The job of a government science website is to inform the public about what science has discovered, not to pass judgment on historical figures for their alleged failure to live up to contemporary progressive standards of opinion.
Someone should make that distinction clear to the men and women at the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI).
The NHGRI is one of 27 separate centers or institutes comprising the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Its particular role is to “collaborat[e] with the scientific and medical communities to catalyze genomic breakthroughs and suppor[t] the robust study and treatment of specific diseases.”
Nowhere in this self-description do we find an obligation to engage in ideological gatekeeping. Yet the NHGRI’s treatment of James Watson, the institute’s first director and the proposer, with Francis Crick, of the now-famous double-helical model of DNA, suggests that the institute feels exactly that responsibility.
A tour of the NHGRI’s website demonstrates the point. According to the institute’s Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA) Fact Sheet page, “[t]he importance of DNA became clear in 1953 thanks to the work of James Watson, Francis Crick, Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin.” Watson’s name, however, is appended with an asterisk:
* James Watson was the first NHGRI Director and appears here as part of our history collection. Despite his scientific achievements, Dr. Watson’s career was also punctuated by a number of offensive and scientifically erroneous comments about his beliefs on race, nationalities, homosexuality, gender, and other societal topics. Dr. Watson’s opinions on these topics are unsupported by science and are counter to the mission and values of NHGRI. (italics in original)
This is poor work on the part of the NHGRI and the leaders who oversee it. Never mind that the apology, as written, makes little sense. (It is unlikely that Watson made “erroneous comments about his beliefs,” as we read here.) The very existence of the statement introduces politics into science unnecessarily and suggests that scientific discovery can be respectably made only by men and women who hold, at all times, opinions suitable to a particular, and increasingly radical, political ideology.
That is not true. Moreover, it betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of how science works. Presumably Isaac Newton subscribed to ideals that today’s progressives would find unpleasant. But we don’t need to litigate them every time we talk about gravity.
The Watson disclaimer appears elsewhere on NHGRI’s site, as well. One finds it on the NHGRI History and Timeline of Events page, on a page listing current and former NHGRI directors, on a page “Reflecting On More Than Two Decades Of The Elsi Experiment,” and on the institute’s Human Genome Project Timeline page.
To be clear, Watson did indeed make statements that fall awkwardly on today’s ears. For example, his 2007 remarks on race, made at the age of 79, are particularly difficult to excuse.
Nevertheless, it is not the NHGRI’s business to litigate the social sins of important scientists. Its job, at least on its website, is to present and celebrate science.
Visitors to many of the NHGRI’s pages are greeted with a banner declaring that NIH websites are changing this fall. Good. The Trump administration should ensure that ideological disclaimers don’t make the move.
