Have you HEARD what James Watson is saying? I'm going to rip his arm off and

[MyTwopenceworth]

beat him to death with the wet end.
africans are less intelligent than white people apparently.

My dh, (african) laughed his head off when he heard that on the news this morning. I don't know how he has the ability to laugh at this, he is an amazing person.

I asked him "how can you laugh, aren't you mad, I am." and dh said, "how can I be mad, it's just one sick little man who needs medication."

Oh god I am sick of this one.

When IQ tests were first invented, they found that Eastern Europeans had lower IQs than Western Europeans. (This was when they were taking conscripts in for WWI in the US.) Only, of course, it turned out that many of the Eastern Europeans didn't have English as a first language, so were hampered by that.

IQ tests are not unbiased, they are a learned skill. Oh, this just makes me .

I hadn't heard about but I just read it.... what an absolute arse!

what a charmer

never heard about him spouting this kind of crap before, it must be so embarrassing for his colleagues

Well, only stoopid people don't realise that IQ tests are culturally biased.

So that suggets that in a head-to-head with James Watson, Mr MTPW would be a clear winner

I, on the other hand, appear to be unable to spell "suggests"

holy shit!

I always thought Kofi Anan, Maya Angelou, George Washington Carver and Beneker(?) were a patently a bit thick really

ponders the development of the IQ test and specific relevance to WASP Males

all you can do is laugh really MTPW

Your DH is amazing, MTPW.

That article just gets worse as it goes along - I didn't reach the end. Dreadful stuff.

to make a comment like that this man must be severely lacking in many areas.
He is American? American 'assessment tests' are biased towards American culture.

MTPW your lovely husband has entirely the right attitude, ignore the little muppet &he'll go & play with his test tubes & gibber quietly while the rest of us get on with RL

they said on the radio today that he has in the past claimed that women were also less intelligent (get your teeth into that ).

He was the personal tutor (in the USA) of someone I know (she is not very young by now...) and she says the only reason she stayed in science was because of his help and engouragement (she went on to have brilliant and productive carrer, one of the top scientists in her field).
If you read the biography of Rosalind Franklin you'll be infuriated by him.
The rest of the scientific/acedemic world generally laughs or ignores this type of comment he makes. Not to be taken seriously.
Having said all that, every time I read an interview with him I just want to throttle
BTW he does not work in the lab anymore, too old for that - would be considered a hazard That is why he has so much time available for so much nonsense.

what a freak

I love his point that "people who have to deal with black employees find this not true". Hellooo??WTF
Such a pity this crap gets airtime

I'm black, a graduate with a doctorate (chemistry), an employee who has been promoted a number of times, manages my own team of fellow scientists and earn a good salary.

I grew up in the 70s and had to endure the invidious racism of teachers who laughed and put me down when I told them my ambitions to go to university. I was told I would never pass my O'levels let alone get to university so I should stop thinking above my station.

Watson is a cockroach and panders to the xenophobes who embrace this type of claptrap as justification for their vitriolic bile. The BNP will be gleefully soaking this up.

the guy is fruitcake

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's always been like this. No-one takes him seriously in academia, but he still does loads of damage because he's so well-known and has no sense of responsibility.

I have never heard of him before but he is clearly a lunatic.

He discovered the structure of DNA, cornsilk.

What an obnoxious tosser. He's always been horribly arrogant, now it seems he's mad as well as bad.

What a shame. The skills the African trackers have, for example, is awesome. No way Westerners could ever compete, a kind of intelligence not tested by the IQ tests.

Funnily enough, this has a parallel in the Claire Verity thing, whose guru, Truby King, said something along the lines that babies must be put into a routine etc, to oppose the Continuum concept (not called that then) because "We don't want them to be brought up as savages do their babies"

It seems tied up with class as well as racism.

His background was in studying viruses, as I recall. Which of course makes him eminently suitable to comment on human intelligence. Pah.

I used to have a lot of respect for James Watson, being a biochemist by education. I had no idea he was such a wanker.

[disappointed]

Being scientifically competant and knowledgeable doesn't stop one from being an asshat in the rest of your life.

Spy magazine used to have a lovely column where they asked Nobel prize winners stupid questions (outside their fields), like "Where do butterflies go when it rains?". And got lovely answers like "Under the toadstools with the elves".

(Not that our lovely MN scientific people are asshats!)

And am rather at the phrase "people who have to deal with black employees". "have"? "deal with"? Pleasant neutral language there ...