Sheldon Krimsky, who supervised my master's thesis at Tufts, has died at age 80. His NYT obituary is here, if you haven't used up your free reads. His work is highly relevant to a discussion we've been having here.
Shelly was a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and he was a critic of science. His life's work was to expose corruption in science, and warn of the negative effects of technology. Sometimes he went a bit overboard, in my view, particularly with respect to gene editing. He was much more alarmed by it than I think was really called for, but that's okay. We need to think about worst case scenarios. And he was certainly right to be concerned about the effect of genetically modified organisms on the economics of farming, and he was right about the long-term problems with herbicides.
I learned from him to think critically about science, that it is at the same time the right way to gain understanding of the world; and subject to error and misuse. A lot of people have a hard time seeing that both are true. So a lot of what I do here is to sort through that paradox. I haven't been in touch with Shelly for a few years, so I never really had a chance to tell him how much his mentorship shaped my thinking. In fact the last contact I had with him was to give a negative review to a book he edited. (Yeah it was about gene editing.) So that's too bad. But it's good to know that the Times has honored his life's work.
2 comments:
What a mensch. I have no problem with skeptics; it's conspiracy theorists who are ignorant and dangerous, especially today in the age of social media. He fought the good fight and was a man of action and conviction. (And a stylish dresser, too, from his obit picture!)
I take it Sheldon Krimsky was still working at Tufts? Impressive and admirable life and work.
The fact that you didn't reach out to him to tell him of his influence on you reminds me of the expression, "When you lose, don't lose the lesson." We need to express our gratitude to people, animals, nature, and those we appreciate before it's too late. It would be great if there's a place where we all meet up later to settle our differences and say what we need to say, but since everything else in Christianity is bullshit, I suppose the concept of heaven is as well. Damn it.
As for style, Shelly liked to wear Hawaiian shirts to teach. He had some impressive examples.
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