[Sherman Logan]

AT a conference in Cambridge, Mass., in 1988 called “How the Brain Works,” Francis Crick suggested that neuroscientific understanding would move further along if only he and his colleagues were allowed to experiment on prisoners.

He was, of course, absolutely correct.

Lots of science involving humans would advance more rapidly if experimentation on humans were allowed.

[wastedyears]

Elementary, dear Watson

[NicknamedBob]

"Invoking his “Scots-Irish Appalachian heritage” and a faith in reason and social justice passed on by his parents, he sounded sad and confused, as though this time he had succeeded in dumbfounding even himself."

Ah, a hillbilly like me.

"We few. We happy few ..."

[atomic conspiracy]

We scold eminent scientists for their excursions into nitwittery because the media tend to invest them with a level of authority that is simply not warranted. It is not an attack on science but on those non-scientists who invest scientists with great personal authority.

Science as a method of inquiry is one thing. “Science” as a sub-culture is something else altogether. Science itself is based on method, logic, and observation, not on personal authority. The occasional genius can speed this along with flashes of insight but even Einstein would have been just another daydreamer if he hadn’t backed up his hypotheses with hard fact.

The problem is that our society puts great emphasis on authority, and scientists are not immune to this. When Kary Mullis runs his mouth about astrology or HIV, his ideas are no more worth emulating than those of the first person you meet on the street. Since he won the Nobel Prize, though, many people and especially the media (an authoritarian sub-culture itself) are tempted to believe that he is gifted with infallibility.

I think I have avoided making a fool of myself during my scientific career by regarding it from the beginning as a kind of work, like driving a tractor or cooking hamburgers, and not as an exercise in personal power. I am alleged to be quite good at it, too. To media types, it is dogma that “perception is reality.” This is not the case in science. For instance, if I started claiming that the Earth is flat, flat-earthers might rejoice and cite my credentials in support of their claims, but the shape of the Earth would not change. Nor could I demonstrate that it had.

Al Gore’s case for global warming is based almost entirely on an appeal to scientific authority, an authority that does not really exist among scientists themselves.

[onedoug]

...including speculations that life might have been seeded on Earth as part of an experiment by aliens.

Even accomplished scientists can often be nuts.

[TASMANIANRED]

“The link between belief and behavior raises the stakes considerably. Some propositions are so dangerous that it may be ethical to kill people for believing them. This may seem an extraordinary claim, but it merely enunciates an ordinary fact about the world in which we live.”

Sam Harris. “The End of Faith”

[SuziQ]

“Perhaps we should have checked that,” a spokeswoman for the Royal Mail told Nature at the time. “But if he has won a Nobel Prize for his work, that should give him some credibility.”

Nah, the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Algore showed that isn't necessarily the case.

[syriacus]

I’m waiting for the announcement that Watson is in the early stages of dementia.

[betty boop]

Though the pronouncements are rarely so jarring, there is a long tradition of great scientists letting down their guard. Actors, politicians and rock stars routinely make ill-considered comments. But when someone like Dr. Watson goes over the top, colleagues fear that the public may misconstrue the pronouncements as carrying science’s stamp of approval.

Oh my, someone's "holy writ" is being gored here.... And the high priests at the NYT are calling it to our attention. Evidently maintaining lockstep consensus around the "holy of holies" of Liberalism is more important than following the scientific trail wherever it may lead.

No wonder Dr. Watson has retired. Public discourse today is vicious, poisonous, and increasingly irrational.

Thanks for posting this (annoying) article, neverdem!