Some years ago, I had a great student working in my laboratory. He was extremely motivated, read widely, was skilled at the bench, and very critical of his work and any results that he produced. However, this critical attitude—although a highly beneficial skill for a researcher—ultimately undermined his career as a scientist; no result was good enough to allow for a detailed description of the molecular process he was studying. Because he emphasized the inevitable imperfections of his work and was not willing to address these with discussion rather than more data, no paper could be written nor any conclusions drawn and he eventually abandoned research. I hope that he realized with time that “perfection is the enemy of the good”; in real life, a 100% performance is a goal to which we aspire, but all too often we must choose to settle for less. He is not the only person to have been paralysed by the quest for perfection. I know of other scientists, particularly those with exceptional intelligence, who are stuck in inaction with the …