DENNIS MYERS Against the Grain Advertisement

To many U.S. baby boomers, Watson and Crick are the names of heroes. It was James Watson and Francis Crick of the United States who, with Britain's Rosalind Franklin, Raymond Gosling and Maurice Wilkins, cracked the "double helix" genetic code and won three 1962 Nobel prizes in medicine (Franklin died in 1958 and Nobels are awarded only to living people. Raymond Gosling was not an award recipient.)

Naturally, the parochial press in the country made it seem like the two U.S. scientists had done the job all by themselves, and that helped lionize Crick and Watson in the minds of boomers.

David Harris, the student leader of the 1960s, used to talk about the difference between heroes and idols. Idols like Marilyn Monroe, he believed, serve little purpose beyond entertainment and occupy a place that admirers are not likely to achieve. But heroes are people who accomplish things and thereby set an example that can be achieved by anyone willing to put in the work. Crick and Watson were not just celebrities, famous for being famous. They were men of the mind, men who accomplished a feat that would open new frontiers to cures and further discoveries. The trailblazers Franklin, Wilkins, Gosling, Crick and Watson were famous for something more than being famous.

To be a hero carries with it responsibility. It is the kind of responsibility that many parents learn when they realize that their children adore them. Whatever kind of life they may have led before, the danger of disappointing their children changes them. If one is in the role of hero, the role demands a good example. In 1993, when singer Michael Jackson was first accused of misconduct with children, a friend of mine whose children idolized the singer told me fervently, "I hope it's not true."

Last week another friend, a former Nevada judge, wrote to me, "I cut my teeth (scientifically speaking) on Watson and Crick - the double helix changed how I looked at science - persuading me that science is a bundle of yet to be discovered, unlimited possibilities. I was shocked when the news re Watson hit the press."

She was reacting to the reports about James Watson saying he was "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa ... all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really." He said he hoped all are equal but "People who have to deal with black employees find this is not true ... people who have to deal with black employees find this not true." In short order, Watson lectures at the London Science Museum and University of Edinburgh were canceled.

Watson offered a fairly abject apology - "To all those who have drawn the inference from my words that Africa, as a continent, is somehow genetically inferior, I can only apologize unreservedly. That is not what I meant. More importantly, there is no scientific basis for such a belief. ... I cannot understand how I could have said what I am quoted as having said."

But it was not enough to save his job - Watson was first suspended and then fired from his post as chancellor of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island. (The biological sciences school at CSHL is named for him.) Some were surprised at the severity of CSHL's response, and my judge friend suggested that I take a look at the laboratory's history. Though you won't find it on the "About us" page on CSHL's web site, the institution was a pioneer in eugenics, the pseudoscience involving techniques like selective breeding and forced sterilization to "improve the race" that was promoted by the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s and actually became state policy in Nazi Germany. Little wonder that Cold Harbor was sensitive. (While doing additional research I discovered that Crick, also, is a eugenicist.)

Paradoxically, Watson has made comments that seem to offer some understanding of the need to set a good example. The events of this month, he said, "focus me ever more intimately on the moral values passed on to me" by his parents and ancestors. "[Their] lives were guided by faith in reason; an honest application of its messages; and for social justice, especially the need for those on top to help care for the less fortunate."

For the benefit of a generation that admired him, it is unfortunate that those things did not come to his mind a little sooner.