Engineers and Doctors

I re-read the Double Helix again, perhaps for the tenth time, and I came across the following from Watson: Maurice refused to get excited. 

My repeated refrain that DNA could fall at any moment sounded too suspi­ciously like Francis in one of his overwrought periods. For years Francis had been trying to tell him what was important, but the more dispassionately he considered his life, the more he knew he had been wise to follow up to own hunches. As the waiter peered over his shoulder, hoping we would finally order, Maurice made sure I under­stood that if we could all agree where science was going, everything would be solved and we would have no re­course but to be engineers or doctors. 

Yes, engineers and doctors, to these mid 20th century "scientists" the truly lowest of those who had a modicum  of thinking capacity. I often wondered if he still thought that way and I was told by some of my students a few years ago when he spoke at MIT, that indeed we engineers and doctors are still down the food chain a bit. But the world has changed, we look at DNA in a system manner, a complex dynamic random system, where the tools and ideas of the engineer, along with the talents of those doctors are put to use.Yes, the bench work, the science if you will, is still being followed, but there are times when the engineering work is necessary and the doctoring is required.