Crick’s gossip test and Watson’s boredom principle: A pseudo-mathematical analysis of effort in scientific research

Summary 

Crick and Watson gave complementary advice to the aspiring scientist based on the insight that to do your best work you need to make your greatest possible effort. Crick made the positive suggestion to work on the subject which most deeply interests you, the thing about which you spontaneously gossip – Crick termed this ‘the gossip test’. Watson made the negative suggestion of avoiding topics and activities that bore you – which I have termed ‘the boredom principle’. This is good advice because science is tough and the easy things have already been done. Solving the harder problems that remain requires a lot of effort. But in modern biomedical science individual effort does not necessarily correlate with career success as measured by salary, status, job security, etc. This is because Crick and Watson are talking about revolutionary science – using Thomas Kuhn’s distinction between paradigm-shifting ‘revolutionary’ science and incremental ‘normal’ science. There are two main problems with pursuing a career in revolutionary science. The first is that revolutionary science is intrinsically riskier than normal science, the second that even revolutionary success in a scientific backwater may be less career-enhancing than mundane work in a trendy field. So, if you pick your scientific problem using the gossip test and the boredom principle, you might also be committing career suicide. This may explain why so few people follow Crick and Watson’s advice. The best hope for future biomedical science is that it will evolve towards a greater convergence between individual effort and career success.