Saturday, January 12, 2008

Francis Crick & James Watson, peas in a pod   posted by Razib @ 1/12/2008 10:48:00 PM
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Steve Sailer has the goods on Francis Crick via his private correspondence. To be short about it Crick seemed to be of the same general opinion as James Watson regarding issues such as race & intelligence; in fact, his survey of the literature & acquaintance with the principals was clearly more thorough. Is anyone particularly surprised by this? Many of the great British scientists were heterodox fellows who generally were disinclined to bend before the winds; note W. D. Hamilton's heresies. I believe that many of these individuals whose opinions and conjectures would raise eyebrows in polite company do approach controversial questions with the same objectivity as that when they study inheritance of bristle number in Drosophila (to paraphrase James F. Crow). I don't think it is any surprise that both W. D. Hamilton and Francis Crick mooted the positive aspects of infanticide. No common men, they. I suspect that their moral sense was a bit deviated from the central tendency...which isn't always a bad thing so long as you don't allow them to manipulate the levers of executive power in an autocracy.

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