Posted on 05/21/2008 12:23:35 PM PDT by Embargo
"...As the pendulum swings, public response has been telling. While there was vociferous outrage over James Watson’s views as expressed to The Times, few editorials have lined up in support of the realism of Neil Turok’s quest for the African Einstein. To be fair, the bar has been set quite high. Nevertheless, Turok’s aim squarely brings to the discussion forum the issue of universal Homo sapien cognitive capacity. Both Turok and Watson suggest that within our lifetimes in the next decade or so, scientific discoveries and technological measures will provide support for their divergent predictions. Who is correct?
Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen in IQ and the Wealth of Nations state that the reason some nations are rich and some are poor is the disparate innate intelligence of their populations. While provocative, the authors fail to explain material anomalies such as Bahamas, and nations formerly within the Soviet Block. The economic successes and failures of those and other nations support significant additional influence factors discarded by Lynn and Vanhanen.
The subject of universal Homo sapien cognitive capacity has become such an explosive and thorny topic that even psychologist Arthur Jensen who started the public debate in a 1969 issue of the Harvard Educational Review states that following increasing difficulty in getting his new work published, he no longer addresses racial implications of his research. The consensus seems to be that silence is golden. When close to the vest held observations are telegraphed such as those made by James Watson to The Times, pandemonium results. Granted, Dr. Watson’s status as a prominent Nobel Laureate should have dictated to him that his pronouncements would not be viewed as agonizing personal musings but as scientifically proven dicta. This raises the question of what does science say. The short answer is very little...."
(Excerpt) Read more at cognitiveevolution.com ...
The Controversy
An enduring controversy has been generated by James D. Watson and Francis Crick`s use of DNA X-ray diffraction data collected by Rosalind Franklin.
Dr. Franklin did all of the original work (without either Watson or Crick)
and which involved making her own unique x-ray diffraction equipment
even while she designed specialized equipment to keep the DNA sample from being destroyed by the interrogation.
In return, Watson and Crick were given her data, and stolen the information therein.
“After Cambridge, she spent three productive years (1947-1950) in Paris at the Laboratoire Central des Services Chimiques de L’Etat, where she learned X-ray diffraction techniques. In 1951, she returned to England as a research associate in John Randall’s laboratory at King’s College, Cambridge.
It was in Randall’s lab that she crossed paths with Maurice Wilkins. She and Wilkins led separate research groups and had separate projects, although both were concerned with DNA. When Randall gave Franklin responsibility for her DNA project, no one had worked on it for months. Wilkins was away at the time, and when he returned he misunderstood her role, behaving as though she were a technical assistant. Both scientists were actually peers. His mistake, acknowledged but never overcome, was not surprising given the climate for women at Cambridge then. Only males were allowed in the university dining rooms, and after hours Franklin’s colleagues went to men-only pubs.
But Franklin persisted on the DNA project. J. D. Bernal called her X-ray photographs of DNA, “the most beautiful X-rayphotographs of any substance ever taken.” Between 1951 and 1953 Rosalind Franklin came very close to solving the DNA structure.
She was beaten to publication by Crick and Watson in part because of the friction between Wilkins and herself. At one point, Wilkins showed Watson one of Franklin’s crystallographic portraits of DNA. When he saw the picture, the solution became apparent to him, and the results went into an article in Nature almost immediately. Franklin’s work did appear as a supporting article in the same issue of the journal.
A debate about the amount of credit due to Franklin continues. What is clear is that she did have a meaningful role in learning the structure of DNA and that she was a scientist of the first rank.”http://www.watsoncrombie.com/rosalind_franklin_dna.html
Watson and Crick were lost in their imagination of what DNA was like.
They pictured the DNA wrong, such as with the bases on the outside, if memory serves.
Dr. Franklin's x-ray spectrograms showed them the correct structure.
Because of Wilkin's opening her notebook to them when she was not in her lab, they saw the truth,
and then pilfered her work.
Perhaps you should submit your conclusion to James Watson directly. He may respond.
Why would anyone really care what Jayson Blair, or any other plagiarist, has to say?
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