James D. Watson Quotes


If someone's liver doesn't work, we blame it on the genes; if someone's brain doesn't work properly, we blame the school. It's actually more humane to think of the condition as genetic. For instance, you don't want to say that someone is born unpleasant, but sometimes that might be true.


Citations

Watson, James D. Interview by David Derbyshire. The Telegraph, 19 Feb. 2003.

Related Quotes

She was one of Francis Galton’s collaborators in his laboratory. This particular quotation if true challenges some of the basic aspects of democracy itself. However, it was a large part of the basis for the Eugenics movement, and is still argued by some today.


This pseudo-scientific organization, in spite of the junk science it was promulgating, actually had a substantial American following and over 20 states actually passed laws to allow forced sterilization who were “UNFIT”. In reality while there is a genetic component to each of the examples it only increases the probabilities and is not determinative. And even f it were and there were selective breeding of humans, these “TRAITS” would not be eliminated in 3 generations.


James D. Watson
James D. Watson
  • Born: April 6, 1928
  • Nationality: American
  • Profession: Scientist

James Dewey Watson KBE is an American molecular biologist, geneticist and zoologist. In 1953, he co-authored with Francis Crick the academic paper proposing the double helix structure of the DNA molecule. Watson, Crick and Maurice Wilkins were awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material". In subsequent years, it has been recognized that Watson and his colleagues did not properly attribute colleague Rosalind Franklin for her contributions to the discovery of the double helix structure.