link: http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/10/18/science.race/index.html

Winning a prize, even a prestigious prize, does not insure that one has all his faculties...prejudices and bigotry exist among the smart as well as among those who may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer.

I agree with this British minister's Statement: "The British government's skills minister, David Lammy, who is black, called the comments "deeply offensive" and said Watson would only succeed in providing oxygen for extremist political groups." It is deeply offensive, but its funny how he contradicts himself in this statement: "In the newspaper interview, he said there was no reason to think that races which had grown up in separate geographical locations should have evolved identically. He went on to say that although he hoped everyone was equal, "people who have to deal with black employees find this not true".

has he begun to suffer from dementia?

Well, we know there are genetic differences (both strengths AND weaknesses) between races... this shouldn't be an excuse to discriminate against a people, but rather to learn more about what makes us different and how to provide help to those who need it...

Even Intelligent people have a right to be wrong.

Why is it that the smartest people are so stupid common sense wise?

In this case he is a bigoted idiot and I am not black however neither am I predjudiced against any race. It's fools like this using their so called "intelligence" who cause strife throughout the world. He certainly wouldn't have won the Nobel prize for Peace. :o(

Of course they aren't. There are plenty of brilliant black people.

This doesn't even make sense!! It certainly shows how NOT intelligent this Doctor's DNA is. I would like to know who's DNA he tested, to prove his theory? I would also like to know How many people he included in his study. How is one DNA structure more intelligent than another? Loads more questions but I am raving MAD!!

sometimes when people are too intelligent they get short circuits in their brains.

Kinda answers the question on why Gore got one. One idiot among many.

Dr. Watson has always been an ass. Anyone who knows the story of how he and Dr. Crick stole some of their nobel-prize-winning research from their female colleague Rosalind Franklin without giving her credit will have a very low opinion of the man's judgement. Here are some choice quotes, showing the man speaks not from his scientific training but from his own prejudices: (On the fellow researcher whose work he, in the most charitable phrasing, "sampled from") : "Rosalind is my cross, I'll bear it. I think she was partially autistic. 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. (What, demanding credit for her work?) "Whenever you interview fat people, you feel bad, because you know you're not going to hire them." http://news.independent.co.uk/sci_tech/article3067222.ece 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 has also suggested a link between skin colour and sex drive, positing the theory that black people have higher libidos. In 2000 Watson shocked an audience at the University of California, Berkeley, when he advanced his theory about a link between skin color and sex drive. His lecture, complete with slides of bikini-clad women, argued that extracts of melanin — which give skin its color — had been found to boost subjects' sex drive. "That's why you have Latin lovers. You've never heard of an English lover. Only an English patient." "If you are really stupid, I would call that a disease. The lower 10 per cent who really have difficulty, even in elementary school, what's the cause of it? A lot of people would like to say, 'Well, poverty, things like that.' It probably isn't. So I'd like to get rid of that, to help the lower 10 per cent." Watson, no stranger to controversy, also suggests that genes influencing beauty could also be engineered. "People say it would be terrible if we made all girls pretty. I think it would be great."Watson says that low intelligence is an inherited disorder and that molecular biologists have a duty to devise gene therapies or screening tests to tackle stupidity. http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn3451 So basically, he's full of shit.

It certainly shows why they refused to give Einstein a prize for 11 nominations . They seemed to have a particular type and clique that were right for the Nobel and intelligence did not always come into it. Why did they give it to Gore I forget? Thoughts are that with equal opportunities a skin colour makes no difference to intelligence. In fact in the UK. Asian children, pro rata have the ost successful record in schools.

We can accept the FACT that as a race Jews and Asians always test better than other groups. It stands to reason that the reverse may be true. If they normed all the tests on Jewish and Asian populations, we'd all be much closer to average. Just remember, its individuals that make a difference, not races. Individuals can always be exceptional.

It is so sad that in 2007 black people are still being "proven" inferior. I find it interesting that the same lame arguement has been used throughout time and shattered over and over and over, yet it resurfaces like zits. Even to entertain this conclusion would mean the blacks that he "studied" were on equal mental terms in the first place with society and/or we accept his definition of intelligence plenty o negro have contributed to the scientific and medical fields although FEW have been honored for such work). I could list a couple more but to blather on about a fool does not prove my wisdom. I have learned from the days of Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan's Black Family Crisis theory (who claimed black female headed familes were the cause for every African American problem ever while neglecting to mention how state goverments at that time required mothers to discredit black fathers in order to receive any sort of family assitance), the white man can be the dumbest most destructive force out there.

****update**** He didn't mean they were "inferior" http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/europe/10/18/nobel.apology/index.html

He started out by stating that he was gloomy about the prospects of Africa advancing because all projections about the progress of Africa were based on the notion that Africans were equal in intelligence to Europeans and Asians - non-Negroes, in other words - and that such is not the case, but that Africans are inferior in intelligence to Europeans and Asians. This is obviously not true nor is it right thinking, which becomes obvious when all the great centers of learning and research in Africa are compared with those of the rest of the world. African culture has clearly surpassed the rest of the world's cultures. Their advances in physics, chemistry, medicine, mathematics, astronomy, computer science, ... all have originated from African universities and research centers, and all the great minds of the world are regularly traveling to Africa to take advantage of the great learning that is abundant there. Or not.

He proves by example the theory that intelligence is not one generic flat measure; it is compartmentalized. That's why he can be smart in one way and stupid in another.

Racist pig!

Racist pig!

Simple prejudice. The facts to not support him. He is showing his personal bigotry.

he is being prejudice.

I think that Dr. James Watson's "intelligence" is limited to helping discover the structure of DNA. Not intelligent enough to interpret it or pass judgement about it.

I'm black, give me some time to gather my thoughts, it takes us longer.

Well if it weren't for the supposedly less intelligent "blacks" he would probably hae to suffer daily fender benders and ever intersections. (you can only hire a traffic officer for so long)

Hmm awkward moment. Are u kidding me- i'm white and i dont belive that! maybe i'm a little bit of a preacher that everything must be fair and the world is perfect but i honestly think that people all start out the same and what u make of it is what u make of it- unless something is wrong either mentally or pysically- whatever have you.

Folks can be smart on one thing and light-headed on others, it happens all the time. My late husband, RIP, was a scientist, but when it came to commom sense with the children, he behaved like a toddler. DNA seems like complex stuff, too many brain cells burnt on that, not enough left for other things.

Science can't be racist. He was just describing the results of 100 years of testing IQs among millions of people around the world. He wasn't saying there aren't geniuses in all races. He just said the mean IQs were not the same for each race. He was just repeating what scientists have known for decades. He also said he didn't believe the gap between whites and blacks can be narrowed. Despite spending 100s of billions of dollars since the 1960s, to improve education and test scores for blacks the gap has not narrowed in the past 40 years. This is because IQ is mostly inherited. There is nothing that can be done to change this.

I don't know if he's right or not, but if he is proved correct it will open the door for all the racists to shout 'I told you so!'.

his controversial statements were made to gain attention to himself. he probably misses some of the limelight he had during his glory days. Smart people can say dumb things. Also he may not be one of the smartest scientists in the world just because he is famous for being linked to one of the most important discoveries, other factors such as luck and politics involved. Sometimes so called experts go beyond the data and feel they have authority to make any statement they want, don't believe everything you hear from experts.