Watson and Crick clearly made use of the ideas and results of other scientists research in pursuing their goal, including work by Linus Pauling, Erwin Chargaff and Rosalind Franklin. Sharing of knowledge is a foundation of scientific investigation.
It has been suggested that the use of Rosalind Franklin’s information without her permission or knowledge was unethical on the part of Watson and Crick. Do you agree or disagree?
Was Pauling’s and Chargaff’s information also used improperly? Thoughts?
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While it makes sense as to why people would argue that Watson and Crick were in the wrong, I can't help but think that the people who actually had the information would have ever been able to do anything with it. Even if they had tried to obtain permission, odds are that the scientists wouldn't have agreed to sharing the information because they would have felt as if they weren't being credited with it. So all in all no, I don't think that the use of the information was used improperly. It was used as it was meant to be used.
ReplyDeleteKarli makes an excellent point. The movie we're watching displays an atmosphere of distrust instead of the proactive forum I would hope a scientific community would display. These scientists currently on the job are all so scared as to who will make the final breakthrough and get ALL the credit that the DNA search seemed to come to a standstill. Until, that is, this new weird looking guy from America comes in with some fuel to take others' ideas and make something really great. Watson/Crick deserve the credit because they had the balls to finish up the project. They showed the initiative to make them deserve the Nobel Prize.
ReplyDeleteI do believe that the use of Rosalind Franklin's work without her permission or knowledge was unethical on the part of Watson and Crick, and the same for the use of the information of Chargaff and Pauling. Rosalind Franklin worked incessantly to tie up loose ends and to ensure that every bit of information she presented had strong evidence to support it. She ended up dying because of the work she did. Watson and Crick, on the other hand, did not have to do any of the dangerous work Franklin did, and suffered none of the consequences. They took her information simply to improve their status in the scientific community. While I do believe that sharing of knowledge is a foundation of scientific investigation, stealing is not. It was especially obvious that Watson and Crick did not truly even understand the research that they were using during the part of the movie where Crick and Watson attempted (key word) to discuss the four bases of DNA with Chargaff. They only wanted fame, not to better our understanding of the world around us.
ReplyDeleteWatson and Crick's use of Franklin's data would have been unethical if it had come directly from her without her knowledge. Instead, she turned her research data over to the academic institution. Thus they did not cheat to obtain her data. The atmosphere of the scientific "community" at that time was not conductive to science as a field. The goal of science should be to further man's understanding of the world around us, and if sharing results is a part of increasing that understanding, it should be encouraged. Instead, the academic environment was one of secrecy and stiff competition for "political" purposes. This is exemplified by the reluctance of the scholarly administration to let Rosalind Franklin take her results to another University. Science is not free from egos, and they unfortunately played a big part is this chapter of biology.
ReplyDeleteThe movie's portrayal of the series of events that led to Watson and Crig's DNA discovery argues that there was nothing wrong with Watson and Crig's actions. Their limited use of Franklin's B sample results were hardly unethical. Franklin had already given the results to Maurice Wilkins, signifying that she was open to the idea of sharing her research. The only questionable action was Watson's copying of the B-sample picture onto his hand and even this is justifiable. Wilkins showed Watson the picture with no hesitation and Watson committed no crime by drawing what he had seen on his hand. When Amadeus Mozart famously transcribed the Alegri Miserere (a piece that at his time was only played at the Vatican) after hearing it once the people did not regard him as unethical cheat but rather as a musical genius and legend. Watson's drawing is no different.
ReplyDeleteThe question of whether the use of Pauling and Chargaff's information was ethical is almost moot. Both scientists had published papers, the clearest signal in science that the writer wants to share his discoveries and have them used by other scientists.
I have to agree with Brett. Franklin worked hard for her work and wanted to understand everything to the best of her knowledge. While I think that sharing information is key in progressing in scientific discovery, taking other people’s work by sneaking around and lying is not the way it should be done. As we saw at the end of the movie, Franklin was on her way to making the same structure that Watson and Crick made, and they were just lucky that she had not seen that they were going in opposite directions. I think that it is clear that this discovery would have been made within weeks if Watson and Crick had not come up with it first – they even knew that and wouldn’t wait the week or so for Franklin to leave so they could justly use her work. So I think the way that Watson and Crick went around taking other people’s work was very unethical and sneaky. Had they used the work with proper authorization and shared their own work, the situation would be different.
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ReplyDeleteWatson and Crick's use of Rosiland Franklin's work was not unethical in the context of scientific work. Franklin, by trying to limit the use of her information, limits scientific progress. The more people that can see a piece of work the more likely it is that one answer put forth will end up being correct. In all cases scientific information should be distributed as evenly and as openly as possible. It does not matter how a discovery is made but only that the discovery is made. Personal glory should play no part whatsoever in science. Scientists should act as a community, all working together towards a common goal, not a set of separated people striving for independent recognition. Both Franklin and Watson and Crick acted as though theirpersonal progress was more important than scientific progress. Franklin should not limit anyone from gaining access to her information, whatever their reasons for wanting it. Watson and Crick's reason for taking Franklin work might have been deplorable,and Watson and Crick may have done what they did precisely to gain personal glory, but in science, it is the outcome, not the the reason for the outcome, that matters above all else; and Watson and Crick's breakthrough changed the face of biology for decades to come.
ReplyDeleteI think the movie tries to portray Rosalind Franklin's work as being unjustly stolen by Watson and Crick. However, in my own personal opinion, I believe that Franklin should have been more open and liberal with sharing her findings. Truly, Franklin was subject to abuse from the sexist atmosphere of the science lab, and did undertake a massive amount of time and effort in order find the results that she did. But I think that information in research among scientists should be shared freely to promote efficiency and a collective effort to seek the answer.
ReplyDeleteHowever, the same principle should apply to Watson and Crick. Though I disagree with Brett that the pair was only in it for the fame, I do concede that they did make a couple of underhanded moves in order to obtain the information that they did. Looking back from a modern point of view, Watson and Crick too should have been more free with sharing their information with the rest of the scientific community. Their handling of Chargaff's and Pauling's information could be considered plagiarism. That is all.
While there have been many good arguments thus far about how evidence should be shared, and how the use of Rosalind Franklin's work without her knowledge was ethical because it happened in a scientific field, I would have to respectfully disagree.
ReplyDeleteWhile it is true that science should be a communal push and that "Sharing of knowledge is a foundation of scientific investigation" the key word is sharing. Sharing, as in the willful act of giving something you have to another. What Watson and Crick did was not sharing, it was taking, as sharing would require her to give it to them of her own accord; the use of her work without her consent is, in effect plagiarism. This point has been noted by previous comments, but has been dismissed, as selfishness on the part of Dr. Franklin. This dismissal seems justifiable by the point that Science is not a field that should be governed by prestige, but by furthering understanding.
But why is science special? Is not math a field that should be governed by understanding? What about history? Literature? Every aspect of human life, in an ideal world, would be done for the good of humanity by whoever happens to be able, not by whoever wants the prestige. Thus, a skyscraper should not be built for fame or for the benefit of one person who wants a nice view of a city skyline, but instead for the benefit of all.
This is not an ideal world. It is true that, in an ideal world, science would be a communal effort. But as this is not an ideal world, as all humans are governed still by the primal evolutionary instinct to improve the sex lives of themselves and their offspring through the prestige connected to their name,(Little known fact: Some time after inventing the light bulb, Edison married a girl NEARLY HALF HIS AGE.)humans live by arbitrary laws of property, laws of property that Watson and Crick violated, they were in the wrong in this situation. All I can say is, at least they mentioned her in their speeches. (But only after she died.)
In science it is apart of the scientific method to look at other scientists' works to come to a conclusion which is sort of what Watson and Crick did. They looked at the work of Rosalind Franklin's, Paulind's,and Chargaffs' work to help conclude that their hypothesis of the double-helix was indeed correct. However, I believe that it was unethical to use their information without thier knowledge and not credit them for the part they played in the discovery that Watson and Crick concluded because with the data that Franklin, Paulind,and Chargaff then Watson and Crick would never have been able to conclude that thier hypothsis was correct.
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