James Watson’s The Double Helix : inaccurate and insightful
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"In his highly popular autobiography The Double Helix, James Watson recounts his career and personal life, focusing on the events immediately surrounding how he, along with Francis Crick, elucidated the now-iconic structure of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). Even beginning with its turbulent publication, the autobiography has enjoyed a preeminent presence among the many works which have been written about the history of molecular biology in the 1950s and 60s. Such has been the influence of Watson’s account that some scientists, such as Nobel laureate Sir Peter Medawar, have elevated the work to the status of a “classic, which will go on being read,” (Williams 366). But remarkably, the book turned out to be just as popular among those not directly involved in science, becoming a primary source of insight for the general public as to the process behind the making of biological discoveries. The Double Helix has become notable for its unique focus on the more tawdry, personal details of the lives of scientists as well as for its dramatic exaggeration of certain personalities and events. Watson likely included such embellishments in an effort to dispel the prevailing image of the scientist as a cold and impersonal figure. However, while the hyperbole of The Double Helix was important for developing the popular perception of science, emphasizing as it did the oft-overlooked involvement of flawed human beings in the discipline, it did also drain the work of some of its merit as an historically accurate reconstruction the discovery of the structure of DNA. Notable among Watson’s historical transgressions is his aberrant treatment of Rosalind Franklin, an x-ray crystallographer who was, like Watson and Crick, intimately involved in the discovery of the DNA double helix." -- first page
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