One of the most insidious and nefarious properties of scientific models is their tendency to take over, and sometimes supplant, reality.
Erwin ChargaffThe results serve to disprove the tetranucleotide hypothesis. It is, however, noteworthy-whether this is more than accidental, cannot yet be said-that in all desoxypentose nucleic acids examined thus far the molar ratios of total purines to total pyrimidines, and also of adenine to thymine and of guanine to cytosine, were not far from 1.
Erwin ChargaffScience is wonderfully equipped to answer the question 'How?' but it gets terribly confused when you ask the question 'Why?'
Erwin ChargaffThere are no such men today. We have created a mechanism that makes it practically impossible for a real genius to appear. In my own field the biochemist Fritz Lipmann or the much maligned Linus Pauling were very talented people. But generally, geniuses everywhere seem to have died out by 1914. Today, most are mediocrities blown up by the winds of the time.
Erwin Chargaff