I'll bet him $1 that he is wrong.
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."
Don’t let Bill O’Reilly see this thread. He’ll read the title and then claim that ‘Black people are less intelligent than whites’ was posted on “hate site” Freerepublic!!
I'll bet him $1 that he is wrong.
"oh yeah.thats right an election year and the rats have to use race to cover up their liberal agenda"
Here is proof that this is false:
Clarence Thomas.
Work ethic is a component of culture, not intelligence.
How about denying “empirical evidence” because the test groups were chosen in a ridiculous manner?
Being “black” does not indicate genetic similarity. These ethnic comparisons are done based on skin color. Therefore, the results are meaningless in the sense that they allow a comparison of intelligence between black and white Americans due to genetic factors.
There may be a difference in performance on tests between the two groups, but it must be based on environmental factors due to the above.
Except that Watson had to actually accomplish something significant for his award, and Gore just had to be a gasbag.
The only thing that the Nobel Peace Prize and Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine have in common is the name "Nobel," they aren't even awarded by the same committee.
LIBERAL RESPONSE: Bigot! Racist!
Work ethic means nothing if it isn’t directed intelligently.
I don't know who Miss South Carolina is, but I vote for both pretty AND smart.
However, if I only get one wish it is for pretty, because nothing is more insufferable than an ugly know-it-all chick.
“Work ethic means nothing if it isn’t directed intelligently.”
As an employer I would rather have someone of moderate intelligence who works their behind off than some super intelligent person who doesn’t do anything.
Nature's IQ test is below as is in fact the reason humans developed intelligence far in excess of that needed to find food and shelter. This definition of higher intelligence probably holds throughout the universe. In the most recent test handed out by nature, it has determined that America has a superior combination of intelligence, teamwork, economic sophistication, and culture than Iraq. Nature has removed many of the low scorers from the gene pool so they do not continue to pass on their genetics and culture.
That's true, and nations with high average intelligence and high work ethic tend to rise to the top.
And Dr. Watson made a General Statement. All you touchy-feelies can get your panties in a bunch reciting anecdotal evidence purporting to refute his statement but it does not invalidate what he said. Now you might not like it to be true, but if it is then you must accept the factual evidence for what it is. And trying to demonize research because you might be offended by the conclusion is tyrannical.
Politics and science MUST NOT MIX!!!
I am a firm believer that nurture and nutrition are the other legs under the stool, the third being inborn intelligence. The effects are cumulative, which build a culture and civilization over time. There are many psychological tests that show that people tend to meet the expectations others have of them. President Bush alluded to that phenomenon in his phrase, "the soft bigotry of low expectations."
There is also a theory in the social sciences called "attribution", in which people are more likely to see what the want to see instead of perceiving reality. Naturally, this tendency to "attribute" preconceived notions contributes to stereotyping and bias.
I don’t know: after thousands of years they couldn’t come up with the wheel. What does that tell you?
You meant to say "anecdotal" — implying a conclusion based on description of a specific situation — rather than "antidotal" — an opposite something that is administered to correct an overabundance of something else.
> There may be more, but Australia, Sub Saharan Africa, and the population of early North America are among areas where the 3 Rs never made much of an appearance......in a fashion we generally consider ‘civilised’.....Not sure the wheel showed up either in those places.......
Neither the wheel nor metal nor a written language found their way to New Zealand, yet nobody would seriously argue that the Maori didn’t have a highly developed, rich and sophisticated society that focused on what they did very, very best of all: making war on each other and on other peoples in the region, hooning around the South Pacific in very seaworthy handmade vessels, cooking and eating people and committing centuries of detailed history, bush lore and navigational know-how to memory.
I have met Maori who can recite, word-perfect, their genealogy from today back to 900 AD, complete with cross-references to other genealogies, witty asides and interesting anecdotes about various of their ancestors. This recitation is called their “whakapapa” and as you can imagine it can take a very, very long time.
Not many folk from Mensa could easily do that.
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