The remarkable success of the UK Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge (W. Bynum Nature 490, 31–32; 2012) might be explained in the words of Max Perutz. When asked what makes creative research, he would say: “No politics, no committees, no referees, just talented highly motivated people” (G. Radda Nature Med. 8, 205; 2002).

Four of the greatest discoveries of the twentieth century — the structure of the atom, quantum mechanics, the theory of relativity and the structure of DNA — were made without project reviewers or grant-giving agencies (B. Gal-Or Cosmology, Physics, and Philosophy p. 493; Springer, 1983).