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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: 3, Insightful) by q.kontinuum on Wednesday December 03 2014, @05:37AM
That would be the wrong kind of racism ;-) I hear lots of comments about Asians being awesomely intelligent and to probably supersede western culture in the area of science, and most (western) people I see take it as a serious warning to keep on their toes, instead of feeling threatened by racism. Like with sexist studies about woman allegedly being more empathic, more communicative, creative and whatnot.
That said, I work in a multicultural environment with colleagues from >50 nations from all continents, men and women (well, not for all those countries both sexes, I assume). I met geniuses, idiots and solid performers from all continents, all ethnic appearances all sexes (well, obviously biological women and men, not sure about trans-gender, hermaphrodites etc. - it usually doesn't come up as a topic in the coffee area, and I don't care too much.). In history, black people, women and many other minorities were treated badly and unfairly, which might not justify to give some of them an unfair advantage now, but does definitely call for a special sense of sensitivity to avoid some unproven blanket-statements, and even when publishing research results. E.g. the mean intelligence of a group might be lower(higher) because of some real retards(geniuses) skewing the results. The median of the intelligence might still be higher(lower). Or, if the variance is higher, the probability to find a genius in a group might be higher even if the mean intelligence is slightly lower.
For bar-room discussions, these details are never considered and usually studies are interpreted against minorities, overlooking the fact that the specimen of bar-room-philosophers are themselves often not at the top of their ethnic and might often range somewhere below the mean value of the discussed minorities.
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