Fury at DNA pioneer's theory

Dub13

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"

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Anti-racism campaigners called for Dr Watson's remarks to be looked at in the context of racial hatred laws. A spokesman for the 1990 Trust, a black human rights group, said: "It is astonishing that a man of such distinction should make comments that seem to perpetuate racism in this way. It amounts to fuelling bigotry and we would like it to be looked at for grounds of legal complaint."

Very wrong: Scientific debate should never be stiffled by laws or silenced through the courts. If people disagree with his views, consider them to be pseudo science, or the rantings of a bigot they should find hard evidence to refute them and expose him as a crank. To prosecute him is to lend credence to his opinions and potentially restrict future research and debate.

SimpleSam06

It really, really depends on what your criteria for intelligence are as well. Standard IQ testing isn't worth a damn, and completely excludes social and historical factors relating to a person's development when growing up. While I agree that political correctness should in no way get in the way of science, making a statement about something as poorly understood as intelligence like that is worthy of condemnation.

r3nu4l

While I have never met James Watson I have heard him lecture and I know sevceral people who know him very well on a personal and professional basis. They have all said to me that while there is no excusing his remarks, they firmly believe that he is becoming a 'bit doddery' in his old age.

Watson has always been forthright in his comments and views and is not afraid to say what he feels but I can't help feeling that the media and general public will slay him for this.

A huge problem with all the genetic research ongoing globally at the moment is the notion of looking for differences based on race. Nobody has a problem with this when it comes to looking for genetic differences that predispose a certain race of people to one disease compared to other races but everybody is afraid to look at anything that may allow white/black/asian/latino supremacists to latch onto a result and use it to show 'supremacy'.

The same is true for gender and sexuality differences. While homosexuality is rampant in the animal kingdom and amongst humans, if there were specific genes found that contained mutations or were only expressed in gay people, certain groups would look at that as a genetic deviation that needed to be 'fixed' :rolleyes:

Watson made a dreadful mistake with his comments and how he phrased them. Maybe he has always been a closet racist or maybe he just phrased his thoughts very poorly. Either way I'm glad on a professional level that he has ignited the debate and hopefully we can start looking at the genetic differences based on race that are currently considered 'too hot to handle'.

All of that said, I'd like to see him defend his comments by pointing to the evidence he has to back up his claims where he said that 'all the tests' have shown what he says to be true. I'd like to see the results from all those tests! I don't think I will though.

SimpleSam06

Just an article here to support my previous point about intelligence.

In recent years, researchers in Africa, Asia and elsewhere have found that people in non-Western cultures often have ideas about intelligence that differ fundamentally from those that have shaped Western intelligence tests.

...

Some cultural differences in intelligence play out on a global scale. In "The Geography of Thought" (Free Press, 2003), Richard Nisbett, PhD, co-director of the Culture and Cognition Program at the University of Michigan, argues that East Asian and Western cultures have developed cognitive styles that differ in fundamental ways, including in how intelligence is understood.

People in Western cultures, he suggests, tend to view intelligence as a means for individuals to devise categories and to engage in rational debate, while people in Eastern cultures see it as a way for members of a community to recognize contradiction and complexity and to play their social roles successfully.

...

Serpell and others have found that people in some African communities--especially where Western schooling has not yet become common--tend to blur the Western distinction between intelligence and social competence. In rural Zambia, for instance, the concept of nzelu includes both cleverness (chenjela) and responsibility (tumikila).

"When rural parents in Africa talk about the intelligence of children, they prefer not to separate the cognitive speed aspect of intelligence from the social responsibility aspect," says Serpell.

Over the past several years, Sternberg and Grigorenko also have investigated concepts of intelligence in Africa. Among the Luo people in rural Kenya, Grigorenko and her collaborators have found that ideas about intelligence consist of four broad concepts: rieko, which largely corresponds to the Western idea of academic intelligence, but also includes specific skills; luoro, which includes social qualities like respect, responsibility and consideration; paro, or practical thinking; and winjo, or comprehension. Only one of the four--rieko--is correlated with traditional Western measures of intelligence.

When the very concept of intelligence is not defined, it is foolish to talk about the relative intelligence of various cultural or racial groups, and could well be construed as an attempt to incite racial hatred.

Elementary, my dear Watson.

leninbenjamin

yeah, sam makes a good point. we've been doing AI in college for a while now, and still haven't been given anything more than a few different vauge concepts over what it might be.

really don't know what to make of his remarks, he does sound a bit doddery alright. and some of the criticism seems a bit OTT really...

humbert

SimpleSam06 wrote: »

Just an article here to support my previous point about intelligence.


When the very concept of intelligence is not defined, it is foolish to talk about the relative intelligence of various cultural or racial groups, and could well be construed as an attempt to incite racial hatred.

Elementary, my dear Watson.

It's late and I haven't read the full article yet, but it seems like that study focus on the way different cultures view intelligence rather than a logical analysis of what it is.

karen3212

tbh I've always found it strange that intelligence(in the western sense) is seen to be such an important thing, and is seen as much more important then all other human 'virtues'. When was the last time we were tested for kindness?

On that note, did Hitler, Stalin etc. have high IQs

SimpleSam06

humbert wrote: »

It's late and I haven't read the full article yet, but it seems like that study focus on the way different cultures view intelligence rather than a logical analysis of what it is.

I think the point was that the ability to be logical isn't the be-all and end-all of intelligence.

Capt'n Midnight

Let's just give everyone an IQ test and psycological profile every year at their mandatory health screening. Physical and mental diseases will be caught early and voting rights can be split accordingly too.

Sand

Let's just give everyone an IQ test and psycological profile every year at their mandatory health screening. Physical and mental diseases will be caught early and voting rights can be split accordingly too.

Seconded - Imagine the savings when people who score a sub par IQ are removed from the education system and instead sent to drink paint or whatever it is people without an education do.

bonkey

Dub13 wrote: »

Very wrong: Scientific debate should never be stiffled by laws or silenced through the courts.

I agree. Scientific debate should not be.

I think you'll find, however, that much of the fury was at the lack of science behind Dr. Watson's comments. Just because the man has a background in science does not mean that everything he says is automatically scientific in origin. Indeed, my first reaction at reading the subject line of this thread was "the word theory is being used in a non-scientific sense...which is ironic given the subject at hand".

If people disagree with his views, consider them to be pseudo science, or the rantings of a bigot they should find hard evidence to refute them and expose him as a crank.

I think you mistake how science works. One only refutes that which has already established itself to merit refutation. Dr. Watson must first provide the hard science which supports his claim. Until then, it most certainly can - in a scientific debate - be derided as anything-but-established-science.

Given that Watson has issued an apology for his remarks suggests he knows full well that he cannot meet the burden of proof which would be required to elevate this to a scientific debate.

Trode

bonkey wrote: »

I agree. Scientific debate should not be.

I think you'll find, however, that much of the fury was at the lack of science behind Dr. Watson's comments.

I disagree.
Watson's statements are meaningless on many levels(firstly, as mentioned, intelligence is very loosely defined, and isn't even fully understood by experts in the field, let alone retired geneticists. Secondly, even if it was it wouldn't matter.Someone being genetically or racially predisposed to something is still one of a million other factors which could effect it.).

But the objections aren't the "Put up or shut up" of people decrying bad science, it's just "Shut up" from people who are rejecting the idea because it doesn't suit their world view. Anti-racism campaigners complaining that the remarks 'fuel bigotry' and should be investigated as hate crimes wouldn't change if it was backed up by a fully verified and scientifically accurate paper.

daveirl

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seamus

SimpleSam06 wrote: »

When the very concept of intelligence is not defined, it is foolish to talk about the relative intelligence of various cultural or racial groups, and could well be construed as an attempt to incite racial hatred.

Intelligence as you rightly point out, is very difficult to quantify.

The problem with any "research" is that someone takes fairly valid empirical data from two distinct groups and then arbitrarily draws a line where they think the difference is and declares that as being the major factor.

If we remove the "Intelligence" measure and use something altogether much more reliable - take 100 White Irish office workers and 100 Black African athletes. Measure their fitness. Why is the African group stronger and fitter than the Irish one? Must be genetics, right, because skin colour is the most obvious difference between the two groups?

bonkey

daveirl wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

Not that I'm aware of, given that no-one has yet managed to find a series of groups who can be said to meaningfully be equivalent in all respects except race.

GuanYin

Few points on this. I've met Watson a few times and he is, without doubt, getting on in age and perhaps doesn't measure himself or his words as closely as he once might have.

All that said, as far as I can make out, he has always had some very, very unconventional and unPC views on matters ranging from gender and race to eugenics.

Apart from all that, he isn't exactly a brilliant mind. He was a decent scientist who was in the right place at the right time with the right people around him. He's rightly famous because of his part in the emergence of modern biology, but he's no world authority on science.

His comments stem from a complete lack of understanding on his part of what intelligence testing measures. Current tests measure ability within the context of society. That is, the society of the tester. As an example, if you wanted to measure someones aptitude at spacial mechanics, you might have various two parts of a cube at different angles to be merged together and give the person a set time to select the right two. Possibly someone from an african tribe, not often encountering parts of cubes that often, may do poorly at that test. On the other hand, a very similar test might involve picking a rock or a tree or a branch that was "just right" to be quickly scaled to evade an animal while out hunting. The trick would be something that a human could quickly clamber up but a creature without fingers and thumbs might have difficulty with. Something nicely defendable would be good too. Someone from an african tribe might have the experience and knowledge at picking that out from several available options quite quickly while someone from Dublin might fail miserably (and the time constraints have a muchmore sinister take in this scenario).

Ok, that might seem like a rather extreme or unPC example and I'm not for a second claiming that an african tribesman running from a lion is an example of a black person, what I'm contrasting is the same brian mechanics in polar opposite cultural systems.

In any case, I'd not be too worried about Watson's remarks. I think as per usual the extremist and representative groups are milking them for all the front-page worthy outrage that they can while everyone else realises it's the ramblings of a rather dothery old man.

Zombrex

Sand wrote: »

or whatever it is people without an education do.

Join the Green Party ... ?

SimpleSam06

daveirl wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

That says more about the value of the Intellgence Quotient system as a measure of intelligence than it does about anything else, tbh. That is to say, its not very useful.

Bottle_of_Smoke

Actually came here to start this thread.

I think it's pretty annoying that due to Afro History, particularly in America, saying anything like this is so taboo. If someone claimed that those of Hebrew or East Asian descent were more intelligent than European Whites there'd be none of this furore.

I'd like to know what he actually meant in the first place. I sincerely doubt it was as racist as it was made out to be.

He's now been suspended by his research lab, which I think is a bit pathetic. By taking this action over an opinion it's implying the lab believes there's credibility to what he's saying but he shouldn't say it, which isn't very scientific.

These comments were in the Independent on Friday:

"We do not yet adequately understand the way in which the different environments in the world have selected over time the genes which determine our capacity to do different things," he is quoted as saying. "The overwhelming desire of society today is to assume that equal powers of reason are a universal heritage of humanity.

"It may well be. But simply wanting this to be the case is not enough. This is not science. To question this is not to give in to racism. This is not a discussion about superiority or inferiority, it is about seeking to understand differences, about why some of us are great musicians and others great engineers."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7052416.stm

Capt'n Midnight

seamus wrote: »

If we remove the "Intelligence" measure and use something altogether much more reliable - take 100 White Irish office workers and 100 Black African athletes. Measure their fitness. Why is the African group stronger and fitter than the Irish one? Must be genetics, right, because skin colour is the most obvious difference between the two groups?

Love the way people lump Africans all together as if they are all the same. Africans have greater genetic diversity than the rest of us. If you remember the Out Of Africa theory then the rest of us are genetically speaking sixth cousins or thereabout.

Skin colour is determined by a lot of genes so very hard to link it directly to IQ which probably has many genetic factors, not to mention enviromental.

IIRC some north american indians tribes do very poorly on IQ tests because in their cultural you're supposed to keep trying to solve a problem before going on to the next one, which puts them at a huge disadvantage in timed tests.

dr_manhattan

Regarding IQ tests:

It's funny how we can go to heartwarming dramas such as 'the mission' and, aglow with the classical soundtrack, aghast at our ancestor's savagery, marvel at how our ignorant, brutish forebears could not recognise the sophistication and beauty of the cultures they encountered, because the indigenous peoples had no *clothes* and the wrong *haircuts*.

And then we can leave the cinema knowing that we are not ignorant, because we have something called an IQ test, which tells us who is intelligent and who is not:

We have a system which compares how well a goatherd herds goats to how well a sysadmin runs servers to how well a stylist combs hair, cross references it with how happy and fulfilled they are, and subtracts whether they still smoke despite having had a lung transplant. It then multiplies it by how well they can make a cup of tea, divides it by whether they can drive or not and raises that to the power of their ability to complete a rubik's cube.

DNA pioneer or not, that man is one stupid &^@%£;$@£;