[Note: This post has been updated (1) as of 8:53 AM Eastern on 26 Oct. See below.]
No-one who knows the brilliant molecular biologist and co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, James Watson, through his personal writings could have been the least surprised by his outrageous remarks that today led to his resignation as chancellor of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, an institution which he was largely responsible for building into the world-class research facility it has become. Through those writings — most notably the bestseller, The Double Helix, and its less interesting follow-up, Genes, Girls, and Gamow — one fast becomes aware that the man is and has always been something of a social misfit: an insufferable intellectual snob and a bourgeois bigot of the first water, albeit of the benign sort, with an unendearing childlike (childish) propensity to run off at the mouth on matters concerning his fellow human beings before first engaging his considerable brain.
Dr. Watson, who shared the 1962 Nobel Prize for describing the double-helix structure of DNA, and later headed the American government’s part in the international Human Genome Project, was quoted in The Times of London last week as suggesting that, overall, people of African descent are not as intelligent as people of European descent. In the ensuing uproar, he issued a statement apologizing “unreservedly” for the comments, adding “there is no scientific basis for such a belief.”
The man ought to be awarded the Nobel for back-pedaling.
Too bad. It’s not how we like to see and perceive our scientific heroes.
RTWT here.
Update (8:53 AM Eastern on 26 Oct): More here.
It's The Music, Stupid!
Peggy
