James Watson Quotes

There is only one science, physics: everything else is social work.

And so if there is a paramount ethical issue attending the vast new genetic knowledge created by the Human Genome Project, in my view it is the slow pace at which what we now know is being deployed to diminish human suffering. Leaving aside the uncertainties of gene therapy, I find the lag in embracing even the most unambiguous benefits to be utterly unconscionable. That in our medically advanced society almost no women are screened for the fragile X mutation two decades after its discovery can attest only to ignorance or intransigence.

Do things as soon as you can. If a decision needs to be made, make it. It gives you more time to change your mind.

That is why the double helix was so important. It brought the Enlightenment revolution in materialistic thinking into the cell. The intellectual journey that had begun with Copernicus displacing humans from the center of the universe and continued with Darwin’s insistence that humans are merely modified monkeys had finally focused in on the very essence of life. And there was nothing special about it. The double helix is an elegant structure, but its message is downright prosaic: life is simply a matter of chemistry.

For all my life, America was the place to be. And we somehow continue to be the place where there are real opportunities to change the world for the better. I'm basically a libertarian. I don't want to restrict anyone from doing anything unless it's going to harm me. I don't want to pass a law stopping someone from smoking. It's just too dangerous. You lose the concept of a free society. Since we are genetically so diverse and our brains are so different, we're going to have different aspirations. The things that will satisfy me won't satisfy you. On the other hand, if global warming is in any way preventable and it's likely to come, not doing something would be irresponsible to the future of our society.

Watson: Our society just hasn't faced up to this problem. In a primitive society, if you saw that a baby was deformed, you would abandon it on a hillside. Today this isn't permissible, and with our medicine getting better and better in the sense of being able to keep sick people alive longer, we are going to produce more people living wretched lives. I don't know how you get a society to change on such a basic issue; infanticide isn't regarded lightly by anyone. Fortunately, now through such techniques as amniocentesis, parents can often learn in advance whether their child will be normal and healthy or hopelessly deformed. They then can choose either to have the child or opt for a therapeutic abortion. But the cruel fact remains that because of the present limits of such detection methods, most birth defects are not discovered until birth. If the child were not declared alive until three days after birth, then all parents could be allowed the choice that only a few are given under the present system. The doctor could allow the child to die if the parents so chose and save a lot of misery and suffering. I believe this view is the only rational, compassionate attitude to have.

The thought that some people are innately wicked disturbs me. But science is not here to make us feel good. It is to answer questions in the service of knowledge and greater understanding. In finding out the extent to which genes influence moral behaviour, we shall also be able to understand how genes influence intellectual capacities.

We do not yet adequately understand the way in which the different environments in the world have selected over time the genes which determine our capacity to do different things. The overwhelming desire of society today is to assume that equal powers of reason are a universal heritage of humanity. It may well be. But simply wanting this to be the case is not enough. This is not science. To question this is not to give in to racism. This is not a discussion about superiority or inferiority, it is about seeking to understand differences, about why some of us are great musicians and others great engineers. It is very likely that at least some 10 to 15 years will pass before we get an adequate understanding for the relative importance of nature versus nurture in the achievement of important human objectives. Until then, we as scientists, wherever we wish to place ourselves in this great debate, should take care in claiming what are unarguable truths without the support of evidence.

Whenever you interview fat people, you feel bad, because you know you're not going to hire them.

I suspect that in the beginning Maurice hoped that Rosy would calm down. Yet mere inspection suggested that she would not easily bend. By choice she did not emphasize her feminine qualities. Though her features were strong, she was not unattractive and might have been quite stunning had she taken even a mild interest in clothes. This she did not. There was never lipstick to contrast with her straight black hair, while at the age of thirty-one her dresses showed all the imagination of English blue-stocking adolescents. So it was quite easy to imagine her the product of an unsatisfied mother who unduly stressed the desirability of professional careers that could save bright girls from marriages to dull men. But this was not the case. Her dedicated austere life could not be thus explained — she was the daughter of a solidly comfortable, erudite banking family. Clearly Rosy had to go or be put in her place. The former was obviously preferable because, given her belligerent moods, it would be very difficult for Maurice to maintain a dominant position that would allow him to think unhindered about DNA. Not that at times he'd didn't see some reason for her complaints — King's had two combination rooms, one for men, the other for women, certainly a thing of the past. But he was not responsible, and it was no pleasure to bear the cross for the added barb that the women's combination room remained dingily pokey whereas money had been spent to make life agreeable for him and his friends when they had their morning coffee. Unfortunately, Maurice could not see any decent way to give Rosy the boot. To start with, she had been given to think that she had a position for several years. Also there was no denying that she had a good brain. If she could keep her emotions under control, there was a good chance she could really help him. But merely wishing for relations to improve was taking something of a gamble, for Cal Tech's fabulous chemist Linus Pauling was not subject to the confines of British fair play. Sooner or later Linus, who had just turned fifty, was bound to try for the most important of all scientific prizes. There was no doubt he was interested. … The thought could not be avoided that the best home for a feminist was in another person's lab.

The discovery of the double helix sounded the death knell for vitalism. Serious scientists, even those religiously inclined, realized that a complete understanding of life would not require the revelation of new laws of nature. Life was just a matter of physics and chemistry, albeit exquisitely organized physics and chemistry. The immediate task ahead would be to figure out how the DNA-encoded script of life went about its work.

My youthful reasoning on the subject, however absurdly misinformed, nevertheless taught me a very valuable lesson: the danger of assuming that genes are responsible for differences we see among individuals or groups. We can err mightily unless we can be confident that environmental factors have not played the more decisive role.
This tendency to prefer explanations grounded in “nurture” over ones rooted in “nature” has served a useful social purpose in redressing generations of bigotry. Unfortunately, we have now cultivated too much of a good thing. The current epidemic of political correctness has delivered us to a moment when even the possibility of a genetic basis for difference is a hot potato: there is a fundamentally dishonest resistance to admitting the role our genes almost surely play in setting one individual apart from another.

If you can't be criticized, that's very dangerous.

Not at all. I would like for them to have changed, that there be new knowledge that says that your nurture is much more important than nature. But I haven’t seen any knowledge. And there’s a difference on the average between blacks and whites on I.Q. tests. I would say the difference is, it’s genetic.

Khan analyzed the data and was relieved to find that his son’s DNA was “pretty boring.” In the brave new world of personal genomics, “boring” is the new “great.”