AVOID BORING PEOPLE: Lessons from a Life in Science

by James Watson

  Under the “Conquest of Cancer” legislation, the president appointed not only the NCI director but also members of a new National Cancer Advisory Board, among which I was included for a two-year term to begin in March 1972. Before that, I had been advising NCI as a member of its Cancer Center Study Section. Directing the NCI then was the bureaucrat Carl Merrill, mindlessly generating a complex flow chart for the cure of cancer modeled after Admiral Rickover's successful Polaris missile program. The one such planning session that I attended in Washington accomplished nothing. I was hoping my forthcoming National Cancer Advisory Board meetings would do more good. The several other pure scientists on the board also appreciated nonsense for what it was. Its clinical oncologists, however, wanted to create more comprehensive cancer centers. But such centers, already operating in New York City, Buffalo, and Houston, had shown no capacity to cure most adult cancers; I saw no reason for more of them other than to create more good-looking places to die. Only inspired science, not public relations, could lead to the knowledge that might let us finally cure most cancers. A real role lay ahead for our lab.

  Ulf Pettersson in the lab at Cold Spring Harbor, December 1971

  Joe Sambrook at CSHL in 1973

  Jane Flint, Terri Grodzicker, Phil Sharp, and Joe Sambrook at CSHL in 1973

  Remembered Lessons

  1. Accept leadership challenges beforeyour academic career peaks

  By forty, I was the right age to begin directing a major research institution. My ever-increasing focus on cancer was best fulfilled by presiding over seasoned professionals, as opposed to graduate students and beginning postdocs. So I consciously made the decision not to run a research group at Cold Spring Harbor. This allowed me to focus my efforts first on recruiting scientists who cared as much as I did about the biology of cancer, then on finding the funding they needed to make their ideas work.

  2. Run a benevolent dictatorship

  I was appointed to provide a vision for Cold Spring Harbor's future, not to persuade existing staff members to share it. A research institution cannot ultimately be a democracy. Still, a wise autocrat takes the trouble to sell his program. I never made appointments without seeking informal counsel among relevant scientists already at Cold Spring Harbor. And in time, most new appointments arose from their sponsorship by scientists already there. To my knowledge, I never appointed anyone not wanted by others on our staff.

  3. Manage your scientists like a baseball team

  Sports and top-quality research have much in common. The best stars of each are young, not middle-aged, though occasionally someone older than forty can still be a formidable force either across the net or at the blackboard. No one can long remain a science manager unless constantly on the prowl for talented rookies able to move the game to the next level. Research institutions that let the average age of their staff creep up inevitably become dull places. Lowering your average age by constructing new buildings to create more space, however, is not the way to go. If the older buildings are not exuding vitality, they become mere financial drains. Equally important, good managers see the need to retire scientists who are no longer hitting home runs. Only individuals who continually reinvent themselves through new ways of thinking should enter middle age still part of your staff.

  4. Don't make midseason trades

  Once you have hired a scientist, give him or her an honest chance to hit the ball over the fence. Grand slams usually come only after a player has put in three to five seasons. Treating your players according to who's got the hot hand from one week to the next only drives down overall self-confidence. Consistency and steadfastness are the way to get the best out of your players. In this regard, handling the science of others is radically different from doing your own. As a scientist, you can profit from frequent quick course changes until the right path becomes clear.

  5. Only ask for advice that you will later accept

  Don't second-guess advice you've sought from a colleague whom you highly respect. If a smart friend advises you to hire one of his or her best students or postdocs, consider it a lucky break and just do it. Conversely, never ask advice from someone with an outlook on science alien to your own; people they recommend will share their values, not yours.

  6. Use your endowment to support science,not for long-term salary support

  Generally, a bare minimum of any research institution's funds should go to salaries for older scientists. Under normal funding circumstances, those who have remained successful invariably get adequate research grants to cover themselves and then some. Revenue generated by the endowment is best used to support scientists at the beginning of their careers, when their grant support usually is not adequate to their research needs. Science is not a welfare state: feeding the young until they can feed themselves serves the greater good, while failing to cull the herd does not.

  7. Promote key scientists faster than they expect

  By promoting your best performers rapidly, you necessarily reduce money that might be given to those whose work no one would miss. Be generous with those you value: a salary increase below the rate of inflation is the universal sign to start looking elsewhere.

  8. Schedule as few appointments as possible

  When a scientist pops into your office or calls to schedule a meeting, learn then and there what he or she wants. You can avoid wasting your time and theirs by immediately saying yes to their request for a piece of equipment or a salary slot they legitimately need to move forward with their jobs. Even if so acting means promising money you don't yet have, do it. Your purposes will be served if their worries exclusively concern getting their work done, not currying favor with you. Any scientist on the scene knew clearly where he or she stood with me; I backed everyone I wanted to stick around.

  9. Don't be shy about showing displeasure

  When someone working for you says something stupid or in other ways makes your blood boil, express your anger immediately. Don't go about silently seething, letting only your spouse know you are upset. That is bad for your health and really not fair to those whose behavior has offended you. They very likely already fear they are in deep shit, and would naturally want to respond to your criticism sooner rather than later. When things are left to fester, the festering takes on a life of its own, sowing unproductive distrust. The fault might even be yours. If so, apologize as fast as you flared up. Being an ass occasionally is forgivable; being unable to admit it is not.

  10. Walk the grounds

  Your staff will seldom come to your office to tell you of impending bad news. Only when the bough breaks do you learn the awful truth. To stay ahead, it's best to make walking the grounds a part of every day. This allows you to meet those lower on the lab's totem pole and acknowledge their existence with a smile or word of praise. Equally important is to pop in on labs in the evening or on weekends. Those populated only during weekday daylight hours are likely going nowhere, while scientists at their benches on Saturday afternoons are seldom there killing time.

  15. MANNERS MAINTAINED WHEN RELUCTANTLY LEAVING HARVARD

  DURING my initial years as director of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, I was never the Lab's primary fund-raiser. As president of the Long Island Biological Association (LIBA), Edward Pulling saw this as his role. Living scarcely more than a mile away, he frequently popped over to give potentially generous neighbors tours of the Lab. Early in 1972, Ed and his fellow LIBA directors committed themselves to raising $250,000 over the coming year. With it, the Lab would winterize Blackford Hall as our year-round dining hall, construct a second annex to James Lab for cell culture facilities, and buy a handsome Victorian house on Bungtown Road, on the way to the sand spit, for post-doc housing. Ed believed professional fund-raising help would be a waste of time and money. His acquaintances wanted only his reassurance that their money would be put to good use. My job was to be on hand when Ed had a hot prospect.

  Ed was on to someone big when he saw the need to track down Liz and me on a brief late June holiday n
orth of San Francisco. From a phone booth in Inverness on the way to Point Reyes, I confirmed that we would be there the next Wednesday when he brought Charles S. Robertson to tour the Lab. Charlie's wife had recently died, and he was looking for an institution to which to donate his estate, some ten minutes away on Banbury Lane in Lloyd Harbor. Excitedly Ed told me that some years before, the Robertsons had made the largest gift to date in the history of Princeton University: $35 million. Their wealth came from Marie's family, the Hartfords, whose one A&P grocery store in lower Manhattan spawned in just two generations some fourteen thousand more across the United States and Canada. At the start of World War II, they were the fifth wealthiest family in the United States. Charlie and Marie's gift to Princeton had been announced as anonymous, but when rumors arose that the CIA was behind the new Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, they had to go public lest the gift be tainted.

  With Edward Pulling at the annual meeting of the Long Island Biological Association, December 1976

  Joining Charlie on his visit was his long-valued New York legal counsel, Eugene Goodwillie. After Marie's sudden death, Goodwillie told Charlie to quickly establish a legal residence in Florida. In this way, his estate would not be socked with punitive New York inheritance taxes. By the same logic, it was best for Charlie not to hang on to the Long Island estate, to which he felt such deep sentimental attachment. Its land had once belonged to his mother's Sammis family, and his marrying into great wealth allowed him to reclaim it. To keep the land forever intact, rather than subdivided into two-acre building plots, Charlie resolved to give it to a nonprofit institution. To be settled today was whether Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory was the worthiest beneficiary of the Banbury Lane property.

  Charlie Robertson with me and Liz at CSH, September 1974

  The visit started off well, with Charlie sensing the frenetic pace of the James Lab tumor virus effort as well as the boldness of the picture-window offices and seminar room of the James Annex. My grand office alone spoke of how the Lab was again on an upward course. Before lunch, I walked the sixty-seven-year-old Charlie and even older Eugene Goodwillie up to the Page Motel to introduce them to our living history in the persons of Max and Manny Delbrück. Delbrück had just arrived from Pasadena for a three-week Phycomyces workshop. Then, rather imprudently, I led my not-so-nimble guests down the steep one-hundred-foot path to Bungtown Road. Neither visitor stumbled, though they were only half smiling when we safely reached Osterhout Cottage. There they joined Ed Pulling for a lunch that Liz had taken great pains to prepare. She ate virtually nothing as she jumped up and down serving several courses that started with consommé Bellevue topped with horseradish-flavored whipped cream.

  After lunch, Goodwillie drove back to New York City while I followed Charlie to the sixty-acre estate that sloped down to the eastern shore of Cold Spring Harbor. Before the war, much of it was still farmland, but that afternoon only several empty chicken coops spoke of that history. For the past thirty-five years the main house had been a large whitewashed brick Georgian structure built in 1936, and in it Charlie and Marie had raised their five children. Below the house, halfway down the sloping bluff, was a large saltwater swimming pond, which the children when young used to enter raucously, I was told, via a long steel slide. But the children were now grown and, furthermore, recipients of generous trusts, leaving Charlie free to dispose of his estate without detriment to them.

  I sensed Charlie wanted us to do real science on his lands, and so to be straight with him I had to confess, nervously, that dividing our research facilities into two sites was not realistic. Instead I saw the best use of his land and buildings as a high-powered conference center similar to that of the CIBA Foundation on Portland Place in central London. Toward that end, the high-ceilinged, seven-bay garage could easily be transformed into a perfect meeting room for thirty to forty people. That night, Liz and I went to sleep not at all sure that the gift of the Robertson estate was what we now needed. Spending time to raise monies for conferences on Banbury Lane would divert us from raising funds to expand our cancer research programs.

  To our relief, Charlie took less than a day to reach a decision that far exceeded our most optimistic hopes. Late the next morning, we learned that he had decided it made no sense to give his estate to an institution surviving hand to mouth. He would soon have Eugene Goodwillie draw up documents establishing an $8 million endowment to support research on the lab grounds. In return, we would accept the gift of his estate, which he would separately endow with $1.5 million. It should generate funds covering the annual operating costs of his estate, including a large annuity to be paid to Lloyd Harbor in lieu of taxes. The estate would come with a covenant to the Nature Conservancy, preventing any changes to the building and lands except for the building of a new residence to complement the visitors’ rooms in the main house.

  The remainder of the day we walked about in a virtual daze, half worrying that becoming rich would destroy the Lab's unique way of doing science. But we soon returned to our senses and accepted the generous offer. Even with the forthcoming Robertson monies, we had more expenses than funds to cover them. Many key Lab buildings remained habitable only during the summer, and fixing them up for year-round use could easily occupy the rest of the decade.

  Robertson House in the 1970s

  Over the past six months, we had used accumulated profits from symposium book sales to winterize and totally renovate Cold Spring Harbor's original Firehouse. After buying it in 1930 for $50, the Lab had rented a barge to bring the building across the inner harbor to a site next to Davenport Lab, where it was subdivided into three apartments for summer use. Handling the badly needed renovation in 1972 was a local builder, Jack Richards, who had joined the Lab staff the year before to oversee construction of the James Lab Annex. Large picture windows, to rival those of Osterhout and the James Annex, were installed, creating views on the inner harbor from each of the three apartments, converting them from utilitarian to spectacular. Richard Roberts, the English chemist soon to move from Harvard, bringing the Lab expertise in nucleic acid chemistry, would occupy the topfloor apartment with his wife and two children. Below him would be Ulf Pettersson and his family, leaving behind a cramped apartment in a barn on Ridge Road. The basement flat would house Klaus Weber and his wife, Mary Osborn, soon to come down from Harvard to learn how to work on proteins of animal cells grown in culture.

  Klaus Weber had risen rapidly at Harvard since joining me as a postdoc in the spring of 1965 to do protein chemistry on RNA phages. Recently promoted to full professor, he did not yet have the research facilities that normally go with the rank. All his previous research triumphs had come from using microbial systems, but he foresaw a bigger future for himself in moving on to animal cells and their related viruses. To learn how to grow and use them, he had just been granted a sabbatical leave for a year's work at Cold Spring Harbor. Going back to Harvard afterward would make sense only if they could provide space specifically outfitted for work with animal viruses. Toward that purpose, in the spring of 1972,1 helped prepare a big application to the National Cancer Institute for funds to construct an extension to the Harvard Biological Laboratories. Mark Ptashne would potentially join Klaus in the new space. He too was keen to work on cancer-causing retroviruses since taking the tumor virus workshop the previous summer (1971). The idea was spreading: MIT was thinking of proposing to use “war on cancer” funds to create a similar facility by converting a former candy factory virtually adjacent to its main campus.

  Next on the facilities agenda of Cold Spring Harbor was the winterization of Blackford Hall, courtesy of LIBA's amazingly fast $250,000 fund drive. Unfortunately, Jack Richards found it painful to work with Harold Buttrick, the well-connected New York architect that a LIBA supporter had chosen for the project. A direct descendant of Stanford White, Buttrick thought himself of higher caste than the builders there to take orders. After the project ended, I quietly made Ed Pulling aware that Buttrick and Jac
k had irreconcilable differences.

  During mid-July, Liz and I were briefly in England so I could take part in a forthcoming hourlong BBC Horizon program on DNA. Our second son, Duncan, was only five months old and so I initially did not want to participate. But Francis, normally allergic to TV exposure, was keen on the project. So for several days we were filmed walking through key Cambridge colleges or standing next to the bar at the Eagle, the pub where twenty years before we'd regularly eaten lunch, and where Francis had first brazenly announced our having discovered the secret of life. An unusual ingredient ofthat interlude was the constant presence of the producer's girlfriend Eva. Several years before, she had been crowned Miss World, and she still retained global dimensions. Sadly, though, she may have paid dearly for a picture-perfect figure, regurgitating meals, as Liz accidentally observed her doing in the washroom of the restaurant one evening.