That incorrect information continues to flow through scientific channels is, in and of itself, puzzling. Upon entering “watson and crick” in to Google “exact word or phrase”, I encounter an article in Nature, dated 2008 and titled “Discovery of DNA Structure and Function: Watson and Crick” By Leslie A. Pray, Ph.D.* The first heading under the title reads: “The landmark ideas of Watson and Crick relied heavily on the work of other scientists. What did the duo actually discover?”
There is also an entry from PBS titled, “Watson and Crick describe structure of DNA 1953”.** It appears to have originated in 1998. In the article, it is correctly pointed out that the helical nature of DNA was discovered by Rosalind Franklin, working at King’s College in London. Watson had come down from Cambridge University and attended a lecture given by Franklin on the subject in 1951. It then goes on to state that Maurice Wilkins (also at King’s College, and working under the same lab director as Franklin) showed Watson more recent results neither with Franklin’s consent nor her knowledge.
Franklin’s research involved x-ray crystallography without which the helical structure of DNA could not have been determined … not by any other technique available in 1953. Neither Watson nor Crick derived any new information independently through x-ray crystallography. In their paper, published jointly by them alone, they claimed to have discovered the base-pairing aspect of the molecule as well as its helical structure. They gave no credit at all to Rosalind Franklin.
To add insult to injury, Watson, when he publish his autobiographical book, “The Double Helix” went out of his way to trash Rosalind Franklin including referring to her patronizingly as “Rosy”, a name that no one would have thought to use in her presence.
Anne Sayre, in her excellent book “Rosalind Franklin & DNA”, suggests strongly that, when it was realized that Watson had gotten away with substantial theft of credit, the scientific community adopted a very different attitude toward ethics. After that, data would not be shared so freely, and it was okay to use information obtained unscrupulously, and not give credit.
That may well have been the beginning of the lack of morality that has begun to act like a cancer on research in general. The problem is as well that Watson and Crick are held up in college classrooms everywhere as noble scientists, and the book The Double Helix is widely assigned as required reading, including its venom against Franklin.
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