He became extraordinarily careful

From John M. Barry, The Great Influenza, page 158. Oswald Avery, early in his research career at the Rockefeller, became excited about the results from a couple of initial experiments and rushed to publish two papers. The ideas he advanced and the tentative evidence he offered both proved to be wrong to his great mortification.

Avery again reached well beyond his experimental evidence for a conclusion.

Both were quickly proved wrong. Humiliated he was determined never to suffer such embarrassment again. He became extraordinarily careful, extraordinarily cautious and conservative, in anything he published or even said outside of his own laboratory. He did not stop speculating - privately - about the boldest and most far-reaching interpretations of an experiment, but from then on he published only the most rigorously tested and conservative conclusions. From then on, Avery would only - in public - inch his way forward. An inch at a time, he would ultimately cover an enormous and startling distance.