This paper explores a dominant feature of the professional socialization of doctoral students in laboratory and field sciences: the harsh reality of struggling to get laboratory experiments and other forms of practical research to `work'. As undergraduates, young scientists have experienced success in their practical work because they are exposed to stage-managed experiments, demonstrations or similarly controlled environments. They encounter a world of stable and predictable phenomena under controlled conditions. In contrast, each generation or cohort of graduates has to learn that everyday research in the field or in the laboratory does not necessarily produce stable, usable results until they have mastered tacit craft skills. In turn, they then learn to remove all mention of those tacit, indeterminate aspects from public accounts of their research.