[flagged]
>Codiscoverer of Rosalind Franklin's notebooks.
this is a preposterously reductive and dishonest account of what happened.
James Watson has died
11–20 of 303 posts
Re: James Watson has died
#12What's with the "is dead at"? I'm not a native speaker but it seems a bit disrespectful.
Re: James Watson has died
#13[flagged]
Re: James Watson has died
#14What's with the "is dead at"? I'm not a native speaker but it seems a bit disrespectful.
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...
Re: James Watson has died
#15[flagged]
This is an ignorant take on what really happened. There are many sources online to better understand what happened, you might want to start with the Nature article: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-01313-5
If you want to attack Watson, his comments on race later in life is a better angle.
Re: James Watson has died
#16[flagged]
is grokipedia allowed ??
Re: James Watson has died
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, how she was treated by Crick and Watson was scandalous.
That's what I read on the surface. Any useful links for the context?
The best I've read is "The Eighth Day Of Creation" (which is amazing book beyond the part that covers the elucidation of the structure of DNA). He references multiple internal data sources that establish the process by which Gosling's photo made it to Watson and Crick. Of all the accounts I've read, it seems to be the most factual. I think it's also worth reading Watson's account ("The Double Helix") and the book that originally brought the most attention to the treatment of Franklin ("Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA")
I believe this article has some updated results: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/25/science/rosalind-franklin... and it appears there was an earlier book before Dark Lady, referenced here: https://www.nytimes.com/1975/09/21/archives/rosalind-frankli...
Re: James Watson has died
#18What's with the "is dead at"? I'm not a native speaker but it seems a bit disrespectful.
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.
Re: James Watson has died
#19[flagged]
What is this abomination?
"Fact-checked by Grok"
So... it's a rip-off of Wikipedia edited by an LLM that was specifically designed for misinformation by the world's richest troll?
Do I have that right? Cancer.
Re: James Watson has died
#20[flagged]
That's reframing things too much. There's the experimental data, and then there's the theoretical model. Watson and Crick were already working on a theoretical double helix model prior to discovering Franklin's x-ray crystallography data, but at the time their model was wrong. Franklin produced the x-ray crystallographic data that completed the picture and produced the correct working model. Franklin could have also…
She was credited, see the original W&C paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/171737a0 at the end is an acknowledgement. She also has a related article in the same issue of Nature.
I wouldn't be so sure that Franklin would have figured out that DNA was an antiparallel double helix. She knew it was a helix from the fibre diffraction pattern, but I don't think just anybody would have had the insight W&C did about it being a double helix and antiparallel, which immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material. However, we can't know for sure.
Edit, in re-reading https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-01313-5 I see that she did suspect the DNA structure contained multiple chains. So my statement about about the double helix aspect was incomplete/incorrect.