http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/london/7050020.stm
The Science Museum has just cancelled an evening event with Dr James Watson (nobel prize winner - structure of DNA) promoting his new book 'Avoiding boring people - and other lessons from a life in science' due to comments he recently made about intelligence between races:
'The 79-year-old geneticist reopened the explosive debate about race and science in a newspaper interview in which he said Western policies towards African countries were wrongly based on an assumption that black people were as clever as their white counterparts when "testing" suggested the contrary. He claimed genes responsible for creating differences in human intelligence could be found within a decade.' (http://news.independent.co.uk/sci_tech/article3067222.ece)
I don't know where I stand on this one, I don't necessarily agree with his comments but I do think his statements should be publicly challenged. The Dana Centre is a place where the general public can meet with scientists to ask questions and define opinions, should we shy away from such controversial issues?
4 comments:
If Dr Watson (amusing name for a scientist!) had stuck to analysing the data, even if wrongly, then maybe we'd have been more open to engaging with the discussion.
As it was though, he veered away from science into anecdotal evidence and downright prejudice ("people who have to deal with black employees find this is not true").
He seems to be doing a bit of back peddling today although not openly apologising. I'm guessing loads of people we host have bigoted views, we just don't find out about them.
True enough. I hope the reason we turned him away was on principles, rather than cynically to avoid bad publicity.
Oh dear, a call for boycott from the states! We will miss those visitors, I don't remember the last American I bumped into on gallery.
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2007/10/british-science.html
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