I usually enjoy your blog, but when I saw the first sentence of this recent post it left a bad taste that just didn't go away.
The post in question was titled, "New England Journal of Medicine engages in typical academic corporate ass-covering behavior," and its first sentence began, "James Watson (not the racist dude who, in 1998, said that a cancer cure was coming in 2 years) writes . . ."
The reader continues:
You could have said "not the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA", but instead to identify him, it is the "racist" label you had to use. Was that really necessary? What was the point of that? To show that you are among the enlightened and moral in identifying that as his most important characteristic? (Besides racist is a entirely vague term now as it can include someone saying "All lives matter" or disagreeing with an African-American).
When a commenter took issue with his mention your response was rather bizarre. So what if cancer cure forecasting and racism were his side gigs? That's what he is famous for now? And no other great scientists have made bogus predictions? It was all rather petty, unbecoming, and unnecessary. The treatment of Watson has been a disgrace and is one of many episodes leading to the culture of fear in academia for saying something offhand that will get you unpersoned. Thanks for adding to that.
I disagree, but I appreciate the open criticism. Here is my reply:
1. Publicity goes both ways. There was nobody holding a gun to Watson's head telling him to say, in 1998, that "Judah is going to cure cancer in two years." Watson seems to love publicity. If the cancer cure had really come, Watson could rightly claim credit for calling it ahead of time. When it didn't come . . . then, yeah, he's due for some mockery. Don't you think it's a little bit irresponsible for one of the mast famous biologists in the world to tout a nonexistent cancer cure? I don't like it when Dr. Oz does this sort of thing either.
2. The reason I called Watson is a racist is not that he said "All lives matter" or that he disagreed with an African American. I called him a racist because he's said things like this:
Some anti-Semitism is justified.
All our social policies are based on the fact that [Africans] intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really.
The one aspect of the Jewish brain that is not first class is that Jews are said to be bad in thinking in three dimensions.. it is true.
I think now we're in a terrible sitution where we should pay the rich people to have children.. if we don't encourage procreation of wealthier citizens, IQ levels will most definitely fall.
Indians in [my] experience [are] servile.. because of selection under the caste system.
East Asian students [tend] to be conformist, because of selection for conformity in ancient Chinese society.
3. You refer to "the culture of fear in academia for saying something offhand that will get you unpersoned." First, I don't know that Watson's statements were so "offhand"; he seems to have pretty consistent views. Second, I'm not unpersoning the guy. He's a person, and one of the things he's done as a person is to trade in some of the fame he got from his youthful scientific accomplishments to promote racism and cancer cures that don't work. Third, what about the culture of fear for ethnic minorities and women in science? Watson was head of a major lab and a big figure in American biology for many years. It doesn't bother me so much that people might want think twice before spewing some of the opinions that Watson's expressed.
In the meantime, I don't think they'll be taking DNA out of the textbooks, even if one of its discoverers was Rosalind Franklin, who Watson apparently couldn't stand. She couldn't do maths, she couldn't think in three dimensions very well, she didn't even curl her hair . . . jeez! It's amazing she could do science at all. I guess standards were lower back in the 1950s.
Look, I'm not saying Watson was evil. He was a complicated person, like all of us. But scientific politics, sexism, and racism were not just part of his private opinions. They were part of his public persona. If you go around saying "Some anti-Semitism is justified," then, yeah, you're gonna piss some people off!