Early scientists thought that nucleic acids were probably just some sort of scaffold or binder for the "real" genetic material, and that real genetic material was most certainly protein. They knew that proteins were complex polymers with specific binding properties and elaborate three-dimensional structures. The potential of such molecules for information storage and processing was manifest. In retrospect, you have to pity those poor guys. Here was a classic situation in science—an idea so reasonable, so perfect, so patently and inarguably obvious that it had to be wrong.