Nobel Laureate Stripped of Titles For “Racist” Comments
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The Nobel Prize-winning DNA scientist, James Watson, who lost his job in 2007 for racist views, was stripped of several honorary titles Friday by the New York lab he once headed.
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory said it was reacting to Watson’s remarks in a TV documentary aired earlier this month, reports the AP. In the film, Watson said his views about intelligence and race had not changed since 2007, when he told a magazine that he was
“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—where all the testing says not really.”
In the 2007 interview, Watson said that while he hopes everyone is equal,
“people who have to deal with black employees find this is not true.”
In this month’s documentary, he said genes cause a difference on average between blacks and whites on IQ tests.
The laboratory, calling the latest remarks “reprehensible” and “unsupported by science,” said they effectively reversed Watson’s 2007 written apology and retraction. It said it had revoked three honorary titles, including chancellor emeritus and honorary trustee.
Watson had long been associated with the lab, becoming its director in 1968, its president in 1994, and its chancellor 10 years later. A school at the lab is named after him.
Watson’s son, Rufus, said Friday that his father, who’s 90, was in a nursing home following an October car crash, and that his awareness of his surroundings is “very minimal.”
“My dad’s statements might make him out to be a bigot and discriminatory,”
…he said, but that’s not true.
“They just represent his rather narrow interpretation of genetic destiny. My dad had made the lab his life, and yet now the lab considers him a liability.”
Apparently, even science isn’t immune from charges of racism.
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The way of our ridiculous world sadly
Unless we use the prescribed words in the prescribed way. I’m not excusing or agreeing with racism, but there’s a difference between action and private prejudice. I’m more concerned with how we act individually and collectively, legally or illegally. We must be free to think what we think.
Watson and Crick’s discovery of the structure of DNA was one of the greatest discoveries of all time. Henry Ford was a bigot – he changed the world. Abe Lincoln would not pass muster today – and yet. . .
What in the world? The time is coming when we won’t be able to talk about black people at all. The very words will be banned. This is fucking nonsense if you ask me. Political correctness gone awry.
And yet the presumption of racism in “white people” is seen as something other than racism. It’s like original sin although you can’t be saved.
I just wanted to add that the proposed IQ difference between races is, whether or not you accept the method or the statistics, shows what seems tiny with respect to Africans and is somewhat larger in the difference between East Indians,
asians and Ashkenazi Jews and Europeans as a whole.
So if you think this proves you’re the master race — Shalom alechem and Namaste dude. You’re not. There are people right here who will giggle if you brag about your 105 IQ. I guarantee it.
But fer chrissake, the guy is dying. He won a prize not for ideological purity but for science. The guy is only stating an opinion and he has a right to it, right or wrong by your estimation though it may be. Let’s let him pass in peace and refrain from pissing on his ashes.
I agree with you. Every, single, word.