Conversations in Genetics

As formal and methodological as it sometimes appears, science remains at its heart a process of storytelling.

Written byRochelle Easton Esposito
| 6 min read

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"We can invent only with memory"

- Alphonse Karr, Les Guêpes, 1843

Graphic: Jennifer Stortz

1) L. Shapiro, W. Gilbert, F. Jacob, 1985; 2) J. Crow, R.A. Fisher, M. Kimura, 1961; 3) F. Jacob, c. 1942; 4) L. Hartwell, 1960; 5) D. Lindsley, L. Sandler, W.K. Baker, 1961; 6) B. McClintock, I. Herskowitz, 1980; 7) E. Lewis, 1960b; 8) G. Beadle, A. Sturtevant, E. Lewis, 1952; 9) A. Motulsky, J. Goldstein, 1985; 10) M. Delbruck, G. Stent, E. Wollman, J. Monod, R. Hershey, 1952; 11) S. Benzer, 1963; 12) F. Mitelman, J. Rowley, 1982; 13) E. Witkin, 1988.

As formal and methodological as it sometimes appears, science remains at its heart a process of storytelling. But published papers and texts bornfrom key discoveries don't tell the whole story. They are highly oversimplified, giving an abbreviated, often artificial account of why experiments were done and how ideas originated. Beneath them rest ...

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