October 26, 2007
Expiration Dates Posted by Alexander Burns at 02:05 PM EST James Watson lost his job yesterday. The Nobel Prize–winning biologist resigned as the chancellor of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he has worked on and administered genetic research for decades. The impetus for his resignation was the uproar over comments he made last week about genetics and racial differences. Speaking with London’s Sunday Times, Watson had commented, “All our social policies are based on the fact that [Africans’] intelligence is the same as ours—whereas all the testing says not really.” Going further, Watson announced that racial equality is a sham: “People who have to deal with black employees find this is not true.” A few people have suggested that the resulting outrage over Watson’s comments was an inappropriate response to the man’s free speech. It seems obvious, though, that the scientist’s comments were not the stuff of which intellectual debate is made. Watson himself has professed surprise at having made such remarks. One hesitates to question the mental capacity of an eminent scientist, but Watson’s comments, and his subsequent retraction of them, look like a pretty good case study in public senility. It’s probably inevitable that our society is going to fixate on the words of famous, accomplished people like Watson, no matter how old they are. But this latest affair makes me wonder whether we wouldn’t be better off imposing a kind of expiration date on public figures. A consensus agreement, perhaps, that 25 years after someone’s career-making accomplishment, we can stop assuming that he remains an impressive person. This sounds a little cruel, but in the long run I think people like Watson would benefit from it. If they stayed lucid in their old age, they would keep making headlines. If they acted like cranks, society would sigh and move on. Biographers might find their ramblings useful, but the rest of us could focus on more important news. Of course, there’s also reason to doubt whether anyone should ever have valued Watson’s opinion as highly as some do. I once had a biology teacher who said Watson’s main gift wasn’t for genetics but for self-promotion. Given how skillfully Watson’s evaded allegations of academic dishonesty, I think that assessment might be merited. I’d say we were fortunate to have him out of the public eye for good, but I doubt we’ll be that lucky.
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