The Double Helix

“The issues were often more complex, and the motives of those who had to deal with them were less tortuous, than he realized at the time. On the other hand, one must admit that his intuitive understanding of human frailty often strikes home.” 

This is Bragg’s closing statement in the Forward. It functions as a defence of Watson’s book, and at the same time pre-emptively notes the limitations of his perspective. It is the only place where we have an authorial voice other than Watson’s, and it is no surprise that Bragg was chosen, as a figure of scientific authority and respectability, with direct involvement in the DNA story.

His statement that the issues were “more complex” than Watson realised is linked to the wider point about perspective which is made repeatedly at the beginning of this book: Watson’s is just one view of the matter, and any one view is bound to have its bias and limits, especially when it comes from someone so intimately involved in events. But this too is the strength of Watson’s account: its freshness, immediacy and vitality owes to its closeness to the action.Bragg writes earlier in his Forward, “I do not know of any other instance where one is able to share so intimately in the researcher’s struggles and doubts and final triumph” (xvii).

The final point about Watson’s “intuitive understanding of human frailty” is also interesting.