Scraprat,
We all have looked for an easier way, people for thousands of years have searched and experimented, many spent lifetimes not finding a way that would work, but found a lifetime of things that would not work, , that is how the processes have come about, through much trial and errors, some of these processes have developed over century's of trials and errors, so studying how to perform the processes that are proven to work you can save yourself many errors others have learned how not to do it, and how to do it in ways that do work, unless you have many years to spend trying to find out what does not work, I feel a person is much better of learning what does work.
A scientist would learn first the how the reaction works, before he experimented with the unknown, or tried to tweak the procedure, this way when he got different results from a small change he made to the experiment he would have an understanding of why his results did not work when he made minor changes, he would also notice if his changes were improvement to the reaction or not.
If this scientist knew nothing about the reaction, or how the experiment was performed, and just tried things he did not understand first (before he learned how to do the process), he would have no idea of what he was seeing in the reaction if it was an improvement or a failure.
If a person wants to learn how to build an airplane and learn to fly it, he would do best from learning from the mistakes of others that have tried for centuries to learn how build planes and to fly, and learn from these people who tried this before him, and can show him what works and what does not work, before he jumped of the cliff in the airplane he thought would be easier to build and to fly.
