After all, luck plays a huge role (is there really a good explanation for the hula-hoop frenzy of the fifties?), and, more fundamentally, serial innovation is just tough: studies suggest that most new products fail.
"A lot of people didn't believe this process could happen probably because it's so tough to study," he said.
Investigating metastasis seems more straightforward than investigating non-metastasis; clinically speaking, it's tough to study those who haven't fallen ill.
It's tough to study the behavior of narwhals and beluga whales in their natural habitats in the chilly and remote northern seas.
John Weeks, the headteacher, puts the school's success down to its partnerships with eight independent schools – including Eton – and HSBC, which lends resources and support, and to a local demand for tough, academic study.
Three years after the president of Harvard, Lawrence H. Summers, got into trouble for questioning women's "intrinsic aptitude" for science and engineering — and 16 years after the talking Barbie doll proclaimed that "math class is tough" — a study paid for by the National Science Foundation has found that girls perform as well as boys on standardized math tests.
Yet Sinopoli's surprising affinity with the natural flow of the bel canto line usually triumphed, even at some dangerously slow speeds; his Madame Butterfly, with Mirella Freni in the title role, exposes the tough psychological study embedded in a lush musical idiom.
The third British film-maker in the official selection is Andrew Hulme, the former editor on movies such as Control and The American, who is making a directorial debut in the Un Certain Regard lineup with Snow in Paradise, a tough character study about violence and religion.
