fridi: (Default)
[personal profile] fridi posting in [community profile] talkpolitics

Isn't it funny how obviously very intelligent people latch onto wacky ideas, especially later in life? He should've known how flawed an IQ test is, and how it is not a test of overall intelligence, but just instead tests how well you do tests. The Flynn effect is a good example of how flawed it is...

Honorary Titles Revoked From DNA Pioneer James Watson Over Racist Views

"Watson, who has been affiliated with the lab since 1968, stood by his controversial 2007 views of Blacks being a genetically inferior race. He won the Nobel Prize in 1962 helping discover the structure of DNA. His views still supported the archaic and invalid line of thought that race and intelligence were connected."

I'm surprised this bastard didn't try to find an alternative helix combination to justify the lack of the ability to be intelligent in black people. Probably not because he didn't try - I suppose. Heh.

(no subject)

Date: 21/1/19 15:54 (UTC)
arhalvaztrirjournal: (ROFLMAO)
From: [personal profile] arhalvaztrirjournal
He endorses the Bell Curve theory, and is a living proof that scientific racism is all too alive and well. It gets funnier in one of the worst ways when you factor in that Watson and Crick essentially plagiarized someone else.....

(no subject)

Date: 21/1/19 20:34 (UTC)
johnny9fingers: (Default)
From: [personal profile] johnny9fingers
Plagiarised... sort of. Franklin should have been the lead name in that Nobel, instead she was left off the list. Her crystallography pictures were the telling evidence in deciphering the double helix structure of DNA, but Watson and Crick had theorised about a helix and variants before the pics of a double helix arrived. It is definitely one of the great injustices, obviously, but let's not get into the plagiarised/copyrighted wankery when talking about academic discoveries that have taken many different folk lifetimes of effort and thought and huge amounts of collaboration.

Obviously, compared to Crick and Watson, Franklin was simply the lady photographer to the folk of that period who nominated men for the Nobel prize almost uniformly. But I still think it's wrong to say they plagiarised her work. You know, as well as the rest of us do, how academic papers often get published with the supervisor's name heading the list of authors; but normally folk acknowledge the other folk who actually did the work too. It is iniquitous, but so is almost all academic publication and supervision, never mind the pay-to-access academic papers because certain publishing houses saw a way of making a bigger margin on academic stuff. It's all behind a paywall near you, after all; if you can get your department to fund access that is.

(no subject)

Date: 21/1/19 21:01 (UTC)
From: [personal profile] mikeyxw
Huh? Story I heard was that she wasn't included because the Nobel Committee doesn't nominate dead people and she died four years before the award. The guy who directed her work and ran the lab she worked in, Maurice Wilkins, was one of the co-winners, so it's hard to say the work was plagiarized.

(no subject)

Date: 21/1/19 22:18 (UTC)
johnny9fingers: (Default)
From: [personal profile] johnny9fingers
You are correct in that. And the Nobel prize three person rule made the cut obvious as she was dead. She was the expendable one. But history rewrites some wrongs. :)
Edited Date: 21/1/19 22:20 (UTC)

Credits & Style Info

Talk Politics.

A place to discuss politics without egomaniacal mods


MONTHLY TOPIC:

Failed States

DAILY QUOTE:
"Someone's selling Greenland now?" (asthfghl)
"Yes get your bids in quick!" (oportet)
"Let me get my Bid Coins and I'll be there in a minute." (asthfghl)

June 2025

M T W T F S S
       1
2 34 5 678
910 1112 131415
1617 1819 202122
23242526272829
30      

Summary

OSZAR »