"Science grows like a weed every year"
About this Quote
“Science grows like a weed every year” lands with Kary Mullis’s signature mix of awe and irritation: progress is unstoppable, but not always orderly, and definitely not always welcome. Coming from the inventor of PCR - a tool that detonated entire fields by making DNA amplification cheap and routine - the line reads like a confession from someone who watched a single technique turn into an ecosystem of papers, patents, protocols, and industrial-scale certainty.
The weed metaphor is doing two things at once. It flatters science as vigorous, opportunistic life: it finds light through cracks, colonizes vacant lots, outcompetes the old landscaping. But it also punctures the heroic narrative of “steady, rational advancement.” Weeds don’t grow because a committee approved them. They spread because conditions allow it. That’s Mullis, the contrarian, insinuating that much of “science” expands through replication and momentum - grant cycles, lab hierarchies, publish-or-perish - as much as through pristine insight.
There’s subtext here about control. Gardens are planned; weeds are tolerated, battled, or rebranded. Mullis is needling the idea that institutions can truly manage discovery, or that every new growth is automatically nutritious. PCR’s aftermath included dazzling diagnostics and forensic revolutions, but also contamination panics, overconfident conclusions, and a flood of incrementalism riding a powerful method.
The intent feels less anti-science than anti-piety: a reminder that knowledge is a living, messy thing, spreading faster than our wisdom about how to use it.
The weed metaphor is doing two things at once. It flatters science as vigorous, opportunistic life: it finds light through cracks, colonizes vacant lots, outcompetes the old landscaping. But it also punctures the heroic narrative of “steady, rational advancement.” Weeds don’t grow because a committee approved them. They spread because conditions allow it. That’s Mullis, the contrarian, insinuating that much of “science” expands through replication and momentum - grant cycles, lab hierarchies, publish-or-perish - as much as through pristine insight.
There’s subtext here about control. Gardens are planned; weeds are tolerated, battled, or rebranded. Mullis is needling the idea that institutions can truly manage discovery, or that every new growth is automatically nutritious. PCR’s aftermath included dazzling diagnostics and forensic revolutions, but also contamination panics, overconfident conclusions, and a flood of incrementalism riding a powerful method.
The intent feels less anti-science than anti-piety: a reminder that knowledge is a living, messy thing, spreading faster than our wisdom about how to use it.
Quote Details
| Topic | Science |
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