“Some anti-Semitism is justified”
“Whenever you interview fat people, you feel bad, because you know you’re not going to hire them”
“Japan should be bombed for dragging its feet on supporting the Human Genome Project”
“I’m not a racist in a conventional way”
“[The] historic curse of the Irish.. is not alcohol, it’s not stupidity.. it’s ignorance”
“Women are supposedly bad at three dimensions”
“[Rosalind Franklin] couldn’t think in three dimensions very well”
“[Rosalind Franklin] had Aspergers”
“People ask about [Rosalind Franklin] and I always say ‘autism’”
“[Francis Crick] may have been a bit autistic”
“Men are a bit strange and their strangest quality is their ability to understand mathematics”
“[Rosalind] Franklin couldn’t do maths”
“Indians in [my] experience [are] servile.. because of selection under the caste system”
“People who have to deal with black employees find [that they are equal] not true”
“[As a female scientist] you won’t be taken seriously if you have children”
“[Linus Pauling] was probably always half-insane”
“Anyone who would hire an ecologist is out of his mind”
“[Rosalind Franklin] was a loser”
“Disabled individuals are genetic losers”
“[With IVF] all hell will break loose, politically and morally, all over the world”
“If we knew our son would develop schizophrenia, we wouldn’t have had him”
“My former colleagues are pinkos and shits”
“[X University]- it used to be such a wonderful place. And then they started admitting women!”
“Catholics are more likely to forgive than Jews”
Bits of DNA 
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May 18, 2018 at 8:39 am
Nick
“[Rosalind Franklin] had Aspergers”
Reminds me a comment during the candidate discussion on the last faculty search that we should not hire a guy because he is not very sociable (sort of more introverted and into science).
May 18, 2018 at 10:29 am
abc123
These are truly abhorent. Seeing them all together really gives you a different perspective on his way of thinking, the sense of entitlement and the lack of sensitivity and empathy.
But I’m not sure why this one is in the list:“If we knew our son would develop schizophrenia, we wouldn’t have had him”.
For anyone who has seen people live a life with this devastating disease, this seems like a responsible’s parent’s choice. Nobody should be sentenced to a life of suffering. The entire field of psychiatric genetics is working toward finding a genetic diagnostic panel, to be able to give parents this choice. And until better tratments become available, it seems a very sensible choice to make.
May 18, 2018 at 2:06 pm
Ricardo
In principle I tend to agree that severe diseases are better avoided than cured, although of course it’s very hurtful to people with schizophrenia to have it put like this. And even more harmful to their mental health. Furthermore if there is ever a viable predictive test for schizophrenia based solely on genetics, I will eat my hat and yours too.
January 14, 2019 at 10:51 pm
Chris
I really like him. Everything he says is more or less true and if people would follow it we would end up in a better world.
If people quit being such sensitive pussys and stopped ignoring science we might get somewhere in a forseable future.
May 18, 2018 at 9:17 pm
abc123
Schizophrenia is highly heritable so we shall see…. My bet is that there will be a genetic test, but not sure if in my or your lifetime. As for the way he put it, indeed it’s vey insensitive and could be hurtfull for some people with schizophrenia, but many of them are in fact of the same opinion: they choose not to have children, for justified fear that their children could have the disease.
May 31, 2018 at 11:40 am
xyz987
Because heritablitiy means heredity? Heritability is such a notion you can do everything with. And don’t even get me started on (lack of) definition of schizophrenia.
May 29, 2018 at 8:27 pm
Archie Ames
This might be an unpopular observation but a lot of these aren’t in and of themselves racist or misogynist in any direct way. They’re just rude comments about individuals or people in general. As for his opinions abortion, well a popular opinion in the prochoice world is that getting an abortion for Down syndrome or just as a middle finger to the other side or whatever reason someone wishes is fine. Why should I be less offended by this than getting abortion for another random characteristic? Getting a little more provocative as we all learned in high school biology the characteristics of different populations on average often go in different directions over time. Maybe biologists of all people should look into this question more rather than plug their ears and pretend that a certain set of characteristics are magically immune to evolutionary processes. Is he a racist/sexist? Probably But overall the biggest relevant difference between Watson and others is that he can’t seem to keep his mouth shut. Or maybe his opinions aren’t that popular. Plenty of people in academia openly hold to the notion that a large part of the human population should be eliminated. Often by force. Or that ideologies once popular in countries like Russia and China that led to the death of millions would be a fine way to go and they don’t seem to get nearly as much grief. Is wanting to eliminate 90% of mankind as a so-called environmentalist that much more palatable than garden variety genocidal beliefs?
May 31, 2018 at 11:50 am
xyz987
Sorry but these are racist and misogynist in a direct way. In what high school were you taught to read deliberations about Jewish brains as “rude comments about people in general”. That would also explain your curious view on what biology is.
Whataboutism also being a technique invented in Russia one wonders how any of this was palatable for you to write.
June 17, 2022 at 11:33 am
A Dunbar
Thank you! This is the precise rebuttal that ridiculous comment needed.
May 31, 2018 at 10:36 pm
Elina
Archie Amers, your wrote “Plenty of people in academia openly hold to the notion that a large part of the human population should be eliminated.”
This is simply not true. Do you have any reference to back up this? I have never met anybody in academia holding such kind of notion.
June 1, 2018 at 9:16 pm
Archie Ames
>Sorry but these are racist and misogynist in a direct way.
No, among other things many of the quotations are attacks on Franklin specifically. You might say he hated her because she was a girl but the quotation itself does not necessarily have to read as an attack on all womankind.
>That would also explain your curious view on what biology is.
Sorry, what is curious or unscientific about at the very least not agreeing that a single dogmatic answer be decreed to certain biological questions that make people uncomfortable? Sex specific differences I hope everybody would agree is a very important and valid area of research for medical reasons if nothing else but is essentially becoming a verboten topic for discussion in many circles and something many self proclaimed dispassionate openminded scientists flee like little children from.
>This is simply not true. Do you have any reference to back up this? I have never met anybody in
>academia holding such kind of notion.
Sure…
https://www.academia.org/self-identifying-marxist-professors-outnumber-conservatives-as-college-professors/
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/oct/6/liberal-professors-outnumber-conservatives-12-1/
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/apr/26/world-population-resources-paul-ehrlich
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Holdren
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/politics-and-the-life-sciences/article/beyond-population-stabilization-the-case-for-dramatically-reducing-global-human-numbers/B402C262DA7B8B9F453E43646DA18104
https://overpopulation-project.com/2018/04/25/what-is-the-optimal-sustainable-population-size-of-humans/
Of course you’ll have very few academics shouting to the rooftops that they are Marxist or want serious population curbs. They’ll always couch their beliefs in the most palatable terms. And its not the type of story that makes much of a splash anyway outside of the relatively smaller insular conservative media. But its fairly safe to say based on personal experience and all the available public evidence that there are far more people in academia with views at the other extreme than those who are compatriots with Watson.
June 4, 2018 at 3:09 am
Elina
Archie Amers, you post is a mumbo jumbo. Most of the references which you post do not support your claim “Plenty of people in academia openly hold to the notion that a large part of the human population should be eliminated”. Many of those are not even related to human population and do not even contain the word population (see: https://www.academia.org/self-identifying-marxist-professors-outnumber-conservatives-as-college-professors/ , https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/oct/6/liberal-professors-outnumber-conservatives-12-1/ ). Some of the other links are related human population control but not to the type of population control which James Watson says. Marxism does not advocate or suggests the type of population control which James Watson likes, so what is the link between Marxism and James Watson’s racist behaviour?
Your posts basically have the goal to muddy the waters in order to justify the racist behaviour of James Watson.
June 4, 2018 at 5:22 am
rob
This entire list of quotes is underwhelming. Are we supposed to ostracize a man because he told a few badly placed jokes or because he didn’t particularly like a few of his co-workers? Are academics really that sensitive nowadays? I wonder how you can you watch the news every day without having to call an ambulance. Or, have you seen the work of some comedians lately? How did you survive the popularity of gangsta rap a few decades ago? Compared to those, these quotes are nothing.
Like comedians, Watson is using a few techniques including exaggeration. Is an exaggeration a factual representation of reality? Of course not. Is it something to go nuts over? No it is not.
Take “Some anti-Semitism is justified”. Click the link and read:
“In an interview profile for the magazine Watson asks rhetorically, “Should you be allowed to make an anti-Semitic remark?” He answered: “Yes, because some anti-Semitism is justified. Just like some anti-Irish feeling is justified. If you can’t be criticized, that’s very dangerous. You lose the concept of a free society.” ”
There is NOTHING wrong with this opinion. Moreover, if the quote had been “Some anti white male feelings are justified”, nobody would have cared, and many of you would have applauded.
“Japan should be bombed for dragging its feet on supporting the Human Genome Project” <—- Exaggeration. Is there anyone here who thinks that he literally was supporting an active bombing raid on Japan?
“All our social policies are based on the fact that [Africans] intelligence is the same as ours – whereas all the testing says not really” <—- not sure but might be referring to the bell curve, in which case this statement might arguably be true, even if the difference is mainly or exclusively caused by environment. Or he doesn't like affirmative action. Many Asian Americans would (or should) agree.
"[Rosalind Franklin] couldn’t think in three dimensions very well" <—- What is so shocking about this? I could make this statement about myself. How about "George W. Bush was not a great soccer player"? Is this a shocking statement?
Is he an old man? Yes. Does he not know when to keep his mouth shut? Yes. Are some of his views outdated? Yes. Get over it. 90% of the planet is as bad as him, if not worse. And 90% of your views will be outdated too in 20 years.
This never-ending desire of "the left" (which includes most of academia) to feel offended is far more damaging than the ramblings of an old man.
June 5, 2018 at 7:45 am
xyz987
“There is NOTHING wrong with this opinion.”
Where to even begin…
“Moreover, if the quote had been “Some anti white male feelings are justified”, nobody would have cared, and many of you would have applauded.”
Get outside and take some sun.
“never-ending desire … to feel offended”
And look in the mirror.
June 5, 2018 at 5:53 pm
rob
Those are not arguments, are they?
“Where to even begin…”
Begin any place you want, and we will take it from there.
June 6, 2018 at 12:03 am
xyz987
Yes, these are arguments. It’s like arguing with holocaust denier, or in this case also Irish Famine denier. Anti-semitism and Irish genocide are not examples of free speech. Unless you’re fascist.
February 10, 2021 at 12:37 am
Based Department
Dr. Watson, you have a call on line 1. It’s the pinkos and shits again.
June 6, 2018 at 1:11 am
rob
And – as usual – we manage to go from 0 to “100% fascist” in a record time. You are hysterical. You are in a moral panic.
Read the quote: “In an interview profile for the magazine Watson asks rhetorically, “Should you be allowed to make an anti-Semitic remark?” He answered: “Yes, because some anti-Semitism is justified. Just like some anti-Irish feeling is justified. If you can’t be criticized, that’s very dangerous. You lose the concept of a free society.” ”
Read it. Watson asks rhetorically, should one be allowed to make an anti-Semitic remark? Yes, he says. Some anti-Semitism might be justified, just like you might have some negative feelings about any population or culture or set of ideas. That makes perfect sense. There is no reason to discriminate against anyone by putting them outside of criticism. What is wrong with that?
Note how Pachter did not put the full quote. No, he just took “Some anti-Semitism is justified”, which he knows will be read by you as “he approves of extermination camps!! He’s a full blown Nazi!!”. In that regard Pachter is on par with the lowest kind of gossip magazines here.
Read the full quote, and it sounds much more as if he might have some criticism of – say – the conflict between Israel and Palestine. Who knows.
So, are we allowed to criticize anything and anyone? Or are some things indeed above criticism? From your answer we’ll see how fascist you are.
June 6, 2018 at 2:24 am
xyz987
Stop repeating yourself so many times you misunderstood poor child, you could be misunderstood for a hysterical person.
Equating this with free speech is fascism, that’s a very simple and factual statement, no need to involve emotion, just education. I see you’d like to discuss actual merits of anti-semitism and drag into whataboutism if Jews being racists somehow invalidates the whole concept of racism. Unfortunately not being fascist I can offer no help, nor can I educate you in the comments.
June 7, 2018 at 4:20 am
rob
First no arguments, and now no answer to a simple question.
“Equating this with free speech is fascism”
But then again, EVERYTHING is fascism nowadays, isn’t it? Everything leads in two or three steps to the same conclusion: “FASCISM!!”. As a result, the value of the word “fascism” has been reduced to nothing. You – of course – think this is a good thing, but more intelligent people would disagree.
Example: “some anti-Irish feeling is justified” in some people minds is equivalent to “Irish Famine denier”, which naturally leads to “he’s a fascist!” Such people are nutcases. But, unfortunately, they are common among academics, including Pachter and probably you as well.
In the same way, criticizing any woman in the slightest way is misogyny. And milk is racist because it is white.
June 6, 2018 at 3:44 am
Elina
@rob
You wrote “Are we supposed to ostracize a man because he told a few badly placed jokes…” Saying it as a joke is no defense for racism.
June 6, 2018 at 12:48 pm
Archie Ames
>Archie Amers, you post is a mumbo jumbo.
Ok
>Many of those are not even related to human population and do not even contain the word population (see: https://www.academia.org/self-identifying-marxist-professors-outnumber-conservatives-as-college-professors/ , https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/oct/6/liberal-professors-outnumber-conservatives-12-1/ ).
Where did I say every link I provided would mention every point I made?
>Marxism does not advocate or suggests the type of population control which James Watson likes, so what is the link between Marxism and James Watson’s racist behaviour?
Where did I say marxism itself supports population control? Even though it does imo.
>Some of the other links are related human population control but not to the type of population control which James Watson says.
Obviously they don’t believe in the exact same thing. But there isn’t that much of a practical difference in the end. Thats the point.
>Most of the references which you post do not support your claim “Plenty of people in academia openly hold to the notion that a large part of the human population should be eliminated”.
Please point out where in the references I am (flatly contradicted by objective facts)… Some sources, include a couple I have listed may argue against my characterizations since they are written by largely leftleaning sources but large population reduction at least on the surface justified for environmental reasons is a significant current in academia and academia has far more people adhering to another brand of noxious philosophy than those adhering to Watson’s orthodoxy at least from all the available evidence. I really don’t know what to say to someone who will deny this with all the hard data out there and the marxists and mathulsians themselves openly confirming it.
>Yes, these are arguments. It’s like arguing with holocaust denier, or in this case also Irish Famine denier. Anti-semitism and Irish genocide are not examples of free speech. Unless you’re fascist.
>Equating this with free speech is fascism, that’s a very simple and factual statement, no need to involve emotion, just education.
So the concept of Free speech is only around to protect and characterize speech we like and would allow anyway? Wow…speaking of education…
June 7, 2018 at 11:01 am
xyz987
Free speech has a definition. Nazism had a great input in shaping that definition. It is not unconstrained speech. Yes, great deal of education goes in understanding that, but you may stop at Isaiah Berlin positive and negative liberty which may hopefully clarify things without need to resort to reading Supreme Court rulings.
As for the troll who had a MELTDOWN! I see no pints being made. No dear child not everything is fascism, just fascism. One point on reading comprehension, when I wrote on my reply being argumentative enough for such a discussion I equated possibility of rational discussion with that of having one with a holocaust denier or Irish Famine denier and such person’s “arguments”. You’ve done a leap of misrepresentation you accuse everyone around of doing.
June 12, 2018 at 1:56 pm
Archie Ames
Okay, xyz987 I’m interested in hearing your definition of free speech. I looked up the terms you referenced but it didn’t really shed any light and actually looked like terms a libertarian would use rather than someone who was arguing for speech restriction. Personally my definition of free or freer speech is to start from a position of unrestricted freedom where liberty and freedom of thought and expression is the highest value and only make exceptions where there would be direct catastrophic damage and there is no other option. Like for example communicating nuclear secrets. And even in this case it’s the damage and not the speech in and of itself that is to be seen as the crime. BTW I don’t consider misgendering someone or denying the Potato famine to fall within such a category.
It may seem extreme but America incorporates some of these elements as opposed to certain places in Europe and hasn’t fallen to pieces so it does seem that something along these lines works in practice. From what I’m getting from you on the other hand and forgive me if I’m mischaracterizing but you seem to think that free speech is allowing stuff people like and maybe some stuff that annoys them a little but they wouldn’t mind that much. In this case the concept of free speech seems a little redundant to me since there’s already nothing that people care enough about to want to ban anyway. But since you said you have the education I’m hoping you can clarify this for me.
December 2, 2018 at 12:39 am
mn
“You can imagine a scenario where you make the decision, you’re going to be a mother at 45. And then you get an autistic child. Should you blame yourself? I say, yes.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/sciencemain/dna-pioneer-james-watsons-genetic-prescription-have-kids-early-8C11273666
December 2, 2018 at 12:53 am
Lior Pachter
I’ve added this quote to the list.
January 1, 2019 at 3:16 pm
Fourier360
Great list, thanks Lior.
Scientific freedom should always be privileged above social concerns. I think the majority of James hypotheses will be proven right. Great man.
January 1, 2019 at 3:58 pm
wilbur james
You have to love the man! even if he is the ultimate bad boy, if you deny morally his right to his opinion (right or wrong) ….then there
! deny if you wish…..dna
January 3, 2019 at 11:26 am
Marnie Dunsmore (@DunsmoreMarnie)
There’s this article in statnews this morning outlining James Watson’s long held racist and sexist views.
https://www.statnews.com/2019/01/03/where-james-watsons-racial-attitudes-came-from/
Nancy Hopkins comments that James Watson went out of his way to mentor her as a graduate student, but then turned on her when she should stood up to Lawrence Summers.
There are several things I would like to point out.
First, the letter that Crick wrote to Watson in 1967 about his concerns regarding the soon to be published book “The Double Helix” indicate that he, Crick, and other researchers at the Cambridge Cavendish Lab, were aware that Watson held sexist beliefs about women.
Click to access SCBBKN.pdf
Crick did not discuss Watson’s racial beliefs in the letter.
Nevertheless, it should be mentioned that Cambridge University was one of the last prominent universities to fully grant degrees to women. it didn’t do so until 1947. Watson started his work at Cambridge in 1950 or 1951.
I was at Cambridge recently attending an ARM Research Summit and would like to think that Cambridge has made progress in the last 70 years, but then I came upon this recent seminar held by the Cambridge Union for Jordan Peterson just three months ago:
Jordan Peterson is well known for expressing the view that women are symbolized by chaos, that the gender pay gap is not due to discrimination and many other misogynist and homophobic beliefs.
The statsnews article mentions that Nancy Hopkins noticed that James Watson’s ideas about race and “IQ” gelled when Charles Murray published “The Bell Curve”. That is when she noticed that he held very backward views about intelligence and race.
These views did not emerge in a vacuum. If you read a history of Charles Murray and his publications, its clear that his thinking evolved in response to the Civil Rights Movement.
In my view, people who had benefited from the university system, especially the “elite” universities in the post WWII era, wanted to think that their success was entirely of their own making. They were aware of racial and gender inequalities, but the extent of it made them uncomfortable. So rather than embrace inclusiveness, many people retrenched and reinforced their prejudicial beliefs just as it became possible for women and minorities to attend university.
While I was a physics and then engineering student in the 1980s and early 1990s, I saw these beliefs start to gain momentum.
Initially, in the early 1980s, there was doubt and room for possibility. Some male (they were all men) professors were hopeful that women would excel in physics and computer science. Then “The Bell Curve”, discussions about “political correctness” and “freedom of speech” came along in the late 1980s. Many of my classmates and professors became emboldened to express disparaging beliefs about women and minorities. With the birth of newsgroups and then the internet, these ideas coalesced.
I followed quite closely in the early 1990s the Stanford discussions about “freedom of speech”:
https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/origin-silicon-valley-dysfunctional-attitude-toward-hate-speech
Throughout the 1980s in Canada, there had been a long discussion about hate speech and its impacts. Certainly, as an officer graduate of the Royal Military College of Canada, where at the time, many leaders there were involved in international peace keeping operations, I understood that hate speech could kill. And so I found the Stanford arguments about hate speech and “freedom of speech” to be profoundly naive. I still do.
These discussions about freedom of speech and about the “right” to express unfounded disparaging remarks about minorities and women gained momentum with newsgroups, then with chatrooms, then with facebook, then with youtube, then with the “dark web” and then with Patreon. It has been an unstoppable and growing barrage of hate and disparagement since then.
All the while, my engineering colleagues, many of them thinking themselves to be left leaning and liberal minded, said nothing, or worse. This is still the case.
I do admire Nancy Hopkins. Her many efforts at MIT have been courageous and impactful for improving the experiences of women in STEM. But I fear that her comments about James Watson, her former mentor, are not quite damning enough, and do not address the broader environment in which his hatred against women and minorities has been, and is still, cultivated.
January 3, 2019 at 11:57 pm
jim
“Nancy Hopkins noticed that James Watson’s ideas about race and “IQ” gelled when Charles Murray published “The Bell Curve””
Since when did Charles Murray publish the “Bell Curve” by himself??
Is this part of the new lore? Officially wiping out history?
I suggest you check out Amazon. The FIRST author is Richard J. Herrnstein.
That’s right, Murray was the second author.
Why exactly did you omit the name of the first author (Jewish, by the way), and focus on the second???
That all seems rather convenient.
January 4, 2019 at 12:09 am
jim
“These discussions about freedom of speech and about the “right” to express unfounded disparaging remarks about minorities and women”
No one is fighting for the ‘right to express unfounded disparaging remarks’. That seems like a straw man (oops, straw ‘person’).
The problem with the current left-wing climate it is that one cannot state completely well-founded claims without enduring a form of reprisal that reminds one of a group of 13th-century religious fanatics chasing heretics.
“as an officer graduate of the Royal Military College of Canada, where at the time, many leaders there were involved in international peace keeping operations, I understood that hate speech could kill”
Speech generally does not kill. If your view of the conflict in the Balkans, Cyprus, Lebanon, Rwanda or the like is so limited that you view each of those situations as merely the consequence of a few speech acts, I would suggest reading a bit more about them. The Yugoslavian government imposed very strict order and forbade ‘hate’ speech in the way you describe; as soon as it fell, the various ethnic groups were at each other’s throats.
I might accept that yelling ‘fire’ in a crowded theater is something that can lead to deaths. Inter-ethnic conflict has far too many variables for such simple minded reductionism.
January 4, 2019 at 1:36 am
Marnie Dunsmore (@DunsmoreMarnie)
@jim
“The problem with the current left-wing climate . . .”
This is a common confusion with Jordan Peterson and his ilk that objections to hate speech against women and minorities are only argued from the left. I just finished a stint at DARPA in Arlington, Virginia. I can guarantee you that many dyed in the wool Republicans also strongly object to hate speech and the disparagement of women and minorities. This commonly argued point that “the left” is the sole objector to hate speech and misleading, half baked theories about groups of people is emblematic of just how confused people like Jordan Peterson and James Damore are. They’re so caught up in their own academic psychobabble that they’ve lost touch with reality.
I myself am a classic liberal. But, unlike Jordan Peterson, I read a few books on Jungian psychology in my twenties, and thereafter decided that a philosophy of life should have some basis in reality and in history. A personal philosophy should not be based on dreams, personal pet peeves, fantasies, or on calling people stupid, hysterical, and chaotic. And saying and doing things that hurt people to advance oneself is a no, no. My Anglican, Methodist, Congregationalist, and Presbyterian grandparents would all have told you that.
“If your view of the conflict in the Balkans, Cyprus, Lebanon, Rwanda or the like is so limited that you view each of those situations as merely the consequence of a few speech acts, I would suggest reading a bit more about them.”
In the case of Rwanda, in particular, Romeo Dallaire has been very explicit that hate speech in the press, as well as the failure of the press to report on this hate speech, was a direct contributor to the Rwandan genocide.
January 3, 2019 at 11:54 pm
jim
Eh, sorry… I’m just not finding anything horrific. He comes across as a bit of a jerk, but compared to wingnuts such as Noel Ignatiev, Andrea Dworkin (etc), is he really all that horrific?
Given all the criticism that whites receive (e.g., white fragility), should we find it offensive to say that some criticism of Jews is acceptable? Of course it is. Judaism should not be off limits to criticism, particularly given the propensity for Jews to engage in critiques of other cultures.
Also, on the IQ front, why is acceptable to say that EE Jews have a higher IQ than other groups (which implies that other groups have lower IQ than EE Jews). Yet it is somehow awful to say that EE Jews score higher in verbal than in spatial reasoning? That seems hypocritical.
Looks to me like the left-liberals (who enjoy slinging ad hominems at their enemies) don’t like it too much when the vitriol is coming their way. I feel little sympathy.
January 4, 2019 at 1:46 am
Marnie Dunsmore (@DunsmoreMarnie)
@jim
I don’t care about IQ.
“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.”
January 23, 2019 at 3:57 pm
Sonn
Some anti-Watson feeling is justified. “If you can’t be criticized, that’s very dangerous. You lose the concept of a free society.” Being stripped of honors is a form of criticism.
January 23, 2019 at 3:59 pm
Sonn
“… some anti-Semitism is justified. Just like some anti-Irish feeling is justified. If you can’t be criticized, that’s very dangerous. You lose the concept of a free society.” ”
Well, some anti-Watson feeling is justified. Being stripped of honors is a form of criticism.
November 16, 2019 at 1:31 pm
eggo
Wow, I didn’t think I could love this guy even more!
August 26, 2020 at 2:18 pm
aisurgen
And what is the most remarkable here – every one of his words are true. Think about it
January 6, 2021 at 2:33 pm
Quest
Yeah, some of this is straight eugenics (OK to abort a kid that might be homosexual). Of course this gets applause. Er, what??
February 3, 2021 at 4:45 am
Barak A. Pearlmutter
Jim Watson said horrible things. He loved twisting people’s tails, saying outrageous stuff and watching people react, seeing if they can defend their positions rationally or just get all emotional. For me the real question isn’t what he *said* it’s what he *did*. And as far as I can tell, he was actually encouraging to talented women and minorities in science, helped them get jobs, made CSHL a safe haven for scientists discriminated against elsewhere. When Franklin was dying of cancer she chose to spend her last month crashing w/ Watson and his wife at their house.
People are complicated, and sometimes actions speak louder than words. I’ve heard lots of nasty quotes, which can cause harm. But Watson was in a position of great power, and I’ve never heard that he actually *did* nasty things.
July 29, 2021 at 3:46 pm
Johnson
Wow I like him even more now!
March 12, 2022 at 4:46 pm
Sis M.
Watson didn’t marry until late 1960’s; years after Franklin’s death.
According to her biographer, Franklin stayed with Crick & his wife during her last illness.