With a competitive spirit, people are driven to act in ways that they would not otherwise and the results can be drastic. In the case of James D. Watson and Francis Crick, in Watson’s novel the Double Helix, this sensation of competition leads to one of the greatest discoveries in biology. But the actions of Watson, Crick, and their competitors may or may not be justified for the results that they yield; the powerful conflict of rivalry has beneficial, detrimental, and questionably moral consequences that shaped the pathway to DNA’s structure.
At times, regardless of the setbacks, rivalry can be advantageous by giving people the inspiration to continue. Debating on whether to give up the race, Watson realizes the full implications this scientific competition has: “But if I went back to pure biology, the advantage of our small head start over Linus (Pauling) might suddenly vanish,” (Watson 144). The grand quest for finding the structure of DNA is too great for Watson to pass up. Not only does this head start inspire Watson to continue studying DNA, but it convinces him to work even harder. While the desire to quickly find a solution can be too daunting to appease, even the notion of being in the lead can be enough incentive to strive for the goal which is a definite positive effect for Watson. But for every positive advantage, there is a negative setback that other competitors may impose.
In this case, the reward for winning the “competition” is so significant that better opportunities are overlooked and some are left without the aid they need. When Watson and Crick ask Rosalind Franklin’s opinion on their model of DNA, the result they are looking for is far from what they had hoped: “Rosy did not give a hoot about the priority of...
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...ed some credit. People see the novel as a poor presentation of who she was and how important her ideas really were. However, I see that both are to blame. Franklin could have worked closer with Watson instead of withholding her results; Watson could have mentioned her in his work earlier on. I believe that this competitiveness between scientists was beneficial overall. This rivalry provided motivation and even though defeat seemed so near at times, they were able to persevere. There are several ways that Watson and Crick could have found the answer but I believe it is for the best that these events occurred the way they did because the ending result justifies all previous actions. The rivalry that sparked between these scientists yielded some negative results but it led to something even greater: the secret of life.
Works Cited
The Double Helix by James D. Watson
Ted Bieler’s Helix of Life (1971) that is located outside the Medical Sciences building at University of Toronto is a sculpture made from a light grey concrete material. Its color appears to be plain which happens to match the exterior of the Medical Sciences building as well. Due to the age of the sculpture, it shows lighter and darker gray dents and streaks near the top and bottom and where it bends. Some of the markings have been made from the material and texture of the sculpture. The material used, which was said previously, is cast concrete. Using concrete without any smooth surface tools creates a rougher and coarse texture which is why it has dents and holes when viewing it up close. As the viewer looks at the sculpture from afar, its
Sinclair Lewis's 1925 novel Arrowsmith follows a pair of bacteriologists, Martin Arrowsmith and his mentor Max Gottlieb, as they travel through various professions in science and medicine in the early decades of the twentieth century. Gottlieb and his protégé, Martin, explore the status and roles of scientific work at universities, in industry, and at a private research foundation, as well as in various medical positions. Lewis presents a picture of tension and conflict between the goals and ideals of pure science and the environments in which his protagonists have to operate. Although Gottlieb and Arrowsmith are able to pursue their research in some places, their work is continually obstructed and undermined by commercialism.
In the summer of 1995, the periodical Wilson Quarterly published "Enemies of Promise," an essay by J. Michael Bishop, a Nobel Prize-winning professor of microbiology from the University of California, San Francisco. The essay addressed the renewed criticism the scientific community has received in recent years by an ignorant and unduly critical public. The overall effect this single work has had on the world may be nominal, but the points Professor Bishop raises are significant, and provide ammunition against the ignorants who maintain this "intellectual war," centuries after it was sparked.
...ing fascinating about science, one gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such trifling investments of fact."
Opportunistic scientists, the most hypocritical deviants of the modern age, revolve around the scientific method, or at least they used to. The scientific method once involved formulating a hypothesis from a problem posed, experimenting, and forming a conclusion that best explained the data collected. Yet today, those who are willing to critique the work of their peers are themselves performing the scientific method out of sequence. I propose that scientists, or the "treasure hunters" of that field, are no longer interested in permanent solutions, achieved through proper use of the scientific method, and rather are more interested in solutions that guarantee fame and fortune.
While these norms all played a role in leading Watson to his discovery, the competitive nature of scientific worse was arguably
Bragg, Melvyn, On Giants' Shoulders: Great Scientists and Their Discoveries from Archimedes to DNA. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1998.
...ne starts life with an equal chance of health and success. Yet, gene therapy can also be thought of as a straight route towards a dark outlook, where perfection is the first priority, genes are seen as the ultimate puppeteer, and personal freedom to thrive based on one’s self isn’t believed to exist. With the emergence of each new technological discovery comes the emergence of each new ethical debate, and one day, each viewpoint on this momentous issue may be able to find a bit of truth in the other. Eventually, our society may reach a compromise on gene therapy.
Along with prompting mass hysteria amongst people, the flu epidemic of 1918 also revealed the arduous aspects of scientific research. In order to efficaciously perform their jobs, scientists are required to possess specific attributes. In a passage from The Great Influenza, John M. Barry uses vivid imagery, figurative language and exemplification to depict the challenges and uncertainty a scientist must overcome, along with the traits they must bear in order to succeed in forming a “path” for future growth.
	X-ray crystallography helped determined the three dimensional structure of DNA when Franklin returned to England. She became the first person to find the molecule¡¯s sugar-phosphate backbone while working with a team of scientists at King¡¯s College in London. Unfortunately, leadership misunderstandings and personality conflicts depreciated Franklin¡¯s effectivness in the laboratory. Maurice Wilkins, the laboratory¡¯s second in command, returned from a vacation expecting Franklin to work under him. Franklin came to the laboratory with the understanding that she would be researching alone. While Franklin was direct and decisive, Wilkins tended to be alluding and passive-aggressive. As Franklin made further advances in DNA research, Wilkins secretly shared her findings with the famous duo of Watson and Crick, who were then working at Cambridge. Franklin¡¯s discoveries fueled their research machine, allowing them to advance beyond others in the field. They would eventually publish on DNA structure in 1953. Due to discriminatory procedures at King¡¯s College, Franklin eventually left to become the lead researcher at London¡¯s Birbeck College--upon agreeing not to work on DNA. She furthered her studies in coal and made significant advances in virology. Franklin died in 1958 of ovarian cancer. She lived 37 monumentally significant years.
In his total ignoring of the humanity of others, Jobs directly defies the ethics of innovation and of science. For instance, he commits flagrant plagiarism of an employee 's ideas. Jobs directly claims another 's intellectual property as his own while at Apple, as Jonathan Ive recounts, “He will go through the process of looking at my ideas and say, 'That 's no good. That 's not very good. I like that one. ' And later I will be sitting in the audience and he will be talking about it as if it was his idea.”5 Were Jobs in the realm of science, he would have been discredited and ignored for his penchant to claim the designs of others as his own. Yet, Jobs continues to have success—he is in the private marketing sector, not a purely scientific office or academia—success which is rather counter intuitive due to the nature of its mechanisms. Study of scientific past usually shows a trend of progress made through collaboration, and failure to adhere to that trend can be extremely detrimental to a field. For instance, the case of the dispute between Hermann von Hemholtz and Ewald Hering discussed in Oliver Sacks ' essay, “Scotoma: Forgetting and Neglect in Science,” is shown to be highly restrictive to the evolution of the scientific
In the first several chapters of The Double Helix, James Watson gives detailed descriptions of the places and people who were of some importance in this charade of science. Watson wrote of his personal history and of how he arrived at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge. In this laboratory was a yet-unknown thirty-five year old man named Frances Crick . When Watson joined the team at Cavendish it was to help continue studies on the structure of proteins. Some of the people in the lab that Watson mentioned were Sir Lawr...
Francis Crick: He does the same research with Watson and they are both teammates. He is also eager to know what is in DNA and the relationship of it with the double-helix, but at the same time is disorganised, and expected Watson to do a majority of work.
Even people like scientists have to take risks sometimes. They are forced to cut corners to get what
Through their readings, Michael J. Bishop and Pamela Samuelson discuss the positive and negative aspects of science. Science can benefit humans by providing them with solutions to improve their lives, such as immunizations and cellular phones. Yet, the same positive solutions can turn detrimental and destructive when science's warnings are not respected and understood.