When facing a problem like this, scientists often heed the counsel of a fourteenth-century friar, William of Ockham: choose the simplest proposal that explains the data. This nugget, known as Occam’s Razor, is not a dictate of logic like modus tollens.6 It may on occasion lead one astray. At a meeting of the Helmholtz Club, Francis Crick spotted such an occasion and remarked, “Many men have slit their throats with Occam’s Razor.”
