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posted by chromas on Sunday January 13 2019, @10:00PM   Printer-friendly
from the race-to-disgrace dept.

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


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 14 2019, @01:42AM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 14 2019, @01:42AM (#786200)

    Ah, true. The denisovans haven't generated as much hype as the neanderthals have. What is the cite for correlation of IQ score to presence of neanderthal DNA?

  • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday January 14 2019, @02:18AM (3 children)

    by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Monday January 14 2019, @02:18AM (#786222) Homepage Journal

    Been a while since I looked at the data and I'm fighting a shiny, new cold this evening. I'll leave this tab open and hunt it up in the morning.

    --
    My rights don't end where your fear begins.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 14 2019, @03:13AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 14 2019, @03:13AM (#786235)

      Eat a clove of fresh garlic then and keep warm. Echinacea tea is also good.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 14 2019, @05:42AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 14 2019, @05:42AM (#786294)

      If we are looking just at averages, it seems that the less pure homo sapiens you are the higher your average goes. I thought there was an SN article a while back about the far east having more denisovan and europe more neanderthal. Maybe it was the extensive journey and continuous need to face new types of challenges that helped both of those two hominids. H. sapiens might fall behind a bit because the trail was already blazed, then benefited from being physically stronger and overcoming the two other hominids.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 14 2019, @04:51PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 14 2019, @04:51PM (#786481)

        could just be fairer climate, more sedentary lifestyle(relatively speaking) and more breeding.