The experimental analysis of behavior (EAB) is in trouble. Financial support for basic operant-conditioning research is difficult to obtain; teaching and research positions in colleges and universities are few; and bright undergraduates join other fields for graduate study. One reason for the difficulty is that EAB basic research does not focus sufficiently on problems relevant to the general population. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other federal granting agencies increasingly support translational research directed at societal problems, and operant researchers are missing out. The author takes two main messages from Critchfield's interesting paper ("Translational Contributions of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior," "The Behavior Analyst," v34, p3-17, 2011): (1) EAB is in bad shape; and (2) the low frequency of translational research contributes to the problem. In this article, the author discusses each of these points. He contends that researchers need to reach out to acquire new skills, construct new types of equipment, learn new fields of study, explore new paradigms, and push the boundaries of science.