Watson, DNA & Racism

The dis-oriented author is a minority. I had a black grandmother. Therefore I find my interest piqued by news stories about race. Today, CNN reported that a lecture by Dr. James Watson at the Science Museum of London had been canceled. Watson, of course, is a Nobel laureate having shared in the 1962 Nobel Prize in Medicine for his pioneering work in DNA. Along with his partner, Francis Crick — his name has been synonymous with DNA.

Watson's speech was canceled because he suggested that blacks are less intelligent than whites.

According to the Times of London:

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 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”.

Watson is a smart guy he should know better. In this era of political correctness there are some questions that simply cannot be asked. As a scientist is it not reasonable to hypothesize as he does here? In a purely scientific context his hypothesis, that human evolution among geographically diverse populations may not be identical seems reasonable. But as soon as that hypothesis involves race, and worse intelligence, it cannot even be considered.

Now what is my position on this? Easy, I am a creationist. I believe that all people are created in the image of God. The idea that some are more or less intelligent based on divergent evolutionary paths does not factor into my belief system.

Watson is not the first to follow evolution to its logical conclusion.