I think you maybe can make that sort of conditional promise sometimes, but in context, that's not the kind of promise described in the article. It's specificall

I think you maybe can make that sort of conditional promise sometimes, but in context, that's not the kind of promise described in the article. It's specifically saying, "a promise of breakthrough discoveries" (this is the quote from the article). A scientist can't promise breakthrough discoveries. A lot of discoveries are just, "this thing we thought might happen didn't happen, I guess that's a dead end".