ISTOCK, USCHOOLSEarlier this month at a genomics meeting at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York, all of the attendees gathered in Grace Auditorium, where a large painted portrait of James Watson hangs, for the keynote session. Afterward, they held a brief celebration for Watson himself on the occasion of his 90th birthday. Eric Lander, the director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, with a glass of champagne in hand, toasted the famed geneticist, saying, he has “inspired all of us to push the frontiers of science to benefit humankind.” The audience clapped.
Tucked discretely within Lander’s toast was a little caveat about the man they were all cheering for: “flawed,” Lander called Watson. It was a cryptic acknowledgement of Watson’s racist and sexist public statements, some made even recently. But for many in the scientific community who watched from the sidelines of social media, Lander’s speech was insufficient in condemning Watson’s ugly views.
The science jerks and bigots should be shunned—no matter if they have a Nobel Prize.
Among the first to respond on Twitter with a scathing criticism of the celebration was Caltech’s Lior Pachter. “That people are willing to celebrate this individual in public was a moment of truth for me of what things actually look like in our community,” he tells The Scientist, “and ...
