Science apologizes.

[NNadir]

The editorial from Holden Thorpe (who I admire) editor of Science, on the 75th anniversary of the transistor.

Shockley was a racist and eugenicist

I believe it's open sourced, but some excerpts:

This week’s issue on the 75th anniversary of the transistor describes a triumph of both basic and applied science. What started out as studies on the fundamental physics of silicon led to the device that makes it possible to read this article online. The coinventor of the transistor, William Shockley, who along with John Bardeen and Walter Brattain won the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics, is correctly recognized as a primary architect of the computer age. Gordon Moore (cofounder of Intel Corporation) famously said that Shockley put the silicon in “Silicon Valley.” Appallingly, Shockley devoted the latter part of his life to promoting racist views, arguing that higher IQs among Blacks were correlated with higher extents of Caucasian ancestry, and advocating for voluntary sterilization of Black women. At the time, Science did not condemn Shockley for what he was: a charlatan who used his scientific credentials to advance racist ideology.

The failure of Science to condemn Shockley began in 1968, when it published a letter lamenting the fact that he was prohibited from speaking at the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn. The letter repeated the familiar trope that Shockley was simply asking questions about the role of race in intelligence. But Shockley had no scientific basis for doing so, he was not submitting peer-reviewed papers on the topic, and most importantly, he was using his ideas as the basis for promoting eugenics. Such a debate had no place in this journal...

...Following Shockley’s death in 1989, Nature correctly called out his racism in an obituary, but then published a letter from Seitz defending Shockley and claiming that the reason Shockley became a eugenicist was because of physical trauma he experienced in a near-fatal car accident. When Science wrote about this dustup, it referred to Shockley’s ideas as merely “unpopular” and “extremely controversial.” It then ran a letter from an even more notorious eugenicist, J. Philippe Rushton, who argued that by merely covering the disagreement at Nature, Science was delivering an “ad hominem attack.” In addition to an ill-advised decision to publish Rushton’s letter, Science posted a response saying, “no criticism of Shockley was intended.” Yikes...

Yikes! Indeed...

...Shockley was part of a cadre of physicists who advanced ideas outside of their area of expertise to promote a right-wing agenda. He was a close friend of Frederick Seitz—president of both the National Academy of Sciences and Rockefeller University—who, following a career in physics, became a purveyor of misinformation on tobacco, nuclear weapons, and climate change...

An apology that is overdue.

I'll be giving a lecture at the end of next month during which I will refer to the NCKX5 protein, which defines the main genetic difference between African people and people descended from Europeans. The latter, the Europeans, have a mutant form of this gene, a single nucleotide polymorphism that makes them increasingly susceptible to melanoma. It's only function is to form melanin is skin. It has nothing to do with neurological tissue.

Have a nice weekend.

[mopinko]

1. after listening to maddow's 'ultra' the obvs question is-

who was paying them? what bunch of rich old men was still pushing eugenics as late as that? old man koch and the birchers?

i feel like, as important as it is to find out where the dark money in politics and media is coming from, where it goes prolly matters a whooooole lot more.

[NNadir]

3. I don't think anyone had to pay Shockley to hold and promote these views. He was apparently...

...a very difficult person his whole life, going back to his childhood, basically an asshole.

In any case, he died in 1989, improving, if not the gene pool, than the intellectual climate. I'm not sure he was even remotely aware of the Kochs.

The fact that he was successful as a scientist does not mean that he was a nice person or even a decent person. I've personally known many scientists - excellent scientists - whose personalities I can't or couldn't stand. (There are, I think, many people who can't stand me.)

Apparently his co-inventors, Walter Brattain, and John Bardeen found him to be extremely problematic and difficult. From what I can tell, they were decent human beings in contrast to their boss, Schockley.

Bardeen won a second Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on superconductivity.

Bardeen's son, James Bardeen, of Yale University, received his Ph.D. from Richard Feynman, another Nobel Laureate, and in his career discovered the exact solution of Einstein's Field equation.

Bardeen Sr. apparently wanted nothing to do with Shockley after they shared the Nobel Prize.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

5. Shockley was so nasty 8 scientists left to form another company. He dubbed them "the traitorous 8"

Their company was successful.

Shockley's ultimately went nowhere.

[mopinko]

9. it was your 2nd quote i was reacting to.

but crackpots are often pushed forward by others, more cynical.

[Pobeka]

2. Thanks. I am discovering several of my science "heros" have been racists.

I'm better for knowing these things, even if they are initially disturbing.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

4. Science (the activity & publication) admits error. In fact, true scientists seek error

Theories only stand if they successfully withstand attempts to find them false.

[4dog]

6. Do you have a link handy to NCKX5 work? If not

I will just look it up

[NNadir]

7. Here's the Uniprot reference.

Q71RS6 · NCKX5_HUMAN

I'm not sure if it lists both isoforms, the ancestral gene or the mutation that makes people white. I have some references somewhere in my files, but I don't have time to find them. As I recall, melanin synthesis proceeds through polymerization of indole derived from tryptophan, but don't quote me on that, I'm working on memory.

Uniprot doesn't seem to list the mutation making people white as a genetic disease, but it does raise the risk of melanoma. In this sense, black skin has a protective effect.

[4dog]

10. Thanks, was not familiar with this resource

If I browse and find anything of interest to "race," I'll bounce it back.

[NNadir]

11. Try this:

Anthony L. Cook, Wei Chen, Amy E. Thurber, Darren J. Smit, Aaron G. Smith, Timothy G. Bladen, Darren L. Brown, David L. Duffy, Lorenza Pastorino, Giovanna Bianchi-Scarra, J. Helen Leonard, Jennifer L. Stow, Richard A. Sturm, Analysis of Cultured Human Melanocytes Based on Polymorphisms within the SLC45A2/MATP, SLC24A5/NCKX5, and OCA2/P Loci, Journal of Investigative Dermatology, Volume 129, Issue 2, 2009, Pages 392-405,

[Warpy]

8. Susceptibility to melanoma is balanced by enhanced D3 production

in northern areas with short summers, lots of cloud cover, and deep forestation. Even though we tend to develop melanoma with prolonged sun exposure, we develop it after our peak breeding years. In a Darwinian sense, it's a positive tradeoff.

Shockley was more infamous than famous. His problem wasn't so much stepping out of his field, his problem was that his profound bigotry and resultant confirmation bias ensured that stepping out of his field would produce results that were both infuriatingly wrong and laughable. A more sanguine scientist would have noticed what an effect a socially and politically oppressed and economically deprived minority population had on math, science, art, literature, music, cuisine, sports, and the list goes on. A more objective scientist, even one hilariously out of his field, would have reached far different conclusions than Shockley did. GIGO.

[hunter]

12. Progress in Science and engineering is a massively parallel process.

It wouldn't be impeded if racists like Shockley or Elon Musk were not funded or celebrated.

Imagine all the potentially brilliant scientists and engineers who were held back by racism, misogyny, etc.

If Shockley hadn't developed the transistor then someone else would have, possibly sooner than he did if science and engineering hadn't been such a white boy's club.