I really like the theme that has developed in our blog-pertaining to how to bring science to the public or how to get the public excited about science. So I went to the TED talk website to get some ideas, because they seem to be a front runner in this regard.
I typed in biochemistry in the search bar, and one of the selections to come up was a talk by James Watson from 2005. The movie we watched dispelled the notion I had that anyone who could make such a discovery or be awarded such an award must be a serious scholar and elegant in how they describe science. Thats not to say that James Watson isn’t a serious scholar. But the way in which he described the DNA discovery was a bit off-putting, at least for me. The audience was laughing the entire time though, and I’m sure he has told the story many, many times, so maybe he’s a bit tired of doing so.
He began his speech talking about Darwin, and the significance of spending time bird-watching with his father, which prompted him to major in Biology. He then mentioned Erwin Schrodinger’s paper “What is life,” in which Schrodinger explains that the essence of life is present in info on a molecule, in digital form. Watson said he thought about going into Biochem, and then discovered it was “boring!”
He said the impetus for the DNA work came when Wilkins showed the DNA crystal photograph, which proved DNA had a structure and that there was something universal about it, which countered the initial belief that the genetic info was on proteins.
He then mentioned that Pauling got the “alpha helix” but thought it was held together by H bonds between phosphates. But they knew that H-bonds between phosphates couldn’t exist at biological pH because the oxygen on the phosphate would have already been de-protenated. He was somewhat dismissive of Rosalind, saying that she was primarily a crystallographer and did not know organic chemistry.
He then spoke briefly about the confirmation of the structure, which he said took place over 2 hours. He summarized: I was told the H atoms were in the wrong place and so I changed them, and thereby found the base pairs. Crick immediately knew that the chains went in opposite directions. This seems to be an awfully condensed version of what happened.
He ended by talking about what clicks for him now- genetics research looking at how diseases can be screened for via genome analysis, when contrasting to normal genomes. But his take on it I thought was peculiarly simplified. He basically said that the cause of such diseases as cancer, autism, and bipolar disorder is just a huge gap of DNA missing. He wrapped up the speech by saying that if I had enough money, I would find all the genes for these diseases this year. I think one issue when science is presented to the public is that it is over-simplified and under-estimated how much the public, with relatively less understanding of more specific science can understand, if explained well. Many pop science articles try to translate science articles for the public and leave out important details. It begs the question: is it the science authors that aren’t including enough supporting info as to how they got their results or the pop. science writers. I think it might be more the latter.