A fly's eye view of EGF receptor signalling

When writing a scientific paper it makes sense to tell the story in a way that is clear to the reader rather than necessarily sticking to historical accuracy. A side effect of such revisionism is that the author can impress the reader with the incisive logic of his or her reasoning that led, with elegant inevitability, from the big question to the significant conclusion. But as we all know, the path of discovery actually meanders from one result to the next, with fresh insights appearing more rarely than we like to admit—it often resembles Brownian motion more than historical inevitability. I was hugely pleased to be awarded the 2001 EMBO gold medal and looking down the list of the 17 previous winners, I certainly felt the honour of the prize. But my pleasure was slightly tempered by the invitation to write a review of my work in an autobiographical style. I saw the danger of giving the impression that I considered myself the sole protagonist in a scientific odyssey where the only results were ‘key’, the only conclusions ‘significant’, and the only insights were ‘broad and general’. However, my predecessors had succeeded in avoiding the trap, and I enjoyed the personal element of their reviews; they present glimpses of the real choices and decisions they had faced. I therefore suppressed the urge to omit the autobiographical element of this review.

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