Discoverer of DNA sells Nobel medal, plans to establish institute in UCC

Steppenwolfe wrote: »

If a scientist believes there is a connection between race and intelligence he should be allowed to express it.

Except a cornerstone of actual science is, y'know, evidence. Not "beliefs". Not "feelings". Actual scientific evidence, of which there is none to support the rubbish he was spouting.

Most people - certainly most laypeople - think that a Nobel prize, particularly in a scientific field, confers a certain authority. People listen when Nobel prizewinners speak. They expect them to be speaking from a position of responsible, established research. Not reactionary bollix and anecdote.

Watson wasted no time in jumping on the "victimhood" bandwagon. Oh, poor him, he discredited himself and now most reputable institutions don't want to be associated with him. Boo hoo. That's not infringing on his freedom of speech. He hasn't been stopped from saying anything. He could start advocating for flat earth and creationism tomorrow (his views on race are about as well supported) and he still wouldn't be thrown in prison or in any way prevented from holding and speaking those views.

It's just that the rest of the world has decided to use their freedom of speech to say "You're a fcukin gobshite so".

The_Captain wrote: »

To be honest, I think politicising scientific research is far more dangerous than any words he said.

There's an awful lot of people who want to discredit his work solely because they don't agree with his personal beliefs

There's a good reason to politicize science by being concerned about the beliefs of donators: If you don't politicize science in that way, science will become politicized by donators using money to influence scientific research, to suit their own political/business agendas.

Just look at the massive network of right-wing think-tanks, manufacturing 'scientific' studies, to back their political goals (where the studies have no basis in reality) - and then imagine what those donors could do to corrupt scientific research elsewhere, if allowed to have the influence that donations bring (because donations aren't always politically neutral, they can have conditions - often unspoken/behind-the-scenes - attached).

strobe wrote: »

Just have the debate? Not exactly a hard one to win.

It'd be interesting to see who turns up to speak in favour of the motion.

Hoop66 wrote: »

Some pretty selective quoting there.

From the same paper (on the front page, in fact, probably a good place to look to find a general conclusion):

"As to the cause of the mean Black–White group difference, however, the Task Force concluded: “There is certainly no support for a genetic interpretation” (p. 97)."

Now, I wonder why you have only quoted the part that you did?

That is not their general conclusion. That quote refers to an APA task force which reviewed the conclusions of 'The Bell Curve'

The paper is close to 300 pages long and looks at 30 years of research in the field. This was their conclusion. Make of it what you want.

Section 14: Progressive Research Leads to Provisional Truth.

"Our conclusion, that the Black–White IQ difference is partly heritable, accords with previous analytic reviews of this literature. Loehlin et al. (1975) concluded that Black–White IQ differences “probably” reflected “genetic differences among the groups” (p. 238). P. E. Vernon (1979) tabulated 30 main topics,each scored on a 4-point scale, and concluded that “although the total number of items favoring genetic influences (G and G?) is roughly balanced by the number of environmental points (E and E?), more of the highly convincing items are G rather than E” (p. 319). The survey of over 1,000 experts in behavioral genetics and psychometrics by Snyderman and Rothman (1987) also found that a plurality believed the Black–White IQ difference “to be a product of both genetic andenvironmental variation” (p. 141). However, there are also notable statements to the contrary. The APA Task Force on intelligence, for example, concluded “[t]here is certainly no support for a genetic interpretation” (Neisser et al., 1996,p. 97). Likewise, Nisbett (1998) reached the conclusion that “the most relevant studies provide no evidence for the genetic superiority of either race” (p. 101). In our opinion, the present review, similar to those of Loehlin et al. (1975) and Vernon (1979) earlier, should be given greater weight because they surveyed a greater range of evidence. Examining all the documentation allows a greater chance of finding accurate explanations than does selecting a few items from the whole. The 10 categories of predictions reviewed in Table 5 were derived from the “hard core” assumptions of the two competing research programs, each of which tries to explain the Black–White IQ difference (see Section 2). Based on Lakatos’s (1970, 1978) criteria for evaluating research programs, and a philosophy of science methodology that evaluates rival theories by generating multiple strong inferences and assessing the preponderance and the consilience of many lines of evidence, we believe the hereditarian theory has satisfied the criteria for a “progressive” research program, whereas the culture-only program has not. Both have drawn implications to make numerous, testable, novel predictions, but we found the hereditarian predictions were mostly confirmed, whereas those from culture-only theory mostly were not...."