I want to use this opportunity to shill possibly the best history of science ever written: The Eighth Day of Creation [1], which describes the history of structural biology, including Watson’s various contributions. He comes across as a precocious asshole, not without talent but with a stronger eye towards self-advancement.
There wasn't ever a "moment" when they "discovered" the structure of DNA.
The closest thing is Franklin's Photograph 51 which took about 100 hours to compile and then took another year to do all the calculations to confirm the position of each atom.
Watson and Crick (without the consent of Franklin) saw this Photograph, did some quick analysis, and came up with a couple of models that could match Franklin's photograph. Watson and Crick were already at work trying to crack the model of DNA, but once they got access to Franklin's work, it became the entire basis of their modeling. After about 2 months of this they finally found the double helix structure that matched Franklin's findings.
I doubt Crick was on LSD for an entire 2 months. Perhaps he was tripping when he first viewed the photograph?
Last time I checked, this was basically folklore. There were some allusions to Francis Crick experimenting with LSD, but their DNA work predates that.
Psychedelic proponents like to claim that LSD helped Francis Crick discover the double helix, but every time I go looking for a source it's a circular web of references and articles that cite each other or, at best, claim that Crick mentioned to a friend that LSD helped him.
Specifically The Eagle in Cambridge. Close to Kings College, and a cosy and storied pub it is. The back bar has photos and soot-signatures of air crews from all over the world, a tradition that started during WWII.
> During a symposium held for centenarian Albert Hofmann, Hofmann said Mullis had told him that LSD had "helped him develop the polymerase chain reaction that helps amplify specific DNA sequences".
High on unkindness and plagarizing behaviour perhaps for not crediting Franklin when he should. We definitely need a debate on men who did amazing contributions to science but were terrible human beings
What should be the outcome or even content of such debate? They existed; they were great and terrible; they are dead. Given the usual inability of mankind to deal with nuance, some will hate them and some will worship them.
In general, it can be expected that people who really shift the scientific status quo will score low on agreeableness. It usually means trampling on someone else's theories and results.
> In general, it can be expected that people who really shift the scientific status quo will score low on agreeableness.
We are not talking about disagreeableness that causes someone to pursue an unconventional path to discovery. We are talking about cheating, pure and simple. I hope you are not claiming that science rests on such behavior.
It’s fair to say Watson should have given more credit to the work of Franklin and Gosling, but to claim it’s “cheating, pure and simple” is clearly revisionist history.
Franklin and her grad student produced key experimental data that corrected and confirmed the model that Watson and Crick were already hard at work on.
Franklin's experimental data wasn't the only key experimental data, but it was pivotal.
Franklin could have elucidated the structure of DNA herself, but she was working on other problems.
Watson and Crick were head's deep in the problem and were building stick figure models of all the atoms and bonds. They synthesized the collection of experimental measurements they had to correct and confirm their model.
This is not an honest depiction of the full picture.
At the time, scientists already suspected a corkscrew structure but there was disagreement between what that looked like or whether it was double or triple helixed.
Franklin's key experiments resulted in the Photograph 51 that almost single-handedly proved the structure. Before Franklin could publish her data, Wilkins—without the consent or knowledge of Franklin—took that photo and showed Watson. Watson later stated that his mouth dropped when he saw the photo. It proved to him the double helix structure and that guided the rest of their modeling/work. At that point they knew what they were proving. Two months later they'd advanced their model far enough and rushed to publication before Franklin could be credited with her own work
Not only did they use Franklin's work without her consent, not only did they not credit her, but they even belittled her in their books and talks. They even referred to her as "Rosy", a name she never used herself.
In fact, it was a photograph she took 8 months earlier, and she didn't realize its significance or implication. If useful data is shelved, is it still useful? For Watson, the image corroborated the double-helix theory and caused them to focus exclusively on that (instead of triple or single). The photograph itself did not deliver a DNA model.
They did collaborate with each other. The labs at King’s and Cambridge shared information at different times. Franklin invited Watson to her lecture. She and Wilkins went to see the double helix model when it was completed. You’re treating a sensationalized version of the story as fact.
> All these excuses for a blatant case of cheating
The man just died and it's as if you're trying to pry the Nobel Prize from him.
Franklin didn't know what she had. If she did, she would have been working on it.
In a moment of supreme clarity, the universe revealed itself. Watson and Crick knew immediately the photo would cut down their search space from alternative structures. They still had work to do, because the Angstrom length data is not a model by itself. It just constrained the geometry for the bonds and electrochemistry.
It's a way of communicating his age; it's standard phrasing for American english. No disrespect is implied or intended. There are generally no holds barred when it comes to dunking on people that are truly disliked, and when newspapers want to disrespect someone, they will leave no room for doubt (there are some awfully hilarious examples of such obituaries throughout American history.)
"Abraham Lincoln, president of the United States, dead at 56"
It's meant for headline brevity, replacing things like "has died at age 97" and is standard practice.
Claude Achille Debussy, Died, 1918.
Christophe Willebald Gluck, Died, 1787.
Carl Maria von Weber, Not at all well, 1825. Died, 1826.
Giacomo Meyerbeer, Still alive, 1863. Not still alive, 1864.
Modeste Mussorgsky, 1880, going to parties. No fun anymore, 1881.
Johan Nepomuk Hummel, Chatting away nineteen to the dozen with his mates down the pub every evening, 1836. 1837, nothing.
-- Michael Palin
Its not always included. I think they added it to highlight how old he was.97 years is quite the accomplishment, so I don't interpret it as disrespectful.
> In 2007, the scientist, who once worked at the University of Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory, told the Times newspaper that he was "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really".
> While his hope was that everybody was equal, he added, "people who have to deal with black employees find this is not true".
In 2013, I sat in on one of his talks at the Salk Institute. This guy was one of the most openly racist and sexist people I've ever seen. He spent 5 minutes shitting on the former NIH head for not funding him because she was a "Hot blooded Irish woman"
This is the sort of turn-of-century Mr. Burns type racism that I don't think most Americans even remember.
I always wonder with that kind of racist explanation, how the line of reasoning goes.
Suppose for the sake of argument, there's a place where everyone has 10 IQ points less, on average, than the West.
The Flynn effect is about 14 points over a few decades.
How do you square those things? Did the West not have a society a few decades ago? Is there some reason you can't have civilization with slightly dumber people? There was a time when kids were malnourished in the west, and possibly dumber as a result. Also, not everyone in society makes decisions. It tends to be very few people, and nobody thinks politicians are intelligent either.
I've never heard an explanation of intelligence that had any actual real-world impact on a scale that matters to society.
The explanation would have to have quite a lot of depth to it, as you have to come up with some sort of theory connecting how people do on a test to whatever you think makes a good society.
In a clean game-theoretic terms, without making any moral or ideological claims about “who is smarter”, we’ll treat underlying advantage as any positional asset (intelligence, wealth, charisma, skill, social capital, etc.). The question is: If a subset of players has an advantage in a repeated, large-group game, how do they best play to maximize payoff and stability?
Here's the strategy chatgpt came up with (amongst many other):
What Not to Say (Avoid These)
Don’t describe intelligence or talent as intrinsic, innate, or permanent.
This triggers resentment and identity defense.
Don’t use language that signals “I am ahead of you.”
Don’t use your advantage to win every interaction—save leverage for important conflicts.
People tolerate talent. They hate being made aware of being lower in the hierarchy.
_____
Is it possible the backlash to Watson could be viewed from this game theocratic perspective, and not that he was racist and wrong?
Watson was the one who described Franklin as "belligerent, emotional, and unable to interpret her own data" in his book. He also repeatedly referred to her as "Rosy", a name Franklin never used.
Wilkins was the one who showed Franklin's Photograph 51 to Watson. This was without Franklin's consent and before her photographs were officially published. Watson and Crick then rushed to publish their findings before Franklin could
One professor that I had said that she met him when he was a bit younger (when he was in his 60s), and every time he would walk into a room, he would immediately pick out the most attractive young women, and ask them to sit directly next to him.
No, they rushed to beat Pauling. In a just world Franklin would gotten a co-author credit, but I don't think anyone holds that she was going to have the breakthrough on her own.
A huge amount of American public school policy is grounded in noticing that there are massive and systemic discrepancies in academic achievement between students of different racial backgrounds, and trying to figure out what to do about that. If you paid any attention to the Algebra I controversy in San Francisco public schools recently, that was largely driven by bureaucrats and activists within the public education system who were concerned by racial discrepancies in the ability to do Algebra I work. "some races are smarter than others" is too reductive a claim, but claims pretty closely related to that are relevant to a lot of things in American life. I don't think anything Watson said about racial differences existing was obviously incorrect, regardless of whether you use the word "eugenics" to describe it or not.
I thought we were beyond this argument, no? There are so many things with all the implications here it's hard to know where to start.
You do realize that picking a certain concept "intelligence", defining it to include certain characteristics, tying it to a certain notion of "fitness", defining "Asian", and finally, tying "asian" to "intelligence", are all matters of definition, choice, and perception and nothing fundamental about reality, right?
Race isn't biological, it's a social and political construct. The social and political construct known as "Asians" comprises about 60% of the global population. Also, IQ is not a measure of intelligence.
There are cultural reasons why some people in some "Asian" countries may do better on average in academics, such as stronger familial bonds, peer pressure and a greater cultural value placed on scholastic achievement, but that's far from proof that "Asians" are genetically and intellectually superior to other races, much less that therefore eugenics (and by extension the white supremacist ideology it was created to normalize, which ironically considered "Asians" to be subhuman) is "proven true."
It's most likely a combination of both genetics and society - neither are absolutes. There is no concrete evidence that intelligence is purely a social construct, nor that it is genetic. We simply don't know.
People get cancelled not for saying that it is genetic, but for questioning whether it may be. Of course, we will never know if we're not allowed to ask. Cancel culture is anti-science.
Watson may have been racist, but questioning whether there is a relationship between genetics and intelligence by itself is not racism.
We are allowed to ask this question, and we have asked it, and we've found that the evidence does not validate the premise of inherent racial intelligence or other racial essentialist views[0]. Claims like "Asians have the highest IQ" are not meaningful or scientifically valid.
This (https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=171) US-government provided table of average SAT scores in the United States in 2023, which has breakdowns by race/ethnicity of the test-taker, and clearly shows Asians with the highest average score out of any of the racial categories in the chart, is evidence for something that you could pithily summarize as "Asians have the highest IQ". The relationship between SAT scores and IQ and intelligence in an everyday sense; and how representative people whose racial categorization went into this chart are of everyone on the planet who could also be grouped into that racial category; are more complicated questions. Nonetheless, the hypothesis that there are genetic differences between people of different racial groups that affect their intelligence in a similar way to how they affect more obvious racial correlates such as hair and skin color, is not obviously wrong.
I mean, he lived to 97. Given what he's known for, it made me chuckle. Anyway, I thought it was Crick who was into eugenics. If it was both of them, I'm afraid I shall have to amend my opinion of both of them from "disturbingly troubling" to "unredeemable so let's just get them out of the textbooks thanks" right away.
If you say person X thought Y was true, ask yourself if Y was true would you accept it? If the answer is no you are not ready for this kind of discussion.
As for whether it's true or not, let's just say we don't know for sure because scientists either are not allowed or don't want to research this question.
And why wouldn't that be plausible given effectively all available cognitive data support this conclusion?
Of course I'm being facetious. I know why. No one wants to ponder that because of the stigma, so everyone puts their head in the sand and avoids the uncomfortable.
Watson is one of the most openly racist and sexist public figures I've ever seen in person.
Also he devoted the last 15 years of his life obsessed with longevity. Dude took anti-oxidants, tennis, and Vitamin C up the wazoo to keep living longer.
Years ago I had the pleasure of sitting in on one of his talks on longevity.
Other than the casual racism and sexism (Watson is the only person in my entire life I've seen say racist things about Irish people), he made a big comment on Linus Pauling's obsession towards the end of his life regarding Vitamin C consumption.
The main idea is that primates such as humans and chimps lost the ability to synthesize vitamin C eons ago, and as a result evolved excellent color vision for finding fruits and in some cases hunting other animals. Pauling supplemented his diet assiduously with Vitamin C and lived to be 93 years old.
Watson has now beaten this record. Maybe it was the Vitamin C, but maybe it was the casual racism and objectivation of female coworkers and subordinates... Who knows?
Linus Pauling's obsession with Vitamin C is a famous case of an accomplished scientist getting sidetracked with baseless medical quackery. Even during his lifetime there were clinical trials including by the Mayo Clinic that failed to support his claims, but he rejected them all because he was convinced he was right and they were wrong.
Linus Pauling was also famously in favor of eugenics directed at African Americans, proposing things like compulsory sickle cell anemia testing for African Americans and forehead tattoos for carriers of the sickle cell gene. So maybe not a surprise that James Watson would vibe with Linus Pauling's legacy.
Society tends to transfer skills/talent/achievement/luck in one field and assume those attributes hold good in all fields because they were successful in one area, even if there is no justification, so their beliefs tend to carry lot more weight and influence than the average joe and hold the field back.
Talented people when sidetracked may no longer be as effective contributors, for example Einstein's dogmatic beliefs in aspects of quantum mechanics or similar other topics likely partially contributed to his diminished contributions in later part of his life.
Ideally the best case is balance between being courageous to hold any kind of belief strongly even if its not conventional wisdom, but also at the same be willing to change in the face of strong evidence.
It's a trait that some people of Irish descent, like Watson, share.
See also: self-deprecating humor Greek, Jewish, Italian, and members of other ethnicities are sometimes known for. The difference is that Watson just didn't care to read the room before letting loose.
It is if he would describe a member of his own family this way, which I'm betting he would. He was rather famously described as a "tough Irishman" by his longtime friend, biologist Mark Ptashne.
He clearly was an exceptional scientist, but also likely an a*hole. Also unfortunately when people get older, many people's negative qualities are amplified. That seem to have happened with Watson and has tarnished his legacy.
I care. His legacy is tarnished by being a bad human being, when it is pretty easy to be a decent person. It’s worth recognizing the accomplishment without lauding the person.
Especially when the accomplishment is built on basically stolen/unacknowledged work. I’d rather have more Rosalynd Franklin in the world than more James Watson.
I want to use this opportunity to shill possibly the best history of science ever written: The Eighth Day of Creation [1], which describes the history of structural biology, including Watson’s various contributions. He comes across as a precocious asshole, not without talent but with a stronger eye towards self-advancement.
[1] https://www.cshlpress.com/default.tpl?cart=17625586661954464...
This book slaps. Constructed from interviews the author had with the great biologists and chemists of the era.
Just found this app: https://www.roma1.infn.it/~dileorob/content/apps/photo51.php
I've always wanted to see how the structure maps to x-ray diffraction pattern in Photograph 51. Pretty neat!
Wasn't his partner Crick high on LSD when he discovered the double-helix structure of DNA?
There wasn't ever a "moment" when they "discovered" the structure of DNA.
The closest thing is Franklin's Photograph 51 which took about 100 hours to compile and then took another year to do all the calculations to confirm the position of each atom.
Watson and Crick (without the consent of Franklin) saw this Photograph, did some quick analysis, and came up with a couple of models that could match Franklin's photograph. Watson and Crick were already at work trying to crack the model of DNA, but once they got access to Franklin's work, it became the entire basis of their modeling. After about 2 months of this they finally found the double helix structure that matched Franklin's findings.
I doubt Crick was on LSD for an entire 2 months. Perhaps he was tripping when he first viewed the photograph?
Last time I checked, this was basically folklore. There were some allusions to Francis Crick experimenting with LSD, but their DNA work predates that.
Psychedelic proponents like to claim that LSD helped Francis Crick discover the double helix, but every time I go looking for a source it's a circular web of references and articles that cite each other or, at best, claim that Crick mentioned to a friend that LSD helped him.
You might be thinking of Kary Mullis, who supposedly came up with PCR while riding his motorcycle on LSD.
https://maps.org/2004/08/08/nobel-prize-genius-crick-was-hig...
But also
https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6835/was-franci...
Maybe thinking of August Kekulé and the carbon ring [1]? I have read elsewhere it was a "pipe dream".
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_Kekulé#Kekulé's_dream
I am not sure. What I do know is that they used to go to pubs, so they probably used to drink pints.
Specifically The Eagle in Cambridge. Close to Kings College, and a cosy and storied pub it is. The back bar has photos and soot-signatures of air crews from all over the world, a tradition that started during WWII.
You're probably thinking about Mullis, inventor of PCR [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kary_Mullis
He gave a talk at where I worked and did make reference to an LSD trip in reference to the PCR process.
No, Mullis wrote the Nature paper on time reversal due to the LSD trip (https://www.nature.com/articles/218663b0)
From the Wikipedia page
> During a symposium held for centenarian Albert Hofmann, Hofmann said Mullis had told him that LSD had "helped him develop the polymerase chain reaction that helps amplify specific DNA sequences".
High on unkindness and plagarizing behaviour perhaps for not crediting Franklin when he should. We definitely need a debate on men who did amazing contributions to science but were terrible human beings
"We definitely need a debate on men..."
What should be the outcome or even content of such debate? They existed; they were great and terrible; they are dead. Given the usual inability of mankind to deal with nuance, some will hate them and some will worship them.
In general, it can be expected that people who really shift the scientific status quo will score low on agreeableness. It usually means trampling on someone else's theories and results.
> In general, it can be expected that people who really shift the scientific status quo will score low on agreeableness.
We are not talking about disagreeableness that causes someone to pursue an unconventional path to discovery. We are talking about cheating, pure and simple. I hope you are not claiming that science rests on such behavior.
It’s fair to say Watson should have given more credit to the work of Franklin and Gosling, but to claim it’s “cheating, pure and simple” is clearly revisionist history.
You mean plagiarized it?
Franklin and her grad student produced key experimental data that corrected and confirmed the model that Watson and Crick were already hard at work on.
Franklin's experimental data wasn't the only key experimental data, but it was pivotal.
Franklin could have elucidated the structure of DNA herself, but she was working on other problems.
Watson and Crick were head's deep in the problem and were building stick figure models of all the atoms and bonds. They synthesized the collection of experimental measurements they had to correct and confirm their model.
This is not an honest depiction of the full picture.
At the time, scientists already suspected a corkscrew structure but there was disagreement between what that looked like or whether it was double or triple helixed.
Franklin's key experiments resulted in the Photograph 51 that almost single-handedly proved the structure. Before Franklin could publish her data, Wilkins—without the consent or knowledge of Franklin—took that photo and showed Watson. Watson later stated that his mouth dropped when he saw the photo. It proved to him the double helix structure and that guided the rest of their modeling/work. At that point they knew what they were proving. Two months later they'd advanced their model far enough and rushed to publication before Franklin could be credited with her own work
Not only did they use Franklin's work without her consent, not only did they not credit her, but they even belittled her in their books and talks. They even referred to her as "Rosy", a name she never used herself.
In fact, it was a photograph she took 8 months earlier, and she didn't realize its significance or implication. If useful data is shelved, is it still useful? For Watson, the image corroborated the double-helix theory and caused them to focus exclusively on that (instead of triple or single). The photograph itself did not deliver a DNA model.
All these excuses for a blatant case of cheating...
> she didn't realize its significance or implication.
That does not change the fact that they plagiarized and cheated. They could have collaborated with her and/or credited her
They did collaborate with each other. The labs at King’s and Cambridge shared information at different times. Franklin invited Watson to her lecture. She and Wilkins went to see the double helix model when it was completed. You’re treating a sensationalized version of the story as fact.
> All these excuses for a blatant case of cheating
The man just died and it's as if you're trying to pry the Nobel Prize from him.
Franklin didn't know what she had. If she did, she would have been working on it.
In a moment of supreme clarity, the universe revealed itself. Watson and Crick knew immediately the photo would cut down their search space from alternative structures. They still had work to do, because the Angstrom length data is not a model by itself. It just constrained the geometry for the bonds and electrochemistry.
https://archive.today/KaTaT
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Watson
What's with the "is dead at"? I'm not a native speaker but it seems a bit disrespectful.
It's a way of communicating his age; it's standard phrasing for American english. No disrespect is implied or intended. There are generally no holds barred when it comes to dunking on people that are truly disliked, and when newspapers want to disrespect someone, they will leave no room for doubt (there are some awfully hilarious examples of such obituaries throughout American history.)
"Abraham Lincoln, president of the United States, dead at 56"
It's meant for headline brevity, replacing things like "has died at age 97" and is standard practice.
Its not always included. I think they added it to highlight how old he was.97 years is quite the accomplishment, so I don't interpret it as disrespectful.
This is normal english.
This is native English and quite colloquial. It's been used in widespread use in newspapers and in the media since forever.
From just recently:
> James Watson, Co-Discoverer of the Structure of DNA, Is Dead at 97
> ‘90s rapper dead at 51: ‘He went out in style’
> Anthony Jackson, Master of the Electric Bass, Is Dead at 73
> Chen Ning Yang, Nobel-Winning Physicist, Is Dead at 103
> Ace Frehley, a Founding Member of Kiss, Is Dead at 74
> Ruth A. Lawrence, Doctor Who Championed Breastfeeding, Is Dead at 101
> Soo Catwoman, ‘the Female Face of Punk,’ Is Dead at 70
More famous headlines:
> Jimmy Carter, Peacemaking President Amid Crises, Is Dead at 100 [1]
> Nancy Reagan, Former First Lady, Is Dead At Age 94 [2]
> Dick Cheney Is Dead at 84 [3]
> Ozzy Osbourne Is Dead At 76 Years Old, Just Weeks After The Final Black Sabbath Concert [4]
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/29/us/politics/jimmy-carter-...
[2] https://www.scrippsnews.com/obituaries/nancy-reagan-former-f...
[3] https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/dick-cheney-dies
[4] https://uproxx.com/indie/ozzy-osbourne-dead-76/
97 years old... must've had good genes...
Oh eu...
Seriously though: RIP to an incredible contributor to both Science & future of humanity.
Plenty of non-paywall links that would be better here eg
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn8xdypnz32o
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-01313-5
Lots of brain responses in rapid succession:
- I had no idea he was still alive!
- Wow, good genes!
- Was he the nice one or the jerk one? (Ignoring for a moment the Rosalind Franklin part of the story, he was the nice one.)
Edit: (I know he was an asshole. It's been a long day and wryness didn't work.)
I'm not sure what your definition of "nice" is, but mine doesn't include saying most of what's here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Watson#Comments_on_race
> In 2007, the scientist, who once worked at the University of Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory, told the Times newspaper that he was "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really".
> While his hope was that everybody was equal, he added, "people who have to deal with black employees find this is not true".
Yeah, pretty racist
In 2013, I sat in on one of his talks at the Salk Institute. This guy was one of the most openly racist and sexist people I've ever seen. He spent 5 minutes shitting on the former NIH head for not funding him because she was a "Hot blooded Irish woman"
This is the sort of turn-of-century Mr. Burns type racism that I don't think most Americans even remember.
I always wonder with that kind of racist explanation, how the line of reasoning goes.
Suppose for the sake of argument, there's a place where everyone has 10 IQ points less, on average, than the West.
The Flynn effect is about 14 points over a few decades.
How do you square those things? Did the West not have a society a few decades ago? Is there some reason you can't have civilization with slightly dumber people? There was a time when kids were malnourished in the west, and possibly dumber as a result. Also, not everyone in society makes decisions. It tends to be very few people, and nobody thinks politicians are intelligent either.
I've never heard an explanation of intelligence that had any actual real-world impact on a scale that matters to society.
The explanation would have to have quite a lot of depth to it, as you have to come up with some sort of theory connecting how people do on a test to whatever you think makes a good society.
In a clean game-theoretic terms, without making any moral or ideological claims about “who is smarter”, we’ll treat underlying advantage as any positional asset (intelligence, wealth, charisma, skill, social capital, etc.). The question is: If a subset of players has an advantage in a repeated, large-group game, how do they best play to maximize payoff and stability?
Here's the strategy chatgpt came up with (amongst many other):
What Not to Say (Avoid These)
Don’t describe intelligence or talent as intrinsic, innate, or permanent. This triggers resentment and identity defense.
Don’t use language that signals “I am ahead of you.”
Don’t use your advantage to win every interaction—save leverage for important conflicts.
People tolerate talent. They hate being made aware of being lower in the hierarchy.
_____
Is it possible the backlash to Watson could be viewed from this game theocratic perspective, and not that he was racist and wrong?
Hmmm, let's see.
How many people died in wars in the 20th century? How many of them did NOT originate in Europe and Asia?
How much of climate change that has fouled up the earth we depend is NOT attributable to economic activity in the west?
Is there a western/Asian country where late-stage capitalism and the devaluation of of the common has not taken hold?
I could go on...
Are these evidence of intelligence? This is not a rhetorical question.
on top of that, I personally know several women scientists that had to put up with his misogyny first-hand.
There was irony involved.
Watson was the one who described Franklin as "belligerent, emotional, and unable to interpret her own data" in his book. He also repeatedly referred to her as "Rosy", a name Franklin never used.
Wilkins was the one who showed Franklin's Photograph 51 to Watson. This was without Franklin's consent and before her photographs were officially published. Watson and Crick then rushed to publish their findings before Franklin could
One professor that I had said that she met him when he was a bit younger (when he was in his 60s), and every time he would walk into a room, he would immediately pick out the most attractive young women, and ask them to sit directly next to him.
No, they rushed to beat Pauling. In a just world Franklin would gotten a co-author credit, but I don't think anyone holds that she was going to have the breakthrough on her own.
> Wow, good genes!
Said with irony? I mean, the guy was into eugenics—thought some races are smarter than others.
A huge amount of American public school policy is grounded in noticing that there are massive and systemic discrepancies in academic achievement between students of different racial backgrounds, and trying to figure out what to do about that. If you paid any attention to the Algebra I controversy in San Francisco public schools recently, that was largely driven by bureaucrats and activists within the public education system who were concerned by racial discrepancies in the ability to do Algebra I work. "some races are smarter than others" is too reductive a claim, but claims pretty closely related to that are relevant to a lot of things in American life. I don't think anything Watson said about racial differences existing was obviously incorrect, regardless of whether you use the word "eugenics" to describe it or not.
Even if he was "into eugenics", there is strong evidence that your genetic makeup contributes significantly to your longevity.
But isn't this true? Asians are proven to have the highest IQ
I thought we were beyond this argument, no? There are so many things with all the implications here it's hard to know where to start.
You do realize that picking a certain concept "intelligence", defining it to include certain characteristics, tying it to a certain notion of "fitness", defining "Asian", and finally, tying "asian" to "intelligence", are all matters of definition, choice, and perception and nothing fundamental about reality, right?
No.
Race isn't biological, it's a social and political construct. The social and political construct known as "Asians" comprises about 60% of the global population. Also, IQ is not a measure of intelligence.
There are cultural reasons why some people in some "Asian" countries may do better on average in academics, such as stronger familial bonds, peer pressure and a greater cultural value placed on scholastic achievement, but that's far from proof that "Asians" are genetically and intellectually superior to other races, much less that therefore eugenics (and by extension the white supremacist ideology it was created to normalize, which ironically considered "Asians" to be subhuman) is "proven true."
If it was a cultural thing it would be a multi modal distribution.
It's most likely a combination of both genetics and society - neither are absolutes. There is no concrete evidence that intelligence is purely a social construct, nor that it is genetic. We simply don't know.
People get cancelled not for saying that it is genetic, but for questioning whether it may be. Of course, we will never know if we're not allowed to ask. Cancel culture is anti-science.
Watson may have been racist, but questioning whether there is a relationship between genetics and intelligence by itself is not racism.
>There is no concrete evidence that intelligence is purely a social construct, nor that it is genetic.
There isn't even any concrete evidence that it's a good thing.
We are allowed to ask this question, and we have asked it, and we've found that the evidence does not validate the premise of inherent racial intelligence or other racial essentialist views[0]. Claims like "Asians have the highest IQ" are not meaningful or scientifically valid.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence#Research...
This (https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=171) US-government provided table of average SAT scores in the United States in 2023, which has breakdowns by race/ethnicity of the test-taker, and clearly shows Asians with the highest average score out of any of the racial categories in the chart, is evidence for something that you could pithily summarize as "Asians have the highest IQ". The relationship between SAT scores and IQ and intelligence in an everyday sense; and how representative people whose racial categorization went into this chart are of everyone on the planet who could also be grouped into that racial category; are more complicated questions. Nonetheless, the hypothesis that there are genetic differences between people of different racial groups that affect their intelligence in a similar way to how they affect more obvious racial correlates such as hair and skin color, is not obviously wrong.
I mean, he lived to 97. Given what he's known for, it made me chuckle. Anyway, I thought it was Crick who was into eugenics. If it was both of them, I'm afraid I shall have to amend my opinion of both of them from "disturbingly troubling" to "unredeemable so let's just get them out of the textbooks thanks" right away.
By all means they should remain in textbooks. We have a lot of unredeemable people in history that we should not ignore.
If anything it's probably a healthy reminder that even "smart" people can have blinders on?
If you say person X thought Y was true, ask yourself if Y was true would you accept it? If the answer is no you are not ready for this kind of discussion.
As for whether it's true or not, let's just say we don't know for sure because scientists either are not allowed or don't want to research this question.
And why wouldn't that be plausible given effectively all available cognitive data support this conclusion?
Of course I'm being facetious. I know why. No one wants to ponder that because of the stigma, so everyone puts their head in the sand and avoids the uncomfortable.
both of them were jerks.
Watson is one of the most openly racist and sexist public figures I've ever seen in person.
Also he devoted the last 15 years of his life obsessed with longevity. Dude took anti-oxidants, tennis, and Vitamin C up the wazoo to keep living longer.
looks like it paid off
Eat goji berries, play tennis, and eat 10x the amount of daily recommended Vitamin C. I will live to be 100
Years ago I had the pleasure of sitting in on one of his talks on longevity. Other than the casual racism and sexism (Watson is the only person in my entire life I've seen say racist things about Irish people), he made a big comment on Linus Pauling's obsession towards the end of his life regarding Vitamin C consumption.
The main idea is that primates such as humans and chimps lost the ability to synthesize vitamin C eons ago, and as a result evolved excellent color vision for finding fruits and in some cases hunting other animals. Pauling supplemented his diet assiduously with Vitamin C and lived to be 93 years old.
Watson has now beaten this record. Maybe it was the Vitamin C, but maybe it was the casual racism and objectivation of female coworkers and subordinates... Who knows?
Linus Pauling's obsession with Vitamin C is a famous case of an accomplished scientist getting sidetracked with baseless medical quackery. Even during his lifetime there were clinical trials including by the Mayo Clinic that failed to support his claims, but he rejected them all because he was convinced he was right and they were wrong.
Linus Pauling was also famously in favor of eugenics directed at African Americans, proposing things like compulsory sickle cell anemia testing for African Americans and forehead tattoos for carriers of the sickle cell gene. So maybe not a surprise that James Watson would vibe with Linus Pauling's legacy.
>an accomplished scientist getting sidetracked with baseless medical quackery
I would still take that over being an unaccomplished nobody getting sidetracked with baseless medical quackery.
Arguably it is worse.
Society tends to transfer skills/talent/achievement/luck in one field and assume those attributes hold good in all fields because they were successful in one area, even if there is no justification, so their beliefs tend to carry lot more weight and influence than the average joe and hold the field back.
Talented people when sidetracked may no longer be as effective contributors, for example Einstein's dogmatic beliefs in aspects of quantum mechanics or similar other topics likely partially contributed to his diminished contributions in later part of his life.
Ideally the best case is balance between being courageous to hold any kind of belief strongly even if its not conventional wisdom, but also at the same be willing to change in the face of strong evidence.
>Einstein
>diminished contributions in later part of his life
Whew, that's a wild one.
> racist things about Irish people
It's a trait that some people of Irish descent, like Watson, share.
See also: self-deprecating humor Greek, Jewish, Italian, and members of other ethnicities are sometimes known for. The difference is that Watson just didn't care to read the room before letting loose.
It didn't come off as self-deprecating at all, although I see that he had a grandmother from Ireland (unclear if she was ethnically Irish or English)
How could it possibly be self-deprecating if he was specifically shitting on "Irish women"?
It is if he would describe a member of his own family this way, which I'm betting he would. He was rather famously described as a "tough Irishman" by his longtime friend, biologist Mark Ptashne.
I'm surprised he identified as such. Dude is from Chicago but talks like someone from England.
He clearly was an exceptional scientist, but also likely an a*hole. Also unfortunately when people get older, many people's negative qualities are amplified. That seem to have happened with Watson and has tarnished his legacy.
Who cares? Lots of assholes have done lots of great things. Some of the most important people in history have been assholes.
I care. His legacy is tarnished by being a bad human being, when it is pretty easy to be a decent person. It’s worth recognizing the accomplishment without lauding the person.
Especially when the accomplishment is built on basically stolen/unacknowledged work. I’d rather have more Rosalynd Franklin in the world than more James Watson.
Because there are lots of people who do great things who aren't assholes.
We as a society should prioritize valourzing the non-assholes who do great things over the assholes who do great things.
why?
Collective action to dissuade assholes from being assholes is a net positive for everyone.
The less assholes you have to deal with in your day to day affairs the better off you are.