On the price of The Prize and the perfect human being

Jim Watson's unrestrained racist and misogynist remarks have eventually made him less affluent than he would like to be. Prof. Watson has been invited out of company boards, forced to retire from CSHL, and fell out of favour with the rest of society. What's more, he will soon be auctioning his Nobel medal through Christie's for an estimated > 2 million USD.

Despite his unfortunate 2007 comments linking race and intelligence (for which he never apologised), extraordinary scientist Lior Patcher of UC Berkeley took the time to analyse human SNP (classified as good or bad, and by their significance and association with diseases) to conclude that contrary to Watson's claims of superiority, an individual harbouring all the good alleles, if s/he existed, would be closest to a woman of Puerto Rican origin. Puerto Ricans have a mixture of European, Native American and West African descent, suggesting that racial diversity confers a selective advantage.

Do you think that the Nobel prize, or any other prize of equivalent status, makes some people start believing in some sort of superiority that exempts them from validating their claims scientifically? Or perhaps these few were already primed to become this way given a certain trigger? Or perhaps if Camus' description of an intellectual is correct ("An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself"), then making unsubstantiated claims might not make an individual superior, but quite the opposite.

Too many people revere scientific heroes and self-aggrandized others without understanding what they did. Again the cure for this disease is education and the development of critical thinking. And now, what will you do when you get your Nobel prize?

More opinions on Watson and the 2 million dolar medal topic here.