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Watson’s Nobel Prize Medal for Decoding DNA Fetches $4.1M at an Auction

nytimes.com

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Re: Watson’s Nobel Prize Medal for Decoding DNA Fetches $4.1M at an Auction

#11

Post by nitin_flanker »

IvyMike wrote: post #2

Slate has a far more negative view of the auction: > Jim Watson is one of the most important scientists of the 20th century. He is also a peevish bigot. History will remember him for his co-discovery of the structure of DNA, in 1953. This week, Watson is ensuring that history, or at least the introduction to every obituary, will also remember him for being a jerk. http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/scie…

Why he is a jerk? it's his rights to decide what to do with that medal. isn't it? Why people are criticizing him is out of my head.

People also call him racist because of his another discovery. I mean let him do whatever he wants to do with that. Will a medal going to carry away whatever he does for the science?

Re: Watson’s Nobel Prize Medal for Decoding DNA Fetches $4.1M at an Auction

#12

Post by colechristensen »

IvyMike wrote: post #2

Slate has a far more negative view of the auction: > Jim Watson is one of the most important scientists of the 20th century. He is also a peevish bigot. History will remember him for his co-discovery of the structure of DNA, in 1953. This week, Watson is ensuring that history, or at least the introduction to every obituary, will also remember him for being a jerk. http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/scie…

> But he knows fuck all about history, human evolution, anthropology, sociology, psychology, or any rigorous study of intelligence or race.

This is really terrible journalism, regardless of the truth in it.

Re: Watson’s Nobel Prize Medal for Decoding DNA Fetches $4.1M at an Auction

#13

Post by jjoonathan »

nitin_flanker wrote: post #11
IvyMike wrote: post #2

Slate has a far more negative view of the auction: > Jim Watson is one of the most important scientists of the 20th century. He is also a peevish bigot. History will remember him for his co-discovery of the structure of DNA, in 1953. This week, Watson is ensuring that history, or at least the introduction to every obituary, will also remember him for being a jerk. http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/scie…

Why he is a jerk? it's his rights to decide what to do with that medal. isn't it? Why people are criticizing him is out of my head. People also call him racist because of his another discovery. I mean let him do whatever he wants to do with that. Will a medal going to carry away whatever he does for the science?

He established his reputation as a jerk independently of selling the medal. Here are some quotes:

> [I am] 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.

He's flat out wrong about what "all the testing" says, btw. We're not just bashing someone for speaking a politically unpopular truth here (I cynically suspect that we would do just that were Watson's position correct, but fortunately that doesn't seem to be the case).

> Whenever you interview fat people, you feel bad, because you know you're not going to hire them

> [the] historic curse of the Irish, which is not alcohol, it's not stupidity. But it's ignorance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Watson#Controversies

Also, he's selling the medal with the specific intent of thumbing his nose at the scientific community. He would draw much more sympathy if he had fallen on hard times due to misfortune, for instance.

Re: Watson’s Nobel Prize Medal for Decoding DNA Fetches $4.1M at an Auction

#16

Post by cal2 »

nitin_flanker wrote: post #11
IvyMike wrote: post #2

Slate has a far more negative view of the auction: > Jim Watson is one of the most important scientists of the 20th century. He is also a peevish bigot. History will remember him for his co-discovery of the structure of DNA, in 1953. This week, Watson is ensuring that history, or at least the introduction to every obituary, will also remember him for being a jerk. http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/scie…

Why he is a jerk? it's his rights to decide what to do with that medal. isn't it? Why people are criticizing him is out of my head. People also call him racist because of his another discovery. I mean let him do whatever he wants to do with that. Will a medal going to carry away whatever he does for the science?

Not to mention that it is essentially Franklin's medal anyway...

Re: Watson’s Nobel Prize Medal for Decoding DNA Fetches $4.1M at an Auction

#17

Post by IndianAstronaut »

baker0 wrote: post #8

This is a simplified argument but if you gave any adolescent group an assignment to study and argue the Talmud, then I think they'd naturally grow into inquisitive-minded individuals well versed in critical thinking. It seems clear that the intellectual success of European Jews is directly related to their cultural upbringing and academic endeavors. I doubt anyone has ever suggested otherwise. The fact that 27% of No…

Another component in intelligence may be the parasite burden people in certain regions have.

http://www.economist.com/node/16479286

Re: Watson’s Nobel Prize Medal for Decoding DNA Fetches $4.1M at an Auction

#18

Post by dnautics »

phj wrote: post #7
jjoonathan wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These days they teach it in school like Franklin did all the work while Watson & Crick were allowed to barge in and steal the credit due primarily to male privilege, which IMO goes too far (it ignores Crick's mathematical contribution, Franklin's unfortunate timing, and the ownership structure of lab projects). The real shame is that we insist on shoehorning a fundamentally collaborative endeavor into a winner-take-a…

The version I learned was that Franklin did all the experimental work, while Crick did the Fourier transforms in his head to interpret Franklin's results. Not sure about Watson's contribution, though.

Watson and crick also together figured out how the known structures of the nucleobases could assemble to become a helix, beyond realizing that Franklin's diffractions implied a double helix (which has a different signature than a single helix, Pauling's incorrect theory)

Re: Watson’s Nobel Prize Medal for Decoding DNA Fetches $4.1M at an Auction

#19

Post by pervycreeper »

coke12 wrote: post #10
pervycreeper wrote: post #5

>The sale also became symbolic of a quest for redemption after he became what he called an “unperson” in the scientific community seven years ago So much for science as a bastion of disinterested objective investigation. When a community's greatest minds (such as Perelman, Grothendieck, etc., in math, for instance) become alienated from the larger community, when conformity and publishing quantity (over quality) is r…

This was not "disinterested objective investigation", it was ranting from a bigot. He's also said (among other things) that he won't hire fat people, and that women aren't as good as men at science. I think what we're seeing here is what too often happens with celebrity scientists -- they get a big head, and think they are expert on issues that they actually know nothing about.

I am condemning the reaction to the comments, not defending those comments themselves (which I have not investigated thoroughly).

>I think what we're seeing here is what too often happens with celebrity scientists -- they get a big head, and think they are expert on issues that they actually know nothing about.

I agree with this point (and would go further by removing the celebrity condition), and it is probably applicable to Watson, just as it is to most who condemn him.

Re: Watson’s Nobel Prize Medal for Decoding DNA Fetches $4.1M at an Auction

#20

Post by kendallpark »

TheBiv wrote: post #4

As a biologist, every time I read a story about Watson or Crick I am compelled to include Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins names in the conversation (granted the HN audience may not need an introduction to their influence). This article seems to cast doubt on how important they were in the discovery of the structure of DNA and into inheritable capability, however it is widely known amongst scientists how large o…

> As a biologist, every time I read a story about Watson or Crick I am compelled to include Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins names in the conversation (granted the HN audience may not need an introduction to their influence).

+1

I was about to do the same.

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