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James Watson has died

nytimes.com

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Re: James Watson has died

#181

Post by culi »

aerostable_slug wrote: post #90
culi wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Frankl…

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.

She literally did though. Both their papers were published at the same time too. Her research was finished a little bit later but they both got published in the same issue of the same journal. Hers came later in the pages so it seemed as if her work was simply confirming the work of Watson/Crick

Re: James Watson has died

#182

Post by griffzhowl »

LarsDu88 wrote: post #71

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…

> primates ... lost the ability to synthesize vitamin C eons ago, and as a result evolved excellent color vision for finding fruits

I have a feeling this must be the other way around. The ancient primates had a diet high in fruits, which is why they could survive without harm when the gene for synthesizing vitamin C mutated into a non-functional form. They must have had the colour vision for detecting ripe fruits before that.

Re: James Watson has died

#183

Post by JamesAdir »

dekhn wrote: post #20
echelon wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 be…

This is the first time I found out that she was credited. Thanks for that.

Re: James Watson has died

#184

Post by vixen99 »

Aurornis wrote: post #85
LarsDu88 wrote: post #71

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…

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 American…

Nobody wants the sickle cell anaemia mutated gene for haemoglobin except insofar that it confers some measure of protection against malaria which is presumably how it's managed to survive.

Re: James Watson has died

#185

Post by jadamson »

BrandoElFollito wrote: post #180

It is sad, however, that he stole the research of Franklin and by today standards should be stripped from his honors. And by today's standards, I mean those applied to everyday scientists, not the "important" ones that should not be disturbed. A terrible person indeed.

He didn't steal anything. Franklin's PhD student took the famous Photo 51, Franklin was credited in the paper [1], and there's much more besides [2]:

"We are much indebted to Dr. Jerry Donohue for constant advice and criticism, especially on interatomic distances. We have also been stimulated by a knowledge of the general nature of the unpublished experimental results and ideas of Dr. M. H. F. Wilkins, Dr. R. E. Franklin and their co-workers at King’s College, London."

[1] https://dosequis.colorado.edu/Courses/MethodsLogic/papers/Wa...

[2] https://www.sciencenews.org/article/rosalind-franklin-dna-st...

Re: James Watson has died

#186

Post by JuniperMesos »

BrandoElFollito wrote: post #180

It is sad, however, that he stole the research of Franklin and by today standards should be stripped from his honors. And by today's standards, I mean those applied to everyday scientists, not the "important" ones that should not be disturbed. A terrible person indeed.

By today's standards, if I heard that some random ordinary scientist was stripped of their honors and was being widely labeled a terrible person in internet comment threads, I would seriously consider the possibility that they were the real victim in the situation.

Re: James Watson has died

#187

Post by BrandoElFollito »

JuniperMesos wrote: post #186
BrandoElFollito wrote: post #180

It is sad, however, that he stole the research of Franklin and by today standards should be stripped from his honors. And by today's standards, I mean those applied to everyday scientists, not the "important" ones that should not be disturbed. A terrible person indeed.

By today's standards, if I heard that some random ordinary scientist was stripped of their honors and was being widely labeled a terrible person in internet comment threads, I would seriously consider the possibility that they were the real victim in the situation.

Have you ever heard anything he said about women, gays, blacks, etc? He is the kind of guy I would not even approach, while so many people were bowing.

This is in addition to his stolen work of course.

The fact that he dies does not, fortunately, clear his name.

Re: James Watson has died

#188

Post by zimpenfish »

pfannkuchen wrote: post #176
jacksnipe wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean plagiarized it?

Would you be “snipe”ing like this if a man were plagiarized? As far as I’m aware, this isn’t completely unheard of in science, at least historically if not today. Would they not have done the same if it were a more junior man? Like sure if he walked up to them and literally gave them the idea, they may not have (in either case), but with the circumstances as I understand them to be, I think this kind of thing happens…

> Would you be “snipe”ing like this if a man were plagiarized?

When men have had their scientific advances plagiarised, stolen, claimed from them in the same quantity as non-men, sure, but that's like saying "you're complaining that I stole a million pounds but they stole a can of coke!" Nonsense whataboutism.

Re: James Watson has died

#189

Post by tome »

uxcolumbo wrote: post #179
peterfirefly wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> is wild about the 30 odd years of his later life There's also the extremely important EPR paper from 1935, twenty years before his death. He certainly didn't stop producing useful science just because he felt it was a good idea to explore ideas that didn't work out. What is truly embarrassing is stuff like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Socialism%3F

How do you define socialism? I see ppl throw around this term without ever defining it. They probably mean a soviet style central government , which of course is terrible. Einstein was merely talking about looking after your people. Carl Sagan as well. The government is there to ensure the system is running healthy and enables its citizen to thrive and prosper. But instead we have a system that is extractive and funn…

The article explains what Einstein meant by socialism:

"Einstein concludes that these problems can only be corrected with a planned economy where the means of production are owned by society itself"

Re: James Watson has died

#190

Post by BrandoElFollito »

jadamson wrote: post #185
BrandoElFollito wrote: post #180

It is sad, however, that he stole the research of Franklin and by today standards should be stripped from his honors. And by today's standards, I mean those applied to everyday scientists, not the "important" ones that should not be disturbed. A terrible person indeed.

He didn't steal anything. Franklin's PhD student took the famous Photo 51, Franklin was credited in the paper [1], and there's much more besides [2]: "We are much indebted to Dr. Jerry Donohue for constant advice and criticism, especially on interatomic distances. We have also been stimulated by a knowledge of the general nature of the unpublished experimental results and ideas of Dr. M. H. F. Wilkins, Dr. R. E. Fran…

Ah yes, he just took Rosy's pictures (she doe snot deserve her full nale) and then went on discussing what she wears.

I am a man who did his PhD in the 2000's. If my supervisor took my data and went on publishing them under his name, not only would I have kicked him in the ass publicly, but I would make my personal vendetta to crap his academic life.

She was a woman (with a not-so-nice character), in the 50s, so this would not have flown, obviously.

Let's not pretend he was not a crappy person in the name of a virgin academic world.

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