Sunday, October 21, 2007

Zuska on James Watson

Zuska has a post that rightly criticizes some of the responses to James Watson's suspension at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory due to his racist remarks:

Academic freedom doesn't exist to benefit people who twist or ignore science to serve lies. Standing up for justice and equality is what a good citizen does, and if that's what you call political correctness, then so be it. I am fed up beyond belief with apologists for the oppressors claiming the mantle of science to wrap around their ugly beliefs: calling the expression of personal racist sentiments "talking about research", bemoaning the refusal to lend a platform to spread those beliefs as some sort of repression of free speech, promulgating a "research" program with racism at its core as if it were the most objective of enterprises.