On John Kendrew’s advice, the energized pair invited the King’s College team to see their model, even though Crick later admitted that he had felt somewhat uncomfortable to issue the invitation so soon. The overture was accepted immediately: The group of Maurice Wilkins, Rosalind Franklin, Raymond Gosling, and William Seeds (another member of the Biophysics Research Unit) showed up in Cambridge the very next day.

The presentation of the first Watson and Crick model proved to be a total disaster. Not only did Franklin question all of the basic assumptions, from the helical structure to the forces that were supposed to hold together the core, but she also pointed out that the reported water content was completely wrong—DNA was a rather “thirsty” molecule—invalidating all of Watson’s density calculations. Apparently, part of the mistake was due to Watson’s misunderstanding of a crystallographic term that Franklin had used in her seminar a week earlier. This unfortunate confusion led Crick to believe that the number of possible configurations was rather limited.

The fiasco had meaningful consequences: Watson and Crick were essentially banned from continuing their DNA work, and all the DNA research was supposed to be confined exclusively to King’s College in London. It has usually been assumed that the directors of the two labs, Randall and Bragg, called for the moratorium on additional DNA work by Watson and Crick. However, in 2010 Alexander Gann and Jan Witkowski of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York discovered some long-lost correspondence of Francis Crick’s. As it turned out, the missing letters had become mixed with papers of biologist Sydney Brenner, with whom Crick shared an office between 1956 and 1977. The recovered correspondence provides a new perspective on the circumstances of the suspension of the DNA research. In a formal letter dated December 11, 1951, Maurice Wilkins wrote to Crick:

I am afraid the average vote of opinion here [at King’s College], most reluctantly and with many regrets, is against your proposal to continue to work on n. a. [nucleic acids] in Cambridge. An argument here is put forward to show that your ideas are derived directly from statements made in a colloquium and this seems to me as convincing as your own argument that your approach is quite out of the blue.

Wilkins, continuing to assume the role of the mediator between King’s and the Cavendish, then added, “I think it most important that an understanding be reached such that all members of our laboratory can feel in future, as in the past, free to discuss their work and interchange ideas with you and your laboratory. We are two M. R. C. [Medical Research Council] Units and two Physics Departments with many connections.” Wilkins suggested further that Crick should show the letter to Max Perutz, and he informed Crick that he was giving a copy to Randall. On the same day, Wilkins also sent Crick a more personal, handwritten letter in which he confessed that he “had to restrain Randall from writing to Bragg complaining about your behavior.” A draft reply written by Watson and Crick two days later indicates that “we’ve all agreed that we must come to an amicable arrangement.” Watson however, was not going to be deterred from at least cogitating over DNA by an administrative decision.