Tracy Press

WASHINGTON — For Dr. James Watson, 79-year-old co-winner of the 1962 Nobel Prize for medicine for his discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA, October marked the nadir of a brilliant career.

The month began with Watson headed to London to promote his new book, “Avoid Boring People: Lessons From a Life in Science,” and to lecture to a sold-out audience at the prestigious Science Museum. An author’s dream tour.

Last week, his lecture was canceled, his tour terminated, his 40-year tenure as chancellor of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island came to an end. Across Britain, he was being denounced as a racist.

What had the wicked Dr. Watson done?

Did he defend the chattel slavery in which five of our first seven presidents engaged? No. Did he agree with Abraham Lincoln that blacks did not deserve equal social and political rights and should be sent back to the continent whence their ancestors came? No. Did he argue for the segregation that was the law in the nation’s capital in which this writer grew up? No. Did he utter the “N-word” used by Harry Truman, who integrated the armed forces, and Lyndon Johnson, who enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965? No.

Watson neither endorsed segregation nor expressed any animus toward people of color. He had simply told The Sunday Times he was “inherently gloomy about the prospects 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.”

While there is a natural desire to believe all people are equal, Watson said, “people who have to deal with black employees find this not true.”

In his new book, Watson adds, “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.”

What Watson was saying was: From a long life and his own reading of IQ test scores, he believes that intelligence is not distributed equally among the races. That conclusion was also reached by social scientists Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray in the 1990s best-seller “The Bell Curve.” The SAT scores seem to bear them out.

When Watson’s remarks hit print, however, a new London blitz began.

The Labor Party chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee charged Watson with “baseless, unscientific and extremely offensive comments” and urged his colleagues to “reject what appear to be Dr. Watson’s personal prejudices.”

“Anti-racism campaigners called for Dr. Watson’s remarks to be looked at in the context of racial hatred laws,” said The Independent. Said Steven Rose, a founder of the Society for Social Responsibility in Science, “This is Watson at his most scandalous.”

The Telegraph quoted Koku Adomdza, director of the black pressure group The 1990 Trust, as calling Watson a “complete dinosaur” and demanding he apologize to “Africa and all people of African origin.”

Added Adomdza: “Dr. Watson is really a relic of the oldest stock and deserves to be made to account for his extremely offensive and ignorant remarks. ... His very poisonously racist opinions put students and the unsuspecting public at serious risk.”

Of these thought police, almost all, it may be fairly said, are academic mediocrities or political hacks who could not carry Watson’s microscope. Yet as the scrub stock piled on, the Nobel Prize winner appeared to buckle.

I am “mortified,” Watson said, burbling this recantation.

“To all those who have drawn the inference from my words that Africa, as a continent, is somehow genetically inferior, I can only apologize unreservedly. That is not what I meant. More importantly, from my point of view, there is no scientific basis for such a belief.”

Sad. Why, with all his honors, prestige and security, did Dr. Watson feel the necessity to apologize for what he wrote, said and believes? Why did he not play the man by flipping off the censors? If they were going to take away his chancellorship, why not go down fighting?

In the England of Henry VIII, heretics were beheaded and their heads put on spikes. Many men, like Thomas More, did not recant.

From the time of Tiberias to the 17th century, men gave up their lives rather than renounce a belief in God. Others gave up their lives rather than renounce a disbelief in the Church. Why could Watson not stand up for his disbelief in the ideological myth of the inherent equality of all men, cultures, creeds and civilizations?

In 1990, the respected journal Science wrote, “To many in the scientific community, Watson has been something of a wild man. ... Colleagues tend to hold their collective breath when he speaks out.”

Too bad the wild man was denatured and domesticated.

Pat Buchanan, a Creators Syndicate columnist, has been a senior adviser to three presidents.

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written by Banana Man , November 03, 2007

This is actually the smartest thing Pat Buchanan has ever written.

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written by Mark Davis , November 03, 2007

As usual, Buchanan does not actually acknowledge the complex facts concerning g (intelligence quotient) in much the same way that Watson did a disservice to the depth of the real science involved. To begin with, the notion that g is an accurate predictor of achievement is itself flawed. g actually only predicts about 25% of the variability in outcomes. Second, there are a range of theories that help explain the wide-range of outcome predictors, like Martin Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligence. Not surprisingly, the ability to mentally rotate blocks is not necessarily a good overall predictor of success.

Watson was just being a bad scientist walking outside his field (molecular biology) and suggesting something that is not borne out by those who carefully study these matters. As a member of the Triple Nine Society, I protest Watson's failure to accurately present the deep treatment of IQ, race and psychological success. And that Buchanan would jump on the Bell Curve bandwagon (widely disputed) is no different than him jumping on the global warming deniers bandwagon.

Sloppy, sloppy, and ignorant.

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written by amy , November 03, 2007

It was my understanding that Rosalind Franklin discovered the double helix. Crick and Watson took the credit for it.

In 1962, James Watson, then at Harvard University, and Cambridge University's Francis Crick stood next to Maurice Wilkins from King's College, London, to receive the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their "discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material." Watson and Crick could not have proposed their celebrated structure for DNA as early in 1953 as they did without access to experimental results obtained by King's College scientist Rosalind Franklin. Franklin had died of cancer in 1958 at age 37, and so was ineligible to share the honor. Her conspicuous absence from the awards ceremony--the dramatic culmination of the struggle to determine the structure of DNA--probably contributed to the neglect, for several decades, of Franklin's role in the DNA story. She most likely never knew how significantly her data influenced Watson and Crick's proposal.

Rosalind Franklin and the Double Helix

Although she made essential contributions toward elucidating the structure of DNA, Rosalind Franklin is known to many only as seen through the distorting lens of James Watson's book, The Double Helix.

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written by k. l. vosburg , November 03, 2007

I'm not exactly sure what the statistics are in Great Britian and while I have no expertise given this paradigm; Another variable social scientists and psychologist have debated pertains to an account in-which 33% percent of all Americans face some delusional neurosis while 17% of those (contained there-in) are certifiably floored.

"Come Watson! The game's afoot..."
(Marching-on to Delores Park)
Sincerely, Patty Whack.

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written by mr bananas , November 03, 2007

Pat let us down he should have one of the candidates up for election for 2008. He has the smarts and dedication to be a great President. He will be well over 75 in 2012 to try for the run. It's not too late Pat, jump into this race now.

Get these two guys Giuliani and Romney out of the race, they are just puppets for the ruling class.

m b

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written by Unsightly , November 03, 2007

Would someone please call the Triple Nine Society and inform them to stop letting their members use their name as a 'letter head'?

Not very smart of them to let their members attempt to validate their opinions with this style of guerilla journalism and 'name-dropping'.

The Preamble to the Constitution of the Triple Nine Society

The Triple Nine Society is committed to friendship, communication, the adventure of intellectual exploration, and a greater realization of individual potentials. It neither sanctions the imposition of one person's philosophy on another nor subscribes to any particular philosophy for its members. It will strive to avoid the insularity of mere exclusiveness.

Here is where you can find the contact information for the Triple Nine Society, to report this violation (and possible breach of a membership, contract).

http://www.triplenine.org/main/contact.asp

Sheeeeeeeeesh!!!

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written by Mark Davis , November 03, 2007

Good luck with that. The use of the imprimatur was purely to note that there is wide disagreement even among those who study the issue (unlike Watson). Here are some resources that point to the fallacies in g and race:

The Genetic Hypothesis. It is sometimes suggested that the Black/ White differential in psychometric intelligence is partly due to genetic differences (Jensen, 1972). There is not much direct evidence on this point, but what little there is fails to support the genetic hypothesis. Once piece of evidence comes from a study of the children of American soldiers stationed in Germany after the Second World War (Eyferth, 1961): there was no mean difference between the test scores of those children whose fathers were White and those whose fathers were Black. (For a discussion of possible confounds in this study, see Flynn, 1980.) Moreover, several studies have used blood-group methods to estimate the degree of African ancestry of American Blacks; there were no significant correlations between those estimates and IQ scores (Loehlin et al, 1973; Scarr et al, 1977).

For more: http://www.lrainc.com/swtaboo/taboos/apa_01.html

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written by Unsightly , November 04, 2007

I agree that there is wide disagreement concerning g.

However, I don't agree that the Triple Nine would throw their support behind you just because you are a member. It seems uninteligent that you would consider such a tactic. The point is it seemed like name dropping to make your opinions sound more valid. And your response to my comment seems flippant???

Everyone has opinions.

If I were a member of the Triple Nine I would question you on why you used that organization's name to assert your opinions, even though your 'damage control' response rejected that idea.

I am not sure, but do you think that it makes you sound smarter? I liked the article, even if we don't all agree on g. Everything is a matter of question. Even YOU don't have all the answers. I admit that you, apparently, are good at taking tests and communicating that you are considered intelligent by the Triple Nine "club". But I question your g, based on your use of the name-dropping technique.

Do you have a Masters Degree in Statistics, or a Minor in Statistics, or some other related field. I think that would better suit you.

Thanks Pat! That smarts!

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written by Mark Davis , November 04, 2007

Actually, I do have a masters in information theory. I don't have a clue what Triple Nine would do, but do know that we worry immensely over what IQ means and what it does not mean, hence my original comment.

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written by kl. vosburg , November 04, 2007

Perhaps man's natural tendency to be analytical has lead to a sort of professional rivalry, if anyone is still hanging precariously to this thread?
I've read most of Mark's posts and have not found him too be malicious, condescending nor self-effacing. Given the blogosphere is a relative unrestricted free-thinking reaction mechanism, if someone quantifies his/her credentials, than it is no different than listing name, rank, and serial number when arguing over military strategy.
He certainly has the ability to chime in on the fallacies and erroneous comments made by others. After-all isn't it really about the truth not anachronyms, and rhetorical cliches which advance us -nowhere.
Write-on! Mark. My apologies if I've offended anyone's delicate sensibilities, since I know how cantankerous you artists can be.

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written by k.l. vosburg , November 04, 2007

Amy also makes a good point inwhich some noted and celebrated scientists have made their successes whether serrendipitously certainly surreptitiously on the research of others. It still boarderlines on fraud.

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written by Unsightly , November 04, 2007

As I said, we agree on this one (1) issue of, "what IQ means?".

And, maybe that Socrates is probably turning in his grave, right now!

And the Triple Nine probably has other fish to fry anyway!



Cheers!

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written by Oranges and Bananas , November 04, 2007

Hey, forget calling the TripleNine Guys. Someone, call Heritage Place (Alzheimers Care Facility). Please inform them that one of their (alzeheimers) patients, (K.L. Volksburg) is using the nurse's computer again without a hall pass.

Meds!

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written by Mark Davis , November 04, 2007

Unsightly: 'As I said, we agree on this one (1) issue of, "what IQ means?".'

I haven't a clue what you are talking about in pretty much all the above discourse except that you were outraged at my name-dropping of TNS. Fair enough, but my original claim that Buchanan and Watson were both poorly informed about the state of racial IQ disparities remains. They were insensitive, sloppy, and ignorant.

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written by k.l. vosburg , November 05, 2007

Message to: Night Nurse.

Basket of fruit turning hostile...
Must advise Patty to abort.

Signed. Patient No.#14

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written by k.l. vosburg , November 05, 2007

...goodnight Lucy, wherever you are?

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written by Oranges and Bananas , November 05, 2007

LOL!

I have to admin, KLV, that was the best one I have read in a while.

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written by Unsightly , November 05, 2007

They were insensitive, sloppy, and ignorant.

Dont forget pompass, arogant, clueless...

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written by Unsightly , November 05, 2007

Why did he not play the man by flipping off the censors?

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written by Oranges and Bananas , November 05, 2007

Anyway, apparently we can't even agree to disagree.

But, whatever!

Have a nice day!

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written by k.l. vosburg , November 07, 2007

It's as if Mr. Buchanan (and he does this from time-to-time) has stepped away from his realm of expertise (Republican Party Analyst of which there's a demand for his particular insight and and self-serving humility (style if-you-will), i.e. MSNBC, McLaughlin Report.
At times "Paddy" almost becomes humble and forthright yet over the years has not been kind to minorities.
Given our day-and-age of conroversy Mr. Buchanan continues to reinvent his relevancy -even if flawed.
Uniquely (and I enjoy reading his spin) this is perhaps what keeps him from falling into the scrapbook of archaic former politicians and simply becoming a cartoon caricature of himself.

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written by k.l. vosburg , November 07, 2007

...welcome back Don Imus.