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His exact words were not terribly insane or outlandish, but were certainly quite offensive. Unfortunately, what he says is somewhat scientifically plausible; there is no reason to assume that mental faculties would be selected for identically across the globe. However, that conceded, it is not at all reasonable to assume that, as Watson apparently has, Africans have less mental faculties. Watson simply has no evidence either way, no evidence for his assumption, and no evidence for, well, anything associated with what he wrote or said. That said, we are talking about a Nobel Prize recipient, someone who contributed something to human knowledge which is truly monumental.
But the poor guys clearly let it get to his head. At eighty-seven years old, James Watson has braved public appearances for forty five years since the Nobel Prize was awarded, and unfortunately, his brain has turned into goo. Personally, I mourn the passing of such a great scientist; he was one of our best and brightest, and now he simply travels around the world saying ridiculous things and making a fool of himself, and even science as a whole. Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time he’s done such a thing. For the last ten years, James Watson has travelled the world making expertly assertions about genetics as if discovering the structure of DNA gave him special insight into how it works… everywhere, in everything. Hes been a liability to scientific credibility since he first started blathering nonsense (Hes tackled obesity, Cambridge University staffing decisions, abortion, homosexuality, and sex drive with, well, differing degrees of incompetence) and it seems to be time to just stop listening to him.
Of course, does Watson still represent a benefit to humanity and to science? Little known facts; he chaired the Human Genome Project for four years, served as president of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a large set of laboratories working on cancer, neurology, genetics, and medicine, before becoming chancellor, a position he holds today, and has chaired numerous organizations, charitable and scientific. We could discount the poor man as a quack, but; he is possibly one of the most notable biologists of the entire 20th century, he continues to have some form of positive influence on the world, and, despite the severity of his comments, he at least avoids overt racism and is willing to accept when he is clearly incorrect. He may be a racist whose sense of discretion has abandoned him, but he’s still a fairly intelligent scientist who knows when to shut up and go home, and that is the real reason why we should all leave James Watson to his last few years of farmed-out senility. It’s not as if anyone takes him seriously anymore.
MSpencer is a U0 evolutionary biology undergraduate at McGill University. This column was written for the McGill Daily, as well as the Games Nations Play. Comments are welcome and can be sent to spencer.matt @ gmail.com
Edited by Hostile, 12 December 2007 - 04:09 AM.
