Nobel Prize Winner Controversy

[arsenal]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071018/...sial_scientist

LONDON - London's Science Museum canceled a Friday talk by Nobel Prize-winning geneticist James Watson after the co-discoverer of DNA's structure told a newspaper that Africans and Europeans had different levels of intelligence.

Pretty crazy statement. It seems you do not not have be smart in order to win a nobel piece prize.

[Agamemnon]

No idea what intelligence would have to do with anything... he deciphered the double-helix in the 1960's, and yet you smear him as 'not smart'. Right.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/19/science/19watson.html

James D. Watson, who shared the 1962 Nobel prize for deciphering the double-helix of DNA, apologized “unreservedly” yesterday for comments reported this week suggesting that black people, over all, are not as intelligent as whites.

In an interview published Sunday in The Times of London, Dr. Watson is quoted as saying that while “there are many people of color who are very talented,” he is “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa.”
“All our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours — whereas all the testing says not really,” the newspaper quoted him as saying.

In a statement given to The Associated Press yesterday, Dr. Watson said, “I cannot understand how I could have said what I am quoted as having said. There is no scientific basis for such a belief.”

Hmmm... he doesn't sound like a raging racist... but maybe I'm only reading what I want to read here...

And;

“I deeply apologize for the statements attributed to me in the January 2007 issue of Esquire magazine. The bigoted remarks do not reflect, in any way, my beliefs or my life history. They do not reflect the values taught to me by my father. The cause of these remarks was my shortsighted comparison of criticism, which I wholeheartedly endorse, to bigotry which I wholeheartedly oppose. I know these words were hurtful and I apologize for the hurt they have caused and the embarrassment they have brought to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and its supporters. I know a great deal about molecular biology but obviously not enough yet about the sensitivities of the human heart.”

http://www.cshl.edu/public/releases/07_esquire.html

Clearly this man is scum of the earth, lets all pile on!

Pretty crazy statement. It seems you do not not have be smart in order to win a nobel piece prize.

Guess you have to be smart in order to know that he didn't win the Nobel Peace Prize. He won the Nobel Prize in Medicine.

[kermitology]

Originally Posted by arsenal

Pretty crazy statement. It seems you do not not have be smart in order to win a nobel piece prize.

Also.. you have to be Al Gore in order to win the Nobel Peace Prize for something that isn't related to Peace. Otherwise you might just win a Nobel Prize for something else.. like science!

[arsenal]

So I may have jumped the gun. Nobel Prize prize winner, my appologies.

[photon]

Ok, I'll try to be careful when I say this.

The statement that one group of people have a different level of intelligence than another group of people isn't, in itself, bad.

What's bad is the way this guy is using this to stereotype and discriminate.

To explain more, take a less controversial subject: how high can someone jump. This is going to be dictated by a combination of genetics and training.

If you take training out of the equation (by training all subjects equally, or accounting for the training in the testing somehow), then you are left with genetics.

If someone tested one group of people and found that that group could, on average, jump higher than another group, then that's neither good nor evil, it's just a statement of fact.

Same thing with intelligence, it's a combination of genetics and training. So that one group of people would have lower intelligence on average than another group seems like a reasonable thing to happen.

However testing intelligence isn't as easy to test as how high someone can jump.

And for sure using either of those pieces of information to discriminate against a group of people is wrong.

When I first read about this my first thought was that people were blowing a statement out of proportion and what he was talking about was what I just described.. but then I read what he was saying and yeah it seems what he thinks is pretty bad.

Goes to show that just because someone is smart doesn't mean they're an authority on everything.

[Table 5]

The science mag i worked for did a piece on James Watson last year...he is quite a smart guy, but yes, also very controversial. He definitely could have definitely picked his words more wisely...not very smart.

I pose a question on this sensitive topic. There is a quite a difference in the levels of ability and intelligence in Mother Nature's animals....is it really unreasonable to think that this is true among human varieties as well? I know equality is nice and all, but from a biological standpoint is it, is it realistic? I know a read a study in a science mag last year that concluded that Ashkenazi Jews had the highest levels of intelligence. Would someone not have to come in last then?

fyi, I write this knowing I'm firmly entrenched in the squishy middle of the intelligence ball...so not trying to imply anything here.

[llama64]

Define "intelligence". Pretty sure that's still a floating target since there is no unbiased, relative metric that works for all people.

[Vulcan]

Originally Posted by Table 5

The science mag i worked for did a piece on James Watson last year...he is quite a smart guy, but yes, also very controversial. He definitely could have definitely picked his words more wisely...not very smart.

I pose a question on this sensitive topic. There is a quite a difference in the levels of ability and intelligence in Mother Nature's animals....is it really unreasonable to think that this is true among human varieties as well? I know equality is nice and all, but from a biological standpoint is it, is it realistic? I know a read a study in a science mag last year that concluded that Ashkenazi Jews had the highest levels of intelligence. Would someone not have to come in last then?

fyi, I write this knowing I'm firmly entrenched in the squishy middle of the intelligence ball...so not trying to imply anything here.

And who wrote this study, Ashkanazi Jews?

All I'm saying is that a test made up by say a city dweller wouldn't have a good result for someone raised as a hunter in the Arctic and visa versa.

[troutman]

Originally Posted by llama64

Define "intelligence". Pretty sure that's still a floating target since there is no unbiased, relative metric that works for all people.

Or, define "race" for that matter.

[FlamesAddiction]

Originally Posted by photon

If someone tested one group of people and found that that group could, on average, jump higher than another group, then that's neither good nor evil, it's just a statement of fact.

Not only that, but you also have the premise for a half-funny early 90s comedy starring Woody Harrelson.

Originally Posted by photon

Same thing with intelligence, it's a combination of genetics and training. So that one group of people would have lower intelligence on average than another group seems like a reasonable thing to happen.

However testing intelligence isn't as easy to test as how high someone can jump.

The problem with measuring intelligence is that there are so many other contributing factors other than training and genetics. Part of it may also be motivation - which in itself, can also be related to genetics and training.

But probably one of the biggest factors (I think) is wealth. Wealth is often directly tied to nutrition and it is scientifically proven that malnutrution leads to dulled cognitive development in mammals. Genetically, the person might be well equipped to develop a high intelligence, and perhaps the training was attempted as well, but the environmental factors were an obstacle.

[Burninator]

Jared Diamond has a different take on this with his book Guns, Germs and Steel.

Most of this work deals with non-Europeans, but Diamond's thesis sheds light on why Western civilization became hegemonic: "History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples' environments, not because of biological differences among peoples themselves." Those who domesticated plants and animals early got a head start on developing writing, government, technology, weapons of war, and immunity to deadly germs...

[photon]

Originally Posted by FlamesAddiction

The problem with measuring intelligence is that there are so many other contributing factors other than training and genetics. Part of it may also be motivation - which in itself, can also be related to genetics and training.

But probably one of the biggest factors (I think) is wealth. Wealth is often directly tied to nutrition and it is scientifically proven that malnutrution leads to dulled cognitive development in mammals. Genetically, the person might be well equipped to develop a high intelligence, and perhaps the training was attempted as well, but the environmental factors were an obstacle.

Definitely.

[Vulcan]

Originally Posted by Burninator

Jared Diamond has a different take on this with his book Guns, Germs and Steel.

Most of this work deals with non-Europeans, but Diamond's thesis sheds light on why Western civilization became hegemonic: "History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples' environments, not because of biological differences among peoples themselves." Those who domesticated plants and animals early got a head start on developing writing, government, technology, weapons of war, and immunity to deadly germs...

Yeah, I watched a few episodes on TV. PBS I think. Great series that put the kybosh to Europeans sense of superiority. I think it got started when a New Guinean asked him IIRC 'how come you got so much while we have so little'.