Arrogant jerkwad creates meaningless kerfluffle, News at Eleven

Notorious arrogant bastard* and Nobel laureate, James Watson shoots off again, this time descending into race/intelligence minefield [Pharyngula, Zuska, denialism blog]. Consequently gets talk cancelled. The ass kick by Greg Laden here and here, pre-empts my need to get into the intelligence literature. Blogosphere and MSM goes nuts for a news cycle or two.

Necessary…

…but useless.

Scientists are arrogant bastards. I’m actually not sure why. But the best of the best, as measured by our usual metrics like C/N/S pubs and Nobel prizes, are asshats. They are. Clues are provided by the types of reputations and scandals accumulated by those at the pinnacles of our business and political environments. A certain level of functional sociopathy is require to reach the peaks of human societies and accomplishments. Why should science be any different? What on earth is going to be accomplished by hooting about one jerkwad sociopathic scientist of at least one recognized accomplishment revealing that, gasp, he’s a jerkwad sociopath?

Now it is true that those of us in various psych subfields are probably a little more sensitive to Nobel laureate blathering than most. Why not? After all we’re in the fields where so many people feel perfectly comfortable expressing firmly held opinions on matters for which there are scientific data, unfortunately with which said blatherers are not really familiar. The “intelligence” literature being prime suspect number one. So I get a specifically and professionally pissed when some Nobel laureate in some far removed field thinks he knows all there is to know about autism, women and black intelligence and the nature of consciousness (the latter is astonishing, I tell you). But is old Jimbo really all that unique?

Hell no. The reins of power and influence in the scientific enterprise are held all up and down the ranks by people who are similar. That have very little understanding of internal biases, the nature of “evidence” from human judgment, the fallacies of predicting the capabilities of an individual from group stats, the difference between innate capability and the environment that permits full expression of genotype, etc. And that express idiotic and bigoted behavior both overtly and covertly in ways that are detrimental to the conduct of science while they believe very firmly they are doing the opposite! People who seem further to confuse the recognition of excellence/brilliance for what is often a reflection of the coincidence of time/place/random luck as it is actual unique personal brilliance are particularly annoying of course. Especially when they take this as some sort of life-time free pass from logic and evidence and an elevation of personal biases to “truth”. But they are not unique.

Racists? Every institute and possibly every department has ’em. Sexists? In spades. Dickweeds who had one or two great papers two decades ago and patrol the corridors denigrating people in gossipatory whisper campaigns? Yep. Actually brilliant scientists who are complete shits as humans? Check. Numbnuts motivated to prop up their own “category” at the expense of others because they fear competition on an open market of ideas? <sigh>…

Let us not pile upon one possibly senile and inhibitory control-challenged Nobel laureate.

Let us instead reconfirm our commitment to challenge similar behaviors and attitudes in our daily professional lives that may be detrimental to science.

Update: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Board of Trustees has suspended Chancellor James Watson from his “administrative responsibilities” pending “further deliberation from the Board”. The NYT article I linked in the comments earlier seems to be datelined tomorrow (Oct 19th), the above CSHL announcement today (Oct 18th). Interesting that it took at least 4 days after the original article for Watson to “apologize” and that it came so close upon evidence that his institution is ReallyMadAboutThis. Of course, they have a specific reason for being a little touchy. According to Wikipedia:

During the years 1910 to 1940, the laboratory was also the home of the Eugenics Record Office of biologist Charles B. Davenport and his assistant Harry H. Laughlin, two prominent American eugenicists of the period. In 1935 the Carnegie Institution sent a team to review their work, and as a result the ERO was ordered to stop all efforts. In 1939 the Institute withdrew funding for the ERO entirely, leading to its closure. Their reports, articles, charts, and pedigrees were considered scientific “facts” in their day, but have since been discredited.

UPDATE 2 (10/19/07): Watson has published a defense (in which he once again references his schizophrenic son as evidence of his humanity). A prior interview in Esquire in which he came across as a bit of a bigot required a similar apology and correction.
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*the evidence of hearing him speak publicly on two occasions is consistent with the reputation.