He could not continue his research without money to buy benzene. So he decided that he would apply for a research grant and, armed with the application, he sat down one evening to fill in the blanks. In a panic he grabbed his lab books and set out to write a paper. The author should provide justification for carrying out this research when Frank Friendly, Gary Galoshes, and Wendy Weinstein have all reported work which overlaps strongly with the results reported here. Now, Joe is a mythical character - in more ways than one.
Science is somewhat like an unfinished brick wall.
We look at the work already done and we lay a brick in an appropriate place. In some cases even more than one brick. Some people are sufficiently lucky to lay one or more bricks in the bottom row. But even these must know about the other walls. Part of the fun of the library is found in the hunt - which in my opinion is almost as important as the laboratory research itself.