Dr. Watson If you won't, I will for you". Holmes suavely responds: "You may do what you like, Doctor". Therefore, the story is presented as "a reprint from the reminiscences of John H. Watson", and most other stories of the series share this by implication. In the first chapter of "The Sign of Four", Holmes comments on Watson's first effort as a biographer: "I glanced over it. Honestly, I cannot congratulate you upon it. Detection is, or ought to be, an exact science and should be treated in the same cold and unemotional manner. You have attempted to tinge it with romanticism...
D. M. S. Watson to show that Watson, and thus by extension promoters of evolution in general, dismiss creationism due to antitheistic bias. A slightly different version of the quotation, derived from a secondhand source, is sometimes used (e.g., by C. S. Lewis): Sometimes the words in square brackets are incorrectly incorporated into the quotation, and/or the ellipsis is omitted. Watson's original statement first appeared in a 1929 article, "Adaptation," in the journal "Nature:" The second version of the quotation, given above, is formed by combining parts of two similar passages in Watson's paper, one from the first page and one from the third.