Now, it might give you a chuckle, as it did me. But come on, folks… I hereby add ‘Irresponsible Use of Illustration’ in science news reporting as yet another category for the Science News Booby Prizes at year’s end. After last week’s sordid destruction of Nobel Laureate James Watson’s storied career as a notorious bigot, this sort of thing can definitely make one wonder what the heck these science reporters are thinking.
If they are in fact thinking at all.
This week there are a couple of notably humorous science news stories making the rounds, to the delight of all science-watchers who sometimes suspect that scientists take themselves way, way too seriously.
First up we have researchers at the University of Memphis informing us that Water pipe use is as addictive as smoking.
Whoa! Who’d have thought that the pipe you smoke is as addictive as what you’re smoking through it? Yet this is just what Dr. Wasim Maziak warns…
“As water pipe use is increasing throughout Europe and North America it is very important that we initiate comprehensive research efforts to combat this looming epidemic,” Maziak said in a statement.
Don’t laugh too hard. Someone funded this research, and it was probably us.
So take heed, children! There’s a reason for the high cost of bongs, and more than just their high class looks and smoke-mellowing abilities to explain your fondness for this ancient and clever apparatus. If you’re really trying to beat addiction, you need to toss that pretty little (or not so little) knick-knack out along with your stash!
On another front, Nobel Prize laureate and co-discoverer of the structure of DNA James Watson has managed to get himself in trouble once again by speaking his mind in public. In an interview published in London’s The Sunday Times he asserted that Africans – for Watson, that’s all people of African descent – are biologically inferior to Europeans (i.e., white people) in the intelligence department.
The reactionary backlash began immediately. His comments drew condemnation from British lawmakers and equality campaigners as well as from his fellow scientists. Over at the Seed Magazine Science Blogs the reaction was swift and loud from insulted colleagues who decried Watson’s ‘racism’ roundly but mostly didn’t address the evidence Watson appealed to.
London’s Science Museum quickly canceled a scheduled lecture by 79-year old Watson, who is chancellor of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York. Cold Spring Harbor earned notoriety in the first decades of the 20th century for its role in promoting Eugenics policies and laws.
Watson’s opinions about race and sex are widely known and always controversial. He shocked an audience during a lecture at UC Berkeley in 2000 when he claimed a link between melanin (skin color) and sex drive. That time, he said…
“That’s why you have Latin lovers,” he said, according to people who attended the lecture. “You’ve never heard of an English lover. Only an English patient.”
We can get a giggle from Watson’s impolitic habits of speech, as they are quite humorous. We might also find it a little odd that scientists and scientific institutions are so quick to censor him. Academic freedom and all that. As opposed to actually tackling the masses of scientific research and sociological applications (like IQ testing) that tend to provide empirical evidence to support a range of abilities across groups of people.
Maybe this time Watson’s statements will motivate researchers to re-examine past studies and current social applications to see exactly how and why they produce such prejudicial results so consistently. As opposed to just complaining that an individual scientist doesn’t mind using those results to support his personal bigotry in public.
Links:
The Island of Doubt: Inevitability of Stupidity
The Questionable Authority: Oh Dear, Watson
Thus Spake Zuska: Watson to Africa: You’re All Dumb