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James Watson: Scientist loses titles after claims over race
Nobel Prize-winning American scientist James Watson has been stripped of his honorary titles after repeating comments about race and intelligence.
In a TV programme, the pioneer in DNA studies made a reference to a view that genes cause a difference on average between blacks and whites on IQ tests. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory said the 90-year-old scientist's remarks were "unsubstantiated and reckless". Dr Watson had made similar claims in 2007 and subsequently apologised.
He shared the Nobel in 1962 with Maurice Wilkins and Francis Crick for their 1953 discovery of the DNA's double helix structure.
Dr Watson sold his gold medal in 2014, saying he had been ostracised by the scientific community after his remarks about race. He is currently in a nursing home recovering from a car accident and is said to have "very minimal" awareness of his surroundings.
Previously: Disgraced Scientist is Selling his Nobel Prize
(Score: 5, Informative) by EventH0rizon on Sunday January 13 2019, @11:25PM (11 children)
My politics is to the left of Bernie Sanders, and there are plenty like me here.
Sorry our color scheme offends you but your assertions are well out of line.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 14 2019, @12:00AM (9 children)
I realize there are some liberals around here but the pattern of the posts show that I am right. Maybe you and other such lurkers should post more than 1-2x a month.
Don't worry, I realize I can leave, but I'll be kicking the door down on my way out.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 14 2019, @12:20AM (3 children)
Liberals are individualists who believe in personal freedoms while you appear to be a collectivist. Congratulations on being a group-thinker of one. Go and tally the number of dead as a result of collectivist ideologies like communism and fascism and get back to us on the veracity of your moral posturing!
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 14 2019, @12:30AM (2 children)
Hi Dummy! You're thinking of Libertarians, and regardless of political affiliation as humans we are all collectivists since we are social mammals. Damn, I fucked up again, explaining facts to someone pushing the "socialism is genocide" nonsense.
Oh how I hope history finds out that 90% of the garbage on the net was written by scripted bots doing their manipulation thing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 14 2019, @01:53AM
No, I'm thinking of classical liberalism as the forerunner of social liberalism.
There goes the collectivist redefining social responsibility as something it provably is not.
Yes, 100,000,000 dead is fucking up quite spectacularly. How fucking dare you apologize for it!
Not happening, you're being called out.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 14 2019, @06:08AM
Revising the books as to the number of deaths caused by attempts at communism is as stupid as revising the number of deaths caused by Nazism. Nothing can explain away or hide that the Nazis killed around 6 million Jews and an additional 4 million other. Nothing can explain away or hide that the Chinese killed 50-100 million and that the Soviets killed 50-100 million. Attempts at communism cause death on a massive scale because of the nature of communism. Fascism also has the same issue with attempting it leading to deaths. The argument should be where we choose to walk on the middle road and how to make sure we don't go too far to the left or right and fall off the road. The identity politics of the left are real reminiscent of the Wiemar republic, and the rise of the far right is a lot like the Nazis rising to confront the crazy identity politics. Both sides need to drop their crazy at the same time or we will fall off to either direction. You can't just have one side back down and have things be okay. If the Nazis back down the left will go full throttle with "traditional masculinity like stoicism is toxic" and "giving boys hormones to turn into girls before they are nine is natural", and that a real dangerous path.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 14 2019, @12:59AM (3 children)
Like the poster above, I'm somewhere left of Bernie. At the same time, the combination of petulant know-it-alls coupled with largest lynching trees ever built (Facebook and Twitter) is not just annoying, it's a real danger to real people. The whole Bret Weinstein thing was an eye-opener and as things have moved since then, my views grow ever more jaundiced. Looking at political media is like chewing on glass shards where every Democrat is trying their level best to keep wars going and not just bring back the cold war, but make it hot. There's the #MeToo thing going around where mere accusation is enough to destroy a person -- Neil deGrasse Tyson springs to mind -- forget evidence just hang 'em high. It's the new McCarthy era.
Censorship never works -- it's the original Streisand Effect. There will be pushback and when it comes, it likely won't be from rational people, but from the freakier types of opposition. We see that pushback oozing out from the less regulated corners of the internet, maybe even here.
The thing I'm grappling with is that there has been so much bad behavior on the SJW side, I just can't get all that worked up when they get trolled. I basically think: "fuck 'em". I don't think I _should_ feel that way. I just do.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 14 2019, @04:02AM (2 children)
Ah yes, good points and believe it or not I feel that way sometimes myself when I see someone hopping up on the outrage soapbox for interactions that just don't seem to warrant it.
Then again I sometimes have to re-calibrate my expectations, it is easy to get comfortable in my straight white male existence and forget that other people really are dealing with some extremely shitty prejudice. Extremists go too far on both sides, but I'm gonna have to laugh at your "so much bad behavior on the SJW side" because it pales in comparison to the racism and prejudice. I understand your concerns, but I am going to prioritize the side with a much larger pile of bodies. What is the worst thing the extreme left does? Ruin some careers by making a big deal about someone's past shitty behavior? Not cool, but that is so far below being actually lynched and not metaphorically on some social media site that didn't even exist 20 years ago.
I wasn't advocating censorship, my call to the site operators was to basically get more active with the site and at least respond to some of the garbage. Otherwise it will become more and more an echo chamber. I am sure that is the goal of some of the trolls, just another hypocritical bit of irony.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 14 2019, @06:11AM
Have you actually watched the videos related to the Bret Weinstein affair? In particular those involving the school's president being ordered to keep his hands at his sides and so forth? And what -- being run out of a job and made unemployable is not some kind of violence? That's just crap. These people are dangerous.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 14 2019, @06:14AM
The right doesn't scare me because they are already the most armed group of extremists that has ever existed and with the exception of a handful of events by legit crazies there haven't been any big problems. They also seem to evaporate into the woodwork rather than escalate things when bad stuff happens. The left though I am afraid of, but that might just be because I have seen what the left is willing to do. Spiking trees, setting SUVs on fire, blocking highways, building bombs (weather underground). I like predictability, and the right is fairly predictable right now. They have their jobs and they have to be at work on Monday, so they can't start too much shit. But the left? I don't know.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Monday January 14 2019, @09:10PM
I tend not to respond to rabid, crazy posts. It is fair to say that such an approach ends up with fewer posts contesting both the right and left extremists; but when one of them (or anyone, really) actually tries to make sense and back up what they say with at least some kind of non-toxic reasoning (and that certainly happens here), I'm inclined to reply if I have time and feel like I can contribute to the matter(s) at hand.
The things to keep in mind about trolls of any stripe are:
--
On censorship and repression:
Sweeping the trash under the bed just means
you don't know what's festering under there.
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Monday January 14 2019, @04:22PM
I think this is a hidden truth - labels are used to avoid dealing in facts...
there is no left or right - a belief is ephemeral until it generates a fact.
And even then "I believe the sun will rise if I make tea at 7am", is not causal.
So listen up folks, ignore everything in the news that does not have facts , reasoning and a means of independent verification.
Oh and the colour scheme appears slightly pink on my monitor ;-)