Blog 12

                Chapters nine through twelve of A Feeling for the Organism describe the difficulties McClintock had in sharing her newly discovered transposition genes to her colleagues and how the advancement of molecular biology supported McClintock’s findings years later. It was only until discoveries made by molecular biologists such as Peter Starlinger and Heinz Saedler, and Monod and Jacob that people began to understand and accept McClintock’s previous findings, though it was still an uphill battle for her the whole time. What I think though was the two main initial barriers that kept people from believing in McClintock’s findings were her poor communication of the findings and her lack of social relations with her colleagues. Though communicating new results to others who have no expertise in the field is difficult, the way McClintock went about it did not help either. Learning how to be able to simplify what one is trying to teach takes a long time and though she would have had a fair amount of practice of doing this, I cannot fault her for possibly not doing this in the best way. However, her lack of trying to meet a middle ground and expecting only success is what her main fault was. Since she did not know how to react to people not agreeing with her because she expected that she was always right, her explanations of transposition genes only became more complex and difficult for others to understand. Also, her lack of relations with these colleagues caused them to be fairly skeptical of her. Both sides did not share much respect for each and therefore led to ill support for McClintock’s findings and for her to not try to work on their level of understanding. The ability to properly share one’s work with others, the mutual help and support between colleagues, and to not hold oneself higher above everyone else are all necessary virtues within the field of science. One can read this chapter in McClintock’s biography and see how the lack of these virtues will only cause one grief. Therefore, one should learn from McClintock’s experience that in order to truly succeed in the field of science, one must practice these virtues as well and not just be a methodical intellectual.

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