Not to praise but to bury

There isn't a term of art for the rare but not unheard of obituary written by someone who has themselves passed. When American monster Dick Cheney died last week his Times obit was written by Robert McFadden , who is still with us though he retired in 2024 after over six decades of reporting.

The advanced obit is a bit of a curious necessity in journalism. The death of a notable figure is breaking news but the details of their lives are not, so it makes sense to have them prepped and ready, even if that does lead to the occasional embarrassment .

Sharon Begley, who died in 2021 due to complications from lung cancer , may have penned the definitive of these, having written James Watson's remembrance four years before his death last Thursday . Watson won the Nobel prize in 1953 for his co-discovery of the structure of DNA and then spent the latter years of his life dedicated to promoting an anti-scientific view of human development that could only be described as abjectly racist and sexist.

Begley writes:

Watson cared deeply about history’s verdict, which left old friends even more baffled about his statements and behavior . It started in 2007, when Watson told a British newspaper that he was “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours — whereas all the testing says not really.” Moreover, he continued, although one might wish that all humans had an equal genetic endowment of intelligence, “people who have to deal with Black employees find this not true.”

How on earth one of the giants of 20th century science could be so overtaken by a decidedly 19th century worldview is central to the question of Watson's life:

A partial answer to “what happened to Jim?”, she and other friends said, lies in the very triumphs that made Watson, in Hopkins’ words, unrivaled for “creativity, vision, and brilliance.” His signal achievements, and the way he accomplished them, inflated his belief not only in his genius but also in how to succeed: by listening to his intuition, by opposing the establishment consensus, and by barely glancing at the edifice of facts on which a scientific field is built.

Again, Begley wrote this a full four years before Watson's death.

One of the most difficult ethical beliefs I hold is that all people are capable of change, even those most dedicated to the kind of cruelty and selfishness that holds sway amongst our so-called leaders today. That doesn't mean I don't believe in accountability or justice, but that I have to believe all of us have the capacity to be the best versions of ourselves. I've heard religious friends express this as "the hardest thing I do every day is pray for that man".

As Watson's final verdict shows, there's a reason it's such a difficult thing to believe.