James Watson on Race

Fury at DNA pioneer's theory: Africans are less intelligent than Westerners - Independent Online Edition > Science & Tech: "Fury at DNA pioneer's theory: Africans are less intelligent than Westerners Celebrated scientist attacked for race comments: 'All our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really' By Cahal Milmo Published: 17 October 2007 One of the world's most eminent scientists was embroiled in an extraordinary row last night after he claimed that black people were less intelligent than white people and the idea that 'equal powers of reason' were shared across racial groups was a delusion."

Controversial DNA pioneer's talk halted - Yahoo! News: "He told the paper he hoped that everyone was equal, but added: 'people who have to deal with black employees find this not true.'"

Isn't odd that this episode should occur one week after a Nobel Prize is awarded that confirms the primacy of science ?

At the risk of being condemned by friends, Watson's remarks need to be thought about just as objectively as we think about global warming. The last time I read on this subject, the famous "Bell Curve" book, I came away convinced it is a valid if loaded topic. Attacks on the Bell curve, esp. by Steven Gould, seemed to me as unscientific as attacks on Gore.

Before sating more, I do need to say I was a student of Herrnstein, the second author of the Bell Curve. Herrnstein was a great teacher but I remember well how this good man was harassed by anti-scientific creeps including Steven J. Gould in his terrible book ,"The Mis-measurement of Intelligence." Under the pretense of science, Gould ridicules the very effort at measuring intelligence as akin to phrenology and then goes on t assert measuring IQ is intrinsically racist because iQ tests were once misused. By that standard Astrology should pre-empt Astronomy and Chemistry should be abadoned because it grew from Alchemy. Beyond that. Dr. Gould's abuse of statistics to serve his ends would have earned a D in my Frosh stats class.

BUT ... before offering to lynch me as a racist, people need to understand the misuse of the term "Black" in our society as compared to the genetics Watson talks about. "African Americans" are not a distinct genetic group,.despite the geographic isolation Watson refers to,because shortly after being imported to the Americas, Africans were intentionally cross bred with Indigenous Americans .. in other words many of our fellow "black" Americans have a large "Asian" genome! Last time I looked, Asians did awfully well on IQ tests.

Of course, the southern slave holders effort to improve the breed was NOT the end of the process of creating the African American genome. Over time, there was enough good spirited hanky panky that the dusky skinned fella or gal next to you on the bus is more likely to be descended from Tom Jefferson or some other upper class white folk than he or she is to be descended from Shaka Zulu or some colleagues of Tarzan's.

The typical African American is no more "Black" than the typical Spaniard is descended from the Cro-Magnons of 25000 years ago or even from the Moors of 500 years ago. The modern African American genome is a wonderful mix of Euroes, Amerinds, and Africans . .. esp. Africans of one region of the African continent. Scientifically, even if there is an intelligence difference between African and Euroes, the probability that this wold be true in the melange of the American genome is zero. The bottom line, using "Black" or African-American as a meaningful genetic term is not much different from saying you can classify mutts by whether they look like wolves vs. dingoes.

Things would not be much better if JDW had referred only to "{real Africans.' Dark folk in Africa belong to very distinct genetic groups .. at least as described in Diamond;s great book," Guns Germs and Steel." By and large slaves were mined from the northwest coast of Africa. Has anyone ever LOOKED at an Ethiopian and mistaken that characteristic face for a Nigerian? Or, while we are at it, how hard is it tell a Koisan bushman from a Congolese or Sudanese? Africa is a very complex place. Ethiopians are linguistically, and I would bet genetically, more closely related to Semites .. Jews and Arabs included, then they are to Nigerians or Zulu people.

Does this rule out the possibility that Africans are genetically dumber than Euroes? No, mo re than it rules out the possibility that nay genetic trait is enriched in any isolated group. BUT, before jumping on that armed vehicle, one need to reconsider African genetics itself. Africa is a wonderful mix of lineages, from the Semites of Ethiopia to the Bantu of Nigeria to the Khoisan of Capetown. If t6here a genetic differences between something as divers as "Africans" and others, there are likely to be differences between Japanese and Chinese or Irish and Italians.

Moreover any differences that do exist will be statistical NOT absolute. Suppose there is a difference of say 10 points between the average Ethiopian and the average Swede .. with no intent to make this go one way or the other. This would be interesting genetically but it would not tell us that any individual was brighter than any other individual.

Finally, for those worried about this, it is important to realize that James Watson is NOT an expert in any of the relevant fields of science any more than he is an expert in baseball. Watson's carer and his contribution have been at the chemical level of genetics, NOT the levels of population genetics (a very mathematical field), anthropology, or psychology. His opinions on these matters are not those of an expert.

My bottom line: I think ALL measurable,.definable properties are fair grist for science. This includes the genetics of intelligence, if we can measure or even agree to define "intelligence." Based, however, on what we actually KNOW about the genetics of African Americans, there can be no evidence that any difference in "intelligence" is genetic simply because the definition of "black" used in the US is not itself a scientific term. Given Barack Obama's descent from a Kenyan and a Khoisan, is there anyone clever enough to figger out whether the candidate is smarter or dumber than ..say Dick Cheney, his distant cousin on the Kansan side?

I also find it hard to believe that a genome as complex as that of "Africa" would select for intelligence across the continent when there are such obvious diversity in other genetic traits such as height and various types of athletic ability. Finally, before endorsing or condemning JDW's view, I suggest folks look into the mirror of their own genome and wonder whether their descent from Saxons or Cameroonians likely makes them more of less intelligent that folks descended from the Incans , Basque or Koreans ?

All this said, there is one aspect of old Jim's remark that does deserve more thought. To argue that human intelligence, assuming it is somehow definable, is NOT genetic is itself "specist." Animals are routinely bred for intelligence or lack thereof, why would our species be different? Evolution presents huge amounts of data that our fore-brains evolved. So the only sensible argument that the human brain is NOT genetically variable implies that human intelligence is housed in the soul or some other magical entity that was infused into our species by some magical being. In other words, claiming that intelligence is not genetic is very much part of the intelligent design agenda.

Comments from the WEB


Pharyngula: I would love to see a debate between Jim Watson and Greg Laden: "Oh, and did I mention black people were supposed to be HAPPY to be enslaved, and a desire to escape was seen as MENTAL ILLNESS: 'Because the Atlantic slave trade raised moral questions from its inception scientific theories were provided to justify the enslavement of Africans, in particular in the United States. According to Alexander Thomas and Samuell Sillen during this time period the Black man was described as uniquely fitted for bondage because of what researches at the time called 'his primitive psychological organization.' Hence, a well-known physician of the ante-bellum South, Samuel A. Cartwright (1793-1851) of Louisiana, had a psychiatric explanation for runaway slaves. He diagnosed their attempts to gain freedom as a treatable mental illness and coined the term 'drapetomania' in 1851 to describe it. His feeling was that with 'proper medical advice, strictly followed, this troublesome practice that many Negroes have of running away can be almost entirely prevented.' Cartwright also described dysaethesia aethiopica, 'called by overseers 'rascality''. Posted by: Laser Potato | October 18, 2007 8:35 AM"