Slashdot Mirror
James Watson's Nobel Medal Sells For $4.1 Million
An anonymous reader writes Scientist James Watson, who has issues with women, Africans, and the scientific community, has became the only living Nobel laureate to sell his medal after it fetched over $4 million at auction. "Watson told Nature that his motivation for selling the medal is a chance for redemption. He plans to donate some of the proceeds to Cold Spring, where he still draws a $375,000 base salary as chancellor emeritus, and also to University College Cork in Ireland to help establish an institute dedicated to the mathematician George Boole. 'I'm 52% Irish,' Watson said by way of explanation."
He could use some of that money to set up a memorial of some kind for the memory of Rosalind Franklin, or make a big donation to Rosalind Franklin University.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
For science to work you must be able to state an unpopular opinion and not get slaughtered for it.
Agreed. Has anyone discounted any of Watson's other scientific discoveries on the basis of this remark? I don't think so. And if not, science is still working as it should.
We're talking about a very smart guy that helped discover DNA.
I'm sensing a fallacious appeal to authority coming up....
If he says that there is a DNA element to intelligence (and everyone knows there is)
Yes, that's a true statement.
and that it varies by race (again, this is a no brainer)
If you're looking for the place where your post went from "misguided appeal to authority" to "racist rant," this is where it happens. Exactly why is it a "no brainer" that intelligence varies significantly by race?? I've personally met some very smart people of all sorts of races, and I've met idiots from all sorts of races too. I don't feel like I've accumulated enough data to say it's a "no brainer" that one race is smarter than another -- what dataset do you have access to where you feel like this is a "no brainer"?
Also, you referenced IQ earlier, and now you're talking about "intelligence" -- are you rejecting the idea that different races might have evolved different sorts of intelligence if you're presuming they've evolved differently enough to have different adaptations in this area (and maybe those localized adapations might not be measured as precisely as a test designed mostly by white people to test white people)? I'm just mentioning one of many problems with IQ as a proxy for "intelligence," even if there were obvious differences... which there aren't. When you control for demographics and other social aspects, a lot of racial differences narrow significantly.
then what is the big deal, he's speaking the truth.
The big deal is when he made these remarks, he was no longer just some smart young scientist. He was an 80-year-old dude with a history of making racist, sexist, and homophobic remarks with little basis. And, let's be honest here, even many great scientists aren't always going to be "at the top of their game" anymore at 80 years old.
So your appeal to authority here is problematic in a number of ways -- a guy was recognized for an achievement more than a half-century ago, he's old, he tends to say things that aren't true or well-thought-out in public, and yet you just assume he "speaks the truth"?
Why? THAT does not strike me as a very "scientific" attitude.
Must be Irish on his mother's side. Second X chromosome and mitochondrial DNA.