Exactly what I thought. Lots of not-so-famous scientists didn't work long hours either. This is just another case of the "Halo Effect".[1] Let's select a group based on an outcome (i.e. being a famous scientist) and then work backwards to find similarities that fit a narrative.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Halo-Effect-Business-Delusions-Manage...

There is a book by the name of "The Halo Effect" about the same thing in business. It's a great read. It really tears apart all of the business books people rave about.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Halo-Effect-Business-Delusions-ebo...

Thanks! I had Making Software on my bookshelf, and someone "borrowed" it. I'll need to "borrow" it back. :-) The challenge from it's intro was that anyone in the field will overstate the truth in the research. I used to be a business book junkie until I realized what weak foundation most of it was built on. I've gradually come back to the genre but more for context and story than predictive power.

The Halo Effect [0] amped up my skepticism. Of course it was a business book [1] that introduced me to the Halo Effect... :-)

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect [1] http://www.amazon.com/The-Halo-Effect-Business-Delusions/dp/...

If you're going to read that book, I'd suggest you read "The Halo Effect" as well. It talks about how questionable the "retrospective" research from these books is.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Halo-Effect-Business-Delusions/dp/...

_The Halo Effect_, Phil Rozenzweig: http://www.amazon.com/The-Halo-Effect-Business-Delusions/dp/...

This revisits books from earlier in the decade (like _Good to Great_), and shows that many of the profiled companies failed. It's a great way to learn how to read entrepreneurship books; many theories are based on "Intel is successful; Intel does X; therefore doing X will make you successful".

In general, go read books from ten years ago and see if any of the predictions held up. Likewise, I recommend _Founders at Work_ because so many of these (currently) successful companies were launched with opposing philosophies, and all of them worked. Open plan? Works! Offices? Also works! Deep funding? Works! Bootstrapping? Also works!

Jim Collins' books are based on pseudo-research. Phil Rosenzweig does a beautiful job of showing this in The Halo Effect: http://www.amazon.com/Halo-Effect-Business-Delusions-Manager...

The Halo Effect, by Phil Rosenzweig, does a good job describing many of the problems with popular business books like Good to Great and In Search of Excellence. It's worth reading.

http://www.amazon.com/Halo-Effect-Business-Delusions-Manager...