It has started, downplaying the unpleasant aspects of Nobel laureate Carleton Gadjusek's life. An obituary (paywall) in Nature has what is a rather positive overview of the man who discovered that kuru, which we now know as a prion disease like Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease, was transmissible. It fails to mention that he thought it was a virus (it is a protein based disease). It also just barely mentioned his pedophilia.
Eccentricity was the source of Gajdusek's genius as a scientist, and of his notoriety late in life. In 1997, he was imprisoned on a child molestation charge involving one of the more than 50 Micronesian and Melanesian children he had adopted and brought to the United States. On his release in 1998 he moved to Europe, which he regarded as less puritanical than his home country.
Oh yes, it was more than a charge. Gadjusek was an unrepentant pedophile. As the obit notes, he spent some years working with Mac Burnet in Melbourne, including with Gus Nossal, who later took over from Burnet as head of The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute. I worked with Gus' secretary, Pamela Dewhurst, and one time Gus showed me the six inch thick correspondence file from Gadjusek filled with eloquent defences of "man love" from classical literature and using all kinds of psychological literature in support. It was disgusting, but fascinating, like any deviance is.
But that's not my point here today. It is widely known that Gadjusek was a pedophile. Why try to whitewash that? I suspect the author, Jaap Goudsmit, is trying to wrestle with the fact that he did some good (and some not so good in retrospect) science despite his moral flaws. Many people think that if you denigrate the man, you must denigrate the work. Certainly creationists try to do that with Darwin, for example - if he was a bad man then his science is suspect. And this is precisely not true.
Gadjusek was a moral deviant who harmed children (almost necessarily if he had sex with boys). He also discovered a transmissible dementia that has ultimately changed our way of thinking about neurological diseases and the very nature of disease itself. Like the founder of vascular surgery, Alexis Carrel, who worked with the Nazis in eugenic extermination, his work was good even if he was not.
Science is done by human beings. Some proportion of any randomly chosen sample of human beings will be saints and some proportion will be deviants and evil. And the science they do remains good or bad independently of their moral failings so long as they do the work well. Recall Hannibal Lector supposedly publishing psychology papers on serial murder after his incarceration? It's only slightly an exaggeration.
But human failings explain too why scientists like Goudsmit need to cover over the flaws and failings of their scientific heroes. Nobody wants to be known as "the guy who continues the work of that pedophile", just as nobody wants to be known as the guy who continues the work of the Holocaust doctors. And moreover, evil people can be educated, charming and interesting. But science is not primarily a moral undertaking - any more than plumbing. If you had a toilet installed by a serial murderer, it would work just as well.
Because science is a human undertaking we have to engage it in all its humanity, and that includes the bad guys as well as the good ones. It isn't handed to us from on high by moral angels. Sometimes scientists cheat. Sometimes they lie. Sometimes they take credit where none is due, and so on. What is nice about the humanity of science is that we do not need to have unattainable ideals for it to proceed. But we remain moral agents, and so we should not try to cover up the moral failings of scientific achievers.
- Log in to post comments
That was well written and makes the point nicely. No doubt creationists will continue to miss the point though.
I guess the bad bits of Gadjusek's life may have been glossed over since people traditionally try to stay positive in orbituaries.
I guess the bad bits of Gadjusek's life may have been glossed over since people traditionally try to stay positive in orbituaries.
Sometimes. I remember when William Shockley, co-inventor of the transistor, died, *every* article mentioned his racial views on genetics.
OK, he was misguided on something outside his field, but, geez, hello, the TRANSISTOR? How many other inventions have transformed society (and science- no one was simulating colliding galaxies or folding proteins with vacuum tubes) as much as that little thing? Of course, as an electronic engineer, I might be biased. :-) I design chips with millions of the buggers.
Hear, hear.
And most people, despite whatever protests to the contrary they may make, lie somewhere in between. And that is the great difference between a humanist and a theistic standpoint: the recognition that perfection in all areas of one's life is very, very difficult to achieve. One may strive for moral goodness in both conceptual understandings, but only one is truly understanding and forgiving, that being the former.
Moral failing is certainly not to be excused, but at least we can make a distinction between the person and the work (knowledge?). Though even then there are difficult moral questions that need to be asked and answered. But at least the humanist is prepared to ask the questions, rather than the theistic propensity to place everything into a black and white situation (even whilst taking advantage of the work of the 'morally evil' person). A gross characterization on my behalf for sure, but one that is true enough for my argument.
This risk becoming the quote by which future generations remember the great John Wilkins.
But if you had a cake that (you knew) had been cooked by an unrepentant poisoner, that would not taste as good ...
... which perhaps supports the point, because the bad behaviour is highly relevant in my poisoner example.
"No doubt creationists will continue to miss the point though."
Nah, I'm sure they'll understand seeing as the Big Fella Upstairs had his less-than-pleasant episodes. He may have been a bloodthirsty murderer and have sanctioned rape, incest and human sacrifice but he did some good work with all that creating, eh? :-)
- Exchange between Lord Mark Vorkosigan and his mother, from Lois McMaster Bujold's Mirror Dance
But the Nazi doctors may go beyond just separation of knowledge from moral failings. The epistemics and morality may be inseparably intertwined. Do you really want to know how to poison 100,000 people? How to torture someone with maximum effectiveness? Do you really want to know what a homeless man's underwear looks like after he hasn't taken his clothes off for a year? Maybe there are some things you just shouldn't know. The choice of what knowledge to acquire is an important one.
If purely evil knowledge (whatever exactly that means) was all we got from the Nazi doctors, that might be one thing, but sadly, and ethically challenging, medicine has been informed by some of their experiments (as I recall, a lot of what we know about hypothermia comes from their "research").
That's where the real moral dilemmas come from. The fellow John talks about did some research in an important field which had nothing at all to do with the fact that he was a pedophile. But a lot of those experiments performed on various "undesirables" by Nazi doctors and scientists did build upon our knowledge of the human body, and it becomes trickier. Is it wrong to use findings gained in such a fashion?
Science, to me, is neutral, neither good nor bad, much as a hammer or two-column accounting is neither good nor bad. It is the application where one has to make considerations, but even there, after the fact, it's not that easy. Let's say a hypothetical doctor discovers a cure for diabetes, but, being a psychopathic fellow, decides to carry out his own tests on its effectiveness and to determine safe dosages and so forth. He secretly injects hundreds of people, killing or injuring several before finding the right dosage. Yes, we would certainly throw the guy in the slammer, maybe even, in some parts of the world, he'd end up with a noose around his neck, and deservedly so. But, after we have sent the guy to a hole in the ground, what then? The cure may have been gained in the most vile and immoral of fashions, but it is still a cure. Would a doctor be wrong to administer it, would a diabetic be wrong to receive it?
Stephen, in regard to the comment that "And that is the great difference between a humanist and a theistic standpoint: the recognition that perfection in all areas of one's life is very, very difficult to achieve." I'm not sure what you mean by that. Christianity generally assumes that everyone is not at anywhere near perfect no matter what they do. Very few religions assume perfection is reasonably attainable. And many major religions (such as most forms of Judaism and many forms of Islam) have an attitude that understands that humans generally lie in a gray area between perfect saints and absolute sinners.
I find the judgement that people who commit acts we percieve as morally reprehensible, as evil people, objectionable. There are very many causes of someone coming to a 'deviant' behaviour or view. Their acts may be vile to us, but taking an all or nothing approach to them is just as bad as religous codes dictating the qualitiy of a person with no consideration for circumstance. They need treatment, not judgement, in the same way as so many psychological abnormalities. Or in some cases that were once wdely viewed the same, see homosexuality, it is the many who must change.
Now dont get me wrong, I am not advocating we tolerate pedophilia. I am saying that to snap jusge people will not result in them being free to seek help, it will never allow it to become a discussed issue while it is so taboo, and ultimatly it is 'the children' who will suffer.
Aaron, you are not describing science. I don't have to list the necessary protocols for medical research here, but the behavior you specify lacks all of them, and it includes torture.
The usage of the word "evil" in this article reminds me of those Bush speeches... We are all capable of wrong doing. Some more than others. This is no defense for pedophiles or any kind of sex offenders, but I wonder if using the word evil to depict them is not a little too black and white. We don't want people like this living in our block, but most of them are probably just mentally ill.
The failings of scientists as moral agents shouldn't be downplayed, I agree, so I guess I'm not missing the point here. But the judgement of their actions and the choice of words is a little too simplistic.
Whether or not I am doing science (or, as here, discussing it) I remain a moral agent. I find nothing wrong with calling something evil, and those who do it evil, even if they are caused by their own neurology or some other biology. Hannibal Lector is a moral monster even if we do think he has reasons for all that he does.
One thing I must therefore respectfully disagree with pubcat and gundisalvus over is that we should indeed call pedophilia an evil, and those who wish to pursue it as Gadjusek did evil people. There are people who have these desires who do not follow them up because they know these deeds are evil. Maybe we won't punish those who do it, but instead incarcerate them for attempts at rehabilitation and to protect society. But they are evil if they do evil things. To think otherwise is, I believe, to misunderstand the very concept of evil.
I say this as a full moral relativist and as a biological determinist of some kind.
Fine post, but rather than discuss the issues, might I just suggest that under a title of "Science by Pedophile," the editor portion of your mind ought to have caught the line "and one time Gus showed me the six inch..." prior to your committing it to the screen?
I guess my concern is not for 'rightness' in terms of it as used here, but in terms of concern for the effect of this term on the people who participate in a culture that does judge so. I dont care who is right, in a sense which baffels my usual predeliction for truth, but whether or not we create a culture which fails to address the issue. The Taboo itself, the cultural milieu that is associated with 'Evil' is partially responsibile for the inability of those afflicted to seek the help they need.
Maybe you care to tell it how it is. I myself, give out alot of well labeled spades. The way in which we encounter issues determines how we view them.
A wouldn't necessarily even need to call it science. The Nazi experiments, or what I know of them, were, within a strict methodological context, science, and yet they were torture as well. Sadly, knowledge can be gained by those either ignoring ethical and moral considerations, or intentionally defying them.
#14 I have wanted to do evil things in my life, but decided not to do them. Admittedly, I'm referring to isolated acts, not recurring harmful sex forced on unwilling children. However, as you say, I, too, remain a moral agent who deliberately considers if my behavior is good or bad.
Meanwhile, in my sick fantasies...
Although I recognize and appreciate the sentiment that "Gadjusek was a moral deviant who harmed children...," I can't help but wonder why you felt the need to add "... almost necessarily if he had sex with boys."
Would you care to elaborate? Are you (hopefully inadvertently) suggesting that while the sexual assault of a boy "almost" necessarily results in harm, the sexual assault of a girl might not necessarily result in harm? I'm hoping this was simply a misguided attempt at humor.
It is possible that some children are not harmed by sexual encounters with adults. It is unlikely, and the apologists for pedophilia claim that it is rarely harmful, which is false. I merely wanted to point out that pedophilia is almost always going to harm the child. I certainly had no intention to indicate that sex with pre-pubescent girls was somehow OK. But Gadjusek was interested in boys.
Thank you for the clarification.
Joshua, reading over my comment again I'm not too sure what I was trying to express either. I think I may have been in a mild rant mode and lost myself. Your rebuttal is well taken.