James Watson's Nobel Medal Sells For $4.1 Million 201
An anonymous reader writes Scientist James Watson, who has issues with women, Africans, and the scientific community, has became the only living Nobel laureate to sell his medal after it fetched over $4 million at auction. "Watson told Nature that his motivation for selling the medal is a chance for redemption. He plans to donate some of the proceeds to Cold Spring, where he still draws a $375,000 base salary as chancellor emeritus, and also to University College Cork in Ireland to help establish an institute dedicated to the mathematician George Boole. 'I'm 52% Irish,' Watson said by way of explanation."
that's one way to get a nobel prize (Score:4, Funny)
buy it!
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I think they offer parking as a perk for being a Nobel Laureate; so it wouldn't follow the medal.
I'm not sure a carry-on laptop bag is an appropriate method of transportation for a $4 million+ piece of metal.
Banks must have some high-security methods of insured secure courier for precious specie; one of those would be more appropriate.
So... (Score:2)
He still came out a winner? Just like the guy who sold the basketball team to Paul Allen for $2 billion.
Here's an idea for him (Score:5, Interesting)
He could use some of that money to set up a memorial of some kind for the memory of Rosalind Franklin, or make a big donation to Rosalind Franklin University.
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Yes, if he's trying to finance his way into redemption, that at least would be a first stab at reparations. What a creep.
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Are you even familiar with what we're referring to?
He used Franklin's data, obtained via underhanded means, without her permission, and then smeared her in his book, The Double Helix, after her death. (The controversies referred to above, while particularly outré, are hardly the first that Watson has engaged in.)
(It's fairly likely she would have shared the Nobel, but it is not granted posthumously.)
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He used Franklin's data, obtained via underhanded means, without her permission, and then smeared her in his book
(It's fairly likely she would have shared the Nobel, but it is not granted posthumously.)
Forgot about that. Still think you could find a better ax to grind.
Re:Here's an idea for him (Score:4, Informative)
I don't really know if there's much point in trying to reply to this, but I'm going to try to, anyway.
Rosalind Franklin is a figure that an awful lot of people, especially scientists (and especially, but certainly not only, women) feel pretty strongly about. She did extremely good work, and managed to work in the field at a time when it was socially quite difficult to be a working scientist as a woman. She played a pivotal role in our understanding of DNA, and meanwhile, the best known account of her, from a professional colleague says stuff like this:
Meanwhile, her data was taken from her, without her permission, and shown to people, one of whom would eventually describe her that way after her death and was one of those who eventually got the Nobel prize. So, yeah, a lot of people think Watson owes her, and a lot of people think she still deserves more recognition.
Watson has a pretty long history of mouthing off in public. His comments about Africans and IQ are only the latest of many (this is fairly well documented on internet, and from a certain standpoint, especially taken as a collection, somewhat amusing. If you have a dark sense of humor.) But a lot of the eye-rolling in the scientific community rests first on the misappropriation Franklin's data - and then, if perhaps to a lesser extent, following up that scientific malfeasance with writing such a sexist smear of her. It's not that uncommon, though unfortunately, for famous scientists to mouth off in public, especially outside of their area of expertise. But you don't fuck with someone else's data.
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the best known account of her, from a professional colleague says stuff like this
Well, if you insist on picking up such bits, then it's your problem. The book is available online [selfdefinition.org] and you can certainly see for yourself what Watson wrote. His account of Rosy is mostly factual. The fact is that she was as stubborn and hard to deal with as she was brilliant. Her work was recognized by Watson in spite of his objectified view of women. Again, I find no problem with such descriptions since they are factual if not very productive. If you don't like such facts, too bad.
The Double Helix was writt
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I think that the hullaballoo about Rosie Franklin is really getting out of hand. Fucking Watson himself wrote in The Double Helix:
In 1958, Rosalind Franklin died at the early age of thirty-seven. Since my initial impressions of her, both scientific and personal (as recorded in the early pages of this book), were often wrong, I want to say something here about her achievements. The X-ray work she did at King's is increasingly regarded as superb. The sorting out of the A and B forms, by itself, would have made her reputation; even better was her 1952 demonstration, using Patterson superposition methods, that the phosphate groups must be on the outside of the DNA molecule. Later, when she moved to Bemal's lab, she took up work on tobacco mosaic virus and quickly extended our qualitative ideas about helical construction into a precise quantitative picture, definitely establishing the essential helical parameters and locating the ribonucleic chain halfway out from the central axis.
Because I was then teaching in the States, I did not see her as often as did Francis, to whom she frequently came for advice or when she had done something very pretty, to be sure he agreed with her reasoning. By then all traces of our early bickering were forgotten, and we both came to appreciate greatly her personal honesty and generosity, realizing years too late the struggles that the intelligent woman faces to be accepted by a scientific world which often regards women as mere diversions from serious thinking. Rosalind's exemplary courage and integrity were apparent to all when, knowing she was mortally ill, she did not complain but continued working on a high level until a few weeks before her death.
Yes, he wrote it back in 1968. So lets just stop with the "poor forgotten Rosie". I mean Watson himself mentioned her often in his book, and wrote those paragraphs (amongs others) about her. Yes, she was right and she was a good experimentalist. Nobody forgot about her, expect idiots who don't read books. Double Helix is less than a 100 pages long, and is an easy read. How much s
A $375,000 base salary? (Score:4, Insightful)
I guess there's some money in being a Nobel laureate - even having "no income outside of academia" (as mentioned elsewhere).
And is that in Dollars or Pounds?
What is the point in buying? (Score:2)
What is the point in buying a Nobel medal? I can only think of somebody who want to fraud people, but a simple google search would expose them.
Depreciation (Score:2)
Who in their right mind would pay 4 million for *his* Nobel prize? I know pure gold doesn't really tarnish... but that thing is tarnished.
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Who in their right mind would pay 4 million for *his* Nobel prize? I know pure gold doesn't really tarnish... but that thing is tarnished.
It would be funny if it were given to the people doing the ig nobels [improbable.com], to be awarded each year in the category "most bone-head racist research".
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Who in their right mind would pay 4 million for *his* Nobel prize? I know pure gold doesn't really tarnish... but that thing is tarnished.
Upthread the interesting theory is offered that the fix was in, and this was a way for rich fan of Watson's unsavory remarks to kick some money his way. The buyer was anonymous of course. It would be interesting to learn if the medal is eventually loaned back to him, or to CSHL, for display only of course.
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The mass purchase of books written by right-wing commentators and politicos by right-wing organizations is well established as a form of support (aka "pay-off") is well established [thedailybeast.com].
I do like the "rich fiends" bit though!
Something tells me... (Score:2)
The buyer was probably not Al Sharpton.
52% (Score:4, Interesting)
Must be Irish on his mother's side. Second X chromosome and mitochondrial DNA.
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Absolute bollocks. From around 1998 to 2004 the country experienced a massive influx of sub Saharan Africans, for the first time ever people were actually immigrating here. Almost immediately after that, the country's population increased by about 15% over the course of three years due to Eastern European economic migrants.
Race riots? None. Right wing parties emerging? None. Public unrest and disturbances, widespread racist incidents? None. Actually there was one "secret" right wing neo nazi rally but that
Not exactly living in a ditch is he? (Score:2)
Cry me a river and pass out the begging bowls.
He has issues ... (Score:2)
... of Playboy, Penthouse and Hustler.
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He sought the truth, as best any one human can
He made biased claims based on his political views, not scientific research. He then hung his scientific credibility on them.
He didn't tell the truth, he flat out lied, using his position of academic credibility to forward lies based on his political biases. Thats fucking terrible. Your terrible too for not being able to distinguish opinion of a scientist, and scientific work.
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Re:the evils of Political Correctness (Score:4, Insightful)
He's guilty of confirmation bias. He's as bad as Jefferson saying blacks can't be educated because Jefferson never met an educated black man. But since educated black men exist now, Watson's worse. Ignorant at best, intellectually dishonest at worst.
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You are probably right about the confirmation bias. But one should be able to make that argument without hounding someone out of a profession. That is more-or-less what happened here.
I would also note that almost no one here is actually a scientist, much less a Nobel prize winner. So no one is all that qualified to debunk his idea. There are certainly falsifiable points in his premise on race (and probably plenty of research to support it). All that need be done is produce and make the
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I would also note that almost no one here is actually a scientist, much less a Nobel prize winner.
There are plenty of scientists here. And I don't need t obe a Nobel prize winner to know that for instance ESP does not exist (unlike Brian Josephsson). You don't need to have a Nobel prize to know when a prizewinner is talking crap.
Re:the evils of Political Correctness (Score:5, Insightful)
You are probably right about the confirmation bias. But one should be able to make that argument without hounding someone out of a profession. That is more-or-less what happened here.
No it's not. The guy has continued to revise his books and memoirs and other publications in recent years, which is more than you can say for most 86-year-olds. He has continued to publish new scientific ideas in recent years.
What actually happened is that he wrote a memoir about his life which was intended for a POPULAR audience, and in the early stages of gearing up for his book tour, he made the remarks everyone's been talking about. Most of his appearances on that book tour were then cancelled, because of reactions to a public figure who basically implied that the science on the genetics of race was settled (when it's really not -- there may be some studies that appear to agree with his claims, but there are about as many that show the opposite) and then made racist implications on the basis of this.
He was not at all "hounded out of a profession," unless you consider "being a public intellectual" a profession. Show me evidence that people have refused to publish his research or took away memberships in academic societies or whatever -- then you can say he was "hounded out of the profession." He wasn't. He did lose a high-profile administrative position, but he continued to advise and do research at that place. He just lost his audence to talk to the public, which he should, given that he has a long history of saying rather nasty things and claiming a scientific basis for them when there generally isn't.
This is a classic case of claims of "Science!" being used as a cover for political correctness. More like "Science! (so shut the hell up)".
Huh? Look, you want to be a "normal scientist" and go about your day, doing research, publishing papers, whatever -- that's great. And chances are if you make some crass or racist remark to some random friends, nothing's going to happen to you.
But if you want to be a world-famous scientist and live in the public eye, you are subject to public scrutiny -- which means when you say something that's not true AND offends people in the process, you might lose your public audience.
That has nothing to do with "science." It's just the reality of being a public figure. It would be one thing if this were a single off-hand comment from Watson. It was not. He has a history of saying things that are racist, sexist, homophobic, etc., and he's been doing it for decades. (He's also, frankly, a bit of a kook in his old age, but that's a separate issue.)
You want press? You get to accept what press you create for yourself....
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You are probably right about the confirmation bias. But one should be able to make that argument without hounding someone out of a profession. That is more-or-less what happened here.
No, it isn't. Watson proved himself incapable, after a good 39 years as Chancellor of the Cold Harbor Laboratory, a publicly funded scientific research institution, to continue to successfully function in that position. Like it or not, carrying out such a prominent, highly-paid job puts demands on a person to act and speak responsibly, with the object of maintaining the image of the institution who trusts him to represent it.
A programmer who can no longer the job he is paid to perform gets fired.
A scientist
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But one should be able to make that argument without hounding someone out of a profession.
Wait a minute, you would't hound a scientist out of a job if he suffered from confirmation bias? That's like keeping a driver who gets drunk.
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His profession is intellectual. Demonstrating extreme intellectual dishonesty is absolutely a valid disqualification for working in an intellectual field. Hurting people in the process by promulgating racist bullshit is a good reason as well.
Also, he wasn't a scholar that studied the fields relevant to his reality-free claims. So literally everybody who posts in this thread is just as qualified as he is to talk about race (and I'm sure many are more qualified).
Finally, arguments matter more than qualific
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Re:the evils of Political Correctness (Score:5, Insightful)
Except your missing the fact that the opinions of a scientist are not equal to science.
Your treating science as a religeon, something men in lab coats say and you unquestioningly believe.
Science is a method. Its not believing unquestioningly what scientists say. Science has standards for ascertaining truths based on observation. Watson's claims are not backed by science, but by his own personal prejudices and political views. That alone is good reason to kick someone out of the scientific community.
For science to work you must be able to state an unpopular opinion and not get slaughtered for it.
I'm not for sure how substantial his claims were but there is no denying that there are differences between races.
How many white people do you see in professional sports? And there is a reason we split men and women
sports apart. An average male athlete would have no problem competing at the olympic level in many sports
if they were allowed to compete on the female side. I've heard somewhere that an average 50 percentile male is
stronger than 90%+ females. Even pointing this out though can get you persecuted and heaven forbid someone
mentions that there are IQ difference between races.
We're talking about a very smart guy that helped discover DNA. If he says that there is a DNA element to
intelligence (and everyone knows there is) and that it varies by race (again, this is a no brainer) then what is
the big deal, he's speaking the truth. Now how much is based on race/genetics is a nature/nurture debate
that we're a long way from solving but the fact that there is a genetic basis to intelligence is undeniable however
much people stick their heads in the sand and try to deny it.
Re:the evils of Political Correctness (Score:5, Interesting)
For science to work you must be able to state an unpopular opinion and not get slaughtered for it.
Agreed. Has anyone discounted any of Watson's other scientific discoveries on the basis of this remark? I don't think so. And if not, science is still working as it should.
We're talking about a very smart guy that helped discover DNA.
I'm sensing a fallacious appeal to authority coming up....
If he says that there is a DNA element to intelligence (and everyone knows there is)
Yes, that's a true statement.
and that it varies by race (again, this is a no brainer)
If you're looking for the place where your post went from "misguided appeal to authority" to "racist rant," this is where it happens. Exactly why is it a "no brainer" that intelligence varies significantly by race?? I've personally met some very smart people of all sorts of races, and I've met idiots from all sorts of races too. I don't feel like I've accumulated enough data to say it's a "no brainer" that one race is smarter than another -- what dataset do you have access to where you feel like this is a "no brainer"?
Also, you referenced IQ earlier, and now you're talking about "intelligence" -- are you rejecting the idea that different races might have evolved different sorts of intelligence if you're presuming they've evolved differently enough to have different adaptations in this area (and maybe those localized adapations might not be measured as precisely as a test designed mostly by white people to test white people)? I'm just mentioning one of many problems with IQ as a proxy for "intelligence," even if there were obvious differences... which there aren't. When you control for demographics and other social aspects, a lot of racial differences narrow significantly.
then what is the big deal, he's speaking the truth.
The big deal is when he made these remarks, he was no longer just some smart young scientist. He was an 80-year-old dude with a history of making racist, sexist, and homophobic remarks with little basis. And, let's be honest here, even many great scientists aren't always going to be "at the top of their game" anymore at 80 years old.
So your appeal to authority here is problematic in a number of ways -- a guy was recognized for an achievement more than a half-century ago, he's old, he tends to say things that aren't true or well-thought-out in public, and yet you just assume he "speaks the truth"?
Why? THAT does not strike me as a very "scientific" attitude.
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I've personally met some very smart people of all sorts of races, and I've met idiots from all sorts of races too.
And that ... is supposed to negate the possibility of average differences? How?
You don't have to have a dog in this hunt to think that something's lacking in that thinking.
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average diffrences
again, you see what you want to see. Your misapplying statistics. a few points of order:
1. IQ test is considered bunk, and even if it wasn't, there are a whole plethora of tests, that yield varying results. Its very much not a mesaure like grams or meters which is absolute, and solid. 2. There are no good scientific studies on race and IQ that factor out things like education and poverty, and conclusively prove discrepencies. you don't have to a horse in this race just to see bad methodology.
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2. There are no good scientific studies on race and IQ that factor out things like education and poverty, and conclusively prove discrepencies.
you don't have to a horse in this race just to see bad methodology.
One reason there are not any good studies is because it's a taboo topic.
No professional would risk their career testing something like this. It would be suicide.
What's left is a bunch of fringe people on both sides that have bad methodologies.
If you want good, rigourous studies then you need to allow the studies to take place.
It's very hard to have a study take place when just vocalizing an opinion gets you
crucified before the study even begins.
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1. IQ test is considered bunk, and even if it wasn't, there are a whole plethora of tests, that yield varying results. Its very much not a mesaure like grams or meters which is absolute, and solid. 2. There are no good scientific studies on race and IQ that factor out things like education and poverty, and conclusively prove discrepencies. you don't have to a horse in this race just to see bad methodology.
Ah, but the tests themselves being crap does not prove that there isn't an average difference, which sounds like what you're saying.
Insufficient Data
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Sure, I'd agree that nurture has a much bigger impact than nature.
We're just throwing a lot of anecdata around here, unfortunately. It seems like people have quite a problem with, when they see an argument they disagree with, they say, "Not only are you wrong, there is no possible way that you could ever be correct"...and in this case, well, yeah...scientifically, it *is* possible that they're true to some extent. We just don't have any proof of it so we should assume there is no correlation.
Your opponent c
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Ah, but the tests themselves being crap does not prove that there isn't an average difference, which sounds like what you're saying.
So you want me to prove a negative?
In this conversation, we went from someone have "absolute indeniable proof", to "we don't really know, but you can't make a hard stance otherwise". even if there was an average diffrence, you still need to prove that is soley genetics responsible. Then you need to prove that the diffrence is bigger than the margin of error. Then you need to prove that its also bigger than the variation of IQ between *inviduals*.
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Which is also funny, because IQ was started soley for political reasons. They were invented to for the soley determination of someone's ability to succede in western civilization, and then proven to be utterly useless.
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Because average differences are less than differences between any two individuals of the different groups. Often enough that you can't make blanket statements like Watson did, about "Anyone who's ever had a black employee..."
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If you're looking for the place where your post went from "misguided appeal to authority" to "racist rant," this is where it happens. Exactly why is it a "no brainer" that intelligence varies significantly by race??
Because it is a no-brainer that if you grab two random groups of individuals and measure ANY trait within them, you'd expect to find a difference in the mean. That is true no matter what the groups are, or what the trait is. Heck, if you grabbed 500 white people, took two samples of 50 out of that group, and compared just about any trait between the two groups of 50 you'd find differences. Hence the reason statisticians are interested in things like standard error.
Black people and white people tend not t
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http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm... [nih.gov]
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"There is more of a distinction between Ford Cars (i.e. more differences between the F-150 and the Focus) than there are between Ford's catalogue and Dodge's catalogue."
Right, so can you say anything about the "intelligence" of a Ford car compared to a Dodge car, just based on one sample? The chance that the Dodge shares the same "intelligence" or "reliability" as the Ford can be greater, for any two cars selected at random, than the Ford compared to another Ford.
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As the GP pointed out there isn't a single "intelligence" trait, and your argument doesn't address that. IQ tests measure a very specific ability, and one which has been improving in all races for decades. IQ is affected by many environmental factors too, and it's hard to deny that some races have, on average, much more favourable environments to live in, even within a single country. People can learn to do better at IQ tests with practice.
At most we can say that the evidence suggests that some races are in
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Because it is a no-brainer that if you grab two random groups of individuals and measure ANY trait within them, you'd expect to find a difference in the mean. That is true no matter what the groups are, or what the trait is. Heck, if you grabbed 500 white people, took two samples of 50 out of that group, and compared just about any trait between the two groups of 50 you'd find differences. Hence the reason statisticians are interested in things like standard error.
Yes, all of this is true. And I think you've just proved my point. All sorts of "differences" can show up in random groups. The question is whether those differences are significant and meaningful (i.e., not caused by improper control groups or other confounding factors).
The variance among people of any given race in intelligence is larger than variance between races. So the question is whether those relatively minor variances seen between races are meaningful.
Black people and white people tend not to inter-marry. I'm not saying that it never happens - only that it doesn't happen NEARLY as often as intra-racial marriage. That makes it all the more likely for genetic drift to make some genes become more predominant in one population vs the other.
As I also said in my post, when you have
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He basically said he thought Africa was unlikely to improve its condition because black people are stupider.
Although this is definitely on the extreme side of things and I don't necessarily agree with it there
is some evidence for it. Google the "lead crime hypothesis". If say the average IQ of africans
is 10 points lower than the average IQ of north americans, this might be enough to destabilize the
region. 10 points doesn't sound like much but it means there are alot more really dumb people and
alot less really smart people which might be enough to halt progress.
Again, Watson shouldn't be shooting stuff like th
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IQ is not intelligence, nor capacity for intelligence. There are plenty of studies that show that you can increase IQ with training and preparation, which goes against what people are using IQ to measure in the first place: genetically "gifted" intelligence.
In your example, the IQ to economics correlation (1) has far too small a sample size, and (2) is the result, not the cause. Poor areas tend to have lower IQs because when you don't have enough money to live, much less to get schooling, you have a lower I
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IQ is just a measure of intelligence, and I agree not a perfect one.
That's not the point. The point of the "lead crime hypothesis" is that
if there is a shift downward in intelligence or a shift upward in violence, etc...
then this shift although minor might have significant effects by pushing
people below some threshold. Africa also has the problem of "brain drain"
where alot of highly intelligent people escape and move elsewhere causing
further stagnation. Just like "generational poverty" here in the USA th
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It's a no-brainer that you'll find statistically insignificant differences between two samples of the same population. That means nothing.
It is possible that intelligence varies by race,. but I haven't seen any good evidence for it. (I've seen loads of crap evidence.) Lacking strong evidence, it can hardly be called a "no-brainer".
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If he says that there is a DNA element to intelligence (and everyone knows there is) and that it varies by race (again, this is a no brainer) then what is the big deal, he's speaking the truth.
Or just confirmation bias by a racist old guy.
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For science to work you must be able to state an unpopular opinion and not get slaughtered for it.
No. You need to be able to present your research without being slaughtered for it. When it comes to opinion, scientists have the same rights and are subject to the same criticisms as anybody else.
How many white people do you see in professional sports?
Heaps.
Cricket, for instance, is dominated by white guys in Australia and England. On the other hand, India, Pakistan and the West Indies have very strong teams - why? Because cricket favours places where kids can play the game in the street. Genetics don't enter into it.
Another example: Aussie Rules versus Rugby.
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For science to work you must be able to state an unpopular opinion and not get slaughtered for it.
true, but thats not whats at stake. This is science, not art, there are real unmovable standards in science. The issue is not that his claims were offensive, but un-scientific. In fact, most of the "science" in racism was disproven long ago, and it was only "science", much because it was paid for by special intrest groups to become science.
I'm not for sure how substantial his claims
OK, stop right there. It looks like we are talking about two diffrent things. I am demanding that science be science, and your letting science be "worship of men in white
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In fact, most of the "science" in racism was disproven long ago, and it was only "science", much because it was paid for by special intrest groups to become science
I don't think that's entirely fair. A lot of racist ideas follow quite logically from hypotheses that make sense from Gregor Mendel's work. The fact that they were falsified by the mid 1900s doesn't mean that they were any less science any more than the luminiferous aether and other discredited hypotheses.
All science is about ideas that are wrong. The way that you can tell that it's science is that, over time, ideas are replaced with less-wrong ideas, until eventually they're sufficiently close an app
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No one is getting offended by his use of "science", and this is severely tangential to his more important point.
And regardless, his point that more current studies that demonstrate differences between races are largely biased, untrustworthy studies is true.
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I don't think that's entirely fair. A lot of racist ideas follow quite logically from hypotheses that make sense from Gregor Mendel's work. The fact that they were falsified by the mid 1900s doesn't mean that they were any less science any more than the luminiferous aether and other discredited hypotheses.
fair enough, scientific racism is as scientific as "luminierous aether". Anyone talking about either outside the context of history herein year of of lord 2014, is a blithering fucking idiot.
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That make sense from Mendel's work? I was unaware that he had a method to measure the intelligence of peas.
Intelligence is a complicated phenomenon, and not really comparable to the texture of pea pods.
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As far as IQ diffrences between races, there is no scientific proof. There are a few books such as IQ and the Wealth of Nations, but they are not scientific, as their methodology is horrible.
Of course there is no scientific proof. There is no scientific proof against it either because no
one is allowed to study it so the only books that get written are by fringe people who are racist
and trying to prove an agenda. Whether it's worth studying is obviously debatable but it should
be allowed to be spoken about and studied without being criticized.
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Of course there is no scientific proof.
Say it again, there is no scientific proof that diffrences between races are greater than diffrences between inviduals. In fact there is proof in the opposite.
There is no scientific proof against it either because no one is allowed to study it
What, are they being shot or something?
it so the only books that get written are by fringe people who are racist and trying to prove an agenda.
you don't say. Its always been this way. Much of the funding for "social darwinism" in the late 1800s was funded by wealthy racists with agendas.
Re:the evils of Political Correctness (Score:4, Insightful)
The latter is exactly my point. I would think the man's premise would be quickly and easily refuted. And it was and is.
But the "community" couldn't let it go at that. He had to be punished for the way he thought, because it made everybody feel better.
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What is this "punishment" fetish? Was he prevented from speaking or selling his prize or posting racist rants on his blog or wherever?
Is this purely a "social" punishment you're so frightened of? Do you want to legislate how society should treat Watson when he spouts racism that is easily refutable by my own personal experience (he said "anyone who's had a black employee knows I'm right about blacks being inferior" or something similar)? But if someone like me says something you disagree with, then it's ok
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I don't care what you say. Say whatever you want, I am a conservative, so I don't think it's a good idea to censor speech.
Thwe Watson case is an absolutely classic case of PC bullying.
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Conservatives think it's fine to censor speech they don't agree with. Like the Bonghits 4 Jesus [uscourts.gov] Supreme Court case, where conservatives were very happy that the speech was censored. Typical conservative hypocrisy.
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Come to Canada and publish something in the media calling bitumen tar instead of oil and you'll see how crazy the conservatives become about political correctness. It's gotten to the point where no-one dares call that tar like substance tar.
Conservatives have a long history of censoring things they disagree with. They just don't notice as to them it is proper
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Pfft. People going on about PC bullying and censoring have little concept of how serious censoring actually gets, and how common it is even in current times.
People coming out in outrage at a popular guy saying something blatently offensive and ignorant is not censorship.
The government making it illegal to say certain things is censorship.
The fact that it's not illegal to say things is why everyone is free to criticize Watson.
And before you call that de facto bullying or some other nonsense that demonstrates
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Its the same when they say "an assault on traditional values", and the "homosexual agenda", when they really mean "the state is going to stop using force to cram their ideas down someone elses throat". Not only is it a bit of projection, its almost a bit of a conspiracy to attack other people with competing ideas
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What is this "punishment" fetish? Was he prevented from speaking or selling his prize or posting racist rants on his blog or wherever?
He claims he was excluded from academic positions or somesuch. So, financial loss.
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Or maybe he just wants his book to sell better. Hmm: http://science.slashdot.org/co... [slashdot.org]
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Wish I could get punished to the tune of $350,000 a year. Besides unlike him, I have enough intelligence to live on that.
Actually I can't decide if he's a scammer or so stupid that he's truly broke.
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He got "punished" by not achieving more success.
He's a whiney baby that can't accept that he did something wrong.
If a civil engineer said that marshmallows were what we should build bridges out of, he would get similarly "punished." And unless he retracted it, that civil engineer would probably never get hired again and would lose any significant academic positions he held.
Try it yourself. If you hold any position of responsibility, say something stupid that proves you're incapable of performing your job an
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Consider the abstract of Genetic Similarities Within and Between Human Populations [nih.gov]:
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His remarks about Africans were in fact based on IQ test results. How is that not science?
Did they correct for leading causes of low intelligence such as malnutrition?
Were the tests culturally targeted? A century ago the IQ test was introduced and used to show that Eastern Europeans had lower IQ tests. Tests that had questions like who won the world series or what does Smith & Wesson (sp?) manufacture. These tests were used to limit immigration into the States as science had proved that Slavs were stupid.
Funny enough the guy who basically invented the IQ test and vigorously backed the result
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Drawing any meaningful conclusion from that evidence is pretty hard.
Re:the evils of Political Correctness (Score:4, Insightful)
"I would also note that almost no one here is actually a scientist, much less a Nobel prize winner. So no one is all that qualified to debunk his idea. There are certainly falsifiable points in his premise on race (and probably plenty of research to support it). All that need be done is produce and make the argument, and the issue should be closed. But no, that's not sufficient, he has to be punished."
Remember Diogenes of Sinope [egs.edu]?
Where were Diogenes's credentials? He was homeless. Science doesn't care about credentials, just the evidence. My own evidence speaks out against the Watson quotations I've read on here. I think he doesn't get out enough to meet blacks who are intelligent. Or listen to Louis Armstrong, for example.
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He's as bad as Jefferson saying blacks can't be educated because Jefferson never met an educated black man.
Jefferson was worse, because he had, in fact, met an educated black man. He should have known better.
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So should Watson. Listen to some Jelly Roll Morton.
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How has he been censored? Is there prior restraint on his book? How has he been destroyed? Will $4.1 million help him or "destroy" him further?
The hyperbolic paranoia in the above post is ubiquitous amongst conservatives. They see everything as a mortal threat. They're like precious little princesses who can't sleep because there's a pea on a mattress 100 feet below them. Prima donna whiners.
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visited upon a man who had the gall to believe differently than the mob and say so.
why people fall for this leftist claptrap is beyond me.
Paedophiles and child rapists believe differently than the mob. That doesn't make their beliefs valid.
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Where's the prior restraint, in Watson's case?
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You'd think he'd be smart enough to realize that selling it would cost him more in taxes than just keeping it. Oh wait, he still made tons of money.
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And in the words of the article he "draws a $375,000 base salary as chancellor emeritus" which according to this calculator [whatsmypercent.com] puts him in the top 2% of Americans. This is assuming that he had no other academic income which we do not know to be the case. Heck, The Double Helix is available right now in five different formats, and so must being in some income.
Efforts to pain Watson as beleaguered and impoverished are bizarre to say the least.
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Re: No More Ramen (Score:2)
He's particularly well-off considering his paying gig amounts to a sinecure.
I'm surprise the Nobel committee allows people to sell their medals. When people win Oscars, for example, the Academy won't let them keep their statue unless they sign an agreement giving the Academy a $1 buyback option on it. The statues all have a little plaque in the back saying, in so many words "this statue is bound by contract and cannot be sold without the written permission of the Academy."
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In the last article, there was a quote from him saying that he planned to use the money from the sale of the medal to buy art to donate to various organisations, apparently thinking that this was a way to buy back some respectability. I don't know if this will work...
His way back to respectability would be a full retraction of his idiotic comments on race. But he probably just thinks it's all some Politically Correct Conspiracy organised by black lesbians anyway.
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Differences among individuals classified as being of the same race are greater than the differences between races.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm... [nih.gov]
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please keep your unfounded bigotry, misapplication of statistics, and wild conspiracy theories and "what ifs", and recycled propaganda from the last age of kings to your blog.
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"Granting one self absolution smacks of self fullfillment or seeking godhood.. which is not exactly a selfless act."
Shhh ... don't tell that to Bill Gates ... it's okay when you have more money than God.
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"Irish" is a race now?
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Well, for a start, you immediately qualified "Irish". That should be enough to end this but let's run with "Gaelic Irish". What of those from the same gene pool who are not Irish? They could be Germans, Americans or even Japanese. Many of those genes probably came from the vikings anyway.
"Irish" is not a race. Though as others have said, the notion of race is stupid anyway. All you have are locally adapted phenotypes of the one human race.
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Widely accepted only among braindead yanks, who seperate the world into black, white, brown, yellow, and the race of Islam.
Re: Yeah, well ... (Score:2)
The term "Irish race" is pretty well-attested in 19th and early 20th century Amercian usage, along with German Race and a bunch of others.
Race is culturally constructed, and the lines Americans draw with race are historically determined by either slavery and its legacy, or immigration. Skin color is a more important pretext to race now than it was in the past, because now most immigrants to the US aren't coming from Europe.
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*any* accepted? Okay. Look at their skin color. That's a rather widely accepted definition that makes them the same race as English, French, Spaniards, Greeks, and even Persians and Arabs.
Anyone who can lump all of those groups together and say they share some common identity because they have "white" skin is simply proving how stupid racism really is.