In my career, I've decided to go for novel materials. But they have to have specialized equipment, they have to be exceptionally smart, and they have to design complex experiments. The way I pursue physics is to try to design, grow or discover samples of new or exotic materials in single-crystal form and then do relatively simple measurements on them. Canfield grows single crystals by flux growth, a synthesis technique he learned from Zachary Fisk during a postdoctoral fellowship at Los Alamos National Laboratory. The people who use this technique as an approach to materials physics have all been associated at one time with Remeika or Fisk.
Canfield points out that training in alchemy has always been by secret apprenticeship.
Books are inadequate. What is written in books is only enough for beginners. The rest is kept secret and is given only in oral teaching. Worship of the proper gods is necessary. The art can moreover only be learned by those who are specially blessed.