You have embarrassed yourself and do not have the intelligence to know it, Mr. Nobel Prize Winner James Watson. Do a bit of research and reading on these men - just for a beginning, because the list is long.
Posted on 10/17/2007 1:36:52 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
'Black people are less intelligent than whites', claims DNA pioneer
One of the world's most eminent scientists is at the centre of a row after claiming black people are less intelligent than whites.
James Watson, who won the Nobel Prize for his part in discovering the structure of DNA, has drawn condemnation for comments made ahead of his arrival in Britain tomorrow for a speaking tour.
Dr Watson, who now runs one of America's leading scientific research institutions, made the controversial remarks in an interview in The Sunday Times.
The 79-year-old geneticist said he was "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really".
He said he hoped that everyone was equal, but countered that "people who have to deal with black employees find this not true".
He claimed genes responsible for creating differences in human intelligence could be found within a decade.
He includes his views in a new book, published this week, in which he writes that "there is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically".
"Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so," he says.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission is now studying Dr Watson's remarks "in full".
Dr Watson arrives in Britain to promote his latest book, Avoid Boring People: Lessons from a Life in Science.
Keith Vaz, the Labour chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee, told the Independent: "It is sad to see a scientist of such achievement making such baseless, unscientific and extremely offensive comments.
"I am sure the scientific community will roundly reject what appear to be Dr Watson's personal prejudices. These comments serve as a reminder of the attitudes which can still exist at the highest professional levels."
Dr Watson was hailed as achieving one of the greatest single scientific breakthroughs of the 20th century when he worked at the University of Cambridge in the 1950s and 1960s, forming part of the team which discovered the structure of DNA.
He shared the 1962 Nobel Prize for medicine with his British colleague Francis Crick and New Zealand-born Maurice Wilkins.
He has served for 50 years as a director of the Cold Spring Harbour Laboratory on Long Island, considered a world leader in research into cancer and genetics.
He has courted controversy in the past, reportedly saying that a woman should have the right to abort her unborn child if tests could determine it would be homosexual.
He has suggested a link between skin colour and sex drive, proposing a theory that black people have higher libidos.
He also claimed that beauty could be genetically manufactured, saying: "People say it would be terrible if we made all girls pretty. I think it would be great."
Steven Rose, a professor of biological sciences at the Open University, told the Independent: "This is Watson at his most scandalous. He has said similar things about women before but I have never heard him get into this racist terrain.
"If he knew the literature in the subject he would know he was out of his depth scientifically, quite apart from socially and politically."
Whenever you see the word "expert", think professional BS'er.
What you said!! bttt
Details, please.
The African Blacks are of far lower IQ than American Blacks. Some of the SubSaharan countries have an average IQ of 70.
You have embarrassed yourself and do not have the intelligence to know it, Mr. Nobel Prize Winner James Watson. Do a bit of research and reading on these men - just for a beginning, because the list is long.
ping
They may be less intelligent, but they are just as smart.
Maybe not. I posted this on previous threads regarding GW hysterics. It's interesting that Crichton discusses uncritical scientists with respect to eugenics. The Cold Springs Harbor Institute, according to Crichton, was started to propagate the study of eugenics. Mayhaps the good professor is a throwback.
Where did you get that graph? It’s not really from The Bell Curve, is it? ............... Stormfront???
Of course it makes Watson's statement look nonsensical. Statistics always break down when you do that.
It's easy to see that Condoleeza Rice is smarter than, say, Richard Simmons. That doesn't make Watson's statement false.
But I will say that all the posters who seem to take the position that blacks, as a broad demographic group, must be statistically equal to whites in the area of intelligence because Thomas Sowell (or Clarence Thomas, or Walter Williams, or ...) is really smart seem to miss the overall point.
I don't say that Watson is right. But these sorts of counter-arguments strike me as something along the lines of "Some of my best friends are black".
A better counter-argument would be a statistical study of IQ by country in which African countries could be compared with non-African countries. Post #124 provides a counter-argument along these lines. I can't vouch for it's accuracy, but it's a darn sight better than "Condoleeza Rice is smart, therefore everyone in Africa is smart."
Look at the statistics almost anywhere for IQ by racial group. It doesn't matter whether you think IQ is hereditary or environmentally determined, the simple observed fact is that the mean IQ for 'blacks' (whatever that really means) is around 85 - a full standard deviation below that of 'whites' (whatever that means). You might argue the test are biased, and they may be. But, what the statistics suggest is that the mean IQ for the 'black' population is 'low normal'. Very ugly and uncomfortable.
Explicit disclaimer: group mean IQ says absolutely nothing about the IQ of any INDIVIDUAL member of that group. I have known exceptionally bright blacks and exceptionally stupid whites, Jews, Japanese and Chinese. Judge NO individual on the basis of group characteristics - give everyone the chance to save you from making a fool of yourself.
“This guy, naturally, defines “intelligence” from an entirely white Eurocentric white, and he’s apparently not smart enough to realize that different peoples develop differnt kinds of “intelligence.”
You are joking with the above statement I hope.
That is the wacky thinking behind all the attempts to dumb down much of k -12 education as well as university course ok. And testing for employment, etc....
Facts are facts, truth is truth. There are no “different types” of intelligence. Math and science is math and science.
Judge Burton: "I turn to [An Inconvenient Truth] the film. The following is clear:
"... science is used, in the hands of a talented politician and communicator, to make a political statement and to support a political programme. ..."
... the Defendant, does not challenge that the film promotes political views. ................."
To say blacks are less intelligent is just stupid in itself.
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