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Comment by Edmond | Hacker News Reader

Highly educated people in the sciences can in fact be quite vulnerable to just this type of hubris, ie thinking that having expertise in one area means expertise in the whole field.

Nobel prize winning scientists have damaged their reputations by opining on matters they know little about (James Watson on genetics, and many others )

Some infamous examples:

http://www.cracked.com/article_18638_4-nobel-prize-winners-w...

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> Nobel prize winning scientists have damaged their reputations by opining on matters they know little about (James Watson on genetics, and many others )

You mean to say that James Watson, the Nobel prize winning geneticist knows little about genetics?

Watson is a Chemist who used his expertise in physical chemistry to discern the structure of DNA....that is not the same as knowing genetics (which is a huge field).

*The point is not to belittle his accomplishment (which would be silly) but to point out that he veered into a field that he was mostly unqualified to offer an informed opinion on, never mind a very controversial one.

Also, it's a HUGE controversy in the scientific community that he and Crick got the Nobel prize and most of the credit for discovering the structure of DNA, and Rosalind Franklin gets none. I thought that was well known.

That's because she was dead and posthumous Nobel Prizes are not awarded. Not because she was a woman.

You are being downvoted for saying James Watson knows little on genetics. Oh my god. Do you even realize what you are saying.

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