Good Scientists Gone Bad -- Dr. Watson and Dr. Pauling

James Watson has really put his foot in it this time. He has a tendency to say some shockingly offensive and bizarre things.Dr Watson told The Sunday Times 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 - whereas all the testing says not really". He said there was a natural desire that all human beings should be equal but "people who have to deal with black employees find this not true".His views are also reflected in a book published next week, in which he writes: "There is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so."

In 1997, he told a British newspaper that a woman should have the right to abort her unborn child if tests could determine it would be homosexual. He later insisted he was talking about a "hypothetical" choice which could never be applied. He has also suggested a link between skin colour and sex drive, positing the theory that black people have higher libidos, and argued in favour of genetic screening and engineering on the basis that "stupidity" could one day be cured. He has claimed that beauty could be genetically manufactured, saying: "People say it would be terrible if we made all girls pretty. I think it would great."

He smiles. "Rosalind (Franklin) is my cross," he says slowly. "I'll bear it. I think she was partially autistic." He pauses for a while, before repeating the suggestion, as if to make it clear that this is no off-the-cuff insult, but a considered diagnosis. "I'd never really thought of scientists as autistic until this whole business of high-intelligence autism came up. There is probably no other explanation for Rosalind's behaviour.

"There is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so."

Is the uneducated man going to score less than the educated?

Is there even any reason to believe that the various "races" have at all been reproductively isolated for any significant period of time?

He said "geographically separated in their evolution" not "reproductively isolated".

Otherwise gene flow would tend to equalize differences between even geographically disparate populations.

There'd be no relevance to geographic isolation, otherwise.

Secondly, if there is gene flow, traits can and will flow between populations, Advantageous traits will tend to spread. You would need selective pressures - not just distance - to be even reasonably sure that a trait would not be found elsewhere.

Intelligence seems to be generally useful (to humans) so I would expect it to be positively selected in almost all populations.

I wouldn't say that the gene flow between North Africa and Europe and the Middle East was that small.

Which goes back to the arbitrary nature of the geographical borders chosen.

And I should add that we have no good reason for expecting a trait for higher intelligence to appear in Europe or Asia rather than Africa.

And even if it did we would expect it to eventually spread - it's just a matter of time.

Well that would need to be established first. You can't reason backward from the possibility of differing traits to the conclusion that there is a specific difference. Especially when it doesn't seem a very likely possibility.