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James Watson: Scientist loses titles after claims over race
Nobel Prize-winning American scientist James Watson has been stripped of his honorary titles after repeating comments about race and intelligence.
In a TV programme, the pioneer in DNA studies made a reference to a view that genes cause a difference on average between blacks and whites on IQ tests. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory said the 90-year-old scientist's remarks were "unsubstantiated and reckless". Dr Watson had made similar claims in 2007 and subsequently apologised.
He shared the Nobel in 1962 with Maurice Wilkins and Francis Crick for their 1953 discovery of the DNA's double helix structure.
Dr Watson sold his gold medal in 2014, saying he had been ostracised by the scientific community after his remarks about race. He is currently in a nursing home recovering from a car accident and is said to have "very minimal" awareness of his surroundings.
Previously: Disgraced Scientist is Selling his Nobel Prize
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 14 2019, @12:20AM (3 children)
Liberals are individualists who believe in personal freedoms while you appear to be a collectivist. Congratulations on being a group-thinker of one. Go and tally the number of dead as a result of collectivist ideologies like communism and fascism and get back to us on the veracity of your moral posturing!
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 14 2019, @12:30AM (2 children)
Hi Dummy! You're thinking of Libertarians, and regardless of political affiliation as humans we are all collectivists since we are social mammals. Damn, I fucked up again, explaining facts to someone pushing the "socialism is genocide" nonsense.
Oh how I hope history finds out that 90% of the garbage on the net was written by scripted bots doing their manipulation thing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 14 2019, @01:53AM
No, I'm thinking of classical liberalism as the forerunner of social liberalism.
There goes the collectivist redefining social responsibility as something it provably is not.
Yes, 100,000,000 dead is fucking up quite spectacularly. How fucking dare you apologize for it!
Not happening, you're being called out.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 14 2019, @06:08AM
Revising the books as to the number of deaths caused by attempts at communism is as stupid as revising the number of deaths caused by Nazism. Nothing can explain away or hide that the Nazis killed around 6 million Jews and an additional 4 million other. Nothing can explain away or hide that the Chinese killed 50-100 million and that the Soviets killed 50-100 million. Attempts at communism cause death on a massive scale because of the nature of communism. Fascism also has the same issue with attempting it leading to deaths. The argument should be where we choose to walk on the middle road and how to make sure we don't go too far to the left or right and fall off the road. The identity politics of the left are real reminiscent of the Wiemar republic, and the rise of the far right is a lot like the Nazis rising to confront the crazy identity politics. Both sides need to drop their crazy at the same time or we will fall off to either direction. You can't just have one side back down and have things be okay. If the Nazis back down the left will go full throttle with "traditional masculinity like stoicism is toxic" and "giving boys hormones to turn into girls before they are nine is natural", and that a real dangerous path.