A very interesting article but unfortunately you need a nature subscription to read it.<p>This is just a teaser:<p>Many labs are renowned for their intense work ethic and long hours. When I set out to profile such a laboratory, I wanted to find out who is drawn to these environments, what it is really like to work there and whether long hours lead to more or better science. I approached eleven laboratories with reputations for being extremely hard-working. Ten principal investigators turned me down, some expressing a fear of being seen as 'slave-drivers'.<p>Number eleven — Quiñones-Hinojosa — had no such qualms. His work ethic is no secret: a 2007 essay in the New England Journal of Medicine1 and several television and newspaper reports have traced his path from 19-year-old illegal immigrant from Mexico, labouring in the fields of California, to neurosurgeon at one of the United States' leading research hospitals. He did not get there by working 9 to 5.