Shots In The Dark
Thursday, September 06, 2007
  02138 in the Globe
Today's Globe references 02138's excerpt of James D. Watson's new book....

Nobel laureate Watson doesn't mince words
Nobel laureate James Watson has some unkind things to say about Larry Summers in his memoir, "Avoid Boring People: Lessons From a Life in Science." In the book, excerpted in the new issue of 02138, the mighty molecular biologist says "nothing may have distinguished Summers' time in office like leaving it." Watson writes that it wasn't Summers' ill-advised women-in-science comment that cost him the top job at Harvard. "It was . . . hundreds of more private displays on his part of seemingly rude disregard for the social niceties that ordinarily permit human beings to work together for a common good." Nothing if not cranky, Watson, who's one of the co-discoverers of the structure of DNA, calls Harvard's Allston expansion a "Soviet-style fantasy."
  8:58 AM  
Comments:
Harvard would recover faster from its ailments if more of its faculty had the intellect, clarity of mind, eloquence and courage of Professor Watson.
# posted by Anonymous : September 6, 2007 9:28 AM
 
At least Larry never stole any research ...
# posted by Anonymous : September 6, 2007 9:28 AM
 
I'd recommend that folks read the entire excerpt; while Watson is very tough on Summers in some ways, he defends him on the women-in-science issue very strongly.
# posted by Richard Bradley : September 6, 2007 10:34 AM
 
are you calling Professor Watson a thief 9.28?
# posted by Anonymous : September 6, 2007 10:46 AM
 
No, not a thief, but it is my understanding that Professor Watson and his colleague Crick used DNA X-ray diffraction data collected by Rosalind Franklin and Raymond Gosling without their permission or consent.

So perhaps Watson shares --or did at some point-- some of the bad manners that he now criticizes Larry Summers for. Does his have the moral authority to do this in his book?
# posted by Anonymous : September 6, 2007 12:26 PM
 
As other posters have noted, this is the pot calling the kettle black on the women-in-science question, and not sure Watson's much better at social niceties, either, frankly!
# posted by Anonymous : September 6, 2007 11:50 PM
 
Actually, James Watson himself has claimed that his own IQ is 115 or so. So he serves as a personally interesting counterexample to Summers' claim (in his women-and-science speech debacle) that the outstanding scientists are found at the top end of the IQ spectrum....
# posted by Anonymous : September 6, 2007 11:58 PM
 
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