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hopefulengineer | 7 years ago

progressives have taken us back in time to the days of the inquisition where heretics must be removed from society. These beliefs have absolutely taken on a religious fervor

James watson, the man who discovered DNA structure, has been excommunicated for saying intelligence could be genetic and that would ruin the equality movement so he had to be removed

It reminds me of galileo and his imprisonment related to heliocentrism

"and yet it moves"

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/11261872/James-Wats...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_yet_it_moves

discuss

order

sethrin|7 years ago

You should read more about Gallileo. He was wrong in many ways, and it's entirely likely that he was punished for his tendency to be a jerk as much as anything else. Actually, the analogy isn't half bad, come to think...

http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-great-ptolemaic-smac...

Symmetry|7 years ago

It's not good that people who come up with important new scientific theories should be forced to recant if they're jerks. Seriously, the progress of civilization depends on unreasonable men. Galileo's ideas about planetary motion weren't perfect but they were the seeds of our present understanding of planetary motion. And really he was persecuted more for saying that the planets were mutable with weather and so forth rather than perfect and eternal than he was for the whole heleocentrism thing. And he was perfectly right about that last bit.

notahacker|7 years ago

I'm not sure that Watson's expressed views that the inequality of races is demonstrated by the experiences of "people who have to deal with black employees" is a high water mark for scientific enquiry, or that his related comments on being particularly cautious about promoting black people were likely to have a neutral or positive impact on science. What I find curious is people who argue that unlike the progressives who eventually lost patience with a scientist using the profile he (deservedly) earned to articulate a long list of offensive crankery, Watson's own shaming of people for being fat, black, autistic etc really isn't worth paying attention to.

prepend|7 years ago

I think that it’s worth paying attention to, but doesn’t outweigh other achievements. Firing him over such comments was the wrong reaction, especially since the goal is to improve people’s viewpoints on equality. Not create some Galt’s Gulch of geniuses who are also flawed in a substantial way.