Science, semi-science and nonsense

We have to get off the idea of genes on a string that we can see. What was interesting about the Human Genome Project was that everyone was so surprised that there were only 30,000 genes ... or is it 29,000? Why can't you just count them up? Because they aren't beads on a string. A gene is defined by what it does and what it does is produce proteins. Now it looks like certain environmental conditions turn genes off. They don't always operate. We still don't understand what's going on in development. The genome project is important, but it's only the first step.

To get controversial, you can't say that certain populations of blacks from Western Africa are good at sprinting and others from Kenya are good at marathon running and the big, husky white guys from Sweden are good at the strong man competition -- all because of genes. Although that certainly sets the pattern, the training and interaction with the environment matters, starting with the prenatal environment all the way to what you're doing this afternoon.

So before we worry about people running off and cloning a bunch of Hitlers, we need to know a lot more. So just let these guys do their research. Same thing with stem cell research. I've yet to hear a good secular argument against it. It's always the right-to-life argument.

Even people who aren't particularly religious will give the knee-jerk response that some things are nature's business without realizing that what they're saying is that certain things are only "God's work."

They don't think it through. There's this idea that if it happens naturally, then it's OK. But we went off that road a long time ago when we began agriculture and tweaked the genome of plants and animals 13,000 years ago. The natural argument is like the organic food people. It's laughable. You wanna eat one of those ears of corn from a couple thousand years ago? They were about a half-inch long. How many starving people in a Third World developing nation are you going to feed on those natural little corns and potatoes? Once you start down the road using science and technology, you just have to keep going.

Back to the racial differences in sports and all the hoopla about blacks being better athletes than whites. In your book, you simply point out that blacks don't dominate all sports. Why are people obsessed with this though?

They don't. They dominate three of them -- track and field, basketball, football and maybe baseball, but they don't even dominate that anymore. It's like the Holocaust deniers: why are you so interested? What is it with you guys and the Jews? I ask them this all the time! Same thing with the guys who are into race and sports or race and IQ. It's not some innocent question. No one cares about Asians and Ping-Pong. But we live in a culture in which black-white differences are everything. There's no question that the Lakers of today are so much better than the Lakers of the '50s with those white guys. It's truly better basketball. But why are we so interested and what difference does it make?

That's why the reaction to Tiger Woods is so interesting: "See, now blacks are the best at golf too!"

And in tennis. But even there, the Williams sisters haven't completely dominated. They get beat all the time by those white girls. And anyway what is Tiger? Is he black?

He's a lot of things. He practiced a lot. I know that much.

That's the 10,000-hour question. I was talking to a scientist who studies creativity at this conference. What does it take to be a creative genius and reach the top of your field? First of all, there's a minimal 10,000-hour rule. If you want to master a sport or a skill or a subject, that comes out to about 60 hours per week for about three and a half years. That's true in all professions. It doesn't mean you'll make it. Good biology and genes help. But look at Mozart. He didn't just plop out of nowhere as some people think. He had the father and the training and did the 10,000 hours when he was 6, rather than 26, when most of us find our way in life. Earlier devotion, of course, does help the genius to come out.

So you do think he was a genius?

Oh, of course.

Who was a scientific genius?

Einstein, Richard Feynman, Darwin. Darwin always has been underplayed because he was a kindly old gentleman and seemed rather modest, but there are different kinds of geniuses who saw what no one else saw. It's been my great good fortune to meet really interesting and smart people. With almost all of them, I can say to myself, well, I'm half as smart as that guy, and if I keep working, I could get there. But every once and a while, I'll meet someone who is on a completely different plane. I can't even fathom how their brain works.

This weekend, I was at the Foundation for the Future conference sponsored by Walter Kistler. Richard Dawkins got the Kistler prize. There, I felt that I was where I belonged with my colleagues ... with everyone except Dawkins. Everything this guy said was on a different plane. When he spoke, it changed the whole dynamics of the discussion. Everyone referred to what he just said, for the rest of the day! Stephen Jay Gould is like that. He has to be one of the smartest people I've ever met. Murray Gell-Mann, Richard Feynman.

But not Freud.

No ... I think Freud was ... no.

Just because his theories were proven wrong? He was a pioneer.

You might say he was a creative genius in the area of literature. To be fair, he created a new field. Obviously, he's had a huge influence, but part of that had to do with the fact that he was "the first." People who are first set the stage for everyone else who comes later. Ever since Darwin, everyone has been a footnote. Even the big guns -- Ernst Myer, E.O. Wilson, Dawkins and Gould -- are just mopping up the big stuff. Thomas Jefferson was an absolute genius. I'm sure there've been many since him, but he and the other guys who set up the Constitution were first. Like Newton. He discovered gravity. That's been done.

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