Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Winning a Nobel Prize Doesn't make you Right

Al Gore is wrong about the role of humans in global warming. James Watson, one of the discoverers of the mysteries of DNA, is wrong about genes and racial intelligence:
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.

from The Independent

5 comments:

scalpel said...

I was surprised Watson's comments didn't stir up more of a fuss on the internet.

Michael Rack, MD said...

Thanks for commenting, Scalpel. There wasn't much coverage in the mainstream news sources, but after Drudge publiscized it, I'm also surpised there wasn't more on the internet about it.

Anonymous said...

Did you hear, they found the gene for intelligence. It's on the Y chromosome.


Or if you don't like that, they found it on the X chromosome, which explains why women are twice as smart as men. ;)

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