Talk:James Watson/Archive 1

message: *That if a genetic test for homosexuality existed, a mother should be able to abort the fetus if she wanted. 
*Linking intelligence inextricably to genes, saying that it would be beneficial to try to improve the human race by selecting against those with low intelligence. 
*A conviction that the benefits of genetically modified crops far outweigh any environmental dangers, and that arguments against GM crops are unscientific or irrational. 
Are you profficient about those declarations? I´m reading ADN: The Secret of Life right now, and he is openly against eugenic programs. 
no need to yell, there.
:I will rewrite that part of the article, as these should definitely be backed up by actual quotes, with references. The second bullet point does indeed make him look like a eugenics promoter, which he is not, obvious for anyone who has read his latest book (DNA: The Secret of Life). And the last bullet is also not NPOV with regard to his actual views -- Watson believes on balance that the benefits outweigh the risks, not that all arguments against GM are irrational. So do probably the majority of scientists, so this view is not really very controversial, I believe Watson is in the spotlight for this more because his high profile and outspoken personality. Mortene 09:12, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree; I just rearranged that section so that his support for genetically modified crops appears at the bottom rather than the top. I don't see that as a controversy on the level with the other statements.--Gloriamarie 05:01, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

text: Watson has said repeatedly that he is an advocate of providing parents with genetic information so that they can have reproductive choices. Wikipedia has Liberal eugenics but I do not know if Watson has ever used that phrase to describe his views. --JWSchmidt 15:32, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: eugenics 

message: He did GENUINELY donate sperm to the Repository for Germinal Choice <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repository_for_Germinal_Choice>, which is relevant to Watsons' delusions regarding genes and intelligence, and should be included.  80.225.184.210 16:09, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Start by providing a list of reliable published sources that discuss Watsons' delusions. --JWSchmidt 17:26, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

text: Watson's books are widely reviewed. Just list the ones that explain why Watson's views are delusions. --JWSchmidt 03:32, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Watsons' delusions

message: "Like his late colleague, Francis Crick, Watson is an outspoken atheist, known for his frank opinions on politics, religion, and the role of science in society. He has been considered to hold a number of controversial views."<BR>
Is there a source for this? --JWSchmidt 13:51, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  fact check: atheist 

message: Is there anyway we could get a halfway flattering picture where he doesn't look like a hunched over rat? I think that with a man who's contributed so much to science, he deserves something respectable. :-)--CountCrazy007 01:27, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, just about every picture of him looks like that. He's not a pleasant guy to look at, which I'm sure attributed to his very weird issues regarding women. --Fastfission 14:08, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Better picture 

message: The number of "citation needed" templates here is ridiculous -- almost every one of them are for things clearly taken from The Double Helix. I'll try and go through and clean them out and add a citation every few paragraphs or so, but it's a pain in the ass for something which would be obvious to anyone who had read around on some of these things. The fact that the statement about TMV being the first virus synthesized is labeled as needing citation just further proves the point: it is a completely uncontroversial fact, as our page on the subject clearly explains. --Fastfission 14:08, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The whole point of adding the cite tags is to aid people who do want to go back to the literature and read around these things. I agree that most of these can be found in The Double Helix and easily added. How are we to tell what facts are reliable and which are not if we have no definitive proof that they are not simply whisked out of the editor's imagination? Asking for a cite is not the same as disputing a fact; they should not be taken as indicating that a given statement is necessarily controversial. Basically, this article (like every one in Wikipedia) should serve as a start point for any interested non-biologist who wants to learn more about the subject; it is not primarily designed for those who have read around the subject and already have some knowledge. Adding the citation tags is messy, but the point is to flag those portions of the text that obviously need backing up. All the best, Badgerpatrol 14:41, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Gratuitious "citation needed"s

message: I feel that we spend too much time on the Franklin "controversy" and not enough time on the science.  I am beginning to think that the controversy deserves its own page, just so that we can keep Waton's biography focused on Watson. -- 67.121.114.170 16:43, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Science vs. Controversy 

message: Since the article is locked, any minor edits can be listed here:
* Wikify the section "Genome Project" including links to Bernadine Healy and the National Institutes of Health
--Ollie 21:12, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I took the protection off. Feel free to edit the article. --JWSchmidt 00:48, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  '''List of Minor Edits''' 

message: This article needs the Template:Infobox Scientist 24.126.199.129 22:14, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Needs infobox

message: The article states ("Other controversies" section) that "Watson is an outspoken atheist..."  Could someone provide a citation for this, as I'd like to add Watson to the List of atheists article?  Thanks.  logologist|Talk 07:35, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you.  Someone has now provided documentary evidence for Watson's atheism.  It is available at List of atheists, to which Watson has been duly reinstated.  logologist|Talk 08:58, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: "Outspoken atheist"

message: The controversy section is very biased towards Franklin and her work.  Also, the section contradicts itself in the amount of contact that Franklin had with Watson and Crick.  First it says that she told them personally, then it says that she had little interaction with them. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 152.23.202.164 (talk) 17:36, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I guess there's been a small recent controversy over his his statement "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", but not enough of one to be mentioned perhaps.--T. Anthony 02:57, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Referring to the controversy section 

message: Some anonymous editors have been taking out the material on Rosalind Franklin from the lede paragraph. I imagine this has been a contentious paragraph over time, but from looking at it, the version with the Rosalind Franklin appears to have been fairly stable for a while.  The editors taking it out have been anonymous & not apparently regular contributors here.  So I've put it back for now, but am raising the issue here. --lquilter 15:57, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: lede

message: Recently James Watson has reportedly allowed his full personal DNA sequence to be made available on the public NCBI trace server (with the exception of his Apolipoprotein E sequence, which has implications for Alzheimer disease)  It is very tempting to set to work on it here.  (That may not be a good idea, but it is well nigh irresistible...)  The WP:NOR policy is restrictive, but I don't think it prohibits (essentially) looking up two sequences to see if they're the same.  To begin a to-do list:
* Use HapMap to infer the degree of correlation with adjoining genes, so that one ApoE isoform can be described as most probable.
* Worrier or warrior?  COMT begs description.
* ACE polymorphism?  Probably not important.
Someone talk me out of this. ;) Mike Serfas 21:01, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, one would hope so! After all, humans ARE almost identical to gorillas! chrisboote 13:26, 29 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Genome sequence 

message: Watson has one of my favorite quotes, one that was even read by Howard Stern on his radio show.  "I divide men into those who think of women 90 percent of the time and those who think about them 99 percent of the time.  I was a 90-percenter."   It is a great quote and I think it should be added somewhere to the article.
He also further states his views on religion "I'm supposed to say, Gee, all religions are equally good. Well, I think that some are worse than others." and fat people "So I shouldn't say that fat people are more content and that's why I want to hire thin, discontent people."
Dom316 14:27, 7 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Quote to include 

message: Take it easy on the old man. Remember how old he is. He had a statement about "latin lovers" and "the English patient". People found these statements amusing. This may have encouraged him to take it a step further.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.108.99.26 (talk) 10:36, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Old Man

message: I made changes to sentences #1 and #2 (below) and have a question about #3:
1) "Watson, through his connections at King's College, used Franklin's data without her knowledge or consent. In fact, when he had asked her to share her crystallographic results, she refused him outright." <-- This was marked as needing citations. I agree. "used Franklin's data without her knowledge or consent" <-- This is somewhat complicated by the fact that Franklin did share her data in a seminar attended by Watson and did share in personal conversation some of her ideas (such as placing the phosphate backbone outside) with Crick and Watson.
2) "Neither was Franklin mentioned in Watson or Crick's Nobel Prize speeches" <-- This is irrelevant. The Nobel Prize was not awarded for just the Double Helix model; Watson and Crick both discussed other aspects of their nucleic acid work in their Nobel speeches.
3) "According to one critic, unprotected by libel laws, Watson's portrayal of Franklin in The Double Helix was negative, giving the appearance that she was Wilkins' assistant and was unable to interpret her own DNA data." <-- What does libel law have to do with Watson's book? If this sentence is to remain in Wikipedia as written, I think we need to find direct quotes from Watson's book to support it. --JWSchmidt 16:21, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  strange sentences 

message: "Watson is known for his frank opinions on politics, religion, race and the role of science in society." The article appears to make no reference to any remarks that Watson's made about religion at all - the closest it comes is mentioning that he's an atheist. Was this here before? Mark J. Shea 05:33, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Other controversial statements

message: "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours – whereas all the testing says not really."
Whereas there are many pages about cartoon disputes, maybe this dispute would rate a page.
 hopiakuta  Please do  sign  your  signature  on your  message.  %7e%7e   Thank You. - 15:50, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It might be useful if we knew more about the context of the "all the testing says not really" comment. Wikipedia has the article Race and intelligence (test data). I suspect that Watson was talking about "intelligence tests". I think the "Race and intelligence (test data)" article does a good job of making clear that "environment" (nurture) has a large influence on the results obtained with intelligence tests and that interpretation of results from such tests can often be complicated by non-genetic factors. This makes many people hesitate to assume that genetic differences account for variations in "intelligence" test scores reported reported for groups of people who have been sorted into cultural or genetic categories. We also have Neurodiversity, and I think Watson's personal experience with his son makes him very interested in the way genes can create different types of human intelligence. I think it is clear that Watson is well aware of examples of genetic differences that alter human intelligence and he has concerns about how a society can best make use of that kind of genetic knowledge. --JWSchmidt 20:31, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Uh,...: 

message: "This statement is consistent with his previous claims and suggests that he has not actually retreated from his views on genetic determinism"
Instead of drawing conclusions, lets report the facts.  Quotes, apologies, repercussions are appropriate.  What is suggested by his statements is a matter of opinion.  I'm removing this sentence from the article. Jcc1 19:31, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with the removal. Mushroom (Talk) 20:03, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Me too! Amit@Talk 10:21, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Original research and conclusions 

message: I added some material from a recent Economist article on research which seems to show Ashkenazi Jews are significant more intelligent than average.  This was removed, with the note "POV and OR".  I have re-added this material, since it clearly not POV and OR, and provided the ref to the Economist article.  I have removed a second following paragraph which expands upon the implications of this research, since that could be taken as OR.
Toby Douglass 22:43, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: A discussion of whether Watson's purported views are justified or not is POV and OR.  In an article about Askenazi Jews, this material is neither POV or OR.  But in Watson's article, it is.  --  Terry Carroll 23:45, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ashkenazi Jews 

message: Would it be possible to have a small, self-contained, factual, NPOV, well-sourced, non-OR, un-biased, whatever-else, section summarising what Watson's opinions of Eugenics are?  81.98.244.111 01:59, 24 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: That didn't even answer my first question ("would it be possible").  Also the section would have to include his opinions on different types of eugenics, such as Liberal eugenics versus state coerced eugenics, which you seem to be confused about.81.98.244.111 13:06, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think stating what his views are in the article does not make the article itself POV. LDHan 14:08, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Part of the problem is that Watson is not really a professional in any field of ethics. He has personal and professional interest in making use of genetic knowledge to help parents, but he has largely been limited to acting professionally as an administrator of scientific funding who has had the chance to help channel money to professional ethicists who do the work. This should probably be mentioned in the article with a citation to Watson's "Genes and politics" article. --JWSchmidt 17:07, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

text: "Watson....hasn't had any involvement in encouraging others to consider the impact their research might have on other people" <-- This is not correct. He made an effort to channel a huge chunk of money to ethicists so that they can deal with issues arising from human genome studies. You (80.225.140.150) express well the attitudes of political correctness. Time will tell if Watson is correct, that political correctness is now blocking some of the ethics work that needs to be done. --JWSchmidt (talk) 14:52, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Eugenics (again) 

message: Reeling is definitely a word. It is a form of the instransative verb "reel", meaning:
1a: to turn or move round and round 
1b: to be in a whirl
2: to behave in a violent disorderly manner
3: to waver or fall back (as from a blow)
4: to walk or move unsteadily 
Slightly different than "shocked", — DIEGO talk 01:49, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: FYI: ''reeling'' definition

message: Was today's announcement a response to his recent Racist comments regarding Africans being less intelligent than Whites?    —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.225.208.212 (talk) 19:52, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: *Shannon, it's obvious that you introduced the new material in an effort to justify Watson's opinion about black people.  As if to say, "Hey, it's not that bad, look at all of these other scientists who (may) concur with his statements."  The problem is that they've done no such thing!  Watson made an off-the-cuff remark that was based on emotion, not empirical observation, and it was nowhere near the legitimate science to which the NYTs article alludes.  The referenced article only uses Watson's gaff to frame an article about race and intelligence.  So forgive me if I've "censored" your entry, but it's quite clear what you're trying to do.  Further, your own user page states that you worked for Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.  Did you know Watson while you were there?  Are you trying to whitewash the nature of his comments because you hold him in esteem?  If so, you're violating Wikipedia's conflict of interest policy.  Other editors have made similar comments about your edits in the edit summaries.  I'm just trying to maintain the neutrality of this article by removing subtle, well-placed POV edits.  Further, I don't find the new content disagreeable, nor do disagree with the "point of view of a NYT reporter."  After all, I previously said it would make a decent addition to Race and intelligence. I'm not going to delete your addition because I don't wish to engage in a revert war, but I still don't think it directly attempts to justify Watson, and it's clear that was the implication when you inserted it.  Nothing personal, just business.  Verum (talk) 18:11, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Resignation from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

message: www.nytimes.com/2007/11/17/us/17dna.html?ex=1353042000&en=4e47cec0d8fa5d93&ei=5089&partner=rssyahoo&emc=rss
www.23andme.com/
"The Global Similarity Map: Genetically, humans are overwhelmingly similar to one another. But over the millennia, slight genetic differences between people have emerged and been passed down. 23andMe's Global Similarity tool compares your genome to those of people around the world. The more similar you are to people in a particular region, the more likely your family tree sprang from that place. . . .This means that 23andMe's Ancestry tools provide you with more accurate, reliable data about your genetic similarity to populations across the globe." 
(www.23andme.com/ourservice/ancestry/, www.23andme.com/ourservice/ancestry/science/)
:The heading, lks, and and paragraph of text were added in an unsigned Nov. 17 edit. I have broken the otherwise crawlable lks (1 to NYT and 3 to a .com site offering a $1000 product of a questionable nature). I have also struck thru the text, since it is not on-topic with respect to the creation of this article. --Jerzy•t 07:40, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Affordable Genome Sequencing and Personalized Health Care

message: Apologies to any who may disagree with the re-formatting I have done.  Quick explanation of what I've done:
A - reformatted quotes to be clearer when reading.  It was impossible to break up the intitial "bad" quotes as basically that is a lazy paragraph literally torn out of The Times.  Seriously verging on plagiarism there (and could do with reworking/wording).  Adapted the final section to draw a difference between his quotes in person and those from texts (i.e. Grubbe makes the distinction in the original article between verbal quoting, and that from a book or written journal - she doesn't specify where or when exactly however).  Has to be said, her article lacks the citations required to make it verifiable and the whole paragraph makes about as much sense as a chocolate teapot (very confusing as it's obvious she's taken quotes from several different conversations and pieced together to lend some cohesion...and ended up picking up a thread on Africa (year, date?), a thread on Black intelligence (year, date?) and one on positive discrimination (year, date?) and then finally an attributed written piece (year, date, origin?).  There's no evidence to suggest this is all one conversation, let alone even the same topic.
B - moved the equally lazy section regarding melanin and sex drive to the "other" section as it's got nothing to do with the topic of intelligence (aside from the fact that Grubbe included it in the same piece in The Times).  Again - it's practically ripped word for word from the original text.  I axed the word "reeled" as...err...well, the idea everybody in the audience suddenly felt faint or shuffled unsteadily in a swoon because someone suggested a link between darker skin and sex drive is frankly outlandish and certainly not neutral.
C - formatted into date order.  I.e. his original comments, the response, his retraction, the belated response of Edinburgh jumping on a bandwagon that had already left the stable.
D - Renamed topic header as "controversial" would be repeated twice (i.e. it's under the heading "Controversies" and called "Controversial".  Egging the pudding a bit).
E - renamed it to match the opening line a little, and also to match the wiki topic race and intelligence.
Whole
Hope it reads a little less like a an amateur tabloid journalism piece.--Koncorde 17:36, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Further to above.  Re-inserting "controversial" is pointless.   "prefacing" it twice is pointless.  Either remove it from the Controversies section so the article doesn't repeat itself, or change the name entirely.  Simply inserting "controversial" makes it look far more incriminating.  The current heading I have just reinserted does not deny that he has opinions on the matter and allows the article to define those opinions - and similarly define the misrepresentation Watson endured through them.--Koncorde 13:23, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Amendments made

message: superb. Many scientists have praised Franklin's DNA work in glowing terms. Watson wrote, "The X-ray work she did at King's is increasingly regarded as superb." Crick wrote, "Rosalind's experimental work was first class. It is difficult to see how it could be bettered." Do we really have to clutter the page with a string of citations in order to be able to use a word that is not dull and boring? --JWSchmidt 05:04, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: If its the general consenses by peers that some ones work is brilliant or such- then I think it should also be stated in the article as such. Without the need for excessive quoting or referencing. Hardyplants 05:13, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  does Wikipedia have to be dull? 

message: Please excuse me for not fully or speedily participating in this slouch toward Jerusalem.
# The concern about a deadline is based on both a conception of consensus worthy of the Sejm that preceded the Partitions of Poland, and, one may suspect, terminally subjective reading of my words.
# For the record, my own re-reading of WP:UCN shows i was mistaken in characterizing its content using "precludes". On the other hand, the seasoned Andrewa's comments should demonstrate that WP is not about the enthusiasms of the red-meat-eating Wiki-warriors who show up as experts on the latest crise de jure, but about a style of work that has been evolving into a kind of wisdom for 7 years, as of next month.
--Jerzy•t 14:55, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Jerzy: I do not understand your comments (above) about "this slouch" and "red-meat-eating". If you want to continue the discussion about the idea of changing the page name from "James D. Watson" to "James Watson", please do so. --JWSchmidt (talk) 15:21, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

text: I'm not sure I understand, are you saying that wikiarticles need to all follow the same style? That has never appeared to be the case here. The largest timesinks I have seen are when people try to enforce a consistent style.  For example, New York City or New York City, New York  or should that be New York City (New York)?  What ever it is there will always be some who are unhappy, even disgruntled. David D. (Talk) 15:52, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

text: JWSchmidt: I think Jerzy's "slouching" reference is just a misquote of Yeats' The Second Coming.  -- TJRC (talk) 20:18, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I indeed intended to evoke Yeats's distaste for what he seems to me to have seen as a counterfeit, suitable to have been perpetrated by one or more "rude" (crude), slouched beasts, of something noble. I did so to express my own distaste for the discussion, which i find doomed for the time being to ignominious results, in contrast to successes of WP's collective editing that have surprised many.--Jerzy•t 20:36, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

text: I agree I am not sure why Jerzy chooses to name call rather than defend what IMO is an ill conceived page move. Attack ideas not people and we surely will all get along. Landerman56 (talk) 02:06, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I erred in using the term "Wiki-warriors", and should instead have referred to "Wiki-warring", to avoid any suggestion of describing a fellow editor. On the other hand, our avoidance of "personal attack" is principally about the argumentum ad hominem fallacy. When i criticize specific editors' behavior (which i may in this case have succeeded in avoiding), or criticize patterns of behavior as distinguished from current examples (what i intended), those who disagree are welcome to argue that the behavior was absent or that the behavior is harmless or beneficial, but i do not think it is accurate to complain about "attack[ing] ... people". --Jerzy•t 20:36, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

text: It appears someone has done the "redirect" disambiguation, but in a rather uneven fashion.  James Watson now points to James Watson with a sole redirect to James D. Watson though who there is a redirect to James Watson (disambiguation).  Bit bloody confusing if you ask me.  I'm sure User:Dekimasu thought he was doing the right thing but wasn't the decision NOT to go ahead with this?--Koncorde (talk) 17:21, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think the current situation (James Watson redirect to James D. Watson and a link to James Watson (disambiguation)) is a standard way of doing things at Wikipedia and what was decided upon in the earlier discussion on this page. It might seem confusing to some people, but can you suggest a better alternative? --JWSchmidt (talk) 18:06, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Looks like someone (a bot) has cleaned up the re-direct so now James Watson leads to James D. Watson - earlier it just went to http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=James_Watson&redirect=no which was my issue.  I still feel this is presumptuous and that James Watson should direct to the disambiguation page first, then allow people to select the correct entry - rather than directing traffic to possibly the incorrect page first.  Linking the disambiguation in this topic however is logical.--Koncorde (talk) 19:35, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

text:  I curiously glanced at User:Dekimasu's contribs, and then at a longer but more focused  portion of that record. It turns out that that user's edits to Wikipedia:Requested moves in 2007 exceed 900. I don't presume to guess how that will color this matter for anyone, but it is striking enough that i could imagine later blaming myself, if had walked away from this while effectively keeping that a secret.--Jerzy•t 03:11, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

text: "Everest" redirects here. For other uses, see Everest (disambiguation).
because even tho "Everest" is the official name of the film, but not of the mountain, uses of "Everest" to mean the mountain far outnumber those  meaning either the person or the film.--Jerzy•t 20:36, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

text: That "precedent" wouldn't support a move, just a redirect. --Itub (talk) 08:18, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Further comments

message: I undid the addition to this page of , which
# seems intended for articles, not their talk pages, and
# seems to call for the editor placing it to start a discussion on the talk page.
The lead seems short to me, but not excessively so. YMMV  --Jerzy•t 05:24, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Too Short?