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While Occam's razor is a useful tool in the physical sciences, it can be a very dangerous implement in biology. It is thus very rash to use simplicity and elegance as a guide in biological research.

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
Use
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Razors
Useful
Implement
Simplicity
Sciences
Thus
Elegance
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Biological
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Biology
Occam
Physical
Guide
Rash
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Tool
Razor

More quotes by Francis Crick

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Rather than believe that Watson and Crick made the DNA structure, I would rather stress that the structure made Watson and Crick.
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If, for example, all the codons are triplets, then in addition to the correct reading of the message, there are two incorrect readings which we shall obtain if we do not start the grouping into sets of three at the right place.
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Anybody who believes that the earth is less than 10,000 years old needs psychiatric help.
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Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved.
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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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A good scientist values criticism almost higher than friendship: no, in science criticism is the height and measure of friendship.
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We have to take away from humans in the long run their reproductive autonomy as the only way to guarantee the advancement of mankind.
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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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The major credit I think Jim and I deserve is for selecting the right problem and sticking to it. It's true that by blundering about we stumbled on gold, but the fact remains that we were looking for gold.
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Evolution is cleverer than you are.
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It is one of the more striking generalizations of biochemistry - which surprisingly is hardly ever mentioned in the biochemical textbooks - that the twenty amino acids and the four bases, are, with minor reservations, the same throughout Nature.
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If poly A is added to poly U, to form a double or triple helix, the combination is inactive.
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The ultimate aim of the modern movement in biology is in fact to explain all biology in terms of physics and chemistry.
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Since I essentially knew nothing, I had an almost completely free choice.
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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.
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It is notoriously difficult to define the word living.
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Unfortunately it makes the unambiguous determination of triplets by these methods much more difficult than would be the case if there were only one triplet for each amino acid.
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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.
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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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This seems highly likely, especially as it has been shown that in several systems mutations affecting the same amino acid are extremely near together on the genetic map.
Francis Crick