I also suspect that many workers in this field [molecular biology] and related fields have been strongly motivated by the desire, rarely actually expressed, to refute vitalism.

For simplicity one can think of the + class as having one extra base at some point or other in the genetic message and the - class as having one too few.

A comparison between the triplets tentatively deduced by these methods with the changes in amino acid sequence produced by mutation shows a fair measure of agreement.

The meaning of this observation is unclear, but it raises the unfortunate possibility of ambiguous triplets; that is, triplets which may code more than one amino acid. However one would certainly expect such triplets to be in a minority.

A theory should not attempt to explain all the facts, because some of the facts are wrong

Protein synthesis is a central problem for the whole of biology, and that it is in all probability closely related to gene action.

A man who is right every time is not likely to do very much.