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Letter to the editor

Scientific icon sets off furor

He apologizes for his comments about blacks.

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published October 19, 2007

NEW YORK - James Watson, the 79-year-old scientific icon who won a Nobel Prize in 1962 for deciphering the structure of DNA, has set off an international furor with comments to a London newspaper about intelligence levels among blacks.

A profile of Watson in the Sunday Times Magazine of London quoted him as saying that he's "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."

While he hopes everyone is equal, "people who have to deal with black employees find this is not true," Watson is quoted as saying. He also said people should not be discriminated against on the basis of color, because "there are many people of color who are very talented."

The comments, reprinted Wednesday in a front-page article in another British newspaper, the Independent, provoked a sharp reaction. Watson has apologized and says he is "mortified."

London's Science Museum canceled a sold-out lecture he was to give there today.

In the United States, the Federation of American Scientists said it was outraged that Watson "chose to use his unique stature to promote personal prejudices that are racist, vicious and unsupported by science."

And Watson's employer, the renowned Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York, said he wasn't speaking for the research facility, where the board and administration "vehemently disagree with these statements and are bewildered and saddened if he indeed made such comments."

Watson is in Britain to promote his new book, Avoid Boring People, and a publicist for his British publisher provided this statement Thursday to the Associated Press:

"I am mortified about what has happened," Watson said. "More importantly, I cannot understand how I could have said what I am quoted as having said.

"I can certainly understand why people, reading those words, have reacted in the ways they have. 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."

Watson's publicist, Kate Farquhar-Thomson, would not address whether Watson was suggesting he was misquoted. "You have the statement. That's it, I'm afraid," she said.

A spokesman for the Sunday Times said that the interview with Watson was recorded and that the newspaper stood by the story.

Watson's new book also touches on possible racial differences in IQ, though it doesn't go as far as the newspaper interview.

In the book, Watson raises the prospect of discovering genes that significantly affect a person's intelligence.

"There is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically," Watson wrote. "Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so."

Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, said, "Jim has a penchant for making outrageous comments that are basically poking society in the eye."

Collins, who has known Watson for a long time, said his latest comments "really ... carried it this time to a much more hurtful level."

In a brief telephone interview, Collins told the Associated Press that Watson's statements are "the wildest form of speculation in a field where such speculation ought not to be engaged in." Genetic factors for intelligence show no difference from one part of the world to another, he said.

Several longtime friends of Watson insisted he's not a racist.

"It's hard for me to buy the label 'racist' for him," said Victor McElheny, the author of a 2003 biography of Watson, whom he's known for 45 years. "This is someone who has encouraged so many people from so many backgrounds."

So why does he say things that can sound racist? "I really don't know the answer to that," McElheny said.

Mike Botchan, co-chair of the molecular and cell biology department at the University of California at Berkeley, who has known Watson since 1970, said the Nobelist's personal beliefs are less important than the impact of what he says.

"I think Jim Watson is now essentially a disgrace to his own legacy. And it's very sad for me to say this, because he's one of the great figures of 20th century biology."

Eric J. Cooper, president of the National Urban Alliance for Effective Education, said Watson diminished the achievements of black leaders.

"It just reinforces the ideas of those who are out there hanging nooses," Cooper said. "That starts when we stop believing in the capacity of all people."

Fast facts

Previous comments

- In 2000, in a speech at the University of California at Berkeley, James Watson suggested a link between exposure to sunlight and sexual urges: "That's why you have Latin lovers. You've never heard of an English lover. Only an English patient."

- At the same lecture, he said thin people are unhappy and therefore more ambitious. "Whenever you interview fat people, you feel bad, because you know you're not going to hire them."

- He has also been reported as saying a woman should have the right to abort her unborn child if tests could determine it would be homosexual. In a BBC interview in 2003, he reflected on what discovering genetic irregularities in unborn children would have meant for his son, who suffers from mental illness. "I think I would be a monster to want someone to suffer the way he has. ... So, yes, I would have aborted him."

Sources: Associated Press, BBC

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To read the profile of Watson by the Sunday Times Magazine of London, visit world.tampabay.com

[Last modified October 19, 2007, 00:59:06]