Fury at DNA pioneer's theory: Africans are less intelligent than Westerners

[Al-khiyal]

October 17, 2007 -- One of the world's most eminent scientists was embroiled in an extraordinary row last night after he claimed that black people were less intelligent than white people and the idea that "equal powers of reason" were shared across racial groups was a delusion.

James Watson, a Nobel Prize winner for his part in the unravelling of DNA who now runs one of America's leading scientific research institutions, drew widespread condemnation for comments he made ahead of his arrival in Britain today for a speaking tour at venues including the Science Museum in London.

The 79-year-old geneticist reopened the explosive debate about race and science in a newspaper interview in which he said Western policies towards African countries were wrongly based on an assumption that black people were as clever as their white counterparts when "testing" suggested the contrary. He claimed genes responsible for creating differences in human intelligence could be found within a decade.

The newly formed Equality and Human Rights Commission, successor to the Commission for Racial Equality, said it was studying Dr Watson's remarks " in full". Dr Watson told The Sunday Times that 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 there was a natural desire that all human beings should be equal but "people who have to deal with black employees find this not true".

His views are also reflected in a book published next week, in which he writes: "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."

The furore echoes the controversy created in the 1990s by The Bell Curve, a book co-authored by the American political scientist Charles Murray, which suggested differences in IQ were genetic and discussed the implications of a racial divide in intelligence. The work was heavily criticised across the world, in particular by leading scientists who described it as a work of " scientific racism".

Dr Watson arrives in Britain today for a speaking tour to publicise his latest book, Avoid Boring People: Lessons from a Life in Science. Among his first engagements is a speech to an audience at the Science Museum organised by the Dana Centre, which held a discussion last night on the history of scientific racism.

Critics of Dr Watson said there should be a robust response to his views across the spheres of politics and science. Keith Vaz, the Labour chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee, said: "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 American scientist earned a place in the history of great scientific breakthroughs of the 20th century when he worked at the University of Cambridge in the 1950s and 1960s and formed 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.

But despite serving 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, Dr Watson has frequently courted controversy with some of his views on politics, sexuality and race. The respected journal Science wrote in 1990: "To many in the scientific community, Watson has long been something of a wild man, and his colleagues tend to hold their collective breath whenever he veers from the script."

In 1997, he told a British newspaper that a woman should have the right to abort her unborn child if tests could determine it would be homosexual. He later insisted he was talking about a "hypothetical" choice which could never be applied. He has also suggested a link between skin colour and sex drive, positing the theory that black people have higher libidos, and argued in favour of genetic screening and engineering on the basis that " stupidity" could one day be cured. He has claimed that beauty could be genetically manufactured, saying: "People say it would be terrible if we made all girls pretty. I think it would great."

The Cold Spring Harbour Laboratory said yesterday that Dr Watson could not be contacted to comment on his remarks.

Steven Rose, a professor of biological sciences at the Open University and a founder member of the Society for Social Responsibility in Science, said: " 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."

Anti-racism campaigners called for Dr Watson's remarks to be looked at in the context of racial hatred laws. A spokesman for the 1990 Trust, a black human rights group, said: "It is astonishing that a man of such distinction should make comments that seem to perpetuate racism in this way. It amounts to fuelling bigotry and we would like it to be looked at for grounds of legal complaint."

Fury at DNA pioneer's theory: Africans are less intelligent than Westerners

[Al-khiyal]

LONDON, October 18, 2007 (Reuters) - London's Science Museum has cancelled a talk by a Nobel prize-winning geneticist who suggested black people were less intelligent than white people.

Dr James Watson, winner of a Nobel prize for his part in discovering the structure of DNA, had been due to speak at the museum on Friday.

Watson, an American, sparked uproar by telling The Sunday Times he was "inherently gloomy about the prospects 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 79-year-old geneticist said he hoped that everyone was equal but countered that "people who have to deal with black employees find this is not true."

The Science Museum, which had been due to host Watson on a visit to Britain publicising his latest book, said this was unacceptable.

"We know that eminent scientists can sometimes say things that cause controversy and the Science Museum does not shy away from debating controversial topics," it said in a statement.

"However we feel that Dr Watson has gone beyond the point of acceptable debate and we are, as a result, cancelling his talk."

Tickets for the talk had been sold out.

Watson was one of three people who shared the 1962 Nobel Prize for medicine.

London museum cancels race row scientist's talk

[Al-khiyal]

DNA pioneer apologises over race row

[Al-khiyal]

WASHINGTON, October 18, 2007 (Reuters) - A prominent New York scientific laboratory suspended Nobel Prize-winning DNA authority Dr. James Watson on Thursday night over racially insensitive comments he was quoted as making in an interview earlier in the week.

Watson made an appearance in London to promote his new book and apologized for his remarks, saying he did not mean to characterize Africans as genetically inferior, British media reported.

Watson, who won a Nobel Prize in 1962 for his description of the double helix structure of DNA, was suspended as chancellor of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York on Thursday.

Watson has been associated with the lab since 1948 but it joined a throng of other institutions and prominent researchers that said Watson's comments were offensive and scientifically incorrect.

"This action follows the board's public statement yesterday disagreeing with the comments attributed to Dr. Watson in the October 14, 2007, edition of The Sunday Times U.K," the lab said in a statement.

In the interview Watson was quoted as 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 Sunday Times did not publish the full interview with Watson, 79, who is known for his outspoken comments.

The newspaper also quoted Watson as saying people should not discriminate on the basis of color, because "there are many people of color who are very talented but don't promote them when they haven't succeeded at the lower level."

Watson said he was sorry for the comments in an appearance at the Royal Society in London.

"I am mortified about what has happened," he told a group of scientists and journalists. "I can certainly understand why people, reading those words, have reacted in the ways they have.

"To all those who have drawn the inference from my words that Africa, as a continent, is somehow genetically inferior, I can only apologize unreservedly.

"That is not what I meant. More importantly from my point of view, there is no scientific basis for such a belief."

Watson, who shared his Nobel Prize with Francis Crick and Maurice Hugh Frederick Wilkins, has long been on record as saying there is a genetic basis for intelligence - something undisputed by other scientists. But experts deny there is any such thing as race on a genetic level.

Watson's interview comments prompted an unusual outpouring from other scientists.

"The comments, which were attributed to Dr. James Watson earlier this week in the London Times, are wrong, from every point of view - not the least of which is that they are completely inconsistent with the body of research literature in this area," Dr. Elias Zerhouni, director of the National Institutes of Health, said in a statement.

"Scientific prestige is never a substitute for knowledge. As scientists, we are outraged and saddened when science is used to perpetuate prejudice," Zerhouni said.

Another group of Nobel laureates also expressed revulsion.

"The Federation of American Scientists is outraged by the noxious comments made by Dr. James Watson that appeared in the Sunday Times Magazine on October 14th," said the group, founded by Manhattan Project atomic physicists.

"At a time when the scientific community is feeling threatened by political forces seeking to undermine its credibility, it is tragic that one of the icons of modern science has cast such dishonor on the profession," added Federation of American Scientists President Henry Kelly.

London's Science Museum canceled a talk by Watson.

Lab suspends scientist Watson over comments on race

[Al-khiyal]

October 22, 2007 -- Despite his frantic backtracking, James Watson's statement that Africans are less intelligent than Europeans follows a long and dubious tradition of geneticists claiming that supposed racial differences have a genetic basis. The idea goes back to the birth of the science of evolutionary genetics and its bastard sibling: eugenics.

After the death of his young daughter, Charles Darwin lamented natural selection's "clumsy, wasteful, blundering and horribly cruel action"; but perhaps man could do better. Darwin did not suggest this step himself, but in the 1930s six of his family were members of the British Eugenics Society, and his son was president from 1911 to 1928. The Galton laboratory at the University of London is named after Darwin's cousin, the geneticist Francis Galton, who coined the term eugenics and advocated perfecting the human race by breeding "those only of the best stock" so that the "feeble nations" could give way before the "nobler varieties of mankind".

Eugenics societies sprang up at the beginning of the 20th century in most western countries to promote breeding programmes, but the movement was not confined to scientists. Browse through the Eugenics Society's membership list and you find lords, ladies, bishops, academics, writers, doctors, artists and politicians from all sides. In November 1913 the Oxford Union carried a motion approving the principles of eugenics. As a cabinet minister, the young Winston Churchill advocated compulsory sterilisation of "the feeble-minded and insane classes". George Bernard Shaw and HG Wells were profoundly influenced by Darwin. The contraception pioneer Marie Stopes campaigned to pass laws to enable sterilisation of the "hopelessly rotten and racially diseased".

But the writings of literary eugenicists betray their real roots: fear. In 1915 Virginia Woolf wrote in her diary: "On the towpath we met and had to pass a long line of imbeciles. It was perfectly horrible. They should certainly be killed." HG Wells openly advocated the killing of the weak by the strong, insisting that "those swarms of blacks, and brown, and dirty-white, and yellow people ... will have to go".

Popular support for eugenics among the west European and US intelligentsia had very little to do with its dubious scientific credentials. Its wellsprings were linked to middle- and upper-class anxiety concerning burgeoning populations of the poor and waves of immigration.

Fear was translated into action in many European countries and US states that adopted eugenicist sterilisation policies. In liberal Sweden, more than 62,000 people (mostly women) with physical or mental disabilities or considered to be socially "undesirable", were sterilised against their will, and the policy continued well into the 1970s. The full horror of eugenics was realised in the 1934 German "racial hygiene" laws, which led to the enforced sterilisation of more than 80,000 individuals.

Hitler's enthusiastic support of its principles established eugenics as the pariah of postwar science. But many geneticists continued to investigate the genetic basis of intelligence, creativity, sexuality and criminality.

Recent controversial (and often disputed) evidence that genes may indeed be linked to these traits has not come as a surprise to sociobiologists, such as Edward O Wilson, who have long argued that mankind cannot, uniquely, escape its genetic inheritance. But the debate that must follow has nothing to do with the ill-considered remarks of Watson. Like his predecessors, Watson betrays fears and suspicions: this time of white privileged Americans of a world that is slipping beyond their control.

A shameful history

Johnjoe McFadden is professor of genetics at the University of Surrey

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October 25, 2007 -- Nobel laureate James Watson has quit his job as chancellor of the prestigious Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York following a row over his remarks about the intelligence of black people.

The DNA pioneer apologised profusely and repudiated comments published in the Sunday Times, but the Science Museum in London cancelled his speaking engagement and his institution suspended him last week.

Prof Watson, 79, who has a record of making controversial statements, shared a Nobel prize with Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins in 1962 for discovering the structure of the DNA molecule.

In his statement today, Prof Watson said that because of his age, his retirement was "more than overdue. The circumstances in which this transfer is occurring, however, are not those which I could ever have anticipated or desired."

The newspaper profile quoted him as saying that 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 that while he hopes everyone is equal, "people who have to deal with black employees find this is not true." He also said people should not be discriminated against on the basis of colour, because "there are many people of colour who are very talented".

In the United States, the Federation of American Scientists said Prof Watson was promoting "personal prejudices that are racist, vicious and unsupported by science."

And the Cold Spring Harbor lab said its board and administration "vehemently disagree with these statements, and are bewildered and saddened if he indeed made such comments".

The lab suspended Prof Watson's administrative duties last Thursday. He had served at the lab for nearly 40 years, having been named director in 1968. He was its president from 1994 to 2003.

DNA scientist resigns after race row