McClintock's work with junior scientists and graduate students
persuaded her that she had finally found colleagues who
appreciated her work. She had given up trying to convince
geneticists that they should pay attention to her theories on
genetic control. As she wrote to the British geneticist J. R. S.
Fincham in 1973, "I stopped publishing detailed reports long ago
when I realized, and acutely, the extent of disinterest and lack
of confidence in the conclusions I was drawing from the
studies." She announced she would follow her own research rather
than seek the approval of her peers. As she wrote to maize
geneticist Oliver Nelson in 1973, "Over the years I have found
that it is difficult if not impossible to bring to consciousness
of another person the nature of his tacit assumptions when, by
some special experiences, I have been made aware of them. This
became painfully evident to me in my attempts during the 1950s
to convince geneticists that the action of genes had to be and
was controlled. It is now equa