The explosive subject of race and genetics has sullied the reputations of many scientists over the decades but none quite so famous as James Watson, who was suspended by his laboratory in New York late Thursday over his comments implying that black people have inferior intelligence.
It was a rapid tumble for Watson, 79, one of the founders of modern genetics who was quoted in a British newspaper last Sunday as saying it’s wrong to assume the intelligence of Africans is “the same as ours.” His statement prompted London’s Science Museum to cancel Watson’s appearance there and brought quick action from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York, where Watson was once director and still serves as a chancellor and board member.
On Thursday night, 45 years to the day after Watson won the Nobel Prize for helping reveal the secrets of DNA, his laboratory announced that its board had “suspended the administrative duties” of Watson pending further review. It was one day after the lab had issued a statement saying its faculty members “vehemently disagree” with his words and are “bewildered and saddened if he indeed made such comments.”
Watson had expressed regret for the remarks earlier Thursday, saying he was “mortified by what had happened.”
“I cannot understand how I could have said what I am quoted as having said,” he said in a statement to the Associated Press. “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.”
Yet to some of Watson’s colleagues, the damage is done. His gaffe summoned memories of science’s tortured relationship with race and group differences, stretching from the 19th Century origins of eugenics to the debate in the 1990s over “The Bell Curve,” a book that contended the differences in average IQ between blacks and whites were genetic.
Some researchers wondered if Watson’s academic standing could recover or if he would wind up widely shunned like the late William Shockley, a fellow Nobel laureate. Shockley, a co-inventor of semiconductors, claimed in his later years that whites have superior intelligence and once suggested paying people with IQs under 100 to undergo voluntary sterilization.
Damaging statements such as Watson’s — and the potential for misuse of research on race — has led many scientists to avoid the topic altogether. In a 1998 “Statement on ‘Race,'” the American Anthropological Association concluded that ordinary notions of race have little value for biological research in part because of the relatively minor genetic differences among racial groups.
Rick Kittles, an associate professor of genetic medicine at the University of Chicago, said Watson’s remarks aren’t backed by science.
“It’s a rather ignorant statement from an intelligent man,” said Kittles, who is also scientific director of African Ancestry Inc., which helps African-Americans trace their genetic heritage. “Unfortunately, when a Nobel laureate says Africans are less intelligent than Europeans, the average person on the street runs with it. That’s the sad part.”
The Sunday Times of London quoted Watson last Sunday as saying he is “inherently gloomy” about the future 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.”
Robert Sternberg, a prominent researcher on race and IQ at Tufts University, called Watson’s statement “racist and most regrettable.”
“It is unfortunate that some people with great expertise in one area sometimes lose their sense of perspective and come to view themselves as expert in areas about which they know nothing,” Sternberg said Thursday in an e-mail response to questions. “They then proceed to embarrass themselves as well as society in general with their comments that express their own ideology rather than scientific findings.”
The study of racial differences in IQ is among the most deeply contentious fields in all of science. Most researchers agree that tests have revealed some differences among racial groups — but even larger differences between people of different income levels.
Picking apart the relative roles of environment and inherited traits in creating the complex brain processes that make up intelligence has proven nearly impossible. Even the basic question of what intelligence is has spawned dozens of disparate theories.
Sternberg, a critic of traditional intelligence testing, believes intelligence can mean something different for different cultures. In parts of Africa, a good gauge of intelligence might be how well someone avoids infection with malaria — a test of cleverness that most Americans likely would flunk.
In the same way, for many Africans who take Western IQ tests, “our problems aren’t relevant to them,” Sternberg said.
Other researchers stand stoutly behind IQ tests as a good predictor of success in life and believe some group differences have a genetic basis. Henry Harpending, an anthropology professor at the University of Utah, has proposed that the relatively high average IQ scores of Ashkenazi Jews stemmed from genetic selection for higher intelligence among Jews in medieval Europe.
He also believes the conclusions in “The Bell Curve” about the genetic origins of racial differences are “rock solid.”
“We publicly deny there’s any such thing [as IQ], yet people obsess over SAT scores, and that’s just another IQ test,” Harpending said.
The damage to Watson’s legacy from his statements may be difficult to mend, said Jerry Coyne, a professor of evolutionary genetics at the University of Chicago.
“He’s done tremendous damage to science, to himself and to social equality,” Coyne said. “It makes us all look bad.”
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jmanier@tribune.com
