from the he-earned-it,-he-can-keep-it dept.
Spotted over at The Scientist is the report that the winning bidder will return Watson's Nobel prize medal following the auction last week.
It turns out that James Watson’s Nobel Prize medal, which he won in 1962 for co-discovering the structure of DNA, will be staying with the biologist after all. The Russian entrepreneur Alisher Usmanov, who paid $4.1 million for the medal at an auction last week (December 4), will return the prize to its original owner, The New York Times reports.
The New York Times' report adds:
Mr. Usmanov said his father had died of cancer, so he valued Dr. Watson’s contributions to cancer research. “It is important for me that the money that I spent on this medal will go to supporting scientific research,” [Usmanov] said, “and the medal will stay with the person who deserved it.”
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Nicholas St. Fleur writes at The Atlantic that in the sad final chapter to a career that traces back to racist remarks he made in 2007, James Watson, the famed molecular biologist and co-discoverer of DNA, is putting his Nobel Prize up for auction, the first Nobel laureate in history to do so. Watson, best known for his work deciphering the DNA double helix alongside Francis Crick in 1953, made an incendiary remark regarding the intelligence of black people that lost him the admiration of the scientific community in 2007 making him, in his own words, an "unperson". That year, The Sunday Times quoted Watson as saying that he felt “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.” Watson added that although some think that all humans are born equally intelligent, “people who have to deal with black employees find this not true.” Watson has a history of making racist and sexist declarations, according to Time. His insensitive off-the-cuff remarks include saying that sunlight and dark skin contribute to “Latin lover” libido, and that fat people lack ambition, which prevents them from being hired. At a science conference in 2012, Watson said of women in science, “I think having all these women around makes it more fun for the men but they’re probably less effective.” To many scientists his gravest offense was not crediting Rosalind Franklin with helping him deduce the structure of DNA.
Watson is selling his prized medallion because he has no income outside of academia, even though for years he had served on many corporate boards. The gold medal is expected to bring in between $2.5 million and $3.5 million when it goes to auction. Watson says that he will use the money to purchase art and make donations to institutions that have supported him, such as the University of Chicago and Watson says the auction will also offer him the chance to “re-enter public life.” “I’ve had a unique life that’s allowed me to do things. I was set back. It was stupid on my part,” says Watson “All you can do is nothing, except hope that people actually know what you are.”
(Score: 2) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Thursday December 11 2014, @12:02AM
Has more basic human dignity than ol' Watson.
You're betting on the pantomime horse...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 11 2014, @12:24AM
You don't get to be the richest oligarch in Russia by being a good guy or even just a man of average morals.
Racism by itself is nothing more than a character flaw among a long list of potential character flaws. The problem comes when character flaws are combined with power. The more power someone has, the more dangerous their character flaws are to other people.
(Score: 1) by Doctor on Thursday December 11 2014, @12:31AM
What in the name of Dog are you ranting on about? If this is related to the topic at hand, it is hard to tell from your frothings.
"Anybody remotely interesting is mad in some way." - The Doctor
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 11 2014, @12:53AM
I am comparing the harm that Watson's racism has done versus the harm that Usmanov's greed has done.
Is it really that hard for you to comprehend or are you just drunk?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 11 2014, @06:08AM
Forgive him, he's a Doctor.
(Score: 1) by jmorris on Thursday December 11 2014, @02:35AM
Racism by itself is nothing more than a character flaw among a long list of potential character flaws.
Everybody keeps saying the guy is a racist. And anyone who hears somebody say he is a racist is supposed to nod in agreement like a good prole lest people think they might be a racist too. I'm calling BS on ya because I'm the effing honey badger of political correctness.
Just because somebody wants to put a motion on the table that every racial subgroup might not be exactly equal in every measurable way (Human Biological Diversity) doesn't make them a racist. It used to make one a scientist, back when science was a search for Truth instead of a search to justify The Party's positions.
Personally I suspect there is something to HBD because a) it would be more unusual if it were false and b) the usual suspects react to the mention of the phrase like Dracula to garlic; it is clear the Progs suspect it is true, but then almost every prog is a racist of some sort if you look beneath the outward pose. However we can't know one way or the other because old research WAS tainted by racism and it is forbidden for Science to ask such questions in these dark times.
It would be a good thing anyway, what is the point of celebrating diversity if everyone is exactly alike? On the other hand if there really IS serious variations in ability by race/gender/etc. then diverse cultures have a real and measurable advantage over non-diverse ones.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday December 11 2014, @03:44AM
Here's [wikipedia.org] another nerd some people were and would be quick to label a "racist:"
So he was attacked for even suggesting that science in heredity could be used to solve problems. He caused a shitstorm and was labeled a "Hitlerite" for saying way less than Watson.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Thursday December 11 2014, @06:32AM
Ethanol, evidently this has come to pass. Obviously you cannot recognize the fallacious reasoning in such science. This is probably because of exactly the breeding propensities noted by Schockley, which no doubt he himself was also subject to. So, superior intellects, let's review: inferior intellect leads to more breeding, more breeding leads to Schockley's theories, therefore! Zieg Heil mein obergeneticism-mister!! There is a reason that racist theories were accepted as science at one point in history, and then rejected at a later one. That reason is that they were racist theories, promulgated by racists on racist assumptions to justify their pre-conceived racist ideas. At some point, the genetic degradation of the human species, in Southern California, and Orange County in particular, but also area around military bases where the same selective pressures and strip joints prevailed, results in people who believe in racist theories. So obviously, racist theory results in racists, who are obviously inferior to normally evolved homo sapiens. So where does that leave us?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday December 11 2014, @10:42AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 11 2014, @02:12PM
That seems to be a motto you and efueled share in common.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 11 2014, @04:11AM
Perhaps the problem is with the identification of the subgroups. Currently people talk about "Africans" and identify them by one phenotypic trait–dark skin. Meanwhile they ignore the fact that the greatest genetic diversity exists in the African populations.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Thursday December 11 2014, @04:35AM
What exactly do you mean by 'racial subgroups?' What do you imagine you are referring to?
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by frojack on Thursday December 11 2014, @04:45AM
Why do you insist on putting all your posts in tt brackets?
Its just as annoying as all caps or all bold, and doesn't enhance your content at all.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 11 2014, @04:59AM
It is narcissism. It makes it easier for him. He doesn't give a damn if it makes it harder for everyone else to read what he writes, what matters most is that he writes even if there is no audience.
(Score: 2) by Techwolf on Thursday December 11 2014, @01:36PM
We need to get together and start mod bombing Arik. This one person is the only one I can't read. Wish I could, i'me sure he/she may have something interesting to read.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Thursday December 11 2014, @02:34PM
The <tt> tag is inserted by the server in this case and that is beyond my control. However, if your browser is correctly configured, this should certainly not cause you any problem on your end. Font handling can be configured in any modern browser although the procedure is a little different from one to another, and defaults are always horrid.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 11 2014, @02:51PM
I use the *posting mode* of code
Since you are not actually posting code you are using the system incorrectly.
if your browser is correctly configured, this should certainly not cause you any problem on your end. Font handling can be configured in any modern browser
<tt> means monospaced font. ALL monospaced fonts make free-form text unpleasant to read.
I agree with other guy, you deserve mod-bombing for making soylent unpleasant for every other reader just to indulge your own peculiarities.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 11 2014, @07:43PM
Bullshit.
That's not just not true, it's the opposite of true. Variable-width fonts are inherently obscure and a giant PITA to read, get a good font and quit bitching.
Yeah, go ahead and mod bomb someone in retaliation for your own illiteracy, that's a good plan.
I hope you do it and I hope the administrators have the sense to ban you from modding for it.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday December 11 2014, @09:35PM
(Score: 2) by Arik on Friday December 12 2014, @01:52PM
It is a pain, as I am reminded occasionally, usually right after doing an OS install and forgetting to configure the browser before trying to use it.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday December 12 2014, @01:19AM
Stop using the "posting mode of code."
Just stop.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 11 2014, @05:11AM
Just because somebody wants to put a motion on the table that every racial subgroup might not be exactly equal in every measurable way
That's a strawman. It isn't about every group being the same, it is about one characteristic determining another unrelated characteristic. That there is some unproven mechanism that has made populations living in northern europe "smarter" than those living in africa. At best the guy is cherry picking certain studies and then doing the "correlation is causation" thing.
the usual suspects react to the mention of the phrase like Dracula to garlic; it is clear the Progs suspect it is true, but then almost every prog is a racist of some sort
That sort of circular reasoning is not very convincing.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday December 11 2014, @10:59AM
That there is some unproven mechanism that has made populations living in northern europe "smarter" than those living in africa.
"Unproven" doesn't mean "nonexistent". There is one very obvious difference between the two regions, the far greater prevalence and variety of diseases and parasites in Africa. Traits which might help one survive various diseases in tropical Africa may also hamper intelligence or brain function to some degree.
It isn't about every group being the same, it is about one characteristic determining another unrelated characteristic.
There's obvious mechanisms by which that can happen in genetics, namely, that the two characteristics are expressed by genes on the same chromosome. There's also interactions between proteins created by genes. The same protein can have different effects depending on where it is in the human body or its ecosystem of dependent organisms, and it can interact with other proteins in the body or in the food that is consumed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 11 2014, @02:10PM
> "Unproven" doesn't mean "nonexistent". There is one very obvious difference between the two regions, the far greater prevalence and variety of diseases and parasites in Africa.
That is some flying spaghetti monster level bullshit. Jumping from sickle cell::malaria to unknown disease::stupid is racist apologia par excellence.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday December 11 2014, @03:36PM
That is some flying spaghetti monster level bullshit. Jumping from sickle cell::malaria to unknown disease::stupid is racist apologia par excellence.
I don't see a reason to care that you wrote that. In the real world, it is rare that one can fully optimize for two intertwined goals simultaneously. There are usually trade offs at some point such as a trade off between how long it takes to complete a trip by car and how much gas is used. One could argue that the interconnection between brain activity and body response to disease is completely different, but that ignores common metabolic systems and the interaction of genes and proteins.
Here's another example. Why does racist behavior exist in the first place? It's allegedly near universal, and is usually asserted that it is impossible to fully remove the mental framework behind that behavior. IMHO that indicates it is the result of some sort of evolutionary process (not merely some sort of social conditioning), perhaps evolving in parallel (it may not be the same common inheritable traits for everyone). It's worth noting that in today's world, such a discriminatory outlook forces people to think harder (I recall that there is research to that effect) when they get confronted by an scenario that doesn't fit their worldview. That makes them effectively dumber in those situations.
That would be another example of how traits can make you less intelligent, wouldn't you say?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 11 2014, @07:11PM
> In the real world, it is rare that one can fully optimize for two intertwined goals simultaneously.
Hello, McFly? Don't you get it? You are making the assumption that they are entertwined in the first place. There is ZERO FUCKING evidence that intelligence is intertwined with any other "goal" unique to the african continent.
> Why does racist behavior exist in the first place?
Racism, and bigotry in general, is just tribalism taken to an extreme. Tribalism is what makes community building possible - social institutions, trust, etc all depend on tribalism. But tribalism is a mental short-cut, a heuristic and as such it gets misapplied by people who aren't willing to rise above simply using mental shortcuts and applying critical thought.
> That would be another example of how traits can make you less intelligent, wouldn't you say?
Nope. You've over--simplified to the point of eliminating context and meaning.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday December 11 2014, @08:44PM
Hello, McFly? Don't you get it? You are making the assumption that they are entertwined in the first place. There is ZERO FUCKING evidence that intelligence is intertwined with any other "goal" unique to the african continent.
And if you had read the next sentence, you would have read why I thought that:
One could argue that the interconnection between brain activity and body response to disease is completely different, but that ignores common metabolic systems and the interaction of genes and proteins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 15 2014, @08:54AM
That's possible. Everyone used to think people in the Southern United States were stupid and lazy. Turned out a lot of them just had hookworm. Maybe a lot of them still do?
http://rockefeller100.org/exhibits/show/health/eradicating-hookworm [rockefeller100.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Magic Oddball on Thursday December 11 2014, @12:38PM
By the actual definition of racism, claiming an entire race/"sub-race" is more or less intelligent than another is racism:
Dictionary.com (Random House Dictionary)
1. a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human racial groups determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior and has the right to dominate others or that a particular racial group is inferior to the others.
There's a good reason that notion and that of criminality or IQ being inherited (and thus potentially manipulated by controlling who gets to reproduce) are no longer considered scientific — which is that actual science discredited them.
Once external factors are accounted for (e.g. poverty, upbringing, culturally biased questions) the supposed difference becomes statistically insignificant: a white person that falls within the average range will be roughly on par with a random black person that falls within the average range.
Note that when I say "culturally biased questions" I'm referring to ones that assume knowledge that's not taught in school. I encountered one as a white nine-year-old while taking a gifted education entrance exam: “what are doors made of?” Obviously, depending on what culture you're growing up in, the doors will be made of different things: wood, glass, reeds, composites, metals, etc. The test assumed all test-takers were fully "from" our culture, where kids were still taught (wrongly) that doors are made of wood. Trouble was, I wasn't really fully from "our" culture: I'd spent a huge chunk of my childhood in hospitals, where kids learned that the on-site school door was made of metal like every other door in the building, plus my at-home schools all had metal doors as well, so that was my answer. (Once my mother pointed out to the admins that almost all of my "wrong" answers were along those lines, they said I was well above the required score for entry.)
In addition to that, the notion of IQ has been warped horribly: it was originally designed to only predict how well a child would do learning academic subjects within standard school settings, not a lifelong capacity for learning in general.
Eugenics was similarly rejected as unscientific for similar reasons. The forced-sterilization program run in the USA openly into the 1970s not only failed to affect the population's overall IQ or reduce criminal acts, the percentage of criminal acts increased dramatically. It has been firmly established for quite a while by sociologists & social (research) psychologists that the factors most strongly affecting academic performance, criminal acts, and so forth are socioeconomic in origin. (Think in terms of uneducated/under-educated parents, parents too tired to teach their kids to read or keep on them about school, homes with residual lead paint, inadequate nutrition in childhood, abuse and so forth.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 11 2014, @04:43PM
Would claiming a breed of dog tends to be more intelligent than another breed of dog be racism?
For humans the breed lines are more blurry due to more "haphazard breeding" but there are breeds of humans and the various breeds have different characteristics (and problems[1]). Assuming there won't be a difference is unscientific given there's plenty of evidence that there would be differences.
By the way I'm not agreeing with Watson. I think the problems in Africa are less to do with intelligence than other factors.
Intelligence is overrated. Culture, education, the ability to delay gratification are more important: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_gratification [wikipedia.org]
You could be a super intelligent but you would get nowhere if you are impulsive and unable to delay gratification. A trainable stupid dog can be part of a team that achieves great things, but a more intelligent dog that can't resist its urges isn't of much use and might even be a danger.
[1] http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/january26/med-hypertension-012605.html [stanford.edu]
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1985439 [nih.gov]
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Thursday December 11 2014, @07:19PM
Good job equating human beings to dogs. I'm sure whatever follows that simplistic sentiment will be full of insight..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 12 2014, @08:15AM
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Friday December 12 2014, @02:39PM
No, I'm pretty sure I read your racist screed right, thanks.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 12 2014, @04:05PM
Certain "white" breeds are provably more susceptible to cystic fibrosis than black breeds. Whereas the black breeds seem more prone to hypertension.
That you won't read and can't think is your problem not mine.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday December 11 2014, @08:06PM
>which is that actual science discredited them.
>There's a good reason that notion and that of criminality or IQ being inherited (and thus potentially manipulated by controlling who gets to reproduce) are no longer considered scientific — which is that actual science discredited them.
Sorry, I'm going to have to call bullshit on this one. As I recall the idea of large *racial* differences in such things has been discredited, but "race" is an extremely poorly defined concept to begin with. Meanwhile a large number of studies have shown that, on an individual basis, there absolutely is a strong genetic component to intelligence. Obviously being intelligent doesn't *guarantee* that you'll have intelligent children, any more than being stupid guarantees you won't - genetics doesn't work that way - but it's still a damned good indicator. Tabla Rasa died decades ago - it's now well understood among that both nature and nurture make major contributions to such things.
And of course that means that a well-informed eugenics program could theoretically work just fine. Not that I'm condoning such a thing - just condemning your claim that there's a scientific argument against its viability. You can breed dogs for intelligence, aggression, etc. what makes you think it would be any more difficult to breed humans for the same qualities? Aside from the ethical and logistical problems of course.
>By the actual definition of racism, claiming an entire race/"sub-race" is more or less intelligent than another is racism:
You might want to re-read that definition, starting at the beginning: "A belief or doctrine...". If you had actual unbiased scientific evidence that some genetic sub-population is consistently and substantially more or less intelligent than the norm, even after correcting for developmental (dis)advantages that would simply be the way things are - all the claims of racism in the world wouldn't change a damn thing. Any more than it's racist to claim that native Africans are, as a group, far better able than most to spend long periods in direct sunlight without risking sunburn or cancer.
I'll agree though that current intelligence tests are such a joke that we shouldn't even be asking such questions - not only is there the rampant cultural bias, there's the fact that we barely understand what it is that we're trying to measure, and that we typically try to reduce an N-dimensional property to a single number, despite the best evidence being that there are at least 9 (or was it 12?) independently varying attributes at play. A musical genius need not be able to even tie their own shoes. Nor a mathematical one for that matter.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday December 11 2014, @09:38PM
By the actual definition of racism, claiming an entire race/"sub-race" is more or less intelligent than another is racism:
This would be considered racism, even if the claim is true.