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."
The good doctor should have kept his mouth closed.
Not because what he speaks might be the truth based on scientific evidence, but rather, saying what is politically unacceptable will end his career and reputation amongst his "peers".
He will now be tossed into a group that includes Arthur Jensen, among others. Not that they were wrong - rather, that they dared to investigate forbidden questions, and then to speak the empirical truths about that which they discovered.
- John
The one thing I’ve learned from this thread is that the average IQ of Freepers is a lot lower than I thought.
“The one thing I’ve learned from this thread is that the average IQ of Freepers is a lot lower than I thought.”
Its the bell curve don’t ya know.
Bump
One of the major differences though is that in Africa many of the leaders happen to be VERY dumb as well, which makes a huge difference.
I know it is a generalized belief, but your statement above is probably more true of most nations than the one about intellegence that got this thread started.
Bump
Conclusion: Lack of intelligence is largely self-imposed through nurture/culture. This goes back to what Bill Cosby has been saying, and what i rather crudely alluded to in my Library vs Basketball analogy. Again, look at the people studying in the lib and the people throwing hoops on the court. Then check their SAT scores. And as for ‘Africans’ ....go to your local university and check what most of the Africans are doing (if they are not studying they are working and saving).
If I recall in one of Sowell’s books he talks about the extremely low IQs of Irish and Italians when they were measured during WWI inductions.
Over the past 80 years those average IQs increased dramaticlly due to fine Catholic school educations in the mid centurey where millions of poverty sticken immigrants were given the finest of educations available at the time for low prices. The Irish and the Italians now outearn WASPS and are only superceded by Asians and Jews.
I think there are both genetic and environmental factors that influence both intelligence and achievement, that is to say the use of the intelligence one has.
Clearly, attitudes, application and diligence, as well as opportunity, greatly affect achievement and possibly even IQ. There is no question that someone with a relatively low IQ who has an outstanding work ethic and applies him or herself diligently can outstrip a person with a relatively higher IQ who is a lazy sot.
To the extent Cosby (and Juan Williams for that matter) preaches blacks in the US have allowed themselves to perpetuate a culture that does not even attempt to make full use of their intellectual capabilities (whatever they may be), he is absolutely right.
To suggest that it follows logically that with application scores will become equal across groups is inaccurate.
Your points about the success of blacks of immediate African (and West Indian) origin in the US does not prove anything - they are self-selected (by coming here) and undoubtedly are of higher intelligence and diligence than the average populations in their countries of origin.
If you read my posts, you will see I do not suggest anywhere that individuals should be judged by group norms. On the other hand, to deny the empirical evidence because it is uncomfortable strikes me as a profound mistake that makes finding real solutions impossible - because it's unclear even what the solutions might and ought to be, and whether the cost of attempting particular solutions (in money and the effects on people) are socially accpetable.
Now had Sen. Robert Byrd said the same thing?
...it'd have been granted more weight. ;^)
People who speak in absolute generalities are always idiots!
/irony
Try to assess the intelligence of any creature, human or non-human and you are opening a hornets nest of problems.
Apparent differences in intelligence are frequently the result of cultural or home environment factors. It is frequently affected by motivation. Intelligence is also relative.
People who train dogs rank certain breeds as brighter than others. But that ranking is based on the ability of that breed of dog to learn and carry out commands given by a human being. Some breeds which are ranked lower in intelligence are very bit as smart, but more stubborn or less interested in performing parlour parlour tricks to please their masters.
I’ve known some very intelligent blacks and some very stupid whites but I wouldn’t think of judging any race on the abilities or inadequacies of a few.
Your point that men have a larger variance in IQ scores than women is very similar to Larry Summers’ statement that led to his being hounded from the presidency of Harvard.
Instead of getting stuck on a couple of graphs from the BELL CURVE, everyone on this board should read the last two chapter's of the book. Murry and Herenstein did not only talk about the issues, they offered solid concrete solutions to the problem that occur when only academic intelligence is valued in the information age.
I first heard it in 1976.
Apparently Watson thinks everything is DNA. He is right that blacks test lower than whites (and whites test lower than Jews and Asians)but it is unlikely that this is primarily due to genetic causes; but to societal and cultural differences.
If there was a gene (Watson admits that none such has ever been discovered) that unambiguously gave greater intelligence with not other detriments, what would stop it from reaching 100% in the population? All things being equal women usually go for the smarter guy, and the smarter guy usually wins out over his dumber competition. There might well be some ‘Poindexter’ gene, that gives greater intelligence but at the cost of physical prowess. But I think it is more likely that those without physical abilities nurture what abilities they DO have.
A black guy from Ethiopia came over to the U.S.A. and was working as a night guard at a building my dad was the engineer of. He used the time to study Economics at the University. He asked my dad “what is wrong with black people in this country?”; because he noticed what anyone who lives in D.C. notices; the urban ‘black’ culture there is the WORST.
Now if it was genetic and ‘out of Africa’, why would a pure African fresh off the boat be studying Economics while African Americans (many with European genes) are doing drive-by’s and selling crack on the street?
I believe a picture of Powell&Rice with the caption, “We are not amused.” would be appropriate.
And once again everyone is surprised when a scientific materialist turns out to be a racist—as if scientific materialism had anything to say about morality or justice!
You beat me to it!
No one has suggested that there aren’t highly intelligent people of all races. The problem arises when some races outperform others on average, which definitely does occur. The assumption is automatically made that each race would perform equally well at every task that exists, were it not for some hidden bias or discrimination. So when blacks don’t get into med school in exact proportion to their population numbers, people start screaming for affirmative action and demanding that a quota be established. It’s declared to be impossible to conceive that one race could actually outperform another in any particular task, but there’s no reason to believe that’s the case.
This doesn’t mean individuals can’t be judged as individuals. They should.
You did.
In a sufficiently large group of people, you will find some who are smarter than you, and some that are not as smart as you. Saying that you can find smart people and dumb people among [pick group name] tells you nothing about the average (which is the point under discussion)
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