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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."
buy it!
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
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.
He's guilty of confirmation bias. He's as bad as Jefferson saying blacks can't be educated because Jefferson never met an educated black man. But since educated black men exist now, Watson's worse. Ignorant at best, intellectually dishonest at worst.
Differences among individuals classified as being of the same race are greater than the differences between races.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...
I guess there's some money in being a Nobel laureate - even having "no income outside of academia" (as mentioned elsewhere).
And is that in Dollars or Pounds?
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
You are probably right about the confirmation bias. But one should be able to make that argument without hounding someone out of a profession. That is more-or-less what happened here.
I would also note that almost no one here is actually a scientist, much less a Nobel prize winner. So no one is all that qualified to debunk his idea. There are certainly falsifiable points in his premise on race (and probably plenty of research to support it). All that need be done is produce and make the argument, and the issue should be closed. But no, that's not sufficient, he has to be punished.
This is a classic case of claims of "Science!" being used as a cover for political correctness. More like "Science! (so shut the hell up)".
As opposed to what? You make it sound like there is this giant leftist conspiracy when out and out the new-right, third position,. and the right have made it damn clear they want to do even worse to the left, and the left is guilty of no more than protecting themselves. The "mob" you reffer to is the body of top scientists, and if he's not guilty of racism, he's guilty of supporting ideas proven scientificly false. At very least he's promoting bad science. Just because he won a noble prize in one field of science does not make him expert in all others. Many other scientists went on to support things of dubious merit after doing real science.
He sought the truth, as best any one human can
He made biased claims based on his political views, not scientific research. He then hung his scientific credibility on them.
He didn't tell the truth, he flat out lied, using his position of academic credibility to forward lies based on his political biases. Thats fucking terrible. Your terrible too for not being able to distinguish opinion of a scientist, and scientific work.
Except your missing the fact that the opinions of a scientist are not equal to science.
Your treating science as a religeon, something men in lab coats say and you unquestioningly believe.
Science is a method. Its not believing unquestioningly what scientists say. Science has standards for ascertaining truths based on observation. Watson's claims are not backed by science, but by his own personal prejudices and political views. That alone is good reason to kick someone out of the scientific community.
For science to work you must be able to state an unpopular opinion and not get slaughtered for it.
I'm not for sure how substantial his claims were but there is no denying that there are differences between races.
How many white people do you see in professional sports? And there is a reason we split men and women
sports apart. An average male athlete would have no problem competing at the olympic level in many sports
if they were allowed to compete on the female side. I've heard somewhere that an average 50 percentile male is
stronger than 90%+ females. Even pointing this out though can get you persecuted and heaven forbid someone
mentions that there are IQ difference between races.
We're talking about a very smart guy that helped discover DNA. If he says that there is a DNA element to
intelligence (and everyone knows there is) and that it varies by race (again, this is a no brainer) then what is
the big deal, he's speaking the truth. Now how much is based on race/genetics is a nature/nurture debate
that we're a long way from solving but the fact that there is a genetic basis to intelligence is undeniable however
much people stick their heads in the sand and try to deny it.
The latter is exactly my point. I would think the man's premise would be quickly and easily refuted. And it was and is.
But the "community" couldn't let it go at that. He had to be punished for the way he thought, because it made everybody feel better.
You are probably right about the confirmation bias. But one should be able to make that argument without hounding someone out of a profession. That is more-or-less what happened here.
No it's not. The guy has continued to revise his books and memoirs and other publications in recent years, which is more than you can say for most 86-year-olds. He has continued to publish new scientific ideas in recent years.
What actually happened is that he wrote a memoir about his life which was intended for a POPULAR audience, and in the early stages of gearing up for his book tour, he made the remarks everyone's been talking about. Most of his appearances on that book tour were then cancelled, because of reactions to a public figure who basically implied that the science on the genetics of race was settled (when it's really not -- there may be some studies that appear to agree with his claims, but there are about as many that show the opposite) and then made racist implications on the basis of this.
He was not at all "hounded out of a profession," unless you consider "being a public intellectual" a profession. Show me evidence that people have refused to publish his research or took away memberships in academic societies or whatever -- then you can say he was "hounded out of the profession." He wasn't. He did lose a high-profile administrative position, but he continued to advise and do research at that place. He just lost his audence to talk to the public, which he should, given that he has a long history of saying rather nasty things and claiming a scientific basis for them when there generally isn't.
This is a classic case of claims of "Science!" being used as a cover for political correctness. More like "Science! (so shut the hell up)".
Huh? Look, you want to be a "normal scientist" and go about your day, doing research, publishing papers, whatever -- that's great. And chances are if you make some crass or racist remark to some random friends, nothing's going to happen to you.
But if you want to be a world-famous scientist and live in the public eye, you are subject to public scrutiny -- which means when you say something that's not true AND offends people in the process, you might lose your public audience.
That has nothing to do with "science." It's just the reality of being a public figure. It would be one thing if this were a single off-hand comment from Watson. It was not. He has a history of saying things that are racist, sexist, homophobic, etc., and he's been doing it for decades. (He's also, frankly, a bit of a kook in his old age, but that's a separate issue.)
You want press? You get to accept what press you create for yourself....
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.
"I would also note that almost no one here is actually a scientist, much less a Nobel prize winner. So no one is all that qualified to debunk his idea. There are certainly falsifiable points in his premise on race (and probably plenty of research to support it). All that need be done is produce and make the argument, and the issue should be closed. But no, that's not sufficient, he has to be punished."
Remember Diogenes of Sinope?
Where were Diogenes's credentials? He was homeless. Science doesn't care about credentials, just the evidence. My own evidence speaks out against the Watson quotations I've read on here. I think he doesn't get out enough to meet blacks who are intelligent. Or listen to Louis Armstrong, for example.
You are probably right about the confirmation bias. But one should be able to make that argument without hounding someone out of a profession. That is more-or-less what happened here.
No, it isn't. Watson proved himself incapable, after a good 39 years as Chancellor of the Cold Harbor Laboratory, a publicly funded scientific research institution, to continue to successfully function in that position. Like it or not, carrying out such a prominent, highly-paid job puts demands on a person to act and speak responsibly, with the object of maintaining the image of the institution who trusts him to represent it.
A programmer who can no longer the job he is paid to perform gets fired.
A scientist who can no longer the job he is paid to perform gets fired.
A Chancellor who who can no longer the job he is paid to perform, well, he becomes Chancellor Emeritus with a $375,000 salary.
NB: The claim that it is up to everyone else to debunk Watson is incorrect. As a man of science he had the responsibility of being able to support his assertion.
Sorry, affirmative action for influential wealthy white men does not wash. Nothing unfair here.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
I've personally met some very smart people of all sorts of races, and I've met idiots from all sorts of races too.
And that ... is supposed to negate the possibility of average differences? How?
You don't have to have a dog in this hunt to think that something's lacking in that thinking.
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??
Because it is a no-brainer that if you grab two random groups of individuals and measure ANY trait within them, you'd expect to find a difference in the mean. That is true no matter what the groups are, or what the trait is. Heck, if you grabbed 500 white people, took two samples of 50 out of that group, and compared just about any trait between the two groups of 50 you'd find differences. Hence the reason statisticians are interested in things like standard error.
Black people and white people tend not to inter-marry. I'm not saying that it never happens - only that it doesn't happen NEARLY as often as intra-racial marriage. That makes it all the more likely for genetic drift to make some genes become more predominant in one population vs the other.
Would you expect the genes that govern skin color to be any different between the average african-american and somebody of european descent? Then why not other genes?
Must be Irish on his mother's side. Second X chromosome and mitochondrial DNA.
Widely accepted only among braindead yanks, who seperate the world into black, white, brown, yellow, and the race of Islam.
2. There are no good scientific studies on race and IQ that factor out things like education and poverty, and conclusively prove discrepencies.
you don't have to a horse in this race just to see bad methodology.
One reason there are not any good studies is because it's a taboo topic.
No professional would risk their career testing something like this. It would be suicide.
What's left is a bunch of fringe people on both sides that have bad methodologies.
If you want good, rigourous studies then you need to allow the studies to take place.
It's very hard to have a study take place when just vocalizing an opinion gets you
crucified before the study even begins.