There isn't anything special about Watson. Like all scientific discoveries, he was in the right place at the right time, and depending on how you look at it was sufficiently ruthless/ambitious to claim his place in history. But so what? If not him, someone else would have worked it out, just like the people that almost discovered calculus or the Higgs boson. If you want to honour science, then give 5 million dollars to someone who is actually still interested in doing research. He's had his day, and has received all the accolades he deserves, if not more.
I thought he sold it because he wanted money and art.
"Mr Watson told the Financial Times he had become an “unperson” after he “was outed as believing in IQ” in 2007 and said he would like to use money from the sale to buy a David Hockney painting."
For anyone who isn't familiar with the backstory, Watson didn't become an unperson for believing in IQ, he claimed in an interview with the Sunday Times Magazine that testing proved that black Africans aren’t as smart as white people, then followed it up with the sentiment that ideally one should think that all people are equal, but "people who have to deal with black employees find this not true."
Note the first paragraph in the Wikipedia article : "The connection between race and intelligence has been ... It is still not resolved what relation, if any, there is between group differences in IQ and race."
Currently we have about 104 years of data, which shows, to put it mildly, a clear pattern of racial differences in intelligence (and pretty much every other metric. Size. Weight. Speed. Color. Body temperature...). Worse, they also show a clear difference in intelligence between different ideological groups (e.g. religion) (again, and they also show a large difference in other metrics).
To some extent Watson, in his first claim, has a point that we seem to be unwilling to make. There is a clear conclusion to be drawn here :
Different races are different. In pretty much any metric you can come up with.
Furthermore, if you look at the effect of average differences in a certain metric to examples in individuals, you get an even more politically incorrect result, based on pure math. If you take 2 groups, who differ by x percentage points in "blueness". Then if you take a random individual from group 1, and a random one from group 2, what are the chances that the first individual is more blue ?
x = 1% => p =~ 76%
x = 2% => p =~ 92%
x = 3% => p =~ 98%
So this means that if blue humans are 1% taller than green humans, then if you meet a blue and a green human on the street, the chance is about 76% that the blue human will win (be taller) than the green.
(Only intelligence scores vary more than 1 standard deviation. The largest difference is between 2.5 and 3 standard deviations (and does not involve either a white ethnic or a black ethnic group))
I didn't down vote, but the inherent bias in the test is a possible reason but even with that factored out, the relevance is a more reasonable objection. We're not talking the difference in between being able to grock quantum physics or not, we're talking a few questions on the exam. And IQ happens to be a pretty sweet bell curve, so if you're an average white guy, then you're still dumber than 49% of the black guys out there, and dumber than 54% of Chinese guys.
So we should give up on Africa because the average black guy didn't answer the 2 train question correctly? Should we also give up on Europe and North America because the white guys didn't answer that correctly either?
The use of this stat, were it even possible to be accurate, really only serves racists. No meaningful outcome could result from the number.
Poetic justice also works in positive ways. It's nice to read something uplifting once in a while, though finding a Russian oligarch in such a story feels strange.
> It's nice to read something uplifting once in a while
Poetic justice?
Dr Watson said: he is "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" but "people who have to deal with black employees find this not true".
He sold the medal because he wanted the money to acquire an expensive painting.
According to BBC News, in the interview with The Sunday Times, Watson said he was "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." He went on to say he hoped everyone was equal but that "people who have to deal with black employees find this is not true."
Sounds more like racism than political correctness.
What he said is racist but it's still true - IQ in most countries in Africa is abysmally low. Problem is that saying it loud today in US produces the same effect on your career as saying that communism is not the true path to future would have produced in USSR.
It's worse than that. The higher up you go, the more bound to standard social-justice tropes you must adhere to or risk losing everything. In that sense, America isn't that different from other countries like China or the former USSR. Dissent from The Party is punished severely, and loyalty is rewarded.
sounds like his statement is based on facts known to him (and being Nobel winning scientist he probably has good skills at understanding and analyzing facts)
>Sounds more like racism
Either you're trying to say what his statement wasn't based on his knowledge and analysis of facts or you're introducing a concept of "racism rooted in facts"
I wonder though whether the Watson will accept the medal back from Usmanov's hands.
> > whereas all the testing says not really.
> sounds like his statement is based on facts known to him
Really? He follows it up by saying "people who have to deal with black employees" will "know" that it's true.
My understanding is that IQ correlates to socio-economic background, but once that's adjusted for, all race considerations fall away. If you've got a credible source that says something else, I'm sure we'd find it interesting.
Racist or not, he is still a pioneer in biology and should keep his award for his contributions. I certainly don't agree with Watson's remarks, but I think it was an admirable thing that Usmanov did here.
> He chose to sell it because he wanted to buy an expensive piece of art.
So? Usmanov decided he would rather make a charitable contribution to Watson in a symbolic manner. Does not change the fact that i was an admirable thing to do (it was, after all, $4.7 million of his own money)
I'm very split on this topic. I read this on The Verge[1] and I know they're pretty left-leaning. But to my experience they rarely lie and they made many criticisms I find valid. On the other hand, marginalization is another big problem of our age. Let me elaborate.
First of all, him stealing research from Rosalind Franklin comment is a bit of a hyperbole. Sure, not asking for her permission before using data and not crediting her at all are major dick moves, but I'm pretty sure he was a brilliant scientist. The quotes from his book The Double Helix don't really help here, they are extremely misogynistic. But The Verge does not mention that in the epilogue of the same book, he said he was usually wrong about Franklin and he acknowledges the hardships she endured as a woman in science.[2] This is just the part about Franklin.
The rest of The Verge article mentions about him being a generally horrible person and does not even quote the parts about obese people and genetic screening, so bonus points for them. But one thing we need to consider is that he is old. Really, he is 86. Of course this shouldn't shield him from criticism, but he was born and lived in a different world than ours. Bad behavior should be called out and shunned, but there's a fine line between this and marginalization. We should all be responsible about it.
The last thing I want to add is how everyone thinks if you made one great achievement you win all the points. This reminds me a lot about what's going on with Linus Pauling.[3] He did awesome things, yes, but at some point he stopped being a pioneer in science and bullishly promoted benefits of vitamin C even though scientific community was mostly united against it. People want to see them as authority figures even after they age and lose their touch. This is sad, really. But continuing taking them seriously is usually more harm than silently ignoring them.
I'm sorry no one takes him seriously anymore. But I understand universities not considering working with him anymore. I understand press not caring about what he says anymore. They all have good reasons. But that's where my pity ends. Him deciding to sell his Nobel medal makes him look like a victim, but as far as I know he didn't do it because he was poor or anything. He wanted to buy a painting, which I'm perfectly fine with. And maybe he wanted a little attention? People get old and sad, which is depressing, but there's not much we can do about it.
I worked with two people that were at the MRC when the discovery was made. I'd always ask them for stories about the discovery, great stuff!
Crick was the true genius or at least the best crystallographer in the bunch as it took him only a couple of moments after seeing the image to know the structure.
A little time later, Crick is working in the wet lab, which was very unusual for him.
Asked 'what are you working on?' and he replied with 'wouldn't you like to know' with a smile.
Soon after he determined that proteins and the number of amino acids that were being derived from DNA, which I would argue probably deserved another Nobel Prize.
There does seem to be a movement to purge anyone with unpopular opinions from the public sphere, regardless of the context in which they developed their beliefs and how irrelevant their beliefs are to the work for which they earned fame. That it's now largely coming from the left wing, which suffered great marginalization during the Red Scare and McCarthyism, is ironic (and depressing as someone who used to identify as a liberal)
I understand your concern, but I personally think we're not there yet. What troubles me most is the sensationalist and preaching-to-the-choir nature of all media. The reason is probably the nature of the internet and benefits of clickbait journalism. If they love you, you win. If they hate you, they'll get you traffic, you win. It's not an easy problem to solve, we'll see how it ends.
On the other hand I'm not concerned that left is becoming the new right. Not right now. People get alarmed when scales are tipped and change is afoot, but as long as there's a clear inequality -be it in skin color, gender or orientation- the complaints will sound ridiculous like 'reverse racism/sexism'. If and when there's no longer a gap in equality and people start to oppress today's oppressors; that will be the time to stop. Until then my complaints will be minor.
There is a difference between unpopular and factually, demonstrably wrong. There is a difference between threatening violence, prison or worse and social shunning.
If you advocate for things that are actively harmful to society (like racism and misogyny), then you do deserve to be shunned.
And? I don’t really see the connection. CEOs are public faces of their companies. As such, all their publicly expressed opinions are quite relevant, especially if they are threatening to their employees. End of story, really.
>But one thing we need to consider is that he is old. Really, he is 86. Of course this shouldn't shield him from criticism, but he was born and lived in a different world than ours. Bad behavior should be called out and shunned, but there's a fine line between this and marginalization. We should all be responsible about it.
Some might call this marginalization, but you could equally consider Watson's comments to be indicative that the grand old man of genetics is no longer really doing modern, functional science, and it's not the business of Cold Spring Harbor, or any other research lab, to subsidize someone making non-scientific and inflammatory comments because they were once good researchers.
I don't think it's marginalization. I completely agree with you on this, but my comment probably sounded like I wouldn't, since I was covering both sides.
In the biology community he was basically regarded as a laughingstock / bully who was able to get away with it because of the DNA thing of which many people consider Crick to have been the major genius behind.
A fascinating controversy in all respects. I find it difficult to argue with the conclusions in this article as an empiricist, but it does provoke some very troubling considerations about our future as a global species:
Prepare to have this comment flagkilled within the hour by the less empirically inclined. It happened to me when I posted this same article the last time a Watson thread appeared here.
Hence my fascination with the human mind and its inherent demons and nuanced machinations. The concept of IQ is fascinating, not least because it causes a fierce ideological firestorm almost instantaneously upon its mentioning. However, mentioning that athletic ability is genetically determined gets a heartfelt, "really, ya think??!"
Alas, we are but a bunch of hominids scrambling in the dark in fear of the world in which we find ourselves. If we get too close to an idea that can burn us, most of us scurry away back to the comfortable dark.
That is except for a few insane pioneers, who embrace the flames even at the cost of their own safety...
The level of unconscious racism in this thread is amazing. Whenever the subject of race comes up and someone sites a statistic purporting to demonstrate "African" or "black" intellectual inferiority, I suggest he imagine a seismologist who stated, "Black earthquakes are inherently inferior to white earthquakes."
"I don't get it."
"Exactly. Why the hell would any reputable seismologist care about white or black earthquakes?"
Seriously. I like the example of bears, since it allows us to remain in the realm of biology. I mean, does any reputable biologist posit meaningful differences between polar bears & black bears? It's absurd. One bear is black and the other is white. What else does that possibly tell us about their behavior or other attributes?
It's not unconscious. I find frank discussion refreshing if terrifying thus the throwaway. Nobody used the word inferior or superior except you. No value judgements were added but your own.
There isn't anything special about Watson. Like all scientific discoveries, he was in the right place at the right time, and depending on how you look at it was sufficiently ruthless/ambitious to claim his place in history. But so what? If not him, someone else would have worked it out, just like the people that almost discovered calculus or the Higgs boson. If you want to honour science, then give 5 million dollars to someone who is actually still interested in doing research. He's had his day, and has received all the accolades he deserves, if not more.
"Mr Watson told the Financial Times he had become an “unperson” after he “was outed as believing in IQ” in 2007 and said he would like to use money from the sale to buy a David Hockney painting."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/11261872/James-Watso...
http://content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1673952,0...
http://www.wired.com/2007/10/more-on-james-b/
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence
Note the first paragraph in the Wikipedia article : "The connection between race and intelligence has been ... It is still not resolved what relation, if any, there is between group differences in IQ and race."
Currently we have about 104 years of data, which shows, to put it mildly, a clear pattern of racial differences in intelligence (and pretty much every other metric. Size. Weight. Speed. Color. Body temperature...). Worse, they also show a clear difference in intelligence between different ideological groups (e.g. religion) (again, and they also show a large difference in other metrics).
To some extent Watson, in his first claim, has a point that we seem to be unwilling to make. There is a clear conclusion to be drawn here :
Different races are different. In pretty much any metric you can come up with.
Furthermore, if you look at the effect of average differences in a certain metric to examples in individuals, you get an even more politically incorrect result, based on pure math. If you take 2 groups, who differ by x percentage points in "blueness". Then if you take a random individual from group 1, and a random one from group 2, what are the chances that the first individual is more blue ?
x = 1% => p =~ 76%
x = 2% => p =~ 92%
x = 3% => p =~ 98%
So this means that if blue humans are 1% taller than green humans, then if you meet a blue and a green human on the street, the chance is about 76% that the blue human will win (be taller) than the green.
(Only intelligence scores vary more than 1 standard deviation. The largest difference is between 2.5 and 3 standard deviations (and does not involve either a white ethnic or a black ethnic group))
So we should give up on Africa because the average black guy didn't answer the 2 train question correctly? Should we also give up on Europe and North America because the white guys didn't answer that correctly either?
The use of this stat, were it even possible to be accurate, really only serves racists. No meaningful outcome could result from the number.
Dr Watson said: he is "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" but "people who have to deal with black employees find this not true".
He sold the medal because he wanted the money to acquire an expensive painting.
Sounds more like racism than political correctness.
sounds like his statement is based on facts known to him (and being Nobel winning scientist he probably has good skills at understanding and analyzing facts)
>Sounds more like racism
Either you're trying to say what his statement wasn't based on his knowledge and analysis of facts or you're introducing a concept of "racism rooted in facts"
I wonder though whether the Watson will accept the medal back from Usmanov's hands.
My understanding is that IQ correlates to socio-economic background, but once that's adjusted for, all race considerations fall away. If you've got a credible source that says something else, I'm sure we'd find it interesting.
He chose to sell it because he wanted to buy an expensive piece of art.
So? Usmanov decided he would rather make a charitable contribution to Watson in a symbolic manner. Does not change the fact that i was an admirable thing to do (it was, after all, $4.7 million of his own money)
Does anyone have a link to a longer statement from Usmanov?
First of all, him stealing research from Rosalind Franklin comment is a bit of a hyperbole. Sure, not asking for her permission before using data and not crediting her at all are major dick moves, but I'm pretty sure he was a brilliant scientist. The quotes from his book The Double Helix don't really help here, they are extremely misogynistic. But The Verge does not mention that in the epilogue of the same book, he said he was usually wrong about Franklin and he acknowledges the hardships she endured as a woman in science.[2] This is just the part about Franklin.
The rest of The Verge article mentions about him being a generally horrible person and does not even quote the parts about obese people and genetic screening, so bonus points for them. But one thing we need to consider is that he is old. Really, he is 86. Of course this shouldn't shield him from criticism, but he was born and lived in a different world than ours. Bad behavior should be called out and shunned, but there's a fine line between this and marginalization. We should all be responsible about it.
The last thing I want to add is how everyone thinks if you made one great achievement you win all the points. This reminds me a lot about what's going on with Linus Pauling.[3] He did awesome things, yes, but at some point he stopped being a pioneer in science and bullishly promoted benefits of vitamin C even though scientific community was mostly united against it. People want to see them as authority figures even after they age and lose their touch. This is sad, really. But continuing taking them seriously is usually more harm than silently ignoring them.
I'm sorry no one takes him seriously anymore. But I understand universities not considering working with him anymore. I understand press not caring about what he says anymore. They all have good reasons. But that's where my pity ends. Him deciding to sell his Nobel medal makes him look like a victim, but as far as I know he didn't do it because he was poor or anything. He wanted to buy a painting, which I'm perfectly fine with. And maybe he wanted a little attention? People get old and sad, which is depressing, but there's not much we can do about it.
Sorry for the long comment.
[1]: http://www.theverge.com/2014/12/9/7363969/dna-pioneer-james-... [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Watson#Use_of_King.27s_Co... [3]: http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/07/the-vitami...
Crick was the true genius or at least the best crystallographer in the bunch as it took him only a couple of moments after seeing the image to know the structure.
A little time later, Crick is working in the wet lab, which was very unusual for him.
Asked 'what are you working on?' and he replied with 'wouldn't you like to know' with a smile.
Soon after he determined that proteins and the number of amino acids that were being derived from DNA, which I would argue probably deserved another Nobel Prize.
On the other hand I'm not concerned that left is becoming the new right. Not right now. People get alarmed when scales are tipped and change is afoot, but as long as there's a clear inequality -be it in skin color, gender or orientation- the complaints will sound ridiculous like 'reverse racism/sexism'. If and when there's no longer a gap in equality and people start to oppress today's oppressors; that will be the time to stop. Until then my complaints will be minor.
If you advocate for things that are actively harmful to society (like racism and misogyny), then you do deserve to be shunned.
That seems more like a popular right-wing conspiracy theory than anything that’s actually happening.
Some might call this marginalization, but you could equally consider Watson's comments to be indicative that the grand old man of genetics is no longer really doing modern, functional science, and it's not the business of Cold Spring Harbor, or any other research lab, to subsidize someone making non-scientific and inflammatory comments because they were once good researchers.
http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2007/10/james-watson-tells-inconven...
Alas, we are but a bunch of hominids scrambling in the dark in fear of the world in which we find ourselves. If we get too close to an idea that can burn us, most of us scurry away back to the comfortable dark.
That is except for a few insane pioneers, who embrace the flames even at the cost of their own safety...
"I don't get it."
"Exactly. Why the hell would any reputable seismologist care about white or black earthquakes?"