In your Column (Nature 466, 919; 2010), the story about me, Congressman Dana Rohrabacher and my pistols is not quite accurate. Neither did the Manhattan Project leave scientists with the belief that they could run their own projects by themselves.

The subject of guns came up over dinner with Rohrabacher at Stanford University (not at my home) when I was director of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center and he was chairman of the energy and environment subcommittee of the House of Representatives science committee. I had been a target shooter, having started as a graduate student member of the faculty pistol team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (times were different in 1953). Rohrabacher was indeed surprised to learn that I owned a small collection of guns and used them in competition; relations between us improved after that.

You are wrong in saying that scientists preferred to run major projects themselves after the Second World War. That was not the training I received. Although scientists were at the top, engineers, managers and business people were all regarded as critically important team members. Compromises have to be made in constructing all big projects, and the Oppenheimers and Panofskys of the time correctly believed that it was the job of the scientist to choose where to compromise, with minimal effect on capabilities, and that a scientist should have the final word. It was true then and is true now: had the old tradition still been in force, perhaps the international fusion project ITER would have fared better.