If you're too sloppy, then you never get reproducible results, and then you never can draw any conclusions; but if you are just a little sloppy, then when you see something startling, (...) you nail it down (...). So I called it the "Principle of Limited Sloppiness".

— Max Delbrück, Interview with Max Delbruck (1978)

Source: http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechOH:OH_Delbruck_M

From a 1978 interview in the Caltech Archives oral history project.

Topics: learning, scientific method