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David Dankort was 4 years into his postdoc at the University of California, San Francisco, without a single paper to show for his work since his PhD. His first two major projects had failed, and if his third experiment didn’t pan out, he was ready to kiss his academic career goodbye. In a last-ditch effort, Dankort had constructed transgenic mice that could be induced to form cancer by activating a particular enzyme. In early 2005, as part of the final test of the experiment, he sedated his mice, placed a solution containing a virus expressing the enzyme under their noses, and waited a couple of weeks. “I’m waiting, I’m waiting, and I start to think: ‘Am I imagining or are these mice ill?’” Dankort recalls. He weighed the mice, and found that they had lost a few grams. Dankort then dissected the mice and found that their lungs were riddled ...