Two strikes and striving for the new
Biology is short of theory compared with physics, and medicine more so. More dull trials, and less and less insight. Busyness and project management, directed by chief executives, wielding Excel spreadsheets. Alfred G Knudson has just died and Nature’s obituary tells the story of somebody who could play at natural history and then form a majestic and testable hypothesis. The penultimate sentence reads: “[his] lack of patience for science that merely repeated the work of others kept everyone in his sphere striving for the new”