Oliver Smithies

Oliver Smithies won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2007. On June 27th, he spoke to students about what he learned from his thesis research, [blank] involved developing a new method to measure the osmotic pressures of mixes of proteins: "Here is my osmotic pressure measurement. And I was rather proud of this method. And I published it with great [blank] . This paper has a record, you know: nobody ever quoted it. And nobody ever used the method again. And I didn't use the method again. So I have to ask you, what was the point of it all? Well, the answer is really a very serious answer. The answer is I [blank] to do good science. But it didn't matter what I did when I was learning to do good science. So it doesn't matter what you do when you're doing a thesis, you see. But it's very important that you enjoy it. Because if you don't enjoy it, you won't do a good job and you won't learn science. So all of this comes around to the fact that if you don't enjoy what you're doing, ask your advisors to [blank] you do something else. And if your advisor won't do that, there's another [blank] : change your advisor."