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

4. Always buy adjacent property that comes up for sale

An institution's growth inevitably demands expanding the size of its campus. Therefore, never hesitate to buy land abutting yours even if there is no immediate use for it. Though the seller will charge you a premium knowing that land is worth more to someone with an adjacent lot than it is to a third party, your bargaining power is still greater than it will be when space is a dire need. It pays to overpay a little now rather than wait till your neighbor has you over a barrel.

5. Attractive buildings project institutional strength

Sometimes it seems money could be saved by building facilities that are less extravagant, with cheaper materials and unknown architects. This, however, is bad for business in the long term. Donors to Harvard never need fear that a building with their name on it will one day be sold off to stanch a hemorrhaging negative cash flow. Less than sturdy structures give out messages that their institution's life may be equally short. In contrast, solid, stylish buildings give donors the confidence that their descendants will one day bask in reflected glory. The lure of permanence inspires generosity.

6. Have wealthy neighbors

Research grants, no matter how much overhead they cover, are never enough to meet immediate needs. Unlike universities that can depend upon rich alumni, research institutions must have rich neighbors nearby who are inclined to take pride in local accomplishments. Typically their enthusiasm will be proportional to the research effort's potential to alleviate human misery. Nothing attracts money like the quest for a cure for a terrible disease.

7. Be a friend to your trustees

Entering worlds where your trustees relax—joining their clubs or vacationing where they go with their families in the summer, for instance—is a good way to put relations on a social footing. Seeing you as more friend than suppliant will incline them to go the extra distance for you in a pinch.

8. All take and no give will disenchant your benefactors

Philanthropy is a two-way street. The kindness of individuals donating to your cause should be acknowledged with a reciprocal gift to theirs. This by no means implies matching their generosity—it's the thought that counts. Since coming to Cold Spring Harbor, I have always made at least modest gifts to my trustees’ other charities. By my so doing, they know I value the other activities that also give purpose to their lives. Equally important is being generous to your own institution. Why should others help if you don't also show you consider the cause worthy of some of your own discretionary income? It never hurts when those who decide your salary see you bite the bullet to give some of it back.

9. Never appear upset when other people deny

you their money

Philanthropists are like others in not wishing to be taken for granted. Your institution is but one of many with its hand out. Soon after I became director, I approached the Bell Labs for sponsorship. My intermediary was a key scientist there who personally knew the value of our summer courses. When he called to say no money was coming our way, I expressed rude anger. Within minutes, I knew what a fool I had been to scotch any chance of our being shown some love in the future.

10. Avoid being photographed

You may raise the money but your success in the end totally depends upon those whose work you host, so it is their visibility, not yours, that matters. If they are not presentable, you are in deep trouble. Photos that put their names to their faces help them move more effectively in the outside world. They may not consider themselves photogenic, but they will enjoy the pride their spouses and especially their mothers will take in seeing them. Most important, keep your face out of your in-house publication unless you can be pictured beside a recognizable celebrity, such as Muhammad Ali or Lance Armstrong. Some of their glamour will momentarily rub off on you.

11. Never dye your hair or use collagen

A dye job works only if your hair is not noticeably thinning. It's impossible to seem as genuine as you must with a wan pate showing through a scattering of coal-black hairs. Of course, the impression of youthful vitality men sometimes cultivate with reddish dyes is even more disastrous. You wind up looking like Strom Thurmond. Gray hair and wrinkles at fifty bespeak dependability. Contrary to our present national ethos, it's better to act younger than you look, rather than the reverse. Harvard's Pusey had a wrinkleless face that reinforced the impression of a life devoid of pain or pleasure.

12. Make necessary decisions before you have to

Success more often comes from being first to take action than from being cleverer than your competitors. When it's the right thing to do, do it fast. If you wait too long, someone else is bound to propose it first and you will find yourself following someone else's agenda. In such circumstances, those taking orders from you will have reasonable cause to wonder why you are getting the top salary. EPILOGUE

THIRTY years on, it would please me to report that the state of science at Harvard had righted itself in a manner befitting the world's richest and most influential university. The relatively short reign of Larry Summers as its twenty-seventh president, however, suggests that Harvard is once again headed in the wrong direction. Nothing may have distinguished Summers's time in office like the leaving of it, but his proposals for the future of science—which have yet to be modified by his successor—figured more critically in his vexed relations with the faculty than any clumsy words that marked his ultimate undoing. That the catalyst should have been his uttering an unpopular, though by no means unfounded, hypothesis only compounds the sorrows that any thinking person must feel contemplating the future of free inquiry at Harvard.

Despite Larry Summers's professed desire to move science onto Harvard's front burner, as his vision became clear many leading scientists on the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) were increasingly worried. Prominent among the uneasy was Tom Maniatis, who came back from Caltech in 1981 to become Professor of Molecular Biology. In his time at Harvard, Maniatis had been at the forefront of work in gene isolation and cloning, as well as a significant player in the biotechnology industry. And so it was notable when in the spring of 2003, he went to Massachusetts Hall to voice his concerns about Summers's plan to make Harvard the engine of a “second Silicon Valley,” whose center would be a vast new campus of biology and medicine on

Harvard-owned land across the Charles River in Allsten. The Allsten vision was to be dominated by “translational research”—a term denoting science highly directed toward immediate application and, one might add, marketing. Tom was no stranger to the development of medical advances from cutting-edge science. He had, after all, founded with Mark Ptashne the successful biotech firm Genetics Institute and his lab had recently undertaken work on ALS. If anyone could appreciate a scientific utopia, it was he. In Tom's mind, however, Summers's plans would further weaken the already feeble heart of Harvard's historically distinguished pure biology programs still located in laboratories along Divinity Avenue to the immediate north of Harvard Yard.

Maniatis had barely begun to voice his opinions when Summers, oblivious to his visitor's distress, seized control of the conversation, using the remainder of the appointed hour to expound on his grand vision of how Harvard should move forward. He asked a purely rhetorical question: Should the president of Harvard be guided by the views of the perennial winners in the research game at Harvard or by the losers? By “the winners,” Summers meant the Medical School, whose clinical studies had in recent decades brought the university its lion's share of awards and patents; “the losers” were the practitioners of basic science at FAS, which despite employing illustrious figures like Tom had lagged behind its rivals, most notably and proximately MIT. Summers would afterward inform a close aide that his meeting with Maniatis had gone extremely well; Tom meanwhile had walked out of Massachusetts Hall seething and more apprehensive than ever about the future of science at Harvard.

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