Watson’s career & controversies

1:17:52um, memoir, first-p person memoir about the scientific discovery. It's unusual for its time because a lot of scientists didn't really talk about the human story, but James Watson put puts this out in print. Um, he wanted to get it published in the Harvard press. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> But Francis Crick and Wilkins were like, "No, >> we don't want that." because they read copies of it and it was a lot of >> self arandizing. >> The other thing is he calls Rosie by her nickname he he calls Rosalyn Franklin by her nickname Rosie which at the time was actually uh >> no one no one said that to her face

1:18:32>> because she [clears throat] wasn't really a rosy personality. Right. As I was saying, she's a tough woman. She's a woman in science and a man's field. She's a tough woman. So he's calling her Rosie. He's basically saying that like Rosyn Franklin did not have the scientific expertise and the brain to figure it out on her own and and yeah and the men had to do it. >> Um this creates a lot of tension among all of her colleagues and they're like what are you talking about? And then that's what starts this movement to be like no you're not going to get away with this. We're going to start talking about Rosen Franklin and her >> contributions. Right. That's the That's so crazy given

1:19:16the context because like y'all were putting Legos together in the lab. >> Yeah. >> She was doing X-ray crystalallography. >> Yeah. >> And actually got the key image that created the entire unlock. >> Yes. >> For everything downstream. >> Exactly. >> And to not even like just be able to >> acknowledge >> acknowledge that is weird, bro. >> It's weird. >> That's like weird. really weird. It's really really weird. >> It doesn't make your insight any less important. >> No, >> like it didn't have to be anyway. >> No. Yeah. >> That's crazy. >> It's weird. It's really weird. Um, James Watson goes on to be appointed the director of the Cold Spring Harbor

1:19:57National Lab. This is a private nonprofit research institution. It's kind of like the >> Institute for Advanced Study, but for biology and chemistry and biochemistry. At the time, it was very small. James Watson really transforms this into a research environment that is unparalleled and I will have to give him credit for that. Cold Spring Harbor um lab today is one of the foremost great world institutions when it comes to cancer research when it comes to genetic research. Um they have eight Nobel prizes to their name >> for a single institution that is not a university that's it's just like an institution. It's pretty good. bioarchchive which is the bio biology

1:20:39archive is hosted by them. Okay. They discovered telomeirs, jumping genes, a bunch of other things. So, >> we just talked about telomeirs. Yes. Uh in one of the two episodes ago. >> Yeah. Yeah. So, so they've done a bunch of research and and James Watson was really one of the pioneer drivers of creating that institution. So, I have to give him credit for that. Um in 1990, he actually became head of the human genome project before it was taken over by Francis Collins. He left two years later because the NIH director at the time, Bernardine Healey, um was proposing acquiring patents on gene sequences and he opposed any ownership of laws of nature. So I have

1:21:20to give him credit for that too because he said that genes are something that belong to humanity. You can't like patent something that is within me. That sounds completely absurd. >> So that's also really great. Yes. >> Um, in 1994, he goes back to Cold Spring Harbor, and that's where things get unhinged. Okay. >> Okay. Starts getting old. Maybe he starts thinking he's invincible. >> Um, >> we've seen that story before. >> Yeah. So, in 2000 in Berkeley, Watson gives a lecture where he suggests there's a link between skin color and sex drive. >> No, at Berkeley, >> bro. >> Like, of all institutions at Berkeley, you're going to say this I mean I