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I got an invitation today to a film screening of Naturally Obsessed, The Making of a Scientist. The documentary, by Richard and Carole Rifkind, asks the question, "What does it take to produce the scientists we need to keep America competitive?"

That seems like an important question, and one to which Scientific American readers would no doubt like to have the answer. So I took a look at the invitation, and found out that the screening, on February 25, would also feature a panel discussion on the "state of scientific training in the U.S." Also worthwhile.

Then I noticed a name on the panel.

James D. Watson.

Yes, that James Watson, the Watson-Crick Nobel Prize-winning James Watson, the one who retired from his post at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories at the end of 2007 for comments he made about the intelligence of Africans. He told the Times of London's Sunday Magazine that he was "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" as "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours—whereas all the testing [IQ and Standardized testing] says not really."

Yes, the James Watson whom, as I wrote in The Boston Globe just after the incident, "[savaged] Rosalind Franklin— from whom many say Watson stole ideas that led to the Nobel he shared with Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins for figuring out the structure of DNA." Watson has said that we should use genetic engineering to "make all girls pretty," and that more melanin—dark skin—gives people greater sexual libido.

So Watson is now evidently a good source of information on how to encourage young scientists to stick with careers in science. The panel, moderated by journalist Garrick Utley, also includes a State University of New York Downstate postdoctoral fellow named Andrey Pisarev and Toni Hoover, senior vice president of global research & development, and director of the Groton/New London Laboratories, for Pfizer.

Hoover is an African-American woman scientist who is evidently involved with promoting diversity in science, at least according to this press release about a $300,000 Pfizer grant to Xavier University, a traditionally black Catholic university in New Orleans. I called Pfizer to ask to interview Hoover about what she thought of being on the panel and will update this post if I hear back.

I also asked a New York Academy of Sciences contact about the choice of Watson. "Word is that he's very committed to this subject and really focused when it comes to discussing it," he wrote in an e-mail.

Find out on February 25, at Academy headquarters in downtown Manhattan.

Photo of a young James Watson courtesy the National Library of Medicine

3 Comments

1. 1. blah38 05:29 PM 2/5/09

   The panel is on training scientists and thinking in a way that can produce scientific discoveries. If anyone can help with that its the guy who helped come up with the structure of DNA. This panel has NOTHING to do with whether or not you approve of his world view, only his contribution to science, which, by the way, far outweighs your contribution to science so leave it alone. Also, I seem to remember reading the Double Helix. At some point he writes that he wrote the book with his accurate feelings based on the time. At the end he explains how he was wrong about the things he thought about Franklin. Basically, he did not "savage" her. If you needed a cure for an epidemic in 2 days to save the planet and you had in front on you a man who could do it in three and a man who could do it in 1.5 but you disagreed with his views, who would you pick?

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2. 2. holtza 07:14 PM 2/5/09

   Watson also played a headline role in the infamous Gina Kolata NY Times story about cancer being cured in two years with antiangiogenesis drugs. That was almost 11 years ago.
   
   Watson later denied telling Kolata that he thought cancer would be cured in two years. Of course, Kolata should have known the cocktail party comment was hyperbole at best.
   
   HOPE IN THE LAB, New York Times, May 3, 1998
   http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F04E6D6113EF930A35756C0A96E958260&sec=&spon=&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
   
   High Hopes on Cancer letter from Watson
   http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D04E3D71531F934A35756C0A96E958260&sec=&spon=&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

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3. 3. selrachj 07:45 PM 2/5/09

   This is way out of line. True enough, and as he fully admits, Watson got a peek at the X-ray crystallogrphy that Franklin had produced but that she had apparently never shared with anyone. When Watson received the Nobel, Franklin was deceased and the Swedes don't give that award to the non-living. There is no evidence that he "savaged" her but there is evidence that she respected him greatly, even after he and Crick announced their discovery. It is clear, to me anyway, that the Watson brain tends to generate lots of ideas and concepts on the fly, and puts them out there with little of the "normal" social filtration that most of us utilize. This style has led to both his great discovery and to his inattentiveness to form and good taste. As with all humans, there is good news and bad. Cut the man a little slack. He apologized profusely for his comments and he has much to teach us about science and forgiveness.

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