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James Watson
Discoverer of the DNA Molecule
James Watson: I guess I'm best known for just saying things the way I think they are under circumstances where you're not supposed to say it. You've got a fairly short life span and, particularly when you have students, you've got to let them know what you think. They shouldn't have a guessing game as to what you think, because you're really out there to try and educate them as to what reality is. So, if you have a bad seminar, you might as well tell the guy to his face. You shouldn't get up and say, "Wonderful talk," when it isn't.
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James Watson
Discoverer of the DNA Molecule
In the case of cystic fibrosis, if you have the gene, and you've got both copies bad, you're going to have the disease. You'll essentially know it soon after you're born. This knowledge, particularly the predictive part of it, should be tightly controlled and probably should only be obtained when you can do something with the knowledge. It shouldn't just be obtained because you want to see the future; it should be obtained because you want to make the future better.
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Kent Weeks
Living Legend of Egyptology
I've written books that have received very good reviews. I've written books that have received some very bad reviews. I try to -- once I get over my little temporary fit of pique -- go back over the bad reviews and say, "All right, now this is what they said I was doing wrong. This is what they would liked to have seen. Next time 'round we'll take that into account and try and improve upon it." If it is constructive criticism, I am finally getting to the point where I welcome it. I think when I was in college I always considered such things a threat. "Somebody is out to get me." Whether it was a nasty comment scrawled by a professor who was tired that night on the margins of an exam book, or somebody who says, "This first draft of a thesis really has got to be redone," it was something that I just got very upset about. Now I look upon it as a very helpful tool. I welcome it now. I will go out and deliberately seek my worst critics and say, "Would you mind reading this over?" I will get back copies of a manuscript with red marks, and slashes, and "Bilge!!!" written in the margin with three exclamation points. I don't mind it anymore. I find it very helpful. And sometimes, frankly, I also find it kind of funny, particularly when I don't agree with them.
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Kent Weeks
Living Legend of Egyptology
I have no qualms at all about asking a philologist, to say, "Look, I'm having problems reading these texts. Would you please take on that aspect of this work for me? And we will give you full credit for having done this." In other words, I'm not trying to put my name on the cover of the book and exclude everybody else from getting any credit from it. I think that would be wrong-headed. It would be destructive, not just of the quality of the book, it would be destructive of our ultimate goal, which is to protect and preserve these monuments. That's the single most important goal that we have. I think that along with this -- and this has been a hard lesson for me to learn -- but I think it's extremely important to be kind and to be considerate. I have learned the hard way, over many years, that you don't make headway by being mean or nasty or vindictive. You don't make headway by ignoring people, or failing to inform them of what you're doing, or how what you're doing might be of value to them. Again, this goes back to collegiality. Again. We're all here in the same boat. I mean, my boat is an Egyptological one, let's say, and my ultimate goal is to protect these monuments, excavate this tomb and make sure that it's going to be there safe and sound and well documented for the next thousand years. I can't possibly do that alone. This is a group effort, and the older I get, the more I think that group efforts are basically what most of life is all about. Even if you're a poet, or a painter sitting in a darkened room -- or in the case of a painter, a well-lit room -- composing, nevertheless, what you're doing is ultimately the result of your interactions with other people. Those are extremely important. And the way in which you deal with those, and the way in which you help other people to deal with similar things in their own work, I think is crucial.
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Andrew Weil
Integrative Medicine
I wrote a book called From Chocolate to Morphine, which was a review of all drugs that can affect the mind. And there was an organized attempt, this was in the early 1980s, to ban the book. And a prominent senator from Florida stood up on the floor of the Senate and waved the book around and said that this was a very dangerous book, because it was neutral, that it didn't tell people to not use substances. And that's exactly what I aimed for; I wanted to put out neutral information. And I think that when you're working in situations that are very polarized, often neither side understands the middle position. You know, the position of neither advocating nor discouraging, of just trying to carve out a balanced path.
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