culann.com

Rational Person

Hmm. Looks like one of the co-discoverers of the molecular structure of DNA is spouting off again.

“If you are really stupid, I would call that a disease,” says Watson, now president of the Cold Spring Harbour Laboratory, New York. “The lower 10 per cent who really have difficulty, even in elementary school, what’s the cause of it? A lot of people would like to say, ‘Well, poverty, things like that.’ It probably isn’t. So I’d like to get rid of that, to help the lower 10 per cent

I’m sorry - the discovery of the double helical structure of DNA was vital to the progress of molecular biology (thanks to C&W, Rosalind Franklin, and innumerable others), but why do Crick and Watson get to KEEP shooting their mouths off about things? Crick’s now convinced that visual consciousness is a 44hz osciallation in the visual cortex (disclaimer - I haven’t read the book, I’m just remembering bits and pieces of a discussion I once had with someone who had, so I could very well be wrong about this. If I am wrong here, feel free to discount the rest of this post). Watson, in addition to the ethically questionable claims recounted in the article above, has embraced panspermia as an answer to the origin of life. Sigh.

You get credit for one big thing and all of a sudden you get a platform to broadcast every thought that enters your head. The meme theorists must love this sort of thing.