Celebrated scientist attacked for race comments:
"All
our social policies are based on the fact that
their
intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the
testing says not really"
By Cahal Milmo
Published: 17 October 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 Harbor 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 Harbor 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