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NancyLebovitz comments on Open Thread, May 1-14, 2013 - Less Wrong
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Another risk is that what the helpers think is good for the scientist actually interferes with the scientists' work.
Like if the scientists get their best thinking done while chopping carrots or something?
I was about to write about how it might feel weird to have someone else do tasks that you're perfectly capable of doing. Or maybe scientists might feel used (objectified?) that society only values them for their output if there's assistants constantly yanking away any non-science and saying, "Sir, please get back to your work!" But then I realized that this could be overcome by having the scientists decide on exactly which chores need to be done. However, that leads to the overhead of explaining to someone how you want something done, which is sometimes more annoying than just doing it yourself.
It could be anything. I know a mathematician who took advice from a very emphatic writer about not being perfectionistic about editing. This is not bad advice for commercial writers, though I don't think it necessarily applies to all of them. The problem is that being extremely picky is part of the mathematician's process for writing papers. IIRC, the result was two years without him finishing any papers.
Or there's the story about Erdos, who ran on low doses of amphetamines. A friend of his asked him to go a month without the amphetamine, and he did, but didn't get any math done during that month.
It's possible that the net effect of some sort of adviser could be good, whether for a particular scientist or for scientists in general, but it's not guaranteed.