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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.”
(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]