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.

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.

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.

-Sam