I Googled “+Ahmadinejad +Watson” and was pretty astounded to find almost nothing. Doing the same on Blogsearch provided three items. Undemocracy in America, Wired Blog Network and Sweetness and Light all make the comparison that for a couple of weeks I have thought way too obvious to bother here with. But really, the Iranian President is given a hero’s welcome at Columbia University, while pusillanimous scientists censor one of their own?
You couldn’t make it up.
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Hmm. Are you saying that we should be ignoring Watson’s remarks, or that Columbia shouldn’t allow Ahmadinejad to speak?
-Sam
Neither, and that’s a false dichotomy. We should not be ignoring Watson’s remarks, and we should be allowing him to speak, and be questioned.
Touche. And I should be able to spot a false dichotomy by now…
I agree that cancelling Watson’s speech and removing him from cold harbor was crossing a line, but I don’t think that the difference in reaction to Watson and Ahmedinejad is so strange. Everyone knows that Ahmedinejad is crazy and that we don’t like him; he’s getting a platform because, crazy or no, he has a lot of power and we have to deal with him, and so it’s interesting to hear how he sees the world. Watson is a very different figure because he’s famous for his scientific work – he’s a figure of intellectual authority who laypeople expect to learn nonpartisan science from. When he uses that trust to spread outdated, racist, garbage, I think people are right to be angry, even if they did overreact.
There’s a whole bunch of people who do not think Ahmedoodad is crazy. are they crazy too?
Watson is even more interesting than you give him credit for. What scientific work has he done since the mid 1950s? He’s a consumate schmoozer. He was gung-ho for the human genome project at a time when many doubted it could be done. He got things done. And he was an authority figure, whether he deserved to be or not. Have you read his pronouncements on genetically engineered food?
One question worth asking is: why did the public trust him (if indeed they did)?
The public doesn’t trust doctors, doesn’t trust scientists in general, You think it put any trust in Watson?
I doubt it. I think he was pretty marginal; not to the history of science, but to public life and politics and football and pop music.
The people who think Ahmedinejad is rational as a holocaust denier are indeed crazy. As for those who feel that he is rational in his ability to run Iran and play nuclear brinskmanship, I don’t really know enough to argue. I don’t think that the people at Columbia who invited him think well of him, though.
Watson is definitely a fascinating guy. A professor I know just finished a big project on him, Crick and Franklin after the discovery of the double helix – apparently the three did a good deal more work together afterwards. Unfortunately, the paper may not get published until Watson croaks – after Watson’s outburst a few weeks ago, one of the archives from which the professor was working got cold feet and asked her to get approval from Watson himself – he gets a balanced treatment in the paper, but he’s so paranoid that he may bar the paper on principle if he gets any say in the matter. What does he have to say about engineered food?
Regardless of his recent work (or the lack thereof), I think that Watson had the combination of achievement, recognition and personality to become a venerable spokesman of science, like Einstein, Sagan or Steven Jay Gould. Instead it seems like he’s more of a cult figure, like Werner von Braun (this is a pretty off-the-cuff classification). Nonetheless, people do listen when he talks, and even people who don’t care about the history of science know his name and what he did.
I agree that the public doesn’t trust scientists qua scientists as much as it once did, but I think that “big-name” scientists still get respect. Obviously no one would listen if Watson endorsed John McCain or lambasted Paris Hilton or something, but I think within the realm of pop biology his words carry a disproportionate amount of weight. Not with die-hard creationists, maybe, but they’re not ALL of America. Yet.