Manuscript note by Francis Crick: "I think the most significant aspect of DNA is the support it gives to evolution by natural selection." Note written on the back of a letter from D J E Stamp.
13 June 1989.
(hat tip to Branch of the NCSE)
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I like this quote from Francis:
" I should perhaps emphasis this point, since it is good manners to pretend the opposite. I do not respect Christian beliefs. I think they are ridiculous."
Great find.
Love the sentiment. However, is it definitely real? Crick was an Englishman who worked in England, so why is the date written in the American format? Was he living in the US at the time maybe?
From 1977, Crick worked at the Salk Institute in California, long enough for him to have fallen into the American dating style.
Ah, that would explain it.
Interesting paper on Crick's hypothesis of
Directed Panspermia:
http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/SC/B/C/C/P/_/scbccp.pdf
Moran has his knickers in a twist about it, though, on the grounds that this is true only if you're talking about molecular phylogeny and he believes Crick wasn't thinking of that,and "therefore" it was a stupid comment and Crick was barmy by that time anyway. One of his commenters has set him straight, though, reminding us that Crick was a pioneer in predicting the usefulness of sequence data for phylogeny, though as he made his original proposal in the 50s he was taking about protein sequences back then (of course he was well aware of the use of DNA sequence comparisons in 1989!)
Speaking of the value of DNA, remember that Tostidos commercial you mentioned where the dad says to his kid we have different DNA so we can survive and adapt? I just saw it again today, and now when the kid asks why? there's a pause before the dad just says "so we can adapt." The DNA reference is absent and the empty pause is in its place.