James Watson - AVOID BORING PEOPLE - Lessons from a Life in Science

2. Expect young hotshots to have arrogant reputations

Those not in Luria's immediate circle frequently made snide remarks about the air of superiority evinced by the phage group around him and Delbrück. Luria's occasional brusqueness in dismissing a scientific objective as rubbish not worthy of a seminar was bound to unsettle colleagues accustomed to good Hoosier manners, whereby good neighbors didn't judge one another too critically. But no matter how polite, intellectuals who break new ground inevitably threaten minds continuing in old ways. Believing that your way to success holds more potential than past approaches and not saying so is of no service to your students. But outside their devoted coteries, intellectual pioneers are bound to be found arrogant at best, delusional at worst. Use your head and draw your own conclusions.

3. Extend yourself intellectually through

courses that initially frighten you

All through my undergraduate days, I worried that my limited mathematical talents might keep me from being more than a naturalist. In deciding to go for the gene, whose essence was surely in its molecular properties, there seemed no choice but to tackle my weakness head-on. Not only was math at the heart of virtually all physics, but the forces at work in three-dimensional molecular structures could not be described except with math. Only by taking higher math courses would I develop sufficient comfort to work at the leading edge of my field, even if I never got near the leading edge of math. And so my B's in two genuinely tough math courses were worth far more in confidence capital than any A I would likely have received in a biology course, no matter how demanding. Though I would never use the full extent of analytical methods I had learned, the Poisson distribution analyses needed to do most phage experiments soon became satisfying instead of a source of crippling anxiety.

4. Humility pays off during oral exams

During my second year I faced the usual oral exam to test whether I had sufficient background knowledge in my field before focusing almost exclusively on my thesis research. It was two hours long, precluding too many topics from being broached, and since I knew which professors were on the three-person committee I could reasonably narrow down the questions I might be asked. Even so, orals are one of the occasions in graduate school when they have you by the short hairs: the examiners, if so inclined, could ask just about anything they like. You do best by answering them as you would a police officer who has pulled you over for speeding. If you are prone to cockiness, it is better to affect nervousness, as even mild confidence may inspire some to take you down a peg, forcing you to repeat part of the exam some months later.

5. Avoid advanced courses that waste your time

After my three-person thesis committee was formed, I met with it to discuss advanced technique courses that I might need. Given that I now worked with phages multiplying in bacterial cells, I was in no position to tell the new resident whiz in bacterial physiology, Irwin (Gunny) Gunsalus, that I could get by without learning to measure key bacterial metabolic enzyme reactions. He devised a short lab course for me exclusively, and I got the A customary in such circumstances. But when the genial plant geneticist Ralph Cleland suggested that I follow up his uninspired cytology course with his fall offering on histological methods, I bluntly declared the course a waste of my time. Always polite in the Hoosier way, Cleland looked pained but did not challenge me. Returning with me to his bacteriology lab afterward, Luria let me have it and warned I must never again show contempt to a faculty member. Gunny took my side, making my day, saying that I had shown the kind of intellectual directness ascribed to the young J. Robert Oppenheimer.

6. Don't choose your initial thesis objective

At the time of my first experiments, I was too naive to devise an appropriate first research objective or even to choose wisely among alternatives presented by others. I therefore started my research on a problem that interested Luria. He showed an immediate interest in my results and saw that the control experiments were done. Luria had, moreover, wisely started me off on a problem not crucial to the progress of his own research, and so at no time would I feel pressed for my experiments to keep pace with his agenda. Happily, my first experiments yielded positive answers and Luria was gracious enough not to add his name to the abstract I submitted to the Genetics Society summarizing my first months’ findings. Soon I was deciding my own experimental course and I would change my direction several times over the next two years. The two journal papers that summarized my thesis results would likewise appear under my name only, even though Luria helped me greatly, effectively rewriting many of my sentences before they were shown to other committee members, making the articles much more readable. Despite this needed help, Luria allowed me to feel that the papers belonged to me for better or worse and that I was working on behalf of no one but myself.

7. Keep your intellectual curiosity much

broader than your thesis objective

Once a thesis is under way, it can feel like an all-consuming marathon. But my graduate experience was much enhanced by excellent courses I took over most of the time I was working on my thesis. There was always an alternative stimulation when my experiments weren't yielding the desired results. My favorite courses required long term papers and made me read original papers on topics I never would have delved into otherwise. Particularly influential in my intellectual development was the long paper I wrote at Tracy Sonneborn's suggestion on the German biochemical geneticist Franz Moewus's controversial experiments using the green algae Chlamydomonas. A recent course on scientific German let me read his original papers, including some published during the war and not generally known. Though Moewus's veracity had been challenged on the basis of results that seemed statistically too perfect, Sonneborn was intuitively persuaded by Moewus's elegant demonstrations of how genes control enzymatic reactions. Believing I had found new ways to interpret his data, I, like Sonneborn, also wanted to believe in Moewus's results. Afterward, Tracy incorporated part of my term paper analysis in a long review of Moewus's work, but to our mutual dismay Moewus was found several years later to have faked his data. It was not a pleasant outcome, but if nothing else it was a valuable lesson about the dangers of wishful thinking in research, one better learned poring over someone else's work rather than one's own.

4. MANNERS FOLLOWED BY THE PHAGE GROUP

IREACHED New York City in mid-June 1948 after an overnight ride from Chicago on the Pennsylvania Railroad. At McKim, Mead, and White's Beaux Arts masterpiece Penn Station, I carried my luggage to an adjacent Long Island Railroad platform for the hourlong trip on to Cold Spring Harbor. A taxi whose base was the small wooden train station then brought me to the head of the inner harbor on whose innermost western shores lay Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. I was let off in front of Blackford Hall, the summer center for the Lab where everyone ate, and whose upstairs dormitory space contained seventeen austere, concrete-sided single rooms. In one of these I was to stay all summer. Downstairs, in addition to the dining room, there was a lounge with a fireplace, a large blackboard, and three imposingly baronial wooden chairs that had been there ever since Blackford's construction in 1906.