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Again the message to experimentalists is: Be sensible but don't be impressed too much by negative arguments. If at all possible, try it and see what turns up. Theorists almost always dislike this sort of approach.

Francis Crick

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Francis Crick
Age: 88 †
Born: 1916
Born: June 8
Died: 2004
Died: July 28
Biochemist
Biologist
Geneticist
Molecular Biologist
Neuroscientist
Physicist
Scientist
University Teacher
Francis Harry Compton Crick
Francis H.C. Crick
Always
Negative
Theorists
Approach
Arguments
Sort
Impressed
Almost
Dislike
Possible
Sensible
Turns
Message
Trying
Messages
Much
Argument

More quotes by Francis Crick

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There is no form of prose more difficult to understand and more tedious to read than the average scientific paper.
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How is the base sequence, divided into codons? There is nothing in the backbone of the nucleic acid, which is perfectly regular, to show us how to group the bases into codons.
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Christianity may be OK between consenting adults in private but should not be taught to young children.
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A busy life is a wasted life.
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Moreover the incorporation requires the same components needed for protein synthesis, and is inhibited by the same inhibitors. Thus the system is most unlikely to be a complete artefact and is very probably closely related to genuine protein synthesis.
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You’re nothing but a pack of neurons.
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It would appear that the number of nonsense triplets is rather low, since we only occasionally come across them. However this conclusion is less secure than our other deductions about the general nature of the genetic code.
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A man who is right every time is not likely to do very much.
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Attempts have been made from a study of the changes produced by mutation to obtain the relative order of the bases within various triplets, but my own view is that these are premature until there is more extensive and more reliable data on the composition of the triplets.
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You can do reverse engineering, but you can’t do reverse hacking.
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It is essential to understand our brains in some detail if we are to assess correctly our place in this vast and complicated universe we see all around us.
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There is no scientific study more vital to man than the study of his own brain. Our entire view of the universe depends on it.
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It has yet to be shown by direct biochemical methods, as opposed to the indirect genetic evidence mentioned earlier, that the code is indeed a triplet code.
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What could be more foolish than to base one's entire view of life on ideas that, however plausible at the time, now appear to be quite erroneous? And what would be more important than to find our true place in the universe by removing one by one these unfortunate vestiges of earlier beliefs?
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I also suspect that many workers in this field [molecular biology] and related fields have been strongly motivated by the desire, rarely actually expressed, to refute vitalism.
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Since I essentially knew nothing, I had an almost completely free choice.
Francis Crick
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I think she [Rosalind Franklin] was a good experimentalist but certainly not of the first rank. She was simply not in the same class as Eigen or Bragg or Pauling, nor was she as good as Dorothy Hodgkin. She did not even select DNA to study. It was given to her. Her theoretical crystallography was very average.
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It is not easy to convey, unless one has experienced it, the dramatic feeling of sudden enlightenment that floods the mind when the right idea finally clinches into place.
Francis Crick
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Almost all aspects of life are engineered at the molecular level, and without understanding molecules we can only have a very sketchy understanding of life itself.
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Protein synthesis is a central problem for the whole of biology, and that it is in all probability closely related to gene action.
Francis Crick