<P> In his autobiography, What Mad Pursuit, Crick wrote about his choice of the word dogma and some of the problems it caused him: </P> <P> "I called this idea the central dogma, for two reasons, I suspect . I had already used the obvious word hypothesis in the sequence hypothesis, and in addition I wanted to suggest that this new assumption was more central and more powerful...As it turned out, the use of the word dogma caused almost more trouble than it was worth . Many years later Jacques Monod pointed out to me that I did not appear to understand the correct use of the word dogma, which is a belief that cannot be doubted . I did apprehend this in a vague sort of way but since I thought that all religious beliefs were without foundation, I used the word the way I myself thought about it, not as most of the world does, and simply applied it to a grand hypothesis that, however plausible, had little direct experimental support ." </P> <P> Similarly, Horace Freeland Judson records in The Eighth Day of Creation: </P> <P> "My mind was, that a dogma was an idea for which there was no reasonable evidence . You see?!" And Crick gave a roar of delight . "I just didn't know what dogma meant . And I could just as well have called it the' Central Hypothesis,' or--you know . Which is what I meant to say . Dogma was just a catch phrase ." </P>

The central dogma states that the flow of genetic information in a cell proceeds