Watson Resigns as Head of Cold Spring Harbor Labs : Transcription and Translation

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Alex Palazzo is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biochemistry at The University of Toronto.

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Watson Resigns as Head of Cold Spring Harbor Labs

Category: Science & Society
Posted on: October 25, 2007 1:16 PM, by Alex Palazzo

All the info is here. A copy of the resignation letter can be found here.

[HT: Eye on DNA]

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Comments

It's such a waste to have such a renowned scientist resign in shame for uttering shameful remarks. Hopefully, history will remember him for his better professional moments than for his last.
I ask all professors and professionals approaching retirement age to consider Watson's case by bowing out gracefully in a timely manner of your choosing and handing the reigns to the next generation rather than wait for the specter of curmudgeonly senility to take your hard-earned prestige from you. Your pride may hurt you for retiring, but it?ll hurt you a lot more when your colleagues lose their respect for you forever. Apparently, the quenching of a reputation you worked all your life to stoke is just an utterance away.

Posted by: HPLC_Sean | October 25, 2007 4:22 PM

I didn't get the last part of the statement:

This week's events focus me ever more intensely on the moral values passed on to me by my father, whose Watson surname marks his long ago Scots-Irish Appalachian heritage; and by my mother, whose father, Lauchlin Mitchell, came from Glasgow and whose mother, Lizzie Gleason, had parents from Tipperary. To my great advantage, their lives were guided by a faith in reason; an honest application of its messages; and for social justice, especially the need for those on top to help care for the less fortunate. As an educator, I have always striven to see that the fruits of the American Dream are available to all.

Does he mean that his parents taught him that individuals of African descent are inferior, or that his parents taught him to have "faith in reason" and that his opinions are based on this mindset?

Posted by: Acme Scientist | October 26, 2007 9:52 AM