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Fastfission, I welcome your thoughts on the article and examples. In defense, here is some reply to the most telling point (and heart of the method) The ""predictions"" section puts the horse before the cart: Watson had already seen the B-form photograph before they thought of proposing the double helix. In Watson's Double Helix memoir, he clearly states that he and Crick had already worked out the mathematics of the Fourier transform of a Helix as an X-shape. They had come upon it with the TMV (tobacco mosaic virus) and had already deduced TMV had a spiral shape. At the time of discovery (of structure of DNA) they did not know the orientation of the bases (inside or outside the helix) which Watson deduced by his concrete modelling of the nucleotide pairs. The discovery (of structure of DNA) came after, at least according to Watson's memoir. And Watson is still alive to clarify this for us. It is a golden opportunity for someone to ask and write down so that we can cite. But the article clearly states that scientific method is not linear, as you have well put. It is a horse-race between the steps, some of which can then be linearized after the moment of discovery, for publication. I do not mind the adjective lousy; in Feynman's words English is a lousy language, yet we somehow manage to communicate with it, and those of us who are prisoners of the tongue even attempt to think with it as well.  "