Blackburn’s scientific thinking has a cyclic nature, something like contraction and dilation. Prescott remarked her skill at “asking a very pointed question in a way that will give you an answer, whether expected or not,” and also recalled that she had “very strict standards of proof”; if he brought her unusual results, “it often took a few experiments to convince her.”34 Yet Blackburn’s skepticism has qualities of radicalism as well as conservatism. Given her intimate familiarity with different model systems and her alertness to anomalies, she can fluidly transition from a narrowly
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