The teaser headline said “Disgraced Scientist Sells Nobel Prize.” I think “controversial” might have been a more accurate word than “disgraced.” Sure, there are certainly some people who don’t like him. One scientist who knows him and has worked with him referred to him as “the most obnoxious person alive.” I don’t know about that. Never met the guy. And, I’ve known plenty of obnoxious people in my life who turned out to be decent folks when the test came.
James Watson
Feminists hate him because they think he stole the credit for discovering DNA. There’s a case to be made. He certainly built heavily on Rosalind Franklin’s research, some of which he’d obtained against her will, by skullduggery, but he and Crick were really the ones to put it all together. But it’s not his fault she didn’t get a share in the Nobel. The Nobel’s rules say prize winners must still be alive, and she’d died (cancer) 4 years before the prize was awarded.
He has made negative comments about fat people (“I always feel bad when I interview fat people, because I know I’m not going to hire them.”), and a lot of people think his comments about stupidity and ugliness (according to Watson, conditions which could be cured by genetics) were a bit insensitive, and the LGBT community was a little bit incensed by his suggestion that, if we discover a gay gene and can detect it in unborn children, it would be a valid reason for an abortion.
But, it was his comments about race (Latinos are horny all the time, and Black people aren’t very bright) that really got him into trouble. He even admitted that giving a couple of million to charity after selling off his prize is an attempt to get back in the public’s good graces. It worked for Bill Gates.
I’m sure what he said could have been phrased more elegantly, but his essential point was that different races have different characteristics, and it goes somewhat deeper than skin color. Asians are superior at math and engineering, apparently, Black people dominate in sports and are also way over-represented on the music circuit.
These aren’t absolutes. We are all individuals, and deserve to be treated as such. There are black people who don’t play basketball. There are, no doubt, Asians who suck at math. There are Latino males with erectile dysfunction. And there are lots and lots of stupid white people. But Jim Watson isn’t one of them.
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