rosborne979 wrote:real life wrote:rosborne979 wrote:real life wrote:Creationism doesn't require any conflicts with the physical world.
I guess it depends on which 'creationism' beliefs you are talking about. I'm talking about YEC (as I stated before). And YEC definitely IS in conflict with reality.
What type of creationism are you talking about?
real life wrote:Evolutionists often say there are certain things that 'only evolution explains'.
Right now, evolution is the only scientific explanation for the evidence we see related to biology and biological history.
What alternate explanations did you have in mind? Please be specific.
Do you agree that there are certain things that 'only evolution explains'?
If not, what conflicts with the physical world are you referring to that cannot be explained by creation?
You didn't answer any of my questions.
All you did was ask more questions. The same questions I already answered.
Are you paying attention?
I didn't see any answers, just a restatement of infallibility.
I wonder how much in the history books is not told!?
real life wrote:rosborne979 wrote:real life wrote:rosborne979 wrote:real life wrote:Creationism doesn't require any conflicts with the physical world.
I guess it depends on which 'creationism' beliefs you are talking about. I'm talking about YEC (as I stated before). And YEC definitely IS in conflict with reality.
What type of creationism are you talking about?
real life wrote:Evolutionists often say there are certain things that 'only evolution explains'.
Right now, evolution is the only scientific explanation for the evidence we see related to biology and biological history.
What alternate explanations did you have in mind? Please be specific.
Do you agree that there are certain things that 'only evolution explains'?
If not, what conflicts with the physical world are you referring to that cannot be explained by creation?
You didn't answer any of my questions.
All you did was ask more questions. The same questions I already answered.
Are you paying attention?
I didn't see any answers, just a restatement of infallibility.
Just because evolution is the only scientific explanation currently available, doesn't mean it's infallible.
And just because I didn't give the answers you wanted, doesn't mean I didn't answer.
Now it's your turn...
What type of creationism are you talking about?
And what alternate explanations did you have in mind? Please be specific.
Interesting how, whenever evolution is criticized, the subject gets changed 'well then, how did creation happen?'
The deepest part of the Celebes Sea is 16,500 feet. The team was able to explore to a depth of about 9,100 feet using a remotely operated camera.
"This is probably the center where many of the species evolved and spread to other parts of the ocean,[/u][/i]" so it's going back to the source in many ways," Madin told a group of journalists, government officials, students and U.S. Ambassador Kristie Kenney and her staff.
Madin said the Celebes Sea, being surrounded by islands and shallow reefs, is partially isolated now and may have been more isolated millions of years ago, leading scientists to believe that ""there may be groups of organisms that have been contained and kept within"[/u][/i]" the basin since then.
)
Amazing.
He has found both the 'source' from which many species spread out AND the (same) place from which species have NOT spread out.
Want to have it both ways, so better stake out an early position on each side of the fence.
Kind of like starting out with a town of a hundred people. Some families will move out and other families may stay for many generations. So yes you can have it both ways. And in this case we're talking about a number of evolving genus. It would be very odd if all of them were static and didn't move.
(Isn't it interesting how many scientists seem to think they have found the 'cradle' of evolution? It's all about legacy, baby. )
How funny that you deliberately distort what was said.
[quote]"This is probably the center where many of the species evolved and spread to other parts of the ocean, so it's going back to the source in many ways," Madin told a group of journalists
Bartikus wrote:I wonder how much in the history books is not told!?
A lot when christian white males are at the pen.
T
K
O
Fury at DNA pioneer's theory: Africans are less intelligent than Westerners
Celebrated scientist attacked for race comments: "All our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really" [/i]
By Cahal Milmo
Published: 17 October 2007
One of the world's most eminent scientists was embroiled in an extraordinary row last night after he claimed that black people were less intelligent than white people and the idea that "equal powers of reason" were shared across racial groups was a delusion.
James Watson, a Nobel Prize winner for his part in the unravelling of DNA who now runs one of America's leading scientific research institutions, drew widespread condemnation for comments he made ahead of his arrival in Britain today for a speaking tour at venues including the Science Museum in London.
The 79-year-old geneticist reopened the explosive debate about race and science in a newspaper interview in which he said Western policies towards African countries were wrongly based on an assumption that black people were as clever as their white counterparts when "testing" suggested the contrary. He claimed genes responsible for creating differences in human intelligence could be found within a decade.
The newly formed Equality and Human Rights Commission, successor to the Commission for Racial Equality, said it was studying Dr Watson's remarks " in full". Dr Watson told The Sunday Times that he was "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". He said there was a natural desire that all human beings should be equal but "people who have to deal with black employees find this not true".
His views are also reflected in a book published next week, in which he writes: "There is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so."
The furore echoes the controversy created in the 1990s by The Bell Curve, a book co-authored by the American political scientist Charles Murray, which suggested differences in IQ were genetic and discussed the implications of a racial divide in intelligence. The work was heavily criticised across the world, in particular by leading scientists who described it as a work of " scientific racism".
Dr Watson arrives in Britain today for a speaking tour to publicise his latest book, Avoid Boring People: Lessons from a Life in Science. Among his first engagements is a speech to an audience at the Science Museum organised by the Dana Centre, which held a discussion last night on the history of scientific racism.
Critics of Dr Watson said there should be a robust response to his views across the spheres of politics and science. Keith Vaz, the Labour chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee, said: "It is sad to see a scientist of such achievement making such baseless, unscientific and extremely offensive comments. I am sure the scientific community will roundly reject what appear to be Dr Watson's personal prejudices.
"These comments serve as a reminder of the attitudes which can still exists at the highest professional levels."
The American scientist earned a place in the history of great scientific breakthroughs of the 20th century when he worked at the University of Cambridge in the 1950s and 1960s and formed part of the team which discovered the structure of DNA. He shared the 1962 Nobel Prize for medicine with his British colleague Francis Crick and New Zealand-born Maurice Wilkins.
But despite serving for 50 years as a director of the Cold Spring Harbour Laboratory on Long Island, considered a world leader in research into cancer and genetics, Dr Watson has frequently courted controversy with some of his views on politics, sexuality and race. The respected journal Science wrote in 1990: "To many in the scientific community, Watson has long been something of a wild man, and his colleagues tend to hold their collective breath whenever he veers from the script."
In 1997, he told a British newspaper that a woman should have the right to abort her unborn child if tests could determine it would be homosexual. He later insisted he was talking about a "hypothetical" choice which could never be applied. He has also suggested a link between skin colour and sex drive, positing the theory that black people have higher libidos, and argued in favour of genetic screening and engineering on the basis that " stupidity" could one day be cured. He has claimed that beauty could be genetically manufactured, saying: "People say it would be terrible if we made all girls pretty. I think it would great."
The Cold Spring Harbour Laboratory said yesterday that Dr Watson could not be contacted to comment on his remarks.
Steven Rose, a professor of biological sciences at the Open University and a founder member of the Society for Social Responsibility in Science, said: " This is Watson at his most scandalous. He has said similar things about women before but I have never heard him get into this racist terrain. If he knew the literature in the subject he would know he was out of his depth scientifically, quite apart from socially and politically."
Anti-racism campaigners called for Dr Watson's remarks to be looked at in the context of racial hatred laws. A spokesman for the 1990 Trust, a black human rights group, said: "It is astonishing that a man of such distinction should make comments that seem to perpetuate racism in this way. It amounts to fuelling bigotry and we would like it to be looked at for grounds of legal complaint."
How many of our evolutionists here at A2k will disavow the notion that blacks are genetically inferior?
If they do, are they rejecting scientific evidence?
Christian Racism
by Jesus Politics
A recent article talks about a revival of racism that is happening in the United States. Fringe hate groups appear to be gaining popularity. Tragically, some extreme Christian Right ideas are often used to justify these growing forms of racism.
An article about the neo-confederate League of the South (LOS) group talks about a "theological" basis for slavery:
Quote:Initially, LOS seemed to concentrate on a cultural defense of the South, complaining bitterly of the treatment Southerners received in the mainstream media. But it wasn't long before it began seriously advocating a second secession, calling for an essentially theocratic form of government, and openly advocating a return to "general European cultural hegemony" in the South.
The group officially came out against interracial marriage. Hill defended antebellum slavery as "God-ordained" and another LOS leader described segregation as necessary to racial "integrity." Hill called for a hierarchal society composed of "superiors, equals and inferiors, each protected in their legal privileges" and attacked egalitarianism as a "fatal heresy."
Another Christian racist hate group called Scriptures for America Ministries Worldwide says that it is:
Quote:an international outreach ministry dedicated to preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ and to revealing to the Anglo-Saxon, Germanic, and kindred peoples of the world their true Biblical identity.
The Christian Separatist Church Society group says:
Quote:We freely admit that we are Christian Supremacists, believing that the true Christian faith is superior to all other religions and that there is no way unto God except through the bending of the knee to Jesus Christ and the claiming of His redeeming blood.
Quote:We reject the Marxist, Leninist, Humanistic doctrine of religious tolerance that relegates Christianity to the level of voodooism or a demonic practice of the boxer Chinese. Those who make such an affirmation of Christian Supremacy are often called bigots, an antichrist Jewish buzzword allegedly laid upon the king of England, when he refused to capitulate to the Jews and said, "By God, I will not," affirming that by the strength of the Eternal, he would remain unshakably adamant in his position.
Quote:While we are a law-abiding people, we reject the Marxist-Leninist Jewish ideology that race- mixing is somehow a civil right.
Quote:Since He is an immutable God that changes not, and is the same yesterday, today, and forever, then we stand sure-footed upon the Rock of Ages in declaring that race-mixing is immoral and is the act of racial murder, not only of those participating in it, but also of the tens of millions that may well have been born in the intended created image of God in the future.
America's Promise Ministries group says:
Quote:When we find modern nations whose history parallels every Bible prophecy concerning Israel, we may then be certain that we have discovered every branch of Israel's family with whom Jesus Christ has sealed His everlasting covenant. History will show that the Celto-Saxon people have been the main builders, designers, engineers, explorers, and even humanitarians in comparison to any other race or nationality. When a third world nation is in need, it is not the black nations of Africa, the Chinese, the Indians, or Oriental nations, but the White/Caucasian directed nations of the world who offer a helping hand.
Quote:"The next sweeping world revival will come when Christian Anglo-Saxons under the New Covenant realize that they too are Abraham's posterity --the children of those ancient Israelites who walked with God under the Old Covenant. These truths will renew in men's minds a dynamic faith in the Bible as the very Word of God; they will create a hunger for more knowledge of God's plans and a thirst for His righteousness; they will remove God's kingdom from the fanciful realm of imagination and put it into a world of reality where its principles and laws may function."
The Legion of Saints group says it:
Quote:is a theo-political, Christian Identity Church organization, governed by the will of the Creator, our Father YHVH, outlined in His Holy word, the Bible.
We stand on the principles of Racial segregation and White Racial supremacy. We believe that the White Race, are the direct descendants of the Adamic man made in the image of YHVH, in the of garden of Eden; and was placed here to be the light bearer and supreme ruling Race of this lost and dying world.
If they do, are they rejecting scientific evidence?
Following your logic about James Watson I suppose we can conclude that Christians are racist.
From there he set out and went away to the region of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice, but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet.
Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. He said to her, "Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs." But she answered him, "Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs."
Then he said to her, "For saying that, you may go -- the demon has left your daughter." --Mark 7:24-29
CALL HER a persistent woman. Call her a determined woman. Call her a bodacious woman. For she was! She refused to allow race, culture, traditions or gender to keep her from obtaining her goals. She pushed past established boundaries to find relief. She knew the customs. She was well aware of acceptable roles of behavior. She understood the contempt for "her kind."
Yet, she was determined life could be better, more just and fair. She knew there was help available. She becomes a case study in the art of pursuing liberty and justice. The inward call to wholeness in life urged her forward. She was relentless in her search for "First Church"!
CALL THEM hidden. Call them weary. Call them sexist. Call them racist. For they were! They were bigoted, narrow-minded, inhospitable and rude. Call them "First Church." We know them as Jesus and the disciples. They were secreted away from the needy, hungry, maddening crowds. They wanted some downtime. They needed space. They coveted this private time.
THEN in barges this darker-colored gentile woman.
"Who does she think she is?" must have been their question as they looked at each other. For even gentile women knew "their place." How dare she enter a room filled with Jewish males?
The later repression and discrimination against the freed black slaves received as much biblical and Christian support as the earlier institution of slavery itself. This discrimination and the choice to enslave blacks only was made primarily on the basis of what has become known as the "sin of Ham" or "the curse of Canaan." Occasionally there would also be defenses of the inferiority of blacks by asserting that they bore the "mark of Cain."
We read in Genesis, chapter nine, that Noah's son Ham comes upon him sleeping off a drinking binge and sees his father naked. Instead of covering him, he runs and tells his brothers. Shem and Japheth, the "good" brothers, return and cover their father. In retaliation for Ham's "sinful act" of seeing his father nude, Noah puts a curse on his grandson (Ham's son) Canaan: ?Cursed be Canaan; lowest of slaves shall he be to his brothers" (Gen 9:25).
Over time, this curse came to be interpreted that Ham was literally "burnt," and that all his descendants had black skin, marking them as slaves with a convenient color-coded label for subservience. When and how this gained widespread acceptance is questionable, but anti-slavery religious and political leaders have worked to refute it for more than a century. Today, biblical scholars note that the ancient Hebrew word "ham" does not have to be translated as "burnt" or "black" - but there is unfortunately little consensus on how the name and passage should be interpreted. Further complicating matters is the position of some Afrocentrists that Ham, although not actually cursed (despite what the Bible says!) was indeed black, as were many other characters in the Bible. Once again, people end up reading the passage as supporting their own racial assumptions.
Although many Christians today would be horrified at using the Bible as a support for racism, they should recognize that it was used in just such a fashion by Christians in America in the same way and with the same justification as Christians today use the Bible in their defense of their favorite ideas. Even as recently as the 1950's and 60's, Christians vehemently opposed desegregation or "race-mixing" for religious reasons. The "curse" of poor Ham lingered on in the minds of white Christians who fought to preserve a constant separation of the races.
A corollary to the inferiority of blacks has long been the superiority of white Protestants - something which has not yet dissipated in America. Although "Caucasians" are not to be found anywhere in the Bible, that hasn't stopped members of Christian Identity groups from using the Bible to prove that they are the true "chosen people" or "true Israelites." This may seem bizarre, but it has long been popular among American Protestants to see themselves as being "divinely appointed" to tame the American wilderness despite the "demon Indians." Americans are supposed to be blessed with a special destiny by God, and many read an American role in Armageddon in the book of Revelations. I am ever amazed at the degree to which Christianity encourages extreme egotism and inflated sense of self-importance or personal destiny.
Christian Identity is just a new kid on the block of White Protestant Supremacy - the earliest such group was the infamous Ku Klux Klan. Too few people realize that the KKK was founded as a Christian organization and still sees itself in terms of defending true Christianity. Especially in the earliest days, Klansmen openly recruited in churches (white and segregated, of course), attracting members from all strata of society, including the clergy.
Although Klan ceremonies have varied greatly, one common form will include an American flag, a cross, and a Bible opened to Romans 12, exhorting Christians to "godly conduct, godly nature." Also common is a sword representing the war against all enemies of the Christian life an the American "Christian Nation." Opening and closing prayers may often include "The living Christ is a Klansman's criterion of character." The origin of a burning cross is unclear - it may stem from the ancient Scottish tradition of burning a cross on a hill to call together the clans, or it may be representative of spreading the light of the True Cross in an effort to promote Christian faith.
The man is a terrible embarrassment to us all. ("Us" being scientists and rational types.) It is said by the press that Watson "makes his colleagues cringe when he goes off script" or "is known for making controversial remarks" and so on. Fine. But these are not apt descriptors for James Watson's most recent remarks or, for that matter, many of his earlier remarks. No, not at all. These descriptors make Watson sound like a somewhat crazy free thinking guy who doesn't care if he pisses off a few people with what he says. But that is not what he is at all.
No. James Watson is, simply put, a moron. I want to take a moment to explain why I think that.
OK, first, the science. There has been a lot of systematic testing of people divided into "racial groups" (including "Asian," "African," "Hispanic," and "White" and so on). In the US it is found that "African" or "Black" categories test, in terms of IQ, a consistent 20 points, more or less, below, "Whites" as a group. On further examination, it is found that socioeconomic status (SES) and home environment predict IQ as well.
When you analyze the data, you find that the latter ?- SES and Home Environment ?- are the main predictors of IQ across a given contemporary population, not skin color. It happens that skin color and SES and skin color and Home Environment, in the US and over the last few decades, are intertwined realities. The cause of the state of the SES and Home Environment variables is not IQ it is cultural variation and, predominantly, racism. The IQ difference we see is the end product.
It is also the case that IQ varies across time in a way that is about as astounding as variation across time in stature in some populations a group of American "Whites" brought forward in a time machine from the 1920s would test perhaps 20 points lower than a matched comparative set of "Whites" living in the first decade of the 21st century. That is not a genetic change it is not the case that all the stupid people died any more than it is the case that all of the short people dying off, causing the secular increase in stature over the same time period. Rather, it is some other kind of change that has not been satisfactorily explained, but probably relates to factors like Home Environment and the vagaries of this kind of testing.
So, there is a problem. It is a social problem, an economic problem, and a problem linked in many different, insidious, ways to racism.
I assert, here and now, that Dr. Watson's remarks indicate that he is of substandard intelligence. I say this because he must know better he is a scientist who has worked in ancillary areas, and there is simply no way that he is not familiar with the relevant scientific literature. Therefore, he must be stupid. At least, that is what the empirical evidence strongly suggests at this point.
It is time to stop fooling ourselves about James Watson. Anyone who has kept up with his remarks will tell you this.
It may seem odd that the guy who, with others, "discovered DNA" could be a moron, but a brief analysis suggests that this is in fact quite possible. There are at least three factors that could explain James Watson's obvious dullness, in spite of his professed brilliance: The Nature of the Academic Free Market; the Swinging Dead Cat Phenomenon; and the Benefits of Teamwork.
Watson's work was done in the post-war era of the mid to late 1950s and the early 1960s. Although we all know that the launch of Sputnik in October 1957 was an event that galvanized the United States into a major effort to build up academic capacity (see this for more commentary), it is also true that there was a general building of universities and scientific and technological capacities as part of a more general post WW II phenomenon. In those days, therefore, there was a shortage of trained university academics (professors, researchers) and an increasing demand for individuals to fill these positions. Those were the days when you could get a job running a physics department with a masters degree in auto mechanics, get tenure, and relax for the rest of your life. And I'm only slightly exaggerating. As we speak, myriad mediocre members of the academy from this era of high demand and undersupply have recently, are just now, or are about to retire. These gentlemen (and they were all gentlemen, or at least, men) were hired some time between about 1955 and 1967, often rising to important positions, but really, not doing much in the way of actually contributing to science. It is possible that James Watson was one of these individuals who happened to get lucky.
The other thing that was going on during this period, in science, was a major shift in instrumentation and technology. To see this in a somewhat humorous and entertaining way, go find yourself a stack of science magazines Science, Scientific American, Nature, etc., from Pre- World War II, and get another stack of similar magazines from the mid 1960s. Compare the contents of the two just look at the pictures, the ads, the illustrations. You will quickly and without needing a degree in the History of Science perceive a major shift in topics of interest, the machinery that was being sold or talked about, and the kinds of phenomena that scientists were addressing. Large, bulky machines designed to move things, burn things, or that produced or detected energy of various types gave way to somewhat more graceful and delicate machines that were designed to see the invisible to peer inside cells, or to divine the micro crystaline structure of dehydrated organic compounds, etc.
In any given subfield, this transition was pretty sudden. One day you're wondering what those dots floating around in a cell are, the next day you are collecting data that allow you to understand the structure of proteins. Wow. This transition is what allowed any moron with a grant to look at pretty much anything and discover something never before imagined.
Watson and his colleagues could not have missed the structure of DNA if they were trying to avoid it. They were living in times when you could not swing a dead cat without discovering a fundemental property of nature.
Especially if you are working with others, or even better, Rosilind Franklin did all the work for you. OK, I admit, I am nothing like an expert on the whole Rosilind Franklin affair. Watson seems to have only bad things to say about her. It does appear to be the case that some of her work was important to Watson and Crick but was not properly cited. It also appears to be the case that Watson remains to this day a misogynist. I don't know what to conclude from this, but it does not smell right to me. In any event, just as it is possible for Watson to have had a reasonably successful career and not been very good, and for Watson to have not been able to avoid the discovery of the structure of DNA, it is also possible that he was part of a team on which anyone could have played his role. There may be nothing special, nothing "genius," about him. Just circumstance and linkage to a particularly important event.
. . . The Bible is used to justify murder, slavery and racism. If God is so wise and just then why was he so stupid as to write a series of books that he must have known would be used to promote so much evil?
If you answer is people are mistaken in their interpretation of the Bible than he would have known this would happen. After all he is God and all-knowing, is he not?
So your saying evolution made Watson bias but the Bible didn't make Christians bias.
BULL
There is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so.
Watson's view :
Quote:There is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so.
is consistent with evolution.
No. James Watson is, simply put, a moron. I want to take a moment to explain why I think that.
OK, first, the science. There has been a lot of systematic testing of people divided into "racial groups" (including "Asian," "African," "Hispanic," and "White" and so on). In the US it is found that "African" or "Black" categories test, in terms of IQ, a consistent 20 points, more or less, below, "Whites" as a group. On further examination, it is found that socioeconomic status (SES) and home environment predict IQ as well.
When you analyze the data, you find that the latter ?- SES and Home Environment ?- are the main predictors of IQ across a given contemporary population, not skin color. It happens that skin color and SES and skin color and Home Environment, in the US and over the last few decades, are intertwined realities. The cause of the state of the SES and Home Environment variables is not IQ it is cultural variation and, predominantly, racism. The IQ difference we see is the end product.
It is also the case that IQ varies across time in a way that is about as astounding as variation across time in stature in some populations a group of American "Whites" brought forward in a time machine from the 1920s would test perhaps 20 points lower than a matched comparative set of "Whites" living in the first decade of the 21st century. That is not a genetic change it is not the case that all the stupid people died any more than it is the case that all of the short people dying off, causing the secular increase in stature over the same time period. Rather, it is some other kind of change that has not been satisfactorily explained, but probably relates to factors like Home Environment and the vagaries of this kind of testing.
So, there is a problem. It is a social problem, an economic problem, and a problem linked in many different, insidious, ways to racism.
I assert, here and now, that Dr. Watson's remarks indicate that he is of substandard intelligence. I say this because he must know better he is a scientist who has worked in ancillary areas, and there is simply no way that he is not familiar with the relevant scientific literature. Therefore, he must be stupid. At least, that is what the empirical evidence strongly suggests at this point.
It is time to stop fooling ourselves about James Watson. Anyone who has kept up with his remarks will tell you this.
It may seem odd that the guy who, with others, "discovered DNA" could be a moron, but a brief analysis suggests that this is in fact quite possible. There are at least three factors that could explain James Watson's obvious dullness, in spite of his professed brilliance: The Nature of the Academic Free Market; the Swinging Dead Cat Phenomenon; and the Benefits of Teamwork.
Watson's work was done in the post-war era of the mid to late 1950s and the early 1960s. Although we all know that the launch of Sputnik in October 1957 was an event that galvanized the United States into a major effort to build up academic capacity (see this for more commentary), it is also true that there was a general building of universities and scientific and technological capacities as part of a more general post WW II phenomenon. In those days, therefore, there was a shortage of trained university academics (professors, researchers) and an increasing demand for individuals to fill these positions. Those were the days when you could get a job running a physics department with a masters degree in auto mechanics, get tenure, and relax for the rest of your life. And I'm only slightly exaggerating. As we speak, myriad mediocre members of the academy from this era of high demand and undersupply have recently, are just now, or are about to retire. These gentlemen (and they were all gentlemen, or at least, men) were hired some time between about 1955 and 1967, often rising to important positions, but really, not doing much in the way of actually contributing to science. It is possible that James Watson was one of these individuals who happened to get lucky.
The other thing that was going on during this period, in science, was a major shift in instrumentation and technology. To see this in a somewhat humorous and entertaining way, go find yourself a stack of science magazines Science, Scientific American, Nature, etc., from Pre- World War II, and get another stack of similar magazines from the mid 1960s. Compare the contents of the two just look at the pictures, the ads, the illustrations. You will quickly and without needing a degree in the History of Science perceive a major shift in topics of interest, the machinery that was being sold or talked about, and the kinds of phenomena that scientists were addressing. Large, bulky machines designed to move things, burn things, or that produced or detected energy of various types gave way to somewhat more graceful and delicate machines that were designed to see the invisible to peer inside cells, or to divine the micro crystaline structure of dehydrated organic compounds, etc.
In any given subfield, this transition was pretty sudden. One day you're wondering what those dots floating around in a cell are, the next day you are collecting data that allow you to understand the structure of proteins. Wow. This transition is what allowed any moron with a grant to look at pretty much anything and discover something never before imagined.
Watson and his colleagues could not have missed the structure of DNA if they were trying to avoid it. They were living in times when you could not swing a dead cat without discovering a fundemental property of nature.
Especially if you are working with others, or even better, Rosilind Franklin did all the work for you. OK, I admit, I am nothing like an expert on the whole Rosilind Franklin affair. Watson seems to have only bad things to say about her. It does appear to be the case that some of her work was important to Watson and Crick but was not properly cited. It also appears to be the case that Watson remains to this day a misogynist. I don't know what to conclude from this, but it does not smell right to me. In any event, just as it is possible for Watson to have had a reasonably successful career and not been very good, and for Watson to have not been able to avoid the discovery of the structure of DNA, it is also possible that he was part of a team on which anyone could have played his role. There may be nothing special, nothing "genius," about him. Just circumstance and linkage to a particularly important event.
There is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so.
