Thoughts on James Watson (DNA structure co-discoverer) controversial statements?

[dastral]

but I've heard several scientists talk about race-IQ differences, which probabilistically, lends some credibility to those assertions.

Why shouldn't there be a huge difference in IQ or Intelligence between Africa and Europe/US ?

We have food, medicine, healthcare, shelter, educating, government, television, games, stimulation, prenatal control.
What chances does the average 7 year old goat-herder, half starving to death while fleeing genocide because a shaman said "Kill all Tutsi" have to develop "normally" ?

My example is extreme, but half the continent is a hell hole....

PS :There was a great documentary from PBS (or BBC) about life if Nairobi's biggest slum.... disheartening.... to say the least.

 

[Gibsons]

Actually wasn't it Franklin, the one that outright told them the DNA structure (double helix outside versus single inside) and provided the x-ray evidence they used to complete and publish "their" discovery?

She did the X ray data, without which they wouldn't have solved the structure. I forget the details beyond that. She deserves more credit for sure.

After the double helix paper though, Crick remained a cutting edge scientist, made a lot of important contributions and that's probably an understatement. Watson became more of an administrative, public figure type.

 

[OinkBoink]

Why shouldn't there be a huge difference in IQ or Intelligence between Africa and Europe/US ?

We have food, medicine, healthcare, shelter, educating, government, television, games, stimulation, prenatal control.
What chances does the average 7 year old goat-herder, half starving to death while fleeing genocide because a shaman said "Kill all Tutsi" have to develop "normally" ?

My example is extreme, but half the continent is a hell hole....

PS :There was a great documentary from PBS (or BBC) about life if Nairobi's biggest slum.... disheartening.... to say the least.

Yep, if it's between people in largely different environments, there almost certainly should be, which is why they say IQ tests are biased in a way. Measuring someone's native/inherent intelligence by shedding environmental factors as much as possible is challenging.

 

[M0oG0oGaiPan]

you guys have been watching too much gattica

 

[Braznor]

HAHAHAHAHA at this thread and the posts here.

Zinfamous is right, Watson cheated.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosalind_Franklin

Franklin is best known for her work on the X-ray diffraction images of DNA which led to the discovery of DNA double helix. Her data, according to Francis Crick, were "the data we actually used"[3] to formulate Crick and Watson's 1953 hypothesis regarding the structure of DNA.[4] Franklin's images of X-ray diffraction confirming the helical structure of DNA were shown to Watson without her approval or knowledge. Though this image and her accurate interpretation of the data provided valuable insight into the DNA structure, Franklin's scientific contributions to the discovery of the double helix are often overlooked. Unpublished drafts of her papers (written just as she was arranging to leave King's College London) show that she had independently determined the overall B-form of the DNA helix and the location of the phosphate groups on the outside of the structure. Moreover, Franklin personally told Crick and Watson that the backbones had to be on the outside, which was crucial since before this both they and Linus Pauling had independently generated non-illuminating models with the chains inside and the bases pointing outwards.[5] However, her work was published third, in the series of three DNA Nature articles, led by the paper of Watson and Crick which only hinted at her contribution to their hypothesis.[6]

You people have to understand that the Nobel prizes are more politics than science when it comes to contentious issues and claims of credit.

 

[werepossum]

If scientific testing shows that the average person of one race has a lower IQ (of course, we could go into a debate about IQ tests and their accuracy and all that) than the average person of another race, people of either race having a problem with it is just a case of them not being able to accept reality. They want the world to work in a certain way (perhaps, in this case, they want a sense of equality to exist among people), but in reality it doesn't. Deep down, they can't accept that. Such people are dangerous. People who truly create change accept the way nature works. They then use the knowledge of how nature works to create the change that they want to see.

Also, the key word here is 'AVERAGE'. Just because the average IQ scores of races differ, doesn't mean you can't have highly intelligent and talented people from races which have a lower average IQ score.

Now, I'm not sure how scientific and rigorous the tests conducted were, but I've heard several scientists talk about race-IQ differences, which probabilistically, lends some credibility to those assertions.

But is he making comments about race, or about Africa? The two are not necessarily the same issue. The strikingly low average IQ of Africans is well-documented, but it's not necessarily an inherent racial factor. Take a group of African kids, give them good nutrition, lots of stimulation, and teach the kind of things IQ tests measure and I'd bet the IQ gap disappears in one generation. Remember this? http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2289451&highlight=

What happens if you drop off a thousand Motorola Xoom tablet PCs in a village with kids who have never even seen a printed word? Within five months, they’ll have taught themselves to customize the software, reactivate disabled features and, perhaps, start down the path of learning to read.

That last, critical part is at the core of a grand experiment in the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program. MIT is trying to crack the wicked problem of teaching literacy and other skills to 100 million or so first-grade-age kids in the developing world with no teachers or infrastructure. Since vast swaths of the world unable to provide even basic education, scaleable solutions are needed to complement the long road to achieve universal schooling (something that took the West centuries).

So Nicholas Negroponte, the founder of OLPC and MIT’s Media Lab, is doing what comes naturally to scientists: running experiments to see what works. OLPC’s latest trial in DIY education involved delivering Motorola Xoom tablets and solar chargers with custom software to two remote rural villages in Ethiopia where literacy rates are close to zero.

As Negroponte said at MIT Technology Review's EmTech conference this year, here’s how it went down:

"We left the boxes in the village. Closed. Taped shut. No instruction, no human being. I thought, the kids will play with the boxes! Within four minutes, one kid not only opened the box, but found the on/off switch. He’d never seen an on/off switch. He powered it up. Within five days, they were using 47 apps per child per day. Within two weeks, they were singing ABC songs [in English] in the village. And within five months, they had hacked Android. Some idiot in our organization or in the Media Lab had disabled the camera! And they figured out it had a camera, and they hacked Android."

Combine programs like this (stimulation and access to Western technological culture) with programs to improve nutrition and the IQ gap probably disappears on its own. Until then we can pretend there is no IQ gap, or we can understand it and take steps to fix it and/or accommodate it. We also need to accept that we may never completely close the IQ gap simply because a part of it may be cultural. Matching Western IQ levels may mean giving up something that many Africans are not willing to give up culturally and/or in response to their environment; IQ tests do not measure the only form of intelligence and the Western-style education that enables one to perform to one's potential on Western-style IQ tests may not be the best for every culture and environment. This is really not that difficult to comprehend and should not be politically incorrect to discuss. It's not that Africans are inherently less intelligent than Europeans - which should be fairly self-evident as Europeans are simply Africans adapted for colder climes - but rather that certain limiting factors exist. One could argue whether or not Western society is better than African society, but as Watson implies, if we are to truly aid them as a continent (as opposed to aiding them as a race, which shouldn't be necessary except where outside factors have disadvantaged them) we need to understand the IQ gap and why it exists, and then either work to close it, or else recognize that it serves other valid purposes and include it in our plans. I have no idea to what extent nutrition and stimulation alone can close the gap, but it should not be controversial to posit that a different form of intelligence might work better for, say, a Masai herdsman than a Brooklyn accountant and, assuming that is true, the Masai herdsman will not approach the IQ of the Brooklyn accountant until that IQ is advantageous to him within his environment. Until then, it's a pretty safe bet that if Masai herdsmen devised an IQ test, that highly paid Brooklyn accountant would perform under par. (I would give an example here but I have no knowledge of what sort of intelligence allows a Masai herdsman to prosper within his environment - but I'm betting it exists. Humans are a wonderfully adaptable bunch.)

 

[Genx87]

I think he is correct in that eventually we will be able to identify genes that may not be desireable and some will want to change those. The question is what will humanity do with this knowledge? So far when given the power in the past, not good things.

 

[nehalem256]

Combine programs like this (stimulation and access to Western technological culture) with programs to improve nutrition and the IQ gap probably disappears on its own.

So why does China have an IQ equal to that of Europe?

 

[nehalem256]

Why shouldn't there be a huge difference in IQ or Intelligence between Africa and Europe/US ?

We have food, medicine, healthcare, shelter, educating, government, television, games, stimulation, prenatal control.
What chances does the average 7 year old goat-herder, half starving to death while fleeing genocide because a shaman said "Kill all Tutsi" have to develop "normally" ?

But yet you take groups of people that have evolved independently for 10s of thousands of years and you expect them to have the same IQ?

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

ITT: A man that knows the truth - says the truth - believes the truth, but society will never accept. Carry on. Continue blinding yourself with everything is equal.

 

[nehalem256]

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”'

It appears that the most important thing he said was not bolded.

 

[Doc Savage Fan]

Genetic predisposition variance by race. Is it racist to believe that this is plausible?

 

[Jaskalas]

The races have largely been separated by environment for thousands of years. It may take thousands of years living together and interbreeding to solve the scars of our past.

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

Genetic predisposition variance by race. Is it racist to believe that this is plausible?

Let me check my fact checker. Yes! Yes it is RACIST!





Burn him at the stakes.

 

[Doc Savage Fan]

Let me check my fact checker. Yes! Yes it is RACIST!





Burn him at the stakes.

Natural selection is a harsh mistress. I'll give you the match.

 

[brandonb]

This reminds me of The Bell Curve.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve

All I think you need to do is look at history and the world around to see the truth.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

Maybe Rosalind Franklin will have some justice and people will learn what a thieving, unprincipled amoral bastard Watson really is.

 

[werepossum]

So why does China have an IQ equal to that of Europe?

My guess would be better nutrition and an education system more in line with Western processes. If it were inherently racial, blacks outside of Africa would have the disadvantage, and after correcting for socioeconomic factors they do not.

 

[BladeVenom]

nevermind.

 

[IGBT]

everyone said Copernicus was crazy too, and shunned him from their groups. I think he has a point. all the stupid people are reproducing at a faster rate then the smart people. what do you think will happen?

..we will keep electing KOOK fringe liberals and all the low information democrats will think they are enlightened to do so. In other words we will keep circling the drain.

 

[Thebobo]

..we will keep electing KOOK fringe liberals and all the low information democrats will think they are enlightened to do so. In other words we will keep circling the drain.

Who are these KOOK fringe liberals?

 

[blankslate]

Also, the key word here is 'AVERAGE'. Just because the average IQ scores of races differ, doesn't mean you can't have highly intelligent and talented people from races which have a lower average IQ score.

By the same token you can have very dumb and stupid people from a "race" that tends to have a higher IQ.

I contend that we've seen plenty of that in the P&N forums. Additionally we've probably seen reasonably intelligent (in terms of problem; solving ability to learn skills) people spout completely insane gibberish...

IQ doesn't preclude crazy either....

 

[Zebo]

The Church of Multiculturalism cant hold back science. Galileo was killed by the church like Watson was from his lab by PCMC administrators/colleagues who think that simply asking certain questions is inappropriate but truth always comes out.

I'm not to sure about this Gattaca breeding regime though. Seems we always did so but with less precision and certainly genetic manipulation allows for so I don't see the problem.

 

[Whiskey16]

Jim Watson is a dick. That's not to take away from his contribution in solving the structure of DNA. He was a brilliant molecular biologist for his time, and was one of the first to solve a biological secondary structure (Pauling came up with the alpha helix and beta sheet for proteins just two years before).

His views on genetics (which, believe it or not, is not his field) are oversimplistic at best and bigoted at worst. He cherry picks pieces of data that match his world view and runs with them, without establishing causation.

Thank
you, for beating me to this.

Such bigoted tripe finds a forum among those with a simple and prejudiced agenda of supremacism. This particular forum has a recorded sordid history that thankfully is facing attempts to clean up.

 

[JEDIYoda]

So Hitler was.... right?

context is eveything...in Hitlers case no he was not right..in the context he was using it.....you on the other well lest just say people who are not very smart make references to Hitler...