Serial Crystallography Is More Scientific

Many good careers have been dashed against the rocks by chance, and a fair few have been made by luck alone. The real shift underway is toward systems that generate the same answer every time. Time-resolved and serial crystallography are shaping expectations in X-ray science because it forces this consistency. As experiments become faster, more automated, and eventually more driven by AI and robot sample exchangers performing the same motions thousands of times, reproducibility stops being a scientific value and becomes a product discipline. The product is a high quality, room tempreature low-dose structures, a little snapshot of time. The precision needed for that outcome pushes every part of the workflow to behave predictably from loading to alignment to analysis. It makes the field a preview of things to come. The days of one heroic crystal making or breaking a graduate student should be behind us, replaced by systems that are reliable, repeatable and fair.