{"id":2723,"date":"2008-06-12T14:09:06","date_gmt":"2008-06-12T14:09:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/gregladen\/2008\/06\/12\/elementary-my-dear-dump-watson\/"},"modified":"2008-06-12T14:09:06","modified_gmt":"2008-06-12T14:09:06","slug":"elementary-my-dear-dump-watson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/2008\/06\/12\/elementary-my-dear-dump-watson\/","title":{"rendered":"Elementary, my Dear. Dump Watson."},"content":{"rendered":"

I need to relate a somewhat complicated story about James Watson, Seed, Scienceblogs, Me and You.James Watson was on the board of directors of Seed Magazine at the time he made remarks mentioned in this post<\/a> (reposted earlier today). I was just coming on board Science Blogs at that time, so I’m a little fuzzy on this, but my understanding is that many\/most\/all Sblings issued some sort of complaint, in blogs or via the Sb staff or whatever (as I say, I was barely aware of my surroundings at the time, having just been born), about Watson’s affiliation.After a period of time, there has been additional discussion of this, but since it is all “back channel” I am not at liberty to discuss any of it. All I will say is that this came up again recently when someone realized that Watson was “still on the board”… Which would be a little troubling given that his inexcusable remarks were made over a half a year ago.However, if you look real close, Watson is not actually listed as a board member. Rather, he is listed as an adviser to the board. This, to me, looks a little odd. Board are advisory bodies. Moving Watson from board member to adviser to the board looks and smells to me like a way of technically removing him from the board while at the same time not really removing him from the board.I hasten to add that I am not as familiar with the situation as I probably could be, and I’ve never been in direct contact with anyone at the highest levels of Seed. There is a certain chance that I am misinterpreting this “adviser” position, or that I am simply misinformed. However, I have made complaints about the Watson connection, and no one in authority has responded directly to me or to my knowledge to anyone (yes, there were “responses” and “conversations” but nothing I was privy to and I know of no details).A few months ago questions came up as to why Watson was still on the board, and a few Sblings blogged their discontent. II wrote a very strong post about this issue and sent the draft to the editors, without posting it, hoping a calm, cool, and collected transition could occur. A day or so later assurances were made that this problem was being dealt with.But now, months have gone by and Watson is still a prominent member of “The Team.” <\/a> I will not be making any more back channel comments. Nor will I go out of my way to attack Seed, it’s owners, or Watson on my blog. But I will be writing about the issue of race, racism, and the stuff James Watson says about it.You may want to lock the children up. This is not likely to be pretty.Meanwhile, if you feel badly that Seed continues to support Watson and\/or visa versa, in this strange and sticky relationship, I recommend this post<\/a> for further consideration and, indeed, instruction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I need to relate a somewhat complicated story about James Watson, Seed, Scienceblogs, Me and You.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[61],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5fhV1-HV","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2723"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2723"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2723\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}