“Research is the process of going up alleys to see if they’re blind.”
— Barstow Bates, President, New Product Services,
Inc. (1967)
I dismissed this quote for years. Honestly, it sounded like something printed on a motivational poster in a dentist’s waiting room — clever enough to glance at, easy enough to forget. Then a colleague sent it to me during a particularly brutal stretch of a project I’d been leading. We’d chased three promising hypotheses across eight months. Every single one collapsed. No explanation. No consolation prize. Just dead ends. She sent the quote with zero context, no message attached, just the words. I read it on my phone at 11:47pm, sitting on the kitchen floor with a cold cup of tea beside me. Something shifted. Suddenly, the dead ends weren’t failures — they were the actual work. That reframe changed everything about how I approached the next phase.
So I went looking for the quote’s real story. What I found surprised me.
The Quote You’ve Probably Seen Misattributed
If you’ve encountered this saying before, someone likely told you Marston Bates said it. Marston Bates was a prominent American zoologist, a respected naturalist, and a genuine scientific mind. His name carries weight in scientific circles. Therefore, when a quote about research appeared under his name in widely circulated reference books, most readers accepted it without question.
However, the attribution is wrong. Completely wrong. The actual speaker was a man named Barstow Bates — president of a company called New Product Services, Inc. — and he said it in a business context, not a laboratory one. The confusion between two men with nearly identical surnames created one of the more interesting misattribution trails in modern quotation history.
Let’s trace the full story from the beginning.
The Earliest Known Appearance: October 1967
The documented origin of this quote traces back to October 1967. That month, Business Management magazine published an article titled “How to Generate Ideas for New Products.” The piece addressed a very practical business challenge — how companies could keep generating fresh product concepts even after management rejected early proposals.
The article’s author encouraged readers not to fear rejection. Additionally, the piece argued that a rejected idea often saves more money than it costs to develop. Within that argument, Barstow Bates offered his now-famous line. The magazine editors clearly found it striking. They pulled it out as a display quote — a visual highlight meant to catch the reader’s eye. That single editorial decision helped the saying travel far beyond its original context.
The full passage read:
“Don’t worry over the cost of being told ‘Forget it.’ That decision is probably going to save you more than it cost. ‘Research,’ says Barstow Bates, president, New Product Services, Inc., ‘is the process of going up alleys to see if they’re blind.’”
Notice the attribution clearly. Barstow Bates. President of a product services firm. Not a zoologist. Not an ancient historian. A businessperson talking about the economics of creative failure.
Quote Magazine Picks It Up: November 1967
Within weeks, the saying gained additional momentum. Quote Magazine — a publication dedicated entirely to collecting and reprinting noteworthy contemporary quotations — featured the line in its November 5, 1967 issue. The entry read:
Research is the process of going up alleys to see if they’re blind. — BARSTOW BATES quoted in “How to Generate New Ideas for New Products,” Business Management.
This reprint matters enormously. Quote Magazine served as a secondary source for editors, writers, and researchers across the country. When publications needed a sharp line about research or persistence, they often turned to collections like this one. Furthermore, the magazine’s editorial staff preserved the correct attribution — Barstow Bates — with a precise source citation. At this point, the record remained clean and accurate.
Eleven Days Later: The First Variation Appears
Here’s where things get interesting. Just eleven days after the Quote Magazine appearance, a newspaper in Sumner, Iowa ran an advertisement that included the saying. However, two things changed. First, the attribution disappeared entirely. Second, the wording shifted slightly:
Research is the process of going up alleys to see if they are really blind or not.
The addition of “really” and “or not” softened the elegant economy of the original. More importantly, stripping the attribution started the quote on its long journey toward orphaned status. Once a quote loses its name, anyone can claim it — or anyone can accidentally assign it to the wrong person.
The 1980 Mistake That Changed Everything
For over a decade, the quote circulated without causing much confusion. Then, in 1980, a compiler made a single critical error. The Quotable Quotations Book, compiled by Alec Lewis, included the saying with a precise-looking citation — it even named the correct issue of Quote Magazine. But the name attached to the quote read “Marston Bates” instead of “Barstow Bates.”
This is the fount of the error. The compiler likely saw “Bates” in the Quote Magazine entry and mentally substituted the more famous Bates — the zoologist Marston Bates — whose name they recognized. It’s a completely understandable mistake. Unfortunately, it proved extraordinarily durable.
Once a respected quotation compilation carries a wrong attribution, that error propagates through every subsequent work that cites it. Editors trust earlier editors. Researchers cite existing books rather than chasing original sources. The mistake compounds with each new printing.
The 1980s: Marston Bates Takes Over
The misattribution spread quickly through the reference publishing world. In 1986, The Fitzhenry & Whiteside Book of Quotations credited Marston Bates. The following year, The Barnes & Noble Book of Quotations — edited by the same editor, Robert I. Fitzhenry — repeated the same error.
By 1988, the Chicago Tribune reprinted the quote with the Marston Bates attribution in its magazine section. At this stage, the wrong name had appeared in multiple nationally distributed reference books and a major metropolitan newspaper. Correcting it would require someone to actually go back to primary sources — which, ironically, is exactly what good research demands.
Who Was Barstow Bates, Actually?
This question deserves more attention than it typically receives. Barstow Bates served as president of New Product Services, Inc. in the late 1960s. His firm focused on product development consulting — helping companies identify, develop, and refine new product concepts.
In that world, dead ends aren’t anomalies. They’re the landscape. A product development consultant understands viscerally that most ideas fail. Most market tests disappoint. Most prototypes reveal fatal flaws. Therefore, Bates wasn’t offering abstract philosophy when he coined this line. He was describing his daily professional reality with unusual precision and wit.
The alley metaphor works beautifully for that context. You don’t know if an alley leads somewhere until you walk it. The only way to find the open paths is to systematically check the blocked ones. That’s not inefficiency — that’s method.
Who Was Marston Bates, and Why Did the Confusion Stick?
Marston Bates (1906–1974) was an American zoologist and author who wrote extensively about natural history, ecology, and the relationship between humans and their environment. He wrote for both scientific and popular audiences, which made him unusually well-known outside academic circles.
His prominence explains why the misattribution stuck so stubbornly. When readers encountered “Bates” alongside a quote about research and scientific inquiry, Marston Bates felt like the obvious fit. He was a scientist. He wrote about nature and discovery. The quote sounded like something a thoughtful naturalist might say. Additionally, his books remained in circulation long after his death, keeping his name familiar to researchers and editors.
However, familiarity isn’t evidence. The documented record consistently points to Barstow Bates as the originator.
The Plutarch Problem: A Twenty-First Century Absurdity
If the Marston Bates misattribution seems careless, the Plutarch attribution is genuinely baffling. In 2008, a textbook on evidence-based physical therapy practice used the quote as a chapter epigraph — attributed to the ancient Greek historian Plutarch.
Pluarch lived from approximately 46 CE to 119 CE. The concept of modern research methodology — let alone the idiomatic English phrase “blind alley” — simply didn’t exist in his era. Furthermore, no classical scholar has ever located this saying in any of Plutarch’s surviving texts.
This kind of misattribution happens when someone encounters a quote without attribution and assigns it to a famous ancient thinker to add gravitas. It’s a surprisingly common phenomenon. Einstein, Twain, Churchill, and Lincoln all suffer from this problem constantly. Now, apparently, so does Plutarch.
The Genealogy Connection: An Unexpected Journey
One of the more charming detours in this quote’s history involves genealogy. In 1988, a newspaper column about family history research reprinted the saying without attribution, alongside this companion line: “To forget one’s ancestors is to be a brook without a source, a tree without a root.”
The pairing makes intuitive sense. Genealogical research is almost pure dead-end navigation. You chase a surname through census records, hit a wall, try another approach, find a promising lead, watch it dissolve. The process of going up alleys to see if they’re blind describes genealogy research with almost uncomfortable accuracy. Therefore, it’s no surprise the quote found a natural home in that community.
This cross-disciplinary adoption reveals something important about the quote’s durability. It transcends its original business context. Scientists recognize it. Genealogists embrace it. Writers, historians, and product developers all find something true in it.
Why the Metaphor Works So Well
Language scholars and rhetoricians often analyze why certain metaphors achieve lasting resonance. Source The blind alley metaphor succeeds on multiple levels simultaneously.
First, it reframes failure as navigation rather than defeat. You’re not failing when you reach a dead end — you’re gathering information. Additionally, the image is kinesthetic. You can feel yourself walking down that alley, reaching the wall, turning around. That physical sensation makes the idea stick in memory.
Second, the metaphor implies systematic method. You go up alleys deliberately, one by one. This isn’t random wandering — it’s structured exploration. Furthermore, the word “blind” carries a double meaning: a blind alley is a dead end, but “blind” also suggests that you couldn’t have known without looking. The blindness belongs to the alley, not the researcher.
Third, the quote refuses to romanticize failure. It doesn’t say research is beautiful or noble. It says research is the process — workmanlike, methodical, unglamorous. That honesty resonates with anyone who has actually done sustained research of any kind.
Modern Usage and Ongoing Misattribution
Today, the quote circulates widely across academic presentations, research methodology courses, and business strategy workshops. Source Unfortunately, most online versions still credit Marston Bates. A smaller but persistent number credit Plutarch. Very few sources correctly identify Barstow Bates.
This matters for a reason beyond mere accuracy. When we misattribute a quote, we erase the actual person who said it. Barstow Bates offered a genuinely insightful observation about the nature of professional research. He deserves credit for it. Moreover, knowing the quote’s business origins rather than scientific ones actually enriches its meaning — it reminds us that the tolerance for productive failure isn’t unique to laboratories. It belongs to anyone doing serious, methodical work.
What This Quote Actually Teaches Us
Strip away the attribution confusion, and the core message remains remarkably useful. Research — whether scientific, historical, genealogical, journalistic, or entrepreneurial — requires a specific psychological relationship with dead ends. You must enter each alley genuinely willing to find it blocked. You must exit without shame. Then you must enter the next one.
This sounds simple. It isn’t. Source Most people experience dead ends as evidence of personal inadequacy rather than as the natural texture of investigative work. Barstow Bates, speaking from the very practical world of product development consulting, understood this dynamic intuitively.
His line isn’t motivational fluff. It’s a methodological description. Research is the process of going up alleys to see if they’re blind. Not some of research. Not the frustrating part of research. The whole thing. The entire enterprise.
Conclusion: Give Credit Where It’s Due
The documented record is clear. Barstow Bates, president of New Product Services, Inc., coined this saying in October 1967 during a conversation about product development research. Business Management magazine published it that same month. Quote Magazine reprinted it correctly in November 1967. Then, thirteen years later, a single compiler’s error substituted Marston Bates for Barstow Bates — and that mistake has echoed through reference books, newspaper columns, academic textbooks, and internet databases ever since.
The Plutarch attribution requires no serious engagement. It’s historically impossible and textually unsupported.
What this quote’s journey illustrates, rather beautifully, is that attribution research is itself a process of going up alleys to see if they’re blind. You follow the Marston Bates lead — dead end. You follow the Plutarch lead — immediate dead end. You trace back through reference books, find the 1980 compilation, spot the error, follow the thread to Quote Magazine, and finally arrive at a name most people have never heard: Barstow Bates.
He walked the alleys. He found the walls. Then he described the whole experience in eleven words that have outlasted almost everything else he ever said or did. That’s not a bad legacy for a business consultant from 1967.