Posted on 10/17/2007 10:20:53 AM PDT by blam
Nobel scientist condemned for 'racist' claims
By Stephen Adams
Last Updated: 2:48pm BST 17/10/2007
Nobel Prize winning scientist Dr James Watson has been heavily criticised for making “racist” comments after he said Africans were not as intelligent as Europeans.
Dr Watson is no stranger to controversy
Dr Watson, who helped unravel the structure of DNA with Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins, was roundly condemned for saying 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”.
The eminent American, currently in Britain to promote a new book, also said the assumption that different racial groups shared “equal powers of reason” was backed by “no firm reason”.
His comments have been fiercely attacked by fellow scientists, anti-racism campaigners and politicians.
Neourobiologist Prof Steven Rose of the Open University, a founder member of the Society for Social Responsibility in Science, said such “racist” comments were also “genetic nonsense”.
“He should recognise that statements of this sort have racist functions and are to be deeply, deeply regretted,” he said.
“Making statements of that sort is certainly a great day for the British National Party but it’s a sad day for scientists and racial harmony.”
Dr Watson has courted controversy before, saying darker-skinned people have a higher sex drive and that women should hypothetically have the right to abort fetuses that “may have a tendency to become homosexual”.
He has also backed genetic screening.
Prof Stevens thought the 79-year-old American was stirring up trouble to raise publicity for his new book, entitled 'Avoid Boring People’.
He said: “He doesn’t need to do it. He had a distinguished reputation as a molecular biologist and he should keep out of areas in which he is not well qualified.”
No evidence that claimed to find people of African descent were less intelligent than Europeans or other racial groups had stood up to scientific scrutiny, he stressed.
Koku Adomdza, director of the black equality pressure group The 1990 Trust, labelled Dr Watson a “complete dinosaur” and pressed him to apologise to “Africa and all people of African origin”.
He said: “Dr Watson is really a relic of the oldest stock and deserves to be made to account for his extremely offensive and ignorant remarks.
“His very poisonously racist opinions put students and the unsuspecting public at serious risk.”
Keith Vaz, the Labour chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee, commented: “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 exists at the highest professional levels.”
The Equality and Human Rights Commission, successor to the Commission for Racial Equality, said it was considering Dr Watson’s remarks “in full”.
The comments by Dr Watson, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1962 together with Britons Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins, were first made in The Sunday Times.
I call on this man to apologize for his ageist statement.
ROTFL ... he’s certainly doing his part to diminish the value of a Nobel prize. Queue Al Gore ...
http://news.independent.co.uk/sci_tech/article3067222.ece
articles cannot be posted by independent so you have to go to see the original story.
“He doesn’t need to do it. He had a distinguished reputation as a molecular biologist and he should keep out of areas in which he is not well qualified.”
_______________________________________________________________
A little out of touch. Dr. James Watson is the original loudmouth celebrity scientist. He has been spouting off about subjects of which he know nothing for forty years.
Can’t let facts interfere, can we. Remember the “Bell Curve”? I think it’s also been offered that the Asian race is a tad smarter than the Caucasian race. Should we protest and demand a retraction to facts? Hmmm?
Why isn't the NBA dominated by 4'3" oriental women?
The big pic is to work together! Not tear each other apart!
I don't know why it's so threatening to some that there might truly be inherent, genetic differences among groups of people. It seems that some are unable to comprehend the difference between statements of generalized facts and statements of specifics.
If it's a general fact that one race or another has an average IQ higher or lower than another, that does not mean a thing about any specific person's IQ. Anglo-Saxons can be less intelligent on average than Asians, and it doesn't mean anything about my intelligence. It's simply a general fact about an overall population.
My intelligence is exactly what it always was. My success and happiness in life are not completely dependent on my IQ. I'm no more nor less of a good or valuable person because of my IQ.
In other words: So what?
Don't fear truth.
I believe that the reason is that Watson has always been a darling of the Left and has been a very useful idiot in advancing their causes.
They can't resist sensationalizing anything "racist," but they don't want to permanently damage his utility to them, so they scrupulously avoid including his name in the headline, because that's the only thing most people will bother with anyway.
Tut, tut! Not political correct thing to say in this climate.
Amazing that a guy this intelligent could postulate something so stupid. I think he just singlehandedly brought down the caucasion IQ enough to negate his study’s “results.”
Oh boy! That'll get everyone pissed off!
William B. Shockley, 79, Creator Of Transistor and Theory on Race
I love it! The liberal education establishment lives and dies by "testing" and "research". What phonies.
If a scientist does a study to prove him wrong, but the numbers end up supporting him, is the study de facto racist?
It is best to determine the required outcome before any studies are done, in order to ensure that the science is objective ;-) Same applies to global warming studies.
Seems sensible, however, to actually challenge the man’s statements not through counter-claims, but actual science. But I realize this won’t happen; the budget is still tied up in the trans-gender inequality study.
“Nobel Scientist Condemned For ‘Racist’ Claims”
During the years I was in/around science in “the academy”, the rap
on Watson was he was “a sexist pig”, given some of his remarks on
the females of the species.
(and maybe an unseemly bit of skirt-chasing...for the average scientist!).
Asian isn’t a race. If it was, then it would shatter the MA Teacher’s Union’s assertion that the MCAS Test is racist.
I'm also tire of people stating that Norwegians are taller on average than Pygmies. Its insulting. People are all exactly the same, no matter what.
It’s amazing that what this scientist said isn’t common knowledge to everyone over the age of 40 — who have had an opportunity to observe the world and people.
That is not to say there are exceptions..
There are exceptions to almost every “standard” or “average”..
Exactly how I feel. I’m black, and still an engineer. Maybe I won’t develop the Warp Drive, but I still contribute to the greater good. And I can still have a good life and touch other lives. Anyone ever wonder who the person was who got Einstein interested in Physics? It wasn’t his dad.
It should be more like has not stood up to violent political pressure.
When underdogs get their political voice we will have to fore go any opinions of differences in dog traits. Just like humans, dogs are a distinct species. Some breeds (races) can hunt. Some can herd. Some can guard. Without question, we use the breeds to their advantage. We even talk about the smart breeds. Does anyone ever brag about how many words a basset hound understands? Well, they do for border collies.
I only got to read about the first 30 pages or so...but the book linked
below is a pretty good biography.
Definitely a brainy guy, but not the nicest one.
Broken Genius: The Rise and Fall of William Shockley,
Creator of the Electronic Age
by Joel N. Shurkin
My daughter who is a recent graduate of McGill University (considered a prestigious school in Canada) told me that the profs openly taught that blacks were not as smart as whites or asians. I was so surprised I had to make sure I heard her correctly. If someone in an American Univ taught that a riot would break out and I expected the same would happen in Montreal. There it was no big deal.
The left’s heads will explode when they have to face the idea of someone aborting a child with homosexual tendencies.
'Black people are less intelligent than whites', claims DNA pioneer (James Watson)
Watson sounds like Darwin and Darwin’s successors the Nazis and abortion industry.
But all of the invective from the beclouded minds of the politically sensitive crowd cannot change the truth of a single proposition. What is true shall remain so even if 99.99% of all "smart" people vote against it. Science has become so politicized that large elements of what passes for scientific discourse today is merely dressed-up religion, usually marxist dogma.
Bravo for Watson for daring to discuss taboo subjects.
As an engineer, you contribute to the greater good by adding capital of one form or another (material, intellectual, inventive) to our society.
I know a young lady that I laugh about whenever I think of my conversation with her: “I just want to work for a non-profit”.
Doing what?
“I don’t know, but it has to be a non-profit, perhaps raising awareness about a public issue. And I can’t go to work for a for-profit company until I find a good non-profit job, because the non-profits look down on that sort of thing.”
I sht you not...
Ok, so if I run into the "Asian race" in a bar I'll be sure to buy it a beer.
The problem with this whole line of thinking is that "races" aren't intelligent or unintelligent. People are. And among people of all backgrounds, you'll find a huge continuum of intelligence that exists regardless of whether they're black or white or whatever. Even if you believe that genes play a significant role in determining intelligence (a shaky claim itself), you'll quickly find that the diversity of genes within individuals of any given race is so great that making generic statements about "racial intelligence" quickly becomes meaningless. An African from the Congo and and an African from Namibia may share fewer genes in common than a European of German descent and a Kenyan.
“...for saying 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”. “
Watson needs to read:
“Out of America: A Black Man Confronts Africa
by Keith B. Richburg”
Which shows the problem of Africa is a lot of smart guys have
“gone for the gold” (and power).
And a lot of “do something” folks in the West keep meddling in all sorts
of unproductive ways.
Anyone else around here old enough to remember when Dr. Shockley went through a similar controversy? As best I can recollect, that would have been in the early or mid 70s.
“An African from the Congo and and an African from Namibia may share fewer genes in common than a European of German descent and a Kenyan.”
I agree. I think the whole ‘racial profiling’ is nonsense, but we sure love to prattle on about it, don’t we?
I'm not sure what your point is. The tallest woman in the world is Yao Defen, a 7'8" tall Han Chinese woman. Yao Ming, center for the Houston Rockets, is a rather notable member of the NBA.
There are tall people and there are short people. And on a local level, height and another attributes is inheritable. But please note, for example, that Africa is home to some of the tallest people on earth (Southern Sudanese, for example) as well as the shortest (Twa pygmies for example). There are huge variations in genetic distributions within races, so many that race itself becomes a useless metric, at least from a scientific perspective.
I guess this means Condi Rice and Clarence Thomas aren’t really black. It must be an illusion.
The problem is culture, not genetics. Take kids out of inner city public schools and send them to schools that emphasize direct instruction and discipline. That is Marva Collins’ way and it works.
No, it's just that your definition of "race" is so reductionist as to be unrealistic.
Wow, and it sounds like you're trying to pick a fight. However, I won't bite. Get a life and stop hijacking threads.
You have got to be kidding me. You believe this crap?
that doesn’t say anything about genetics. I bet a group of Britney Spears fans will also have a lower IQ than the rest of the population.
They can kill any of their preborns who are Jewish or Presbyterian or black for that matter.
Abortion is an equal opportunity murder.
Well, I think there are pretty clear examples from history why typologizing people on the basis of race is a bad idea.
But as to the merits of your argument, there are genetic differences between groups of people. The question is really "which groups of people?" The differences between groups of people of the same race are so great that they actually dwarf differences between different races. Race -- if we're talking skin color -- is an incredibly useless measure of genetic variation. Races aren't distinct genetic groups, they're just people who happen to have the same or similar skin color.
What is it about population statistics that you aren't getting? The existence of outliers do not negate the general statistical picture. Asians are, on average, shorter than other major racial groups. They are also, however, much more populous, which means that it is statistically more likely that an Asian will also appear way out on the end of the bell curve past members of the other groups, even though the Asian average is to the left of these other groups. Men and women have the same average IQs. Men, however, have a wider distribution, which means that men are much more represented than women at both the high and low IQs - their bell curve is flatter and extends out further in both directions than does that of women. Yet, the most intelligent person in the world, by raw IQ score, is reputed to be Marilynn Vos-Savant, a woman. She is an outlier who does not, however, disprove the overall picture.
Ok, you go define race then. Don't knock my definition if you can't provide your own.
I think one of the problems we're going to find is that any definition of race is inherently arbitrary.
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