WEBVTT - Ep142 "Do breakthroughs require rule-breakers?" with Eric Weinstein 0:00:05.200 --> 0:00:10.800 Why do revolutionary ideas so often come from outsiders? Do 0:00:11.039 --> 0:00:16.440 good scientists sometimes crowd out great scientists? Do we still 0:00:16.440 --> 0:00:20.520 have room for scientific cowboys? And what is the relationship 0:00:20.560 --> 0:00:26.439 between national security and modern science? Are scientists participants in 0:00:26.520 --> 0:00:30.159 a larger game that they barely see? What if the 0:00:30.200 --> 0:00:33.440 most important ideas are the ones you're not allowed to 0:00:33.479 --> 0:00:37.080 hear about. From universities to public health to Watson and 0:00:37.200 --> 0:00:40.159 crick and nuclear bombs and AI. Today we're going to 0:00:40.240 --> 0:00:45.240 cover it all with physicists and mathematician and iconoclast Eric Weinstein. 0:00:45.600 --> 0:00:51.120 So get ready for a great brain stretch. Welcome to 0:00:51.159 --> 0:00:54.600 Inner Cosmos with me David Eagleman. I'm a neuroscientist and 0:00:54.600 --> 0:00:57.520 an author at Stanford, and in these episodes we sail 0:00:57.680 --> 0:01:01.720 deeply into our three pound universe to understand how we 0:01:01.800 --> 0:01:04.480 see the world, and as we'll discuss today, we don't 0:01:04.520 --> 0:01:21.160 always see what we believe we're seeing. We usually think 0:01:21.200 --> 0:01:25.880 of science as a calm enterprise that's cumulative. You have 0:01:26.000 --> 0:01:30.680 thousands of people testing hypotheses, you have vast amounts of 0:01:30.800 --> 0:01:36.560 data getting gathered and knowledge slowly accretes. But underneath that 0:01:36.760 --> 0:01:40.720 veneer sometimes things can be a little more turbulent, because 0:01:41.000 --> 0:01:47.160 what happens sometimes is that scientific discoveries can quickly reshape 0:01:47.200 --> 0:01:50.840 economies and alter what nations can do to each other, 0:01:51.200 --> 0:01:56.600 and redraw political boundaries and redirect the future long before 0:01:57.040 --> 0:02:01.560 most of us even notice. In other words, ideas that 0:02:01.640 --> 0:02:06.240 begin on a chalkboard can end up steering history. But 0:02:06.280 --> 0:02:10.359 we very rarely pause to ask whether the way science 0:02:10.440 --> 0:02:15.320 is organize today is matched to the power it now holds. 0:02:15.919 --> 0:02:20.040 Who decides which questions get asked or which lines of 0:02:20.160 --> 0:02:26.160 inquiry get funded. How much of scientific progress depends on conformity, 0:02:26.240 --> 0:02:29.360 and how much of it depends on rule breakers who 0:02:29.400 --> 0:02:33.160 are willing to look crazy before they are proven right. 0:02:33.800 --> 0:02:37.800 These questions sit at the intersection of labs and nations, 0:02:37.880 --> 0:02:41.520 and they matter more than ever in a world where 0:02:41.560 --> 0:02:46.000 any single discovery could reverberate globally. My guest today is 0:02:46.040 --> 0:02:50.280 someone who spent years thinking about science from that high altitude. 0:02:50.600 --> 0:02:54.519 Eric Weinstein is a mathematician, a physicist, and a public 0:02:54.560 --> 0:03:00.720 intellectual who is unusually thoughtful about the architecture of knowledge, 0:03:01.120 --> 0:03:05.000 like how ideas are filtered by the system and how 0:03:05.120 --> 0:03:10.840 originality survives or fails inside universities. Eric hosts a podcast 0:03:10.919 --> 0:03:14.400 called the portal, and he has a reputation for asking 0:03:14.520 --> 0:03:19.280 questions that make people uncomfortable and for refusing to treat 0:03:19.440 --> 0:03:25.359 existing structures as inevitable just because they are familiar. Today, 0:03:25.440 --> 0:03:27.919 Eric and I are going to talk about how discovery 0:03:28.240 --> 0:03:32.240 really happens, who it serves, and what might be required 0:03:32.360 --> 0:03:35.480 if we want science to live up to its highest 0:03:35.560 --> 0:03:45.480 ideals in the decades ahead. Here's my conversation with Eric Weinstein. So, Eric, 0:03:45.600 --> 0:03:48.120 Jim Watson recently passed away, and I know that you 0:03:48.360 --> 0:03:50.960 were close with him and you really admired him. Tell 0:03:51.000 --> 0:03:51.440 me about that. 0:03:52.040 --> 0:03:52.320 Well. 0:03:53.440 --> 0:03:55.680 I spent time with Jim, and for the time that 0:03:55.720 --> 0:03:59.520 we were together was very intense. But Jim is in 0:03:59.560 --> 0:04:03.920 many ways my spirit animal. And one of the things 0:04:03.960 --> 0:04:07.640 that's really important is to recognize who Jim was as 0:04:07.640 --> 0:04:13.480 a scientist, who he was as a writer, and to 0:04:13.600 --> 0:04:17.240 relegate everything else that he was to a tertiary status 0:04:18.000 --> 0:04:22.640 that shouldn't distract us from the miracle that was Jim. 0:04:22.880 --> 0:04:23.800 Give me example of that. 0:04:24.320 --> 0:04:27.240 What's happened is that people who are not close to 0:04:27.360 --> 0:04:32.400 science have set up a mimetic complex, which Jim Watson 0:04:33.520 --> 0:04:37.320 auto completes somehow to a bunch of things that are 0:04:37.480 --> 0:04:38.480 much less relevant. 0:04:38.520 --> 0:04:41.680 So you know, can you unpack that? Sure? 0:04:41.880 --> 0:04:45.320 Imagine that you knew Archimedes personally, and Archimedes had some 0:04:45.360 --> 0:04:47.400 sort of like personal hygiene problem. 0:04:47.440 --> 0:04:49.640 They didn't brush, you know. 0:04:49.920 --> 0:04:54.160 Okay, so you imagine that everybody in Archimedes time. Oh 0:04:54.360 --> 0:04:57.520 the breath on Archimedes was so terrible, you know, but 0:04:57.560 --> 0:05:02.359 that's Archimedes. We important to recognize that that was Jim Watson. 0:05:02.480 --> 0:05:06.680 Jim Watson was a blinding figure of science, world science, 0:05:06.760 --> 0:05:11.599 American science in particular, and he auto completes to some 0:05:11.680 --> 0:05:15.840 stuff that is far less relevant and salient. And so 0:05:16.040 --> 0:05:21.080 it's important to me that we discussed Jim Watson and 0:05:21.160 --> 0:05:23.640 not be captured by when we happen to be having 0:05:23.640 --> 0:05:26.920 the conversation, because this is a ten thousand year. As 0:05:26.960 --> 0:05:28.800 long as there are humans and as long as there 0:05:28.839 --> 0:05:32.120 will be life as we know it, Jim Watson will 0:05:32.120 --> 0:05:33.960 be one of the most important people who ever lived. 0:05:34.160 --> 0:05:36.279 And when you say auto completes, you mean in people's 0:05:36.320 --> 0:05:38.560 heads they think Jim Watson and then they think X 0:05:38.640 --> 0:05:38.920 Y Z. 0:05:39.920 --> 0:05:42.840 Well, yes, but again we're falling into the trap. So 0:05:42.920 --> 0:05:44.800 let's briefly go into the trap and then only to 0:05:45.279 --> 0:05:47.640 like it's a picture plant. Let's go into the picture plant, 0:05:47.640 --> 0:05:49.640 help ourselves to a couple of deep gulps, and then 0:05:49.680 --> 0:05:52.480 get the hell out. Okay, great, Okay, So Jim Watson 0:05:52.520 --> 0:05:56.920 auto completes right now to Rosalind Franklin. Ah And if 0:05:57.000 --> 0:05:59.240 you ask me, if you care about Rosalind Franklin, you 0:05:59.240 --> 0:06:01.000 should be carrying about Irwin Chargaff. 0:06:01.200 --> 0:06:03.200 Nobody talks about chargaph interruption. 0:06:03.640 --> 0:06:07.360 So Krick and Watson discovered the structure of DNA, published 0:06:07.360 --> 0:06:10.160 that in April of nineteen fifty three, and they ended 0:06:10.240 --> 0:06:13.360 up winning the Nobel Prize with Maurice Wilkins for that work. 0:06:13.920 --> 0:06:17.560 People then came out and said, look, Rosalind Franklin had 0:06:17.600 --> 0:06:23.000 taken the first photographs of the structure and didn't recognize 0:06:24.000 --> 0:06:26.800 what it was, the double helix structure, but should have 0:06:26.800 --> 0:06:29.039 gotten credit. That's what we're referring to here. Just so 0:06:29.240 --> 0:06:30.280 not really okay. 0:06:31.400 --> 0:06:36.080 Roslind Franklin had taken done the X ray crystallography on 0:06:36.160 --> 0:06:39.960 nucleic acid and had this famous Maltese cross, which Watson 0:06:40.640 --> 0:06:45.120 and Krick took to mean that the structure of the 0:06:45.200 --> 0:06:48.160 nucleic acid was likely to be helical, not double helic. 0:06:48.400 --> 0:06:49.000 Just helical. 0:06:49.720 --> 0:06:53.839 They were under suspicion by their colleagues of not knowing anything, 0:06:54.880 --> 0:06:58.839 of being so enamored of Linus Paulling's great achievement in 0:06:58.920 --> 0:07:01.760 that discovery the alpha helix, which ended up as a 0:07:01.760 --> 0:07:05.520 secondary structure of protein that they were trying to copy 0:07:06.760 --> 0:07:11.120 palling and to shove nucleic acid into a form that 0:07:11.600 --> 0:07:13.200 there was no reason to think that it had to 0:07:13.240 --> 0:07:15.840 be that. And so the part of the the part 0:07:15.840 --> 0:07:18.080 of the problem of this story is that Rosslyn Frank 0:07:18.240 --> 0:07:22.440 was absolutely correct. There was no reason that DNA had 0:07:22.480 --> 0:07:27.280 to be helical. That's good science, it's very good science. 0:07:27.600 --> 0:07:30.680 And it's an absolute cautionary tale. Why you can't let 0:07:30.800 --> 0:07:32.640 good scientists run science. 0:07:33.000 --> 0:07:36.680 Ah, because you're making a distinction between good scientists and 0:07:36.680 --> 0:07:39.360 great scientists. Okay, I see. 0:07:39.240 --> 0:07:42.160 Jim Jim Watson, in my opinion, was not a good scientist. 0:07:42.240 --> 0:07:43.200 He was a great scientist. 0:07:43.200 --> 0:07:44.360 He was a great scientist. 0:07:44.400 --> 0:07:46.560 And there it's not that you take good science and 0:07:46.600 --> 0:07:48.600 turn it up to eleven to get great science. It's 0:07:48.640 --> 0:07:49.960 a different process. 0:07:50.640 --> 0:07:52.880 Okay. And you think of this as cowboys is that? 0:07:52.920 --> 0:07:57.840 Which is that correct? You call cowboys science? YIPI ka, Okay, 0:07:57.880 --> 0:08:01.160 So let's unpack that. So, yeah, what does cowboy science 0:08:01.160 --> 0:08:04.200 look like? And actually let's continue this story in that context. 0:08:04.280 --> 0:08:09.720 Well, you see, Jim and Francis were searching a much 0:08:09.800 --> 0:08:13.560 smaller landscape because they were convinced that it was going 0:08:13.600 --> 0:08:16.480 to be helical. Okay, so they didn't have to think 0:08:16.520 --> 0:08:18.840 about all the possible like if you ever spend time 0:08:18.880 --> 0:08:22.480 with the protein data bank, my god, does nature get 0:08:22.560 --> 0:08:26.160 up to some fun architecture really, I mean just unbelievably 0:08:26.200 --> 0:08:30.080 beautiful things. And they didn't think it was going to 0:08:30.120 --> 0:08:32.640 be any of those things. So Jim and Francis were 0:08:32.679 --> 0:08:38.560 in part not reasonable people, and they made a point 0:08:39.760 --> 0:08:42.920 of telling everybody that if you weren't working on nucleic acid, 0:08:42.960 --> 0:08:44.760 you were an idea that they didn't have time to 0:08:44.760 --> 0:08:47.440 go to seminars that were mere distractions. This is the 0:08:47.440 --> 0:08:49.720 difference between good science and great science. 0:08:49.800 --> 0:08:51.000 Exactly what we're. 0:08:50.880 --> 0:08:55.880 Doing is we're driving great science out of academics and 0:08:55.920 --> 0:08:58.800 out of research so that we have this proliferation of 0:08:58.840 --> 0:09:01.680 good science. Don't do this, people who are not a 0:09:01.720 --> 0:09:05.920 walking hr nightmare. Yeah, which is a catastrophic decision. 0:09:06.280 --> 0:09:08.960 So just before we get to that, just for the audience, 0:09:09.000 --> 0:09:09.679 I want to mention. 0:09:09.880 --> 0:09:13.680 So Eric knew Jim Watson, I as a postdoc worked 0:09:13.679 --> 0:09:16.240 with Franciskriek. Neither of us knew the other one, but 0:09:16.320 --> 0:09:19.520 we both got to spend time with these two giants 0:09:19.760 --> 0:09:24.360 of my god a biology. Yeah. Okay, So so you're 0:09:24.400 --> 0:09:27.839 categorizing that as great scientists as opposed to good scientists. 0:09:27.840 --> 0:09:30.400 So what's the problem that you see in academia in 0:09:30.480 --> 0:09:34.000 terms of support of good science and not great science. 0:09:34.040 --> 0:09:37.720 Well, you need both, You absolutely need both. And one 0:09:37.760 --> 0:09:40.360 of the tasks for people in the great science model 0:09:41.280 --> 0:09:45.000 is not to crap all over their good science colleagues. 0:09:46.040 --> 0:09:51.520 And in fact, Jim was extremely kind in my experience 0:09:52.200 --> 0:09:55.360 to Roslin. Franklin and I discussed her at great length, 0:09:56.480 --> 0:09:59.280 and he didn't pritify the story and by which you 0:09:59.280 --> 0:10:02.320 mean making a pretty Yeah, well he was an ass. 0:10:02.800 --> 0:10:05.560 He met your daughter and wife right, and he behaved 0:10:05.559 --> 0:10:09.120 abysmally towards them. But then he behaved in a very 0:10:09.160 --> 0:10:13.600 kind fashion as well, like what my daughter asked him 0:10:13.600 --> 0:10:17.120 a question, as I recall in a crowded room, I 0:10:17.120 --> 0:10:22.400 don't know, age twelve or thirteen, about the origin of 0:10:22.440 --> 0:10:25.599 the organelles or how did mitochondria end up in the 0:10:25.640 --> 0:10:30.800 eukaryotic cell. Was it an infection? And he looked at 0:10:30.800 --> 0:10:34.440 her and he said, you know this Nobel Laureate eighty eight, 0:10:35.520 --> 0:10:38.320 world famous. Oh, I don't have any interest in that, 0:10:41.440 --> 0:10:45.280 you know. It reminds me of Miles Davis talking to 0:10:45.280 --> 0:10:48.000 a three year old kid who was seeking his autograph, 0:10:48.000 --> 0:10:49.800 and I think that his famous line was something like, 0:10:49.840 --> 0:10:52.520 he looks up expecting to see an adult shows her. 0:10:52.640 --> 0:10:56.240 I sees this tiny kid tugging at his pant leg. 0:10:56.640 --> 0:10:59.800 He looks at it, says, fuck off, kid, Oh god, okay, 0:11:00.000 --> 0:11:04.640 all right. But then Jim came back, you know, at 0:11:04.679 --> 0:11:08.920 some point, and he said, which one is your wife? 0:11:10.760 --> 0:11:13.160 And I said, the economist who mopped the floor with 0:11:13.200 --> 0:11:14.840 you intellectually at dinner last night. 0:11:15.720 --> 0:11:16.960 He said, oh, she's very good. 0:11:18.600 --> 0:11:22.559 Because he was completely dismissive of her being female and 0:11:22.600 --> 0:11:24.520 all these things. He said, you want to know why 0:11:24.520 --> 0:11:29.000 your children are so intelligent? I said, excuse me. He said, well, 0:11:29.040 --> 0:11:31.719 your daughter is obviously very intelligent, as is your son, 0:11:31.720 --> 0:11:34.280 because he knew both of them. So even though he 0:11:34.360 --> 0:11:37.920 was cruel, he thought very highly. And I said why 0:11:38.000 --> 0:11:39.760 do you think He said, well, you can't just do 0:11:39.800 --> 0:11:41.880 it with one set of genes. You should thank your wife. 0:11:42.080 --> 0:11:49.760 Oh it's lovely. Well, but he was a misogynist, but 0:11:50.200 --> 0:11:54.720 women loved him. But he was very kind and active 0:11:54.720 --> 0:11:59.160 in promoting female careers. Like you don't understand the complexity 0:12:00.160 --> 0:12:03.360 of this particular guy. Was he a horse's ass? 0:12:03.440 --> 0:12:03.960 He was? 0:12:05.240 --> 0:12:08.680 And I'm not saying that's great. I got a chance 0:12:08.720 --> 0:12:11.600 to tell him to shut up multiple times and he 0:12:11.679 --> 0:12:12.040 took it. 0:12:12.240 --> 0:12:13.240 But you had to back it up. 0:12:13.280 --> 0:12:15.960 You know, you can't just mumble something about racism or 0:12:16.000 --> 0:12:20.720 sexism because DNA and its implications are absolutely profound and 0:12:20.760 --> 0:12:23.800 most of us haven't wrestled with. And I also believe 0:12:23.840 --> 0:12:27.000 that Jim came from a place of kindness and goodness 0:12:27.080 --> 0:12:28.160 that isn't recognized. 0:12:28.280 --> 0:12:30.120 Is there anything that we can learn from the story 0:12:30.160 --> 0:12:33.760 of Roslin Franklin and Jim Watson that allows us to 0:12:33.840 --> 0:12:35.120 do better science? 0:12:35.480 --> 0:12:35.880 I think so. 0:12:36.200 --> 0:12:39.679 I mean, I think that recognizing that there are these 0:12:39.720 --> 0:12:44.080 different styles of science and that we need all of 0:12:44.120 --> 0:12:48.800 these styles of science would be very helpful, and that 0:12:49.040 --> 0:12:51.400 in general, I don't think a Jim Watson would want 0:12:51.600 --> 0:12:54.120 to drive a Rosalind Franklin out of science at all. 0:12:54.920 --> 0:12:57.760 But the problem is is that there is absolutely no 0:12:58.000 --> 0:13:01.880 place for this cowboy science within the standard framework. So 0:13:01.920 --> 0:13:04.480 if you look, for example, at the interactions with Chargaff, 0:13:05.280 --> 0:13:08.440 Chargaff is absolutely merciless to Watson and Crek. He calls 0:13:08.480 --> 0:13:10.920 them two pitchmen in search of a helix. 0:13:11.240 --> 0:13:13.320 Okay, wait, hold on, So first tells who Chargraph is 0:13:13.360 --> 0:13:14.880 and tells what a pitch man is. I don't know 0:13:14.920 --> 0:13:15.480 that term. 0:13:15.760 --> 0:13:19.560 So Irwin Chargaff is a Columbia professor. I believe that 0:13:19.640 --> 0:13:22.880 he came probably from Vienna. I think he spoke five languages, 0:13:22.920 --> 0:13:25.200 maybe English was his fifth. He wrote one of the 0:13:25.200 --> 0:13:28.880 most amazing books in the history of biology, called Heracletian Fire, 0:13:28.920 --> 0:13:34.040 which nobody's read, and in it he tells the story 0:13:34.280 --> 0:13:38.320 of figuring out that the equimolar relations, where he figured 0:13:38.320 --> 0:13:41.560 out that the amount of the nucleotides was exactly paired 0:13:41.559 --> 0:13:44.400 when you chopped up whatever the nucleic acid was. 0:13:45.280 --> 0:13:45.880 So we had this. 0:13:46.960 --> 0:13:49.240 Meaning you have the same amount of a's and t's 0:13:49.760 --> 0:13:50.960 and the same amount. 0:13:50.640 --> 0:13:53.560 Of seeds as that's right and so. 0:13:53.679 --> 0:13:55.960 But there was no explanation for it. So it was 0:13:56.000 --> 0:13:58.440 what we would call a fine tuning mystery. Now, isn't 0:13:58.440 --> 0:13:59.960 it interesting? What is it fine tuning mystery? 0:14:00.000 --> 0:14:00.840 Well, that's usually we. 0:14:01.240 --> 0:14:05.920 Encounter it in physics, like is the universe finally tuned 0:14:05.960 --> 0:14:08.360 for life? If the proton were a little bit less 0:14:08.360 --> 0:14:10.400 heavy or a little bit more heavy, it wouldn't work. 0:14:10.440 --> 0:14:14.400 And how is the curvature exactly? Everything is just so right? 0:14:14.800 --> 0:14:17.040 And usually what there is is there's an explanation in 0:14:17.040 --> 0:14:21.360 this case, like the hydrogen bonds which enforced the pairing. 0:14:21.400 --> 0:14:25.240 It wasn't an accident. And of course people always somebody 0:14:25.240 --> 0:14:26.800 will always say, maybe it's a coincidence. 0:14:26.920 --> 0:14:28.680 You can't conclude that right. 0:14:28.200 --> 0:14:31.840 So what Watson and Crick did is they took that 0:14:31.960 --> 0:14:35.680 information of CHARGEV and CHARGAV, I believe came up with 0:14:35.760 --> 0:14:39.880 a mobius band theory of nucleic acid. He said, if 0:14:39.880 --> 0:14:42.800 he'd only been able to work with a Rosalind Franklin, 0:14:42.840 --> 0:14:45.560 he would have gotten it. And Jim, to his credit, said, 0:14:45.880 --> 0:14:49.560 if Rosalind Franklin had simply spent one day decamping from 0:14:49.600 --> 0:14:52.480 her atomacy, that we didn't have enough information to say 0:14:52.480 --> 0:14:54.160 it was a helix. He said she would have gotten 0:14:54.200 --> 0:14:59.040 it in an afternoon, an amazing claim that Rosalind Franklin 0:14:59.040 --> 0:15:02.120 would have gotten the double helix in an afternoon but 0:15:02.320 --> 0:15:05.720 for her insistence on being a good scientist. I see, 0:15:05.840 --> 0:15:09.280 And so you have to understand that what Jim was 0:15:09.320 --> 0:15:12.160 willing to acknowledge about Rosalind Franklin was in many ways 0:15:12.160 --> 0:15:19.680 incredibly complimentary. But Chargaff writes very clearly that these pitchmen, 0:15:19.880 --> 0:15:22.200 he means, you know, think about Silicon Valley where you 0:15:22.240 --> 0:15:25.440 now it pitched me bro Okay. He saw them as 0:15:25.480 --> 0:15:29.120 a couple of ne'er dwells. They didn't know any biochemistry, 0:15:30.440 --> 0:15:32.240 That's what he says. He says, they don't know anybody. 0:15:33.400 --> 0:15:37.880 You know, after they get the double helix, he writes, 0:15:38.520 --> 0:15:40.280 you can tell how late in the day it is 0:15:40.320 --> 0:15:44.120 in biology that such pigmies would throw such long shadows. 0:15:44.440 --> 0:15:49.040 You have to understand that this you and I, I 0:15:49.040 --> 0:15:52.480 mean you knew Francis, I didn't I. And to be blunt, 0:15:52.520 --> 0:15:56.840 I think Francis was the more intellectually deep of the two. 0:15:57.720 --> 0:15:59.600 And I told you before that even though I thought 0:15:59.760 --> 0:16:01.760 France and this was smarter, I thought Jim was far 0:16:01.840 --> 0:16:09.840 more important. And they represented two halves of great science. 0:16:10.040 --> 0:16:13.080 And Jim was that brash. I think he was taken 0:16:13.120 --> 0:16:15.840 into the University of Chicago at age fifteen, So shout 0:16:15.840 --> 0:16:18.880 out to the University of Chicago. Let's get back to 0:16:18.920 --> 0:16:21.120 taking twelve year olds, thirteen year olds, and fourteen year 0:16:21.160 --> 0:16:24.400 olds into our universities. In the University of Chicago in 0:16:24.480 --> 0:16:27.440 particular is probably our top university, with every other one 0:16:27.520 --> 0:16:29.920 falling off of some cliff. For God's sakes, we don't 0:16:29.960 --> 0:16:36.040 know why that brashness that Jim had and that eccentricity 0:16:36.040 --> 0:16:42.200 that Francis had were essential in Chargef's chargeff Oh, I 0:16:42.280 --> 0:16:45.960 wish I could read it just he writes so beautifully, 0:16:46.400 --> 0:16:48.520 But he talks about the fact he said, the idea 0:16:49.600 --> 0:16:54.440 that the odds that two geniuses would fall into his orbit, 0:16:55.080 --> 0:16:57.960 knowing nothing of biochemistry and solve this problem was so 0:16:58.080 --> 0:17:02.360 vanishingly small that it didn't even warrant consideration. 0:17:03.400 --> 0:17:07.520 Wow. Wow, this is why peer review doesn't work. Right. 0:17:07.600 --> 0:17:11.399 So, in large measure, the history of DNA and the 0:17:11.440 --> 0:17:15.760 history of the genetic code again discovered by someone outside 0:17:15.800 --> 0:17:18.840 the fabled RNA TI club, so that all the top 0:17:18.880 --> 0:17:21.520 people were assembled to crack the genetic code, and the 0:17:21.560 --> 0:17:23.800 guy who was outside of it, named Marshall Nierenberg was 0:17:23.840 --> 0:17:26.640 the one who cracks it ten years later in sixty three. 0:17:27.920 --> 0:17:32.719 This is the greatest story of recent years that you 0:17:32.760 --> 0:17:35.359 and I are within the living memory of Watson and Crick. 0:17:35.600 --> 0:17:38.479 And by the way, that book, the Double Helix, you know, 0:17:38.600 --> 0:17:41.280 great literature begins with things like it was the best 0:17:41.320 --> 0:17:43.080 of times, it was the worst of times, or in 0:17:43.119 --> 0:17:46.000 the beginning, or some memorable call me Ishmael. 0:17:46.640 --> 0:17:50.000 Watson began and ended that book. 0:17:50.680 --> 0:17:52.960 Saying he's never seen Francis Crick in a humble mood, 0:17:53.440 --> 0:17:54.720 modest mood, modest mood. 0:17:54.760 --> 0:17:57.199 Right, yeah, perhaps he is with others, but it's not 0:17:57.280 --> 0:17:58.359 so with me or whatever it is. 0:17:59.400 --> 0:18:01.920 Oh my god, can that guy write? I mean that 0:18:02.080 --> 0:18:04.160 was literature, man, Yeah, agreed. 0:18:04.320 --> 0:18:11.880 So anyway, I just I love Jim unapologetically, and I'm 0:18:12.000 --> 0:18:15.159 well aware of the total of the total nature of 0:18:15.160 --> 0:18:16.520 the man, and I'm not going to sweep any of 0:18:16.520 --> 0:18:18.480 that into the rug. And by the way, I don't 0:18:18.520 --> 0:18:21.600 think we stripped him of his official titles at cold 0:18:21.640 --> 0:18:25.120 Spring Harbor until two thousand and seven, and I don't 0:18:25.119 --> 0:18:27.840 think we stripped him of his honorary titles until twenty 0:18:27.920 --> 0:18:31.080 nineteen or something like that. And that, my friends, was 0:18:31.160 --> 0:18:33.639 the American system that we could be proud of, that 0:18:33.720 --> 0:18:39.160 a complete horses ass like Jim Watson would be kept 0:18:39.520 --> 0:18:45.440 within the system of our institutions and celebrated and not 0:18:45.640 --> 0:18:49.639 be seen as a walking hr problem waiting to happen. 0:18:50.359 --> 0:18:52.679 I mean he was seen as that walking again was 0:18:52.960 --> 0:18:55.760 by walking hr problem waiting to happen. 0:18:55.960 --> 0:18:59.280 He was that twelve times a day. Yeah, exactly. 0:18:59.320 --> 0:19:01.960 But my point is we didn't throw him out until 0:19:02.080 --> 0:19:04.159 very late in the game when we were determined to 0:19:04.240 --> 0:19:04.960 lose our mojo. 0:19:05.600 --> 0:19:05.879 Ah. 0:19:05.920 --> 0:19:09.480 Interesting, okay, And so coming back to this idea of 0:19:09.560 --> 0:19:13.320 cowboy science, it's the Krick and Watson's it's the Nuremberg. 0:19:13.400 --> 0:19:17.760 It's the ways of coming in from the outside and 0:19:17.800 --> 0:19:20.720 proposing something breaking the rules. 0:19:21.000 --> 0:19:25.840 Yeah, it's based on the middle finger. It's based on 0:19:25.960 --> 0:19:30.760 being true to science and telling the National Security Complex, 0:19:30.800 --> 0:19:35.240 the National Interest Complex, your department, your funder to sit 0:19:35.320 --> 0:19:36.080 down and shut up. 0:19:37.560 --> 0:19:39.879 And by the way, you know, I've talked about purity 0:19:39.920 --> 0:19:44.160 view before, but one thing we know is that when 0:19:44.240 --> 0:19:47.119 Krick and Watson came up with this structure and they said, hey, 0:19:47.160 --> 0:19:48.840 we think it's a double helix, or the as and 0:19:48.840 --> 0:19:50.440 t's and c's and g's are wanting to each other. 0:19:51.240 --> 0:19:54.880 They sent the typed manuscript over to Nature. Crick's wife 0:19:54.960 --> 0:19:57.840 drew the double helix picture, which is gorgeous picture by 0:19:57.880 --> 0:20:01.159 gorgeous picture because he was terror trying and she was 0:20:01.160 --> 0:20:04.719 really adeal no deal exactly. She was a good artist. Anyway, 0:20:04.760 --> 0:20:08.119 they sent it over to Nature, which Kriik told me 0:20:08.520 --> 0:20:11.280 at the time was a man and two boys, and 0:20:11.760 --> 0:20:15.719 the yailed the mandscript over yeah, the editor, and it 0:20:15.760 --> 0:20:17.800 got published. There was no peer review at the time. 0:20:18.160 --> 0:20:21.439 There was no peer review until nineteen sixty five to 0:20:21.520 --> 0:20:26.280 seventy five. This is a fabricated story, largely due to Merton, 0:20:27.400 --> 0:20:32.680 that was backfitted and retconned into outside reviewing and outside 0:20:32.720 --> 0:20:37.440 refereeing which occurred being turned into peer review. But basically 0:20:37.440 --> 0:20:40.280 it's a fabricated story of the history of science. 0:20:40.359 --> 0:20:43.119 Sorry you're saying. The fabricated story is that peer review 0:20:43.359 --> 0:20:45.320 wasn't drew to at some point, and then it was 0:20:45.680 --> 0:20:47.120 claimed that it was older than that. 0:20:47.720 --> 0:20:50.959 The story is that peer review begins with the founding 0:20:51.000 --> 0:20:53.440 of the Royal Society and has been with science ever since. 0:20:53.880 --> 0:20:54.040 Ah. 0:20:54.400 --> 0:20:55.399 Usually that's not true. 0:20:55.480 --> 0:20:59.280 No, it's untrue. And the willingness of the Academy to 0:20:59.400 --> 0:21:04.280 lie about that, bold faced lie about this it might 0:21:04.320 --> 0:21:04.960 be ignorance. 0:21:05.080 --> 0:21:05.679 No, it's not. 0:21:06.359 --> 0:21:09.120 Well, it depends who you mean by the Academy. Had 0:21:09.200 --> 0:21:11.040 you asked me before you told me about peer review, 0:21:11.080 --> 0:21:13.720 I would have. But if I showed you, yeah, the 0:21:13.760 --> 0:21:18.480 history of peer review. Right, the Academy wants to say 0:21:18.480 --> 0:21:22.119 that outside refereeing is peer review, and it isn't. The 0:21:22.200 --> 0:21:26.280 double helix is a great example of something. I believe 0:21:26.400 --> 0:21:28.760 that in Horace Judson's Eight Day of Creation it could 0:21:28.760 --> 0:21:32.919 be sourced elsewhere. The claim was that Watson Creek couldn't 0:21:32.920 --> 0:21:36.879 be peer reviewed because there was too much information in 0:21:36.920 --> 0:21:39.320 the one page paper. You know, as you know, they 0:21:39.320 --> 0:21:41.320 had a fight as to whether to write something very 0:21:41.359 --> 0:21:46.359 complete or something very incomplete. And you will notice that 0:21:47.480 --> 0:21:49.800 there's a phrase it has not escaped our notice that 0:21:50.280 --> 0:21:53.320 you know this? Yes, yes, so more or less that 0:21:53.359 --> 0:21:54.520 was a twenty page paper. 0:21:54.560 --> 0:21:56.159 It has not escaped. I noticed that. 0:21:56.200 --> 0:21:58.399 Right by the way for the audience, it's they were saying, 0:21:58.480 --> 0:22:00.639 it is giving this double heelos ructure, it has not 0:22:00.760 --> 0:22:03.080 escaped our notice that. You know, you could unzip this 0:22:03.240 --> 0:22:06.440 and duplicate it this way where each strand of the 0:22:06.560 --> 0:22:09.760 DNA then gets the complementary nucleotides on it, and you 0:22:09.800 --> 0:22:13.040 can do this amazing thing that way. Right, They just 0:22:13.119 --> 0:22:15.120 mentioned it when well, have you been to the Eagle Pub? 0:22:15.720 --> 0:22:17.240 I have not. You have to go. 0:22:17.359 --> 0:22:19.720 Oh, I'd love you again for the audience. This is 0:22:19.720 --> 0:22:23.159 where Crick and Watson burst into the Eagle Pub? Was 0:22:23.200 --> 0:22:25.040 it the Eagle and Child or the whatever? 0:22:25.160 --> 0:22:25.359 I think? 0:22:26.480 --> 0:22:29.960 Oh, maybe they burst into the pub and in early 0:22:30.040 --> 0:22:32.200 nineteen fifty three and said we have discovered the secret 0:22:32.240 --> 0:22:32.600 of life. 0:22:33.480 --> 0:22:36.440 Yeah, I'd love to go see that. Goosebumps. 0:22:36.520 --> 0:22:39.600 Yeah, yeah, okay. So, by the way, one other thing 0:22:39.600 --> 0:22:41.400 I just want to make it clear is that peer 0:22:41.480 --> 0:22:44.159 review is you write up a science paper and you 0:22:44.280 --> 0:22:47.960 submitted to a journal, and then the journal sends it 0:22:48.000 --> 0:22:50.800 to several of your colleagues in the field, something like 0:22:51.160 --> 0:22:53.639 the jury system that we have in court, something like that, 0:22:53.680 --> 0:22:56.600 where your colleagues who are expert in the field also 0:22:57.200 --> 0:23:00.600