Nobel Prize winner and DNA discoverer: Whites smarter than blacks

[The Big Ragu]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/london/7050020.stm

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hbWwe16Y68vdK7nUgcoOOPzuXuFAD8SB8I281

Can't believe there hasn't been a thread about this... unless I am missing it. If I did, I am sorry about the DB...

Dr. James Watson who won the Novel prize and essentially discovered DNA gave an interview in which he said that blacks are less intelligent than whites.

In an interview with The Sunday Times, the 79-year-old 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 went on to say he hoped everyone was equal but that "people who have to deal with black employees find this is not true".

I am just blown away by this... The guy is a brilliant scientist ... and an absolute dumb**** ... Is there some kind of genetic explanation for how that can possibly be?

 

[Chi City 81]

'Yab has no idea why he just had an orgasm.

 

[Beaker]

Sounds like the guy's a certifiable nut:

The scientist has courted controversy in the past, saying that a woman should have the right to abort her unborn child if tests could determine it would be homosexual.

 

[jgmacg]

Lord knows there's plenty of bad science on the issue of race and IQ, going back decades. A quick overview of same:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence

And there's plenty of evidence that brilliance in one area doesn't guarantee anything of the sort in another. That a 79-year-old white Brit - even a Nobel scientist - doesn't think the woman behind the counter at Costa gets him his coffee fast enough or with sufficient deference should come as no surprise.

 

[Beaker]

Lord knows there's plenty of bad science on the issue of race and IQ, going back decades. A quick overview of same:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence

And there's plenty of evidence that brilliance in one area doesn't guarantee anything of the sort in another. That a 79-year-old white Brit - even a Nobel scientist - doesn't think the woman behind the counter at Costa gets him his coffee fast enough or with sufficient deference should come as no surprise.

No doubt, jg. I guess I would have hoped pseudoscience like eugenics would be dead and buried by now. But yeah, the Bell Curve wasn't even that long ago.

 

[Fenian_Bastard]

Watson and Crick probably changed the way we look at the world more than anyone since Darwin -- without ever giving due credit to poor Rosalind Franklin, of course.
Watson has always been a crank outside the lab. Now, he's 79 and probably not altogether there.
Sad.

 

[The Big Ragu]

Lord knows there's plenty of bad science on the issue of race and IQ, going back decades. A quick overview of same:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence

And there's plenty of evidence that brilliance in one area doesn't guarantee anything of the sort in another. That a 79-year-old white Brit - even a Nobel scientist - doesn't think the woman behind the counter at Costa gets him his coffee fast enough or with sufficient deference should come as no surprise.

It actually surprises me a great deal. Genetics is such a precise science. I have a good friend from college who is a geneticist and he is the most rational person I have ever met. James Watson is arguably the most influential scientist of the 20th century. Given how rooted in precision his scientific work was, the fact that he is lending his name to something as imprecise and imbecilic as "all you have to do is hire a few black people and you quickly know they aren't that bright," is really baffling. It's also the kind of dangerous rhetoric bigots hang their hats on.

 

[jgmacg]

The update:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,2193899,00.html

 

[Idaho]

That a 79-year-old white Brit ..

Picking nits here, but he's American. Born in Chicago, educated at Cambridge, though.

 

[jgmacg]

Nice catch, Idy, thanks.

 

[Beaker]

Suspended from his research post:

http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/10/19/uk.race/index.html

 

[Ace]

I'd prefer that my Nobel recipients be at least a smidge smarter than Al Campanis, but that's just me.

Seriously, we don't even know enough about how the brain works to be able to have any confidence in any tests being a reliable indicator of how well a person uses his or her brain.

 

[old_tony]

I'd prefer that my Nobel recipients be at least a smidge smarter than Al Campanis, but that's just me.

Yeah, he's no smarter than Al Campanis. Tell me again, when did Campanis share in discovering the structure of DNA?

I guess the question I would have regarding the subject is this: Is he saying that whites are genetically predisposed to being smarter? Or is it the culture of each race that causes it to do better on certain tests?

There are tests that are a reliable indicator. Math is not a subjective thing. Neither is grammar. I don't believe one race is genetically predisposed to do better or worse on standardized grammar and math test.

But the culture one is raised in will clearly make a big difference.

So while all the lefties here lick their chops ready to call me a racist, here is my take.

Surely, a black kid raised in a stable, two-parent home will do better than a white kid raised by a crack-addicted single mom. Just as a white kid raised in a stable, two-parent home will do better than a black kid raised by a crack-addicted single mom.

And I believe a black kid and a white kid raised in comparable situations will most likely achieve on a comparable scale.

Now if some of you want to argue that inner city cultures -- white or black -- where single teens are popping out kid after kid by different fathers is equal to a middle-class area with a majority of two-parent families, you're completely fooling yourself.

 

[Norman Stansfield]

I'd prefer that my Nobel recipients be at least a smidge smarter than Al Campanis, but that's just me.

Yeah, he's no smarter than Al Campanis. Tell me again, when did Campanis share in discovering the structure of DNA?

I guess the question I would have regarding the subject is this: Is he saying that whites are genetically predisposed to being smarter? Or is it the culture of each race that causes it to do better on certain tests?

There are tests that are a reliable indicator. Math is not a subjective thing. Neither is grammar. I don't believe one race is genetically predisposed to do better or worse on standardized grammar and math test.

But the culture one is raised in will clearly make a big difference.

So while all the lefties here lick their chops ready to call me a racist, here is my take.

Surely, a black kid raised in a stable, two-parent home will do better than a white kid raised by a crack-addicted single mom. Just as a white kid raised in a stable, two-parent home will do better than a black kid raised by a crack-addicted single mom.

And I believe a black kid and a white kid raised in comparable situations will most likely achieve on a comparable scale.

Now if some of you want to argue that inner city cultures -- white or black -- where single teens are popping out kid after kid by different fathers is equal to a middle-class area with a majority of two-parent families, you're completely fooling yourself.

How does global warming affect a white kid raised by a crack-addicted single mom?

 

[Ace]

I'd prefer that my Nobel recipients be at least a smidge smarter than Al Campanis, but that's just me.

Yeah, he's no smarter than Al Campanis. Tell me again, when did Campanis share in discovering the structure of DNA?

I guess the question I would have regarding the subject is this: Is he saying that whites are genetically predisposed to being smarter? Or is it the culture of each race that causes it to do better on certain tests?

There are tests that are a reliable indicator. Math is not a subjective thing. Neither is grammar. I don't believe one race is genetically predisposed to do better or worse on standardized grammar and math test.

But the culture one is raised in will clearly make a big difference.

So while all the lefties here lick their chops ready to call me a racist, here is my take.

Surely, a black kid raised in a stable, two-parent home will do better than a white kid raised by a crack-addicted single mom. Just as a white kid raised in a stable, two-parent home will do better than a black kid raised by a crack-addicted single mom.

And I believe a black kid and a white kid raised in comparable situations will most likely achieve on a comparable scale.

Now if some of you want to argue that inner city cultures -- white or black -- where single teens are popping out kid after kid by different fathers is equal to a middle-class area with a majority of two-parent families, you're completely fooling yourself.

I bet Al Campanis knows more about baseball than this guy, too.

Just because he knows DNA doesn't make him any less a bigot.

When you are talking whites vs. black and whole continents, I don't think you are trying to account for environment. You are just saying one race is inferior.

And again, I don't think our tests are sophisticated enough to measure how well we use our brains. There are plenty of experts who will tell you IQ tests aren't worth spit.

Math tests aren't a good indicator of the smarts of someone who hasn't been taught math.

 

[Write-brained]

I don't agree with the guy, but I'm finding it hard to get upset about something said by a 70-odd something scientist.

It's interesting, and I understand some of the media play, but I don't get the naked outrage by the London mayor et al. Has anyone even heard from this guy since he discovered DNA? If anything, I'd love to read a biography on this guy and see how such an intelligent man came up with his point of view - but just to start ripping into him is an ignorant reaction. Then again, that's pretty much par for the course when talking about race these days.

 

[jgmacg]

Here's the original interview:

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article2630748.ece

And the relevant paragraph:

He says that he is “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”, and I know that this “hot potato” is going to be difficult to address. His hope is that everyone is equal, but he counters that “people who have to deal with black employees find this not true”. He says that you should not discriminate on the basis of colour, because “there are many people of colour who are very talented, but don’t promote them when they haven’t succeeded at the lower level”. 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”.

 

[tapintoamerica]

Two things:
1) The guy who discovered DNA is still alive?
2) Did the reporters do any background checks on his lucidity between getting the quotes and writing the story?

 

[Chi City 81]

Two things:
1) The guy who discovered DNA is still alive?
2) Did the reporters do any background checks on his lucidity between getting the quotes and writing the story?

That hasn't stopped others in the past. ESPN did a profile of Bobby Fischer a few years back despite the fact that Fischer is bat**** crazy these days.

 

[Write-brained]

Can't believe there hasn't been a thread about this... unless I am missing it. If I did, I am sorry about the DB...

Dr. James Watson who won the Novel prize and essentially discovered DNA gave an interview in which he said that blacks are less intelligent than whites.

In an interview with The Sunday Times, the 79-year-old 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 went on to say he hoped everyone was equal but that "people who have to deal with black employees find this is not true".

Now we know why he wasn't called to testify about DNA in the OJ murder trial ...