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."
You’re confusing natural selection and evolution. They are two different things. Natural selection would occur whether the first man was created by God, evolved from lower forms, or was seeded here by aliens.
We should not pass up the opportunity to promote those Blacks who are very bright and very conservative -- such as Rice for VP or President in five or nine years and Brown for Supreme court as soon as one of the present justices dies or retires.
Farrakhan?
LOL!
What a loser.
He’s also ignoring all the resarch that shows that intelligence is partly determined by the child’s environment in the 3-7 year old range.
Whites smarter? Hmmmmmmmmmmm Let’ see.....
Compare Al Gore to Walter Williams
Compare Hillary to Thomas Sowell
Compare Nancy P or Harry Reid to Clarence Thomas....
Naw, I don’t think so! Some of the most brilliant people I know are black! I think it depends on parental upbringing and education, just like with ALL people.
ML/NJ
THE DEFINITION OF INSANITY
By Michelle Malkin • May 21, 2006 09:33 AM
"They say insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Today’s example of craziness: New Orleans reelecting Ray Nagin mayor.
They’re stuck on stupid."
Hillary Clinton vs. Condoleezza Rice?
Al Gore vs. Clarence Thomas?
With the exception of peeing across the room, this group average tells us absolutely nothing about the performance of any individual man or women.
Given that you accept that knowing a person's sex ("gender", strictly speaking, is a grammatical category. "Gender" is an attribute of words, "sex" is a biological category and is an attribute [of most] people.) you will make a priori inferences about their ability to piss for distance, how can you exclude other traits?
Dr Bayes would disagree with you. The a posteriori probability is conditioned on a priori assumptions.
If there is little genetic basis for race, then why don’t white couples produce black babies and vice-versa?
True. And that is why the EEOC should be abolished.
Is Bill Cosby at it again?
It doesn’t surprise me coming from a scientist. On this forum alone, if you disagree with the findings in certain fields related to biology, you’re a knuckle dragging, mouth breathing, IDiot, moron, whatever.
Some people consider intelligence to be the end all and be all of life but don’t consider that without common sense, *intelligence* doesn’t get you very far, not to mention that there are many other skills that are valuable.
The smartest man in the world can’t paint a painting or compose a symphony if he doesn’t have the talent.
This is nothing! You should hear what this one crackpot Nobel Prize winner is saying about global warming!
Carolyn
I agree. The IQ level in most rational individuals (of whatever race, color or creed) is easily raised with education.
Emotional intelligence (maturity), however is the key to a happy life.
We all know high-IQ / highly educated people who are quite successful in their "careers", but totally UNHAPPY basket-case failures in their "personal" lives. (Click my screen name for more on the subject).
Many of the posters here probably don't realize that Africa was on par with Europe, especially northern Europe, until relatively recently.
Along with cultural flaws holding Africans (and African descendants) back, would also suggest scientists look into how recent history could have an effect on Africans' epigenome. Additionally, studies have shown that if children are treated as being [above] other children, their performance is increased compared to their [below] colleagues. So, for Africans, why not vice versa. Especially in the United States, almost from birth, African descendants are bombarded with stupid comments such as some of those expressed on this thread and from Watson. If they are brought up to believe they are stupider, uglier, etc. than their European descended counterparts, is it even remotely surprising that they do not succeed in society? (rhetorical--unless you're 'blind,' it isn't all that surprising at all). Add onto this their having to face that their ancestors (largely) were slaves and treated as subhuman (from some of the comments, some of that attitude hasn't changed), and that they don't have a single African/African descended majority country that is wealthy/technologically advanced/otherwise 'successful.'
Probably a lot of them wonder whether they are actually [below] the other 'races.' And racist comments don't help them get out of this rut.
More about the "Bell Curve," instead of being in third place, [Latinos], who are largely of mixed Amerindian and European descent (unless Brazil was a major participant, and the other Latin American countries were not as represented), should place in between Asian and European to get second place, and bump European down to third, as Amerindians are supposed to be most closely related to northeast Asians and European descended pan-Americans are closely related to Europeans. Instead, they place closer to Africans than to Europeans. You could argue that southern Europeans may have stupider 'IQ DNA' than northern Europeans (since Latin American European descendants are heavily of southern European extraction), but again, history doesn't suggest this. Again, suggestive that intelligence (or IQ, which is not intelligence) is not primarily determined by 'racial' DNA (such as it is).
Simple, there are native Africans that can live in the wilds with nothing but a sharp stick and a couple of rocks. You or I in that same situation would quite likely end up in the belly of something or other by the end of the first week.
We may be able to do algebra in our heads and type 80 words a minute, so in the case then any test based on that criteria we would obviously show a huge difference in intelligence. He on the other hand can do things taught or self learned that we probably couldn't do without years of practice also.
YOu are confusing intelligence with a particular set of learned skills. The African with a sharp stick is probably not going to invent a light bulb, for example.
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