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Avoid Boring People: Lessons from a Life in Science

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James Watson did not win the Nobel prize helping discover the double-helix structure of DNA by being stupid. Thus, it is no surprise that his "Avoid Boring People" is full of insightful and invaluable observations gained during his work. These "Remembered Lessons" are primarily aimed at those in academic/research endeavors; however, a large proportion apply to any area of focus. Examples follow:

College is for learning how to think. Learning "Why?" something occurred is much more important than a few facts (eg. the reasons for the rise and fall of the Roman Empire are more important than the birth date of Julius Caesar). It is better to simply know which books hold details you will need than to overload oneself with facts that never will be repeated. On the other hand, new ideas usually need new facts.

Students should choose courses that naturally interest them, and if one's grades are not largely a, they likely have not yet found their intellectual calling. One should narrow down their career objectives while still in college.

The academic world abounds in triviality. Choose a young thesis adviser - the older ones' expertise is most likely in fields that long ago had seen their better days, leaving devotees with diminished job expectations. Those breaking new ground inevitably threaten minds continuing in old ways. Extend yourself intellectually through courses that initially frighten - eg. math is necessary to pursue the frontiers of genetics. Never accept invitations to senior faculty homes unless you have reason to anticipate a very good meal or a fetching face.

Exercise exorcises intellectual blahs. If you are just a little sloppy you have a good chance of introducing an unsuspected variable and nailing down an important new phenomena; too sloppy, however, and you never get reproducible results.

Choose a research objective apparently ahead of its time - mopping up the details after a major discovery by others will not likely mark you as an important scientist; however, only take on problems where meaningful results can come over a 3-5 year interval. Work with a teammate who is your intellectual equal - this helps shorten flirtations with bad ideas.

Teaching can make your mind move onto big problems - especially when challenged by advanced students.

Exaggerations do not void basic truths; emphasizing exceptions and qualifying terms is not the way to get ideas across initially. Controversial recommendations require political backing.

Never offer tenure to practitioners of dying disciplines - eg. plant biology. The result will be an unwarranted appeal to less qualified students.

Begin and end every chapter of a book with a snappy sentence.

Don't take up golf - becomes too much of an obsession for too many. Similarly, two obsessions is one to many - must focus.

Managers should schedule as few appointments as possible - just say "Yes" immediately to legitimate requests, even if you don't have the money. Walk the grounds - get wind of problems early, see who is truly committed and probably going places (working weekends and nights). Institutions are either moving forward or backward - never stagnant (eg. top staff will leave if not moving forward).

Be a friend to your trustees - joining their clubs, donate to their causes. Attractive buildings project institutional strength.

At the end, Watson makes an important observation in today's too politically-correct world. "A priori, there is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of people geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically."

Finally, Watson sympathizes with Larry Summers' recent removal as Harvard president for making an apolitical remark wondering if differences in women's brains accounted for their lower participation in scientific careers. Ironically, a similar recent slip-up by Watson jeopardized his leadership status at Cold Harbor.

I have read this book after being a fan of Francis Crick for years, and sure enough, James Watson is also cast from a similar mold... inquisitive, assuming nothing, fun, witty, and introspective. This would be a great read I would imagine for anyone sunk in the institution of academia, it reveals how those institutions really work. I applaud Watson personally for his very important work, and his relevant views, which are neither incendiary nor aggresive, but simply based on the facts of an observable universe. Which is right where we belong.

Jim, Jim, Jim....

You've written this story three times now. The first, "The Double Helix," is possibly the best history of science ever written. The second, "Genes, Girls, and Gamow: After the Double Helix," is undoubtedly the worst -- I had to wash my hands repeatedly from the offal emerging from each page. Now we have, "Avoid Boring People," a modest step up from the last. I'll leave it to the New York Times to decide whether or not this rendition of the same material is boring and to others to critique whether your use of "Manners" in the title of each chapter indicates you have the foggiest notion about etiquette. But the little science that appears in this book is shockingly bad in at least three instances.

First with regard to emphasis: Anyone not familiar with the history of Molecular Biology would conclude from this book that the second most important discovery of the 20th century (after your discovery of the structure of DNA) was the isolation of the lac repressor by Wally Gilbert. Nonsense. What about the breaking of the genetic code (1 sentence), the development of recombinant DNA technology (1 sentence) or even the development of DNA sequencing techniques for which Wally shared the Nobel Prize (not mentioned at all)? The repressor story has always been overblown in part because of Jacque Monod's incorrect insistence (that you initially bought into) that all regulation was via repressors and that activators didn't exist.

Your second mistake is the claim that Alfred Tissières failed to break the genetic code because his preparation of polyadenine had aggregated. Nonsense. PolyA is about as soluble as salt. The reason his experiment failed is the same reason Marshall, Heinrich and I failed. Namely, we were all using trichloroacetic acid to precipitate the polypeptide products and polylysine (encoded by polyadenine) is the one polypeptide that is soluble in trichloroacetic acid. It took Ochoa's group to recognize that one had to use tungstic acid.

The third is your notion that seemingly erudite "scientific" questions are valid even when there is no possible way to answer them. Nonsense, again. Aristotle's musings on the nature of the atom weren't prescient but merely an exercise in mental gymnastics and a waste of time except as an excuse for practicing Attic Greek. For the same reason Nobelist Shelly Glashow has argued repeatedly that String Theory is worthless unless and until it can come up with a testable prediction. So the argument against Larry Summers' ignorant statement with regard to women scientists has nothing to do with political correctness. The question as to whether women's brains make them more or less suitable for science is untestable and therefore stupid. Fewer than 5% of my medical school class ('60) were women. (By the way, the Blonde that you were lusting after at Woods Hole in 1956 was one of them, but has the good taste to wish to remain anonymous.) The Harvard Medical School class of '08 is closer to 50% women. Has the female brain really evolved that fast? Of course not, it's just that accessibility has changed. And I wouldn't be surprised if by the end of this century half of the Nobel Prizes in the sciences go to women. Please stop this nonsense about political correctness.

And let your story rest...

I picked up this book after reading the positive review in the journal Science. It has a point of view of life as a scientist that is rare to hear so clearly, reduced to its human terms, anywhere else. In a way, it is a sad story, where his lifestyle is so devoid of family life until the age of about 45, and a fulfilling story, where world-class problems are tackled and solved.

The commentary on university structure and politics remains relevant today, and the homilies summarized at the end of each chapter are pithy and accurate, although a bit annoyingly pedantic, as is the wont of Harvard profs (excepting my seismologist friends, of course).

The references to women were confusing, at best. There are constant references to women to whom he is attracted, with the uniform theme that he chased them and was rejected. Not exactly the role women in science are hoping for, and I doubt the storyline was so simple in reality.

On the subject of his research, the author tried to make the genetics accessible, but he mostly confused me through a combination of arcane detail and lack of interest. I generally wound up skimming the paragraphs about races to research results, but which are less than a quarter of the narrative, and not essential to the tale.

So I'd summarize the book as somewhat uneven - overall a very good and unique read. The closest comparison for me is Feynman's books. "Boring" is less urbane and amusing but a deeper picture into the reality of a very successful scientist.

This autobiography is not written well, as it focuses too much on small details and fails to find focus. It feels as though Watson is trying to ensure that everyone of his life's moments are captured in the history books before he fossilizes. Lessons from each "stage" of his life are listed at the end of each corresponding chapter and prove to be useful for anyone considering the sciences as a college major or career. even then--take the advice with a grain of salt.

Amongst the recent turmoil over his racial comments, I decided to pick up his book while at a local bookstore yesterday. I'm a chemistry PhD student, so not much of a critiquer. However, I know good science writing when I see it, and this is good science writing. My favorite aspect of the book is that he shows you what it is like to develop into a scientist, both dreams lost and gained. Since I am in academia, this was especially fitting, as the behind the scenes politics are hidden from view from the lowly graduate student. Aside from what he has recently said, I would highly recommend this book. This man won the Nobel prize for some of the most creative ingenious work with genetics ever done. A man like that should be heard above the cries of the ultra-sensitive. Read it. You wont be dissapointed.

James Watson, the scientist most famous for discoverign and writing about the Double Helix, writes a broad autobiography, complete with advice to those following in his footsteps. The book is heaviest on the people he met in life, and lighter on science, which makes for entertaining reading by a broader audience. Those looking for details on the science discovered (as opposed to the author's aquaintances) are best advised to look elsewhere.

There are several interesting ironies in the book. At the end of each chapter is a list of "Manners" describing career advice, yet much of Honest Jim's behavior (chasing undergads, writing unflattering portaits of his colleagues in the Double Helix) is extremely unmannered. Additionally, some of the flourish he adds as head of the Cold Springs Harbor Laboratory (expensive renovations on his home) are at odds with the financial mess he was brought in to fix.

The quality of an autobiography, though, shouldn't be judged on a character assessment of the writer. The book gives a non-technical view of the life of one of American's most reknowned scientists, and provides a much broader view than he provided in the Double Helix. The "Manners" do indeed provide advice for junior scientists. Perhaps most important, it isn't boring, and that's a trap hard to avoid in scientific autobiographies.

An enjoyable trip down Memory Lane, where the sometimes stream-of-consciousness narrative ties events with memorable individuals during a remarkable career inside academia. More like a flat stone skipping across a lake's smooth surface, with few topics covered in depth, and a lot of name dropping, it is a light review of a personal journey starting with early curiosity as a small boy, his early teamwork leading to the elucidation of DNA, through developing talent, and on to managing a leading research institution, using Harvard University as the ultimate point of reference. One of the more interesting observations is the important role of personality in the pursuit of Big Science, particularly the politics of it all. A chronological order of Dr Watson's career in fifteen chapters, with important lessons, both personal and professional, at the end of each, all recapped in a separate section at the end. Many of the names dropped may not be well known now, so the section describing them is very helpful, not only for their own sake but also for a recognition of their contributions that are a part of Dr Watson's life, work and career.

"Avoid Boring People: Lessons From a Life in Science," by James D. Watson, Alfred A. Knopf, NY 2007. ISBN-978-0-375-41284-4, HC 327 pages, plus 13 pgs. Cast of Characters and a brief Foreword & Preface, 74 B & W photographs, 9 1/2" x 6 1/2".

Dr. James Dewey Watson, 1962 Nobelist with F. Crick and M. Wilkins for discovery of the Double Helix DNA structure, is now an octogenarian who's authored eight widely-read and acclaimed books whose prose goes from A to Z & at 1 to 60 mph in contemplation's of sophisticated molecular biology using scientific jargon, OR as one that mirrors, chronologically, an attentive preoccupation in disclosing personal introspective revelations of one's musings on people and events that he, seemingly, evaluates critically and unceasingly in acute terms of being good, bad or even ugly. His cast of formidable characters includes more than 88 notables, most world-renowned scientists or ranking scholars, but no less importantly emphsized are his characterizations of various teaching and research centers or facilities, living quarters or residences in which he lived, taught, visited or studied at.

This Chronicle is thoughtfully divided into 15 chapters, each conclude with enumeration of a half-dozen learned manners or lessons beginning in childhood until the present time terminating with the year 2006 resignation of Harvard's 27th president, Larry Summers, in favor of Drew Gilpin Faust. The book is unsettling, revealing some censuring and condemnations emanating from his intensely preoccupied quest for scientific discoveries at expense of acquiring and thus a void in balance of societal skills, being virtually incapable, thereby, of "small talk" and appreciably introverted and ego-centric, but none-the-less an acclaimed research biologist of first magnitude.

His personal evaluation of Larry Summers's flaws (Harvard's youngest to matriculate) includes a conjecture of possessing Asperger's syndrome variant and speculating a 5 to 10 point IQ drop, an age-adjustment, in wunderkind Summers' intellect, musing that being genetically based Summers should find some sympathy from the furor triggered by his 'women-and science' firestorm that preceded his resignation and must be viewed as 'divinatory' in light of the 'race-IQ-diversity' fury Watson himself precipitated while touring the UK in October 2007 touting this book whose title, is itself, enigmatic - readable either as 'do not bore people' or 'avoid people who may bore you'.

It is comforting to read and know Dr. Watson is happily married to Liz (Lewis), a Columbia University graduate, and that they have two sons to keep them busy; Watson knows full-well that avant garde research is for the young & restless so he ought bask in glories past.

The book is an important read, for despite the furor which led to Watson's step down as Chancellor of CSHL, he is one of our important scientists who was well aware of treacheries in inciting anger when political correctness must take precedence over anything else, but has at certain ages and/or for diverse reasons perhaps, some lessons or manners do get lost and one becomes vulnerable and thusly must either seek or be provided protection by a murder of crows, publicists or peers or be hung out to wither as forgiveness is not always on the table. Unfortunately, there is not enough money in the world to conduct any further testing of IQ betwist racial groups, representing perhaps that unique or singular study which may not be conducted because the non-sicentists, i.e. society, will not license it.

This reviewer, a Harvard graduate, has heard Watson speak, has read his many books and wishes him success with his books and many years to fully indulge in his family life, including catching up with that small talk, something he denied himself in the past. He, like McArthur, is/was a good soldier but not one who will fade away.

It record almost the whole life of James Watson, the most exciting person with distinctive characters and enjoyable opinions. It is really good experience to take his view of scientific and personal achievements. It is really a lot of fun to read this book. For example, his little tips even include that you may gain weight after you won Nobel Price because some many people want to invite you for dinner. I love this book!