The review is a few days old now, but I've been meaning to comment on George Johnson's blistering and dismissive takedown of James Watson's book, "Avoid Boring People," in the Times book review.

Johnson ignores the chapter we excerpted in 02138, about the conduct and future of science at Harvard, which I thought was provocative and useful (and judging from the feedback we got, many of you did as well).

Instead, he seizes on a few, probably silly anecdotes and writes....

Imagine more than 300 pages of this. Gossiping at the Piping Rock Club on Long Island with a Neiman Marcus heiress. Sleeping over at Abby Rockefeller’s and admiring Daddy’s Derain. Motoring to a book party at Woods Hole, Mass., “with a pretty Radcliffe senior with short blond hair called Joshie Pashler, who also had something to celebrate in the recent discovery of her first RNA phage R17 mutant.” When you decide to call your third book about yourself “Avoid Boring People,” you’re kind of asking for it. What worked wonderfully in Watson’s earlier books has worn translucently thin.

Watson, Johnson says, has grown "boring."

I wonder, though, if it is really possible to give this book a fair read in the aftermath of Watson's foolish comments about race several weeks back. Would one have been so quick to dismiss his writing when he was still writing from a position of strength, rather than when he's cast himself into disgrace?

James Watson made a terrible mistake recently. It does not mean that his entire life, nor his current work, should be written off as the ramblings of an unhinged old man. Is it just a coincidence that Johnson has done exactly this?