Politics & Power Quote by Paul Nurse

You can hear the origin myth of a scientist being assembled in real time: curiosity, self-direction, and a faintly mischievous delight in doing the work with your own hands. Nurse isn’t name-dropping Scientific American to sound smart; he’s pointing to a particular kind of gateway science culture, where serious experimental protocols were accessible to an interested kid and where knowledge wasn’t sealed behind institutional doors. The pleasure is in the verb choices: “investigating,” “following,” “making.” This is science as practice, not prestige.

The second clause carries the sharper subtext. “When it was still acceptable” is a small, loaded hinge that swings the whole memory into the present. It acknowledges shifting ethics and sensibilities around collecting specimens: the quiet cultural move from amateur naturalist to potential violator of norms. Nurse doesn’t argue that the change is wrong. He just marks it, implying a loss of a certain tactile intimacy with nature that helped form scientific instincts. There’s nostalgia here, but it’s disciplined nostalgia, aware of its own compromised innocence.

Context matters: Nurse is a Nobel-winning biologist, someone whose authority comes from modern lab science, yet he’s tracing that authority back to DIY experimentation and childhood collecting. The intent isn’t just reminiscence; it’s a defense of early, unglamorous “low-status” science as foundational. The line also sketches an argument about access: publish the methods, let people try them, and you might manufacture the next generation of researchers.