When you start in science, you are brainwashed into believing how careful you must be, and how difficult it is to discover things. There's something that might be called the 'graduate student syndrome'; graduate students hardly believe they can make a discovery.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the challenges and self-doubt faced by graduate students in science, emphasizing the rigorous training that makes discovery seem daunting.
Francis Crick reflects on the initial experiences of graduate students in science, noting that the pressure to be meticulous can lead to a sense of inadequacy. This 'graduate student syndrome' creates a barrier to believing in their own potential to make meaningful discoveries, suggesting that the rigorous expectations can stifle creativity and confidence in their abilities. Crick's observation encourages a shift in mindset, advocating for a belief in one's capacity for innovation despite the challenges of scientific learning.
In practice
In a university lecture on the struggles of graduate students.
One can say, looking at the papers in this symposium, that the elucidation of the genetic code is indeed a great achievement. It is, in a sense, the key to molecular biology because it shows how the great polymer languages, the nucleic acid language and the protein language, are linked together.
Exact knowledge is the enemy of vitalism.
A theory should not attempt to explain all the facts, because some of the facts are wrong
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.
To produce a really good biological theory one must try to see through the clutter produced by evolution to the basic mechanisms lying beneath them, realizing that they are likely to be overlaid by other, secondary mechanisms. What seems to physicists to be a hopelessly complicated process may have been what nature found simplest, because nature could only build on what was already there.
It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material.
Simplification of modes of proof is not merely an indication of advance in our knowledge of a subject, but is also the surest guarantee of readiness for farther progress.
The typical imperative from biology is not "Thou shalt... ," but "If ... then ... else.
If you've been wondering where the next gold rush is going to take place, look up at the night sky to our closest celestial neighbor. The next economic boom might just be a mere 240,000 miles away on the bella luna.
When we see the shadow on our images, are we seeing the time 11 minutes ago on Mars? Or are we seeing the time on Mars as observed from Earth now? It's like time travel problems in science fiction. When is now; when was then?
Future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century's developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age.
The cloning of humans is on most of the lists of things to worry about from Science, along with behaviour control, genetic engineering, transplanted heads, computer poetry and the unrestrained growth of plastic flowers.
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