Avoid Offensive People: Controversial Claims from a Life in Science

This is what happens when a specialist tries to be a generalist.

If Dr. Watson had stated Asians are generally smarter than Americans there would be no backlash from FAS. Rather than condeming his statements, the FAS should use science to proove him wrong, and show that genetics play no role in intelligence.

It takes an 'open mind' to accept facts once science has prooven their validity.

I know that of all his acomplishments and awards, Dr Watson treasures the Nobel prize the least.

WOW, you hit the nail right on the head! The FAS ought to use science rather than jumping onto the anti free speech band wagon. It seems anymore people will readily use censorship rather than the voice of reason.

And what if Watson is correct? Are we so afraid of this possibility that we will kill the messenger? What proof is there of any equality in the human genome? My children are gifted in mathmatics and art. My neighbor's children all seem to have musical talent. Therefore if such similarities can exist in family units it seems to be quite possible there could be a similar polarization of traits in a larger groups.

To deny the heretics among us the right to speak is to miss an opportunity to explore a reasonable alternative or validate a premise.

The post states that FAS objected on grounds of Watson's opinion being "unsupported by science." Why all this gargage about political correctness from responders? People who are somehow bothered by PC are mostly lazy and don't want to bother with regard for others. How's that for a broad sweeping statement?

"What if Watson is correct?" If, dog, rabbit. What if the moon is made of cheese?

You guys are just too hilarious.

Oh, statistics! The offence probably comes from a tendency to classify, to categorise, to group. Wars have been fought as a result of relying on grouping.

Once this tendency is stripped away, and every individual is treated as an individual, away goes the problem.

Its the old bathwater baby scenario all over again.

A person can be a genius but still be a complete ninny when it comes to being politically correct. Unfortunately being politically correct looks to be of more importance than any other accomplishments or abilities of a person.

The sad truth seems to be all too often demonstrated that a politically correct dullard will garner more respect and acclaim than any person of merit who happens to put foot in mouth more often than not, even if they do make what they see as a valid observation. One would expect a valid and reasoned response but instead we get a knee jerk (stress on the jerk) reaction where brain disengages and frenzied verbal berserker begins. Mark Twain or Stephan Leacock would not long survive the modern pillories of todays media.

I wouldn't be so bold as to try to judge his intentions, but I do find it amusing when anyone who says something so controversial is castigated in such a way. I'm not saying he's right or wrong (I don't know much about genetics) but I think that we all have a right to say what we think (even if it goes against the grains of society). I don't know on what (if any) scientific evidence he bases his claims, and I do understand the implications if the scientific community were to accept those claims out of hand.

For argument's sake though, what if it were proven that there is a correlation between intelligence (not education) and racial demografic? Would Watson be commended for helping to fascilitate the discovery or would he be demonized for creating a rift between people?

As far as genetically engineering pretty girls...I think that's funny, I don't know if he was serious or not but it's still funny. Personally I think that when we start talking about "engineering" people, we get into a very touchy subject with very merky moral waters. Throughout history (particularly the last couple centuries) when society makes a change in its perception of moralityto accomodate a narrow spectrum of circumstances, it always seems that in a relatively short amount of time the spectral band becomes so wide that nobody seems to remember how we got that far away from the original point (Roe vs. Wade anybody...I know that's a touchy one, but equally controversial).

There it is...I deposit 2 cents.

Darn it! I forgot to log in and I didn't realize it until the fifth post to which I replied!!!

I think Dr. Watson may be intentionally outrageous. The outrageous part is the stepping on the toes of the politically correct. Whether or not the views of the PC are based on fact or just opinion, those of that mindset explode when contrarian statements are made. If Dr. Watson was a little more circumspect, he would have noted that environment, genetics, and natural selection produce diverse people who are adapted to survive and thrive where they live. Perhaps it would be instructive to see how people of different genetic backgrounds perform on a selection of intellectual,relational, etc. skills under different earthly environmental and social conditions. I am reminded of "Only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the noonday sun."

The co-inventor of the transistor, William Shockley, made similarly disturbing comments

much to his later regret.

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

He once suggested everyone with an IQ under 100 be sterilized.

What a crock of sh**e..

If you could find the gene ....

D'uh.. yes and be certain that it doesn't actually play some critical role in some other unsuspected part of our biology...

Like these idiotic claims that upmteen percent of our genes don't do anything! Yeh right...that's anything that we have worked out yet....

If we applied the same philosophy to a car...we'd rip half of it out and then find it didn't work anymore.... all that messy oil ! what on earth is that about..it's excess weight pour it away..and water! Who needs water...or an airfilter...

you get my drift.

I won't even lower myself to responding to the racist lines of drivel...

Del

Here's an interesting link that was sent from a co-worker... Thanks Steve.

Enjoy!

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22895442-30417,00.html

-Kate

If true, the article is interesting. It shows that Dr. Watson could not be a racist, along with re-enforcing his generalizing statements. I wonder if the FAS will apologize.

Guest said "It shows that Dr. Watson could not be a racist, along with re-enforcing his generalizing statements."

I'd have to take issue with your idea that someone with documented (but perhaps unknown to them) African ancestry can't be a racist. I've actually met significantly more Black racists than white ones, taking their self-identification of race at face value.

But I don't see how the Australian article re-enforces Dr. Watson's assertion that Africans, taken as a group, are on average, less intelligent than other groups. Unless you mean that Dr. Watson was stupid to have made that remark, at least, where people would quote him. But I'm afraid he's correct that quite a lot of the intelligence testing done so far does show that Blacks score less well than whites. Some people claim the tests are biased culturally against Blacks. But there are some almost culture-neutral, and language-independent IQ tests, and the differences are there too, though not as pronounced as when a test relies heavily on vocabulary or prior knowledge.

Certainly in my home town, we have a significant "achievement gap" between Black and white students, even after the effects of family socio-economic level are adjusted for. This is after almost 10 years of significant effort by the school district to reduce or eliminate that gap. Our school district has also been cited by the Federal government as having a "disproportional" representation of Black children in special education as "cognitively impaired". Well, the definition of cognitively impaired requires that the student score below either 75 or 70 (almost or exactly 2 standard deviations below the "average" level of 100, depending on the test) on an individually administered IQ test in the students' native language. That's the least amount of evidence used. Usually there are two or three tests of both "ability / capacity" and of academic achievement in the kids' file before such a determination is made.

I'd be reluctant to say that a single IQ test ought ever to determine a person's entire academic or professional career. Motivation and perseverance counts for a lot. But there's no way a person with an IQ repeatedly measured around 80 should consider becoming a surgeon. Or even an engineer.

Anna

Point taken, Anna, but just to level the playing field, let's have all the various groups take these tests in African environment extremes and see how well the scores hold up. It is my contention that the scores will change in that Africans will probably do roughly the same and the racial groups that come from more temperate climates and environments will suffer a loss due to the stress of adverse and unaclimated environment.

Further, IQ tests measure what IQ tests measure. What about social IQ, emotional IQ, creative IQ, mechanical IQ, hunting IQ, etc., etc. Depending on the date of testing, I am dead average or Mensa qualified. IQ is like a muscle. The more it is exercised, the stronger it gets. This is personal observation and also backed up by research.

I think that there is a lot of cultural confusion of intelligence with human value. I think once everyone resolves this confusion, we can talk about differences in cognitive processing without getting into fits of PC hysteria.

Well Dave, your suggestion to "have all the various groups take these tests in African environment extremes" might have more merit if we weren't talking primarily about people who are 3-7 generations removed from life in Africa. I'm sure environmental adaptation counts for something, but not the 0.5 or more of a standard deviation differences that routinely show up among different racial groups in the US. Indeed, given climatic adaptation, the Asian sub-group might do even better in a physical environment, such as Africa, more like the areas in which their progenitors evolved. But that the difference among the means is now only around a half of a standard deviation is good news. That means that by some combination of better educational practices and less-biased tests, we've reduced what was a between-groups difference of almost 2 standard deviations in the 1930's and 40's by three quarters.

I agree with you that IQ tests measure what IQ tests measure. Psychometricians call what IQ tests measure "g" or general intelligence. The results of IQ tests are very highly correlated with academic performance, and less highly correlated with economic success in Western societies. (Think Bill Gates, who dropped out of college. ) On the other hand, both the NBA and the NFL have many more Black athletes than white ones. Is it racist to say that it appears that the average size and/or strength and/or endurance of Black athletes seems to be higher than the average for white ones? No one can tell just by looking at a person if they are below, at, or above average in intelligence (for their particular group, or for humans as a whole) as one can do with both size and strength. I don't think intelligence is necessarily the sine qua non of human value, but it certainly is important, or people wouldn't be so defensive about measures of it.

I am personally (just) old enough to have had my first set of IQ test sub-test scores reported as compared to all kids, to just males, and to just females. School districts and testing services rarely do that any more; it's too politically incorrect. But the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) does break down scores by gender. They also break down results by socioeconomic level within each country participating, and discuss school day and school year duration, expenditures on schooling, and the degree to which school is mandatory for citizens. See PISA for a report with more stats than you probably want about the most recent (2006) test. It seems that worldwide, girls as a group do substantially better than boys at reading, very slightly less well than boys at science, and somewhat less well than boys at mathematics. These differences seem to hold across participating countries with a wide variety of attitudes towards the education of girls and women, and no matter what level the average academic performance of their country. Is it sexist to discuss this question? I don't think so, but Larry Summers (ex-president of Harvard) was hounded from academia for saying that the comparative dearth of women in mathematics and the hard sciences might possibly have something to do with women, as a group, having less mathematical talent.

There are also very substantial differences in performance on this test among countries, and in some cases, among racial groups within countries, although the racial partitioning of a country's results is not published by the OECD, but occasionally by the various countries. Unfortunately for this discussion, no African countries are participants in the OECD-sponsored PISA, so we can't directly use that data set to discuss Dr. Watson's faux pas statement about the average intelligence (as demonstrated by academic achievement) of Africans.

I don't think anyone is well served by ignoring the data we do have, or by pretending that differences don't exist between groups. It may sometimes be necessary to remind everyone that policies should be developed which judge every individual fairly and by relevant criteria, not necessarily to ensure an equal outcome for all individuals, and especially not to ensure "proportional" representation of various groups. For academic programs, that means the person's demonstrated ability to do the type of academic work relevant to their desired program. For football teams, that means the person's ability to throw or to catch, to block or to tackle. It's just as ridiculous to insist that the freshman class at MIT must contain at least 12% Black students (the proportion of Blacks in the US population) as it is to insist that the Green Bay Packers must have 11% Hispanic players (the proportion of Hispanics in the US population).

Anna

Anna--

You are going to give the PC-equal outcome folks screaming fits. I believe Jimmy the Greek got clobbered for advocating that blacks were genetically better athletes. It is too bad this discussion has to be sheltered under a "controversial" wing. Unfortunately, society is not ready to investigate this topic seriously because the most strident have already dictated the answer--and don't muddy things up with facts! Reminds me of the Galileo heliocentric/geocentric heretic-burning fuss. I wonder if we will take centuries to clear our heads. Good luck to you, Anna. May good science prevail. Be careful where you publish.

I do give the PC-equal outcome people fits, whenever we discuss this topic. I live in Michigan, which last fall passed, by almost 70% of the validated ballots cast, a law that prohibits the use of gender or race-based preferences in publicly-funded hiring, contracting or education. The very instant the results were announced, the President of our state's most prestigious institution of higher learning called a press conference and pledged to use every legal means to continue their affirmative action policies (which the year before they had defended, at the cost of some $6 million in state funds, all the way to the Supreme Court and mostly lost) by substituting, to the greatest degree possible, family socio-economic status and the racial mix of the candidate's high school or previous college for their previous race-based admission preferences.

I'm sad to say that the Alumni Association followed President MarySue Coleman off that PC cliff and pledged to use their privately-raised money to give racially-targeted scholarships, now that the university could no longer use their funds to do so. Arghhh! I'm happy to say that donations to the Alumni Association dropped by almost 30% since that happened. I withheld donations on both my and my husband's account, and I will continue to do so until the university and Alumni Association both start treating their prospective (and current ) students primarily as individuals rather than as representatives of their various interest groups. I'm afraid I'm not all that popular in the non-science-math-and-engineering academic circles here in town.

Anna

You are right to take issue with my first statement regarding racism. I agree completely, that racism is ugly and foolish, as well as not restricted to any particular race.

Also you were correct in presuming that my second point; re. Dr. Watson re-enforcing his own findings, was a round-about way of calling Dr. Watson stupid for remarking publicly.

As you know, my reply was pointed to the poster of the Australian article. I was hoping to point out how the info in the Australian article was meaningless, even if true. I believe both of my points were missed by the poster.

If I may; I view racism as being a result of the racist's lower intelligence level. I really hate/fear the hidden, yet open racists. They publicly insist one group is less 'capable' than another group, and thus deserves artificial preferences, and treatment to 'level' the perceived in-balance. This is vulgar and insulting to the receiver of the preferential treatment, but so accepted. All people are capable of success, and as you state, success comes in many forms.

I personally could not pass medical school. But I still feel successful. Apparently not to many other white Americans can pass medical school either, as the majority of my doctors are Asian. It may be hard for some to believe but, I have full faith in their abilities. I try to judge mainly on the content of one's character, and I may judge the clothes you choose to wear. I never judge based on the skin you were born with.

I apologize for posting above as GUEST. The comments were mine.

Thank you Anna for your very informative, and (unfortunately I should state) brave comments. Good fortune to you.

Hi Mevel -

You said, "I really hate/fear the hidden, yet open racists. They publicly insist one group is less 'capable' than another group, and thus deserves artificial preferences, and treatment to 'level' the perceived in-balance. This is vulgar and insulting to the receiver of the preferential treatment, but so accepted. " It's the racists (and sexists) of that sort who I take greatest exception to myself. This is most frequently the sort of minority-group-member racists I encounter in academia, politics and government agencies, or the HR departments of businesses. There's a term for people who hold that sort of view regarding women; they're called "difference feminists", and they currently are in ascendancy in most of the so-called "women-centric" or feminist institutions. While I am a proud and outspoken feminist, I'm afraid I'm usually not very popular with difference feminists either. But I blame them, and racists of the ilk you describe, for the fact that I repeatedly and continually have to prove myself to be a competent engineer to 7/8th of the people I meet professionally. Since pretty much all of us have encountered too many "diversity candidates" who only got their positions because of preference of one sort or another to automatically treat minority members of almost any profession as competent.

You apparently are also willing to stand behind your comments, even to the point of identifying them after you've unwittingly posted anonymously. Good for you, and it's nice to make your acquaintance in this forum. Thanks for your kind wishes, and may you also find good fortune on your path.

A person should be evaluated by other people (or institutions) based soley on criteria relevant to the purpose behind the evaluation. Students seeking admission to schools should be judged based on academic (and maybe some character) criteria. Doctors, lawyers, architects and other professionals should be selected based on their education, experience, accessibility and how they (and their staff) behave towards patients/clients. While there are measurable and real differences between groups, these differences are very small compared to the differences between members of any group. You can't tell where a person is on the intelligence (or competence, or kindness) spectrum just by looking at the outside. You have to see how they behave, and the sort of people they surround themselves with, when given a choice.

So the only civilized way to behave is to treat everyone with the same respect as an individual, except when the differences among individuals actually matter to the business in hand. And when the differences do matter, when a limited number must be chosen from a larger pool of applicants, all candidates should be judged by the same criteria, the same standards, and should undergo the same selection process. All the criteria or standards should be demonstrably and defensibly relevant to the job / position / award / promotion. No "nudge, wink, namedropping" to let the interviewer know that this candidate is the son or the niece of a member of the Board. No similar "nudge, wink" to let the interviewer know that his or her department "really needs to do a little better at promoting diversity, eh."

I think James Watson was unwise to make the comments he did. But I'd be much more inclined to look at the quality of the people he hired at Cold Harbor (and perhaps the quality of any minorities he or his chosen subordinates turned down) before I'd be willing to label him a racist of any sort.

Anna

wow. old men are always offensive though. and crazy.... apparently the genes for modernism and moralism dont run that deep.