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Nobel prize-winning dna pioneer stripped of titles for his views on race.


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30 minutes ago, I1L2T3 said:

 

The curious thing is that his rigorous and excellent approach to the advancement of science did not stop him holding predudiced non-scientific personal views that it appears were based on his personal experience with black employees.

 

 

His rigorous and excellent approach to science may have never applied to anything else apart from one molecule in his entire working life.  One could work on one molecule irrelevant of prejudices, biases and personal hatreds. 

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16 minutes ago, medusa said:

His rigorous and excellent approach to science may have never applied to anything else apart from one molecule in his entire working life.  One could work on one molecule irrelevant of prejudices, biases and personal hatreds. 

Yes that is true. It’s who I guess a good scientist can also have powerful religious views.

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6 hours ago, I1L2T3 said:

He’s entirely free to voice his thoughts.

 

If his thoughts are racist then he will unfortunately have to pay the consequences.

 

That is how it works

And who decides his thoughts are racist?

Can publishing his scientific research be classed as his 'thoughts'?

As has already been said, were his research to be in a different field and he concluded that blacks are physically superior, would his thoughts be racist or would that be ok?

 

 

 

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3 hours ago, Jim Hardie said:

And who decides his thoughts are racist?

Can publishing his scientific research be classed as his 'thoughts'?

As has already been said, were his research to be in a different field and he concluded that blacks are physically superior, would his thoughts be racist or would that be ok?

 

 

 

Problem with that argument is he didn’t do research that compared intelligence. He came to his conclusion because he though black employees were less intelligent. 

 

Society basically gets to decide whether his views are acceptable. And as a result he ended up with much reduced income. Within society there are many arbiters of what is acceptable.

 

God help us if views like his ever become mainstream again. We’d be on a dangerous path.

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2 hours ago, I1L2T3 said:

Problem with that argument is he didn’t do research that compared intelligence. He came to his conclusion because he though black employees were less intelligent. 

 

Society basically gets to decide whether his views are acceptable. And as a result he ended up with much reduced income. Within society there are many arbiters of what is acceptable.

 

God help us if views like his ever become mainstream again. We’d be on a dangerous path.

Sorry, jumped in with both feet there. I was confusing him with someone else who had expressed similar views some time ago and was hounded out of his job, unfairly in my opinion.

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1 hour ago, petemcewan said:

Genes and intelligence are part of the Sociobiologists tool kit . 

Is race a factor though?

 

From what I know of classic IQ tests you can train to do well in them. People who apply for Mensa often train for the tests. Different cultures have different educational practices, and perhaps the tests favour people who have been taught from young in certain ways. Even within the U.K. a good IQ score could be partly a result of having a good education so does that mean state educated Britons are not as intelligent as privately educated Britons. That’s not true of course. Just a thought but those are the sorts of conclusions cod science around IQ tests can lead to.

 

 

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