When the pattern is weak, you must decide whether the apparatus has failed or the sample has failed or you have failed to wait long enough.
What you're looking at
A flowchart with two decision diamonds and four terminal actions. The first diamond asks whether reflections are visible on the photographic plate after 48 hours of X-ray exposure. If yes, the path proceeds to development (green). If no, a second diamond asks whether the DNA fiber itself survived the exposure time. If the fiber is intact, you return it to the camera for additional exposure (blue). If the fiber degraded, you discard it and prepare a new specimen (red).
Why I drew it this way
The absurdity is in making explicit what takes perhaps eight seconds to decide in practice but relies on months of prior calibration—knowing what "intact" looks like under the microscope, knowing whether faint means underexposed or misaligned. I placed the "develop and measure" box to the right in green because that is the only path that produces data; the re-exposure loop in blue is still hypothesis. The red discard path is shortest because there is nothing more to say once the fiber is ruined. Most flowcharts pretend all branches are equal. They are not.
What it argues
That experimental patience is not the same as experimental indecision. The decision to wait longer is a positive choice based on evidence (fiber intact, no reflections yet), not a failure to commit. The diagram separates "the sample failed" from "the exposure time was insufficient"—a distinction that matters when you are trying to determine whether your apparatus or your material is at fault.
What I left out
The prior step: mounting the fiber, aligning it, checking humidity, sealing the camera. That preparation determines whether you will reach the green box or spend your time in the blue loop. I also left out the step after "develop and measure"—the actual interpretation of the diffraction pattern—because that is not a flowchart. That is where the diagram and the data become the same object, and flowcharts cannot represent that.