One of the advantages of a larger group is that people get to do what they’re good at and they like doing. I hate watching video tapes and sitting and coding them. Other people love it. I don’t mind writing a manuscript. Other people loathe it. I really like to plan a data analysis and to process data. Other people are overwhelmed by it.

If you have a large enough group and you can sort your tasks out, what you discover is that people get to do what they want to do, and that’s when they do their best work. And that’s one of the things that made our [NICHD] group work well is we had enough people and enough tasks, and most of the tasks that you undertook you chose to undertake.