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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: 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.