James Watson
November 1, 2007
We are learning a huge amount about our genetic history, but are we prepared for the public policy debates? The treatment of one of our most prominent scientists and a pioneer of DNA, James Watson, suggests not. Jason Malloy at gene expression takes a definitive look. I’m very far from an expert, but our political culture needs to have the capacity to at least debate these issues and their policy implications.
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James Watson is a kooky old codger, and he seems to have a pechant for statements bordering on the racist and misogynistic. See the following article about a talk he gave at Berkeley a few years back on the links between skin color, obesity, happiness and sex drive. A big hypothesis of his is that exposure to the sunlight increases sex drive. Fat people are also more “sexual”. He also once called for Japan to be bombed for dragging its feet on the Human Genome Project. He also remarked at the talk that women are only interested in men who buy them pretty dresses.
Now, all this this sounds like the harmless ranting of an old guy, with some of the lingering prejudices of his generation, plus some sexual issues thrown in to boot. I don’t think we need a witch hunt against him, but neither do we need to give heed to anything he says.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/11/13/MN111208.DTL
James Watson is regarded by his peers as one of the most important scientists of the 20th Century. He is a co-discoverer of DNA. His lab was famous and renowned – he built it from nothing and its research is very highly regarded.
He is not some pseudo-science crank, and what has happened to him should make all who care about scientific inquiry ashamed.
We need to give very strong heed to what he says because he knows more about genetics than just about anybody on the planet.
And “lingering prejudices”?? No. There is no evidence whatsover over the course of his life that he is racist toward anyone. Look closely at his comments. Look at his “apology” (which, rightly, is not an apology). We define terms down by assiging the words prejudice or racist to him or his opinions on this question. The assigning to ourselves of moral superiority by suggesting people such as Watson are racist is not worth it, because it is blinding to very important policy questions.
Jonathan, I have questions about their “proof.”
First, are all people equally educated? This certainly impacts scores. I know that if a person does not begin reading in the first 3 years, that person has forever lost the window of opportunity for prime brain development. That does NOT mean they cannot learn, but it DOES mean that it is much more difficult.
If a person takes music lesson early on, say 4 yrs of age, they tend to be “smarter” than their peers.
I did not read one bit of evidence on the page that explained anything. What it DID remind of, though, was the early 20th Century “scientific” based evidence that showed whites were superior to everyone else.
The most “prominent” scientist was laughed down by his peers. Watson sadly is a joke no different than all of the highly educated Germans who helped participate in the events leading up to Genocide.
Furthermore, the reason this “political climate” in NOT interested in “debating” questionable “facts” is because we used to believe this garbage for, oh say, 200 + years and, oh yeah, it led to a great many atrocities. Yeah, not interested in returning to the “good old days.”
RCM,
The question of innate genetic difference has been settled. It exists, among the sexes, among racial groups, and among the evolutionary development of our species. We see this most clearly in disease. Now, with such developments as the mapping of the human gnome, we are learning much more about cognitive functions and abstract thinking skills, and this makes a lot of people uncomfortable.
The question is not one of “superiority” – as Watson states very clearly – but about difference, and the importance of understanding differences better.
There’s nothing wrong with pointing out the fact (and it is a fact) that people in Africa have lower average IQ scores than do people in Europe, or that the current IQ score averages of certain racial or ethnic groups are higher than for others. Watson’s problem seems to be that he infers that there is a genetic explanation for these differences, and as evidence for this inference he cites only racial stereotypes (such as the one about black employees).
On the connection between race and IQ, I’d recommend the following article (part one of a three part series) by Thomas Sowell:
http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=1958
Jonathan, that is NOT what the evidence was showing. Do you really think that people will not say, as did Watson, that “oh we are smarter therefore we are superior?” I don’t buy it.
The problem with Watson’s claim is very simple: he ventured out of genetics and made a sociological claim whose conditions (questioner, question, answer) is framed in a contingently sociological framework. The differences of which he speaks do not seem to be genetic at all. Rather, this supposed difference is based on empirical observation of societies and their modes of expression. Watson’s “scientific” claim that is really sociology is quite reminiscent of Richard Dawkin’s “scientific” claims about religion that are really fodder for metaphysics.
RCM,
One can question is usefulness of tests of abstract critical thinking and analytical ability in measuring intelligence, and one can question if such tests are better than other proposals (multiple intelligence likely the most prominent alternative), but it’s not up for debate that gaps are persistent across generations and across environment in terms of IQ. The data is too strong.
I know what he did, Jonathan, and how big his contribution is. I also know that he’s now 80 years old and rambling on about stuff he has no evidence for. Go to any academic department in any university. They are full of old guys who have done great work in the past, but are a little kooky today. I don’t know what it is about academia that does that to people, but I’ve come across many of these guys.
And by they way, Jonathan and Blackadder, this is absolutely NO reputatable evidence of intelligence differences among the races. Who is this Sowell character? Tell me where he has published on this topic, in a reputatable journal, and then I will check it out. The top-class econometrician and Nobel Laureate, Jim Heckman, has written the decisive rebuttal to the Charles Murray type of empirics.
MM,
It is simply factually inaccurate to state that there is no “reputable evidence” for measured differences. There is quite a lot. You may disagree with methods or usefulness, but that is a completely seperate discussion. If we value IQ, and IMO we should, there are pronounced and persistent differences, and that has been true for nearly a century, ever since the U.S. military started keeping detailed records of cognitive function and analytical ability (which they still do). Ever wonder why the military has a lot more racial harmony than nearly every other segment of U.S. life? They have turned down a lot of applicants.
Morning’s Minion,
I’m guessing that you didn’t read the article by Sowell that I linked to, as the article argues that the differences in IQ scores among different racial and ethnic groups are *not* the result of genetic factors.
Do you really not know who Thomas Sowell is? He was an economics professor at UCLA and was (and is) a prolific writer on the subjects of economics, race, and culture. A list of his publications can be found here:
http://www.tsowell.com/writings.html
Are we REALLY talking about this? Are we really neglecting the sociological factors that shape the development of a person and limiting it to genetics? And how is this conversation helpful/constructive/positive?
No one who believes that genetics or IQ matters denies sociological or environmental factors. Not P. Rushton, Steven Pinker, Charles Murray, Richard Lynn, Tatu Vanhanen, Watson, or a whole host of others. Still, there is very strong evidence socip-economics and environment don’t come close to giving us the whole picture.
But this topic is important for a lot of reasons. For example, if part of the reason why Africa lags so badly is human capital – and a very persuasive case can be for that – then efforts should be made to improve cognitive functions, beginning with breast-feeding.
But, sadly, there is an inability to talk about these issues (who wants to be called a racist? who wants to lose their status? and who wants to miss the fun of piling on big shots like Watson?)….
Now I’ve heard it all– the solution to Africa’s problems is more breast feeding.
If you think there are racial intelligence differences, you obviosuly don’t get out that much. My friends and co-workers are from all over the world. Some of the smartest people I know hail from Africa and southeast Asia. Of course, they all benefitted from excellent education and social support systems. Let’s talk about economics. Let’s talk about institutions. Let’s talk about culture. But to say that non-white people are dumber (and that’s what you are saying, at the end of the day) is pointless and offensive.
I think this discussion misses the bigger picture.
MM, good grief. Not all problems are rooted in racism or whatever “system” issue you want to throw out there. Breast-feeding is a very important one.I think I was clear enough: there are steps that can be taken to improve brainpower. We should be willing to discuss how best to assist in these. There is strong evidence it greatly enhances cognitive development.
And counterexamples and anecdotes….predictable. This discussion is not existence vs. non-existence, or uniqueness vs. non-uniqueness. Counterexamples and anecdotes are COMPLETELY irrelevant….don’t prove squat. If I claim that men are more likely than women to be 6 feet tall, pointing out even 40,000 women who are at least 6’0 doesn’t men anything. We are talking about patterns and averages over extended periods of time.
And MM if you want to accuse me of racism, then come right out and say it. Don’t beat around the bush. Just go ahead, define the term down, down, down, and call it like you want to see it.
This is one of those “evil, all-powerful liberals use PC to persecute conservatives” narratives that seem to be the stock in trade of Little Green Footballs, Free Republic and Michelle Malkin. Not sure what it’s doing on a Catholic site like Vox Nova.
This is not all about “you”, Jonathan, so stop trying to wrap yourself in phony martyrdom. The issue is about why Africa persisently lags behind. How acquainted are you with the literature on this topic? There is no easy answer to this question, though most experts point the finger at institutions (see the work of Daron Acemoglu). I can assure you of one thing: nobody claims it is because Africans are stupid.
And the racists have come to party under the rubric of ‘open debate’. I was a tad disappointed that the usual suspects did not speak up earlier when Watson’s comments became public knowledge. Vox Nova has to decide what it will stand for.
It’s not about “me,” it’s about suggesting those who believe we need to take genetic difference seriously are probably racist without really saying so and without offering any reason. It’s cheap and tiring. As stated in the original post, I’m not an expert, only a reader for about a decade. But why should experts like Watson be driven from public discourse? Silenced and shunned? It’s a disgrace. The man has contributed hugely to science for more half a century, is by all accounts a good and decent human being, and now he is being sneered at, his professional life over, all because he “insulted” and “disrespected.”
And anyone who does not take human development into considerations of why some countries succeed and some countries fail is either ignorant or willfully blind. No one denies there are a lot of factors (corruption, tribalism, and cousin marriage are major problems for Africa and the Middle East in terms of economic and political development), but what cannot be denied is 1). the silence and 2). the difficulty of public discourse for a topic like group cognitive and analytical abilities, a topic where it’s all too easy to smear.
arewak, thanks for being a perfect example of what I’ve been referring to.
And each contributor speaks for themselves, so long as they adhere to Catholic doctrine. It’s good to have discussion and debate….the problem is this topic tends to attract lots of accusations of nefarious motive without any substance.
Jonathan,
I’m a bit confused, I think, about what exactly your position is. Some of your comments seem to suggest that the difference in average IQ scores between Africans and Europeans is due to genetic factors, and hence not correctable. Yet other of your comments seems to suggest that the difference is due to environmental factors such as poor childhood nutrition, and therefore would be eliminated if the environmental factor were to go away. Please clarify.
As to Watson, I can’t say I feel very sorry for him. People are understandably wary when it comes to the possibility of racial differences, and anyone who wishes to discuss them needs to be extra careful to be precise in his statements and avoid misapprehension. Yet Watson seems to go out of his way to state his views provocatively and trades on racial stereotypes to make his points. He can hardly cry foul when people take offense.
Jonathan,
You state:” our political culture needs to have the capacity to at least debate these issues and their policy implications.”
Why? Let’s assume for a second that you are correct, what is your point? Why is it relevant? What do you hope to obtain? Why does it matter to policy? Really? Why?
Also: AS a high school teacher who used to work in a tough school, I worked with kids who according to the tests were “dumb.” They didn’t have it. But when i pulled their elementary school records they had missed a MASSIVE amount of school so they were missing key building foundations for future education. Once those gaps were filled the kids did better. My point is that if we just looked at the test scores we would say “Oh, so and so is dumb. It must be his genetics” when in reality it was that he was a child of a single parent homeless mother who moved constantly and his education suffered because of it.
Many cultures are not literate, their wisdom is in other areas. I think you are missing something here by focusing on what the US military has gathered for decades. WHO CARES!
What is your point? And, once again, how is this issue connected to a Catholic blog?
Blackadder,
I don’t know the degree or extent to which such differences are rooted in genetics. My point is that there is evidence genetics is an important factor, and our society should be willing to discuss this without getting the vapors (remember Larry Summers?). I’m personally persuaded that innate genetic difference matters with regard to the most important measures of intelligence, for both race and gender, but I try to read as much as possible pro and con. It’s an important and fascinating topic.
RCM,
The reason this is important is because it touches on most of our most difficult issues: preferences and quotas, schools, and immigration among them. Understanding human difference means a better understanding of how best to tailor public policy to help the most people in the most effective way.
Tangential, but supportive of what RCM is getting at:
The very concept of “Intelligence” is hardly a settled scientific matter. What do we mean by it?
I think it is safe to say that if you dropped nearly ANY european into the jungle in the Congo, and forced him to fend for himself, the locals would be baffled by the sight of a healthy adult nearly starving to death in an environment where good, nutritious food is seldom more than a foot or two from either of his hands; or blundering helplessly into the jaws of some predator that even the local small children can easily scare away.
To return to RCM’s question, probably the most prominent recent example is the No Child Left Behind Act. This legislation is based on the assumption (which Bush and Ted Kennedy hammered home) that all children can be proficient in core subjects….and the bar is still set relatively low. What a farce! – so much so that states not only teach directly to the test, but they blantantly cheat in reporting their numbers and get to set their own (lower) definitions of proficient. Well, the uncomfortable reality seems to be that about half the kids are “below average” – which is made much more uncomfortable by the performance (and proportion of that half) of black and Hispanic students (this persists even in wealthy-minority communities). We should not be afraid of considering difference, and to do so does not imply that any person or group is of “lesser value”. It means we are not equal in our talents, interests, and aptitudes, and abilities, even as we all have the same fundamental human dignity in the eyes of God.
Why not increased vocational training? Why should liberal arts-type critical thinking and analytical skills be valued more highly (in terms of prestige) than working with your hands in some way….which leads us to the competition and mass immigration question….
Jonathan: I’m having a hard time even typing this for some reason, but let me get this straight: Because blacks are, as a race, inferior in intelligence to whites, and thus not as capable of attaining the educational heights as whites are, we should expand vocational training to adapt to this disparity??
That’s what you seem to be saying, and I’m just…stunned.
Matt, you need to read more closely. I have never written that anyone is “inferior.” The misleading inferior-superior line of thought is a common but unhelpful one in these discussions. We are dealing with statistical group difference.
In terms of statistical group difference, the black-white gap in the U.S. is roughly 15 points, or nearly two standard deviations (85-100). This has been true since the (varied) tests were first administered, about a century ago. Among African nations, the best data comes from the book IQ and the Wealth of Nations (whose authors spent years collecting and analyzing test results). There, the average is about 70. These are significant gaps, but there are ways to close it.
There is debate about the usefulness of such tests (again, they measure cognitive and analytical abstract critical thinking) as a measure of intelligence, although they are commonly accepted. Therefore, it is not possible to state that anyone is “inferior in intelligence,” only that there is evidence of statistical group difference over these measures.
IMO, this is important and should be discussed openly, especially among policy makers. There are much better ways to help those who face trouble with abstract critical thinking than we currently employ.
Jonathan,
Sowell sets out some evidence against the “genetics is behind the IQ disparty” argument in the series of articles I linked to earlier, and the cumlatively case seems pretty devastating. It’s not clear, for example, how the theory can account for the Flynn effect (IQ’s of societies tend to rise over time). Nor is it compatible with the fact that the relative disparities in IQ between different groups vary significantly both between cultures (significant IQ differences between ethnic subgroups in Japan are not present among American immigrants from those subgroups) and time (Jews went from consistently having a low average IQ to an above average one). Nor does it explain how the difference between different subgroups of Whites (say, those in Apalachia vs. those in New England) is as great as the difference between Whites and Blacks. There was also a study done of the IQs of the illegitimate children of U.S. Airmen during WWII (german mothers, American fathers) that found no IQ gap between Whites and Blacks. Given all this, it’s hard to see how the genetics thesis can be sustained.
Blackadder,
Watson thinks we’ll know for sure within two decades. He’s said (especially in his promotional tours for his memoir) that scientists are moving very agressively to get some solid answers on the genetic question. The Jewish point is an interesting one. Eastern European (based) Jews have the highest group average IQ, but that appears to be a recent development. Charles Murray speculates this is due in part to being restricted to certain trades starting about 1,000 years ago.
In terms of the Flynn Effect, Malloy highlights this passage from Flynn himself (about half the way down of his GXNP piece):
“When you analyze IQ gains over time, you often find that they do not constitute enhancement of these latent traits — they do not seem to be general intelligence gains, or quantitative factor gains, or verbal factor gains”
Flynn sees little bearing of the movements he has detected on the gaps, which are unfortunately quite persistent. We’ll hopefully know a lot more as they begin to finish the mapping.
What needs to be understood is that this is an important scientific topic, one with a lot of social science components. Yet social scientists, especially in the universities, are by and large worthless, intoxicated with social construction and “critical theory” nonsense. We need many more researchers who take anthropology seriously, and go out into the field, like the physical anthopologist Carleton Coon. If you ever find a book of his, it is worth picking up. He took difference seriously and did an incredible amount of homework.
Matt Talbot: In AK back in 1994, some rich, white Harvard graduate decided to live off the land in Alaska and starved to death. His stupid story is now a movie called “into the Wild.” Education did him little good.
Jonathan, please cite all studies that show wealthy blacks are inherently dumber than wealthy whites.
“dumber” is not an accurate characterization of my opinion throughout this thread.
But RCM to address your point directly, look at Shaker Heights in Ohio, and New Haven in CT, and Berkeley in CA (for geographical diversity….these areas have also been studied extensively). You may need a university computer to access some….that’s where I’m killing time and it’s hard for me to tell:
http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/brookings_papers_on_education_policy/v2001/2001.1rich.pdf
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/brookings_papers_on_education_policy/toc/pep2001.1.html
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0094-3061(200407)33%3A4%3C414%3ABASIAA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-E
A good summary of Shaker Heights is in No Excuses by Abigail Thernstrom. Here’s a news article that summarizes studies from the late 90s
http://www.eastbayexpress.com/2003-05-21/news/rich-black-flunking/
And again, no one denies environment or culture. The whole point, however, is that the differences are so large and so persistent that we must be open to genetic cognitive difference, and within our lifetimes its very feasible to know with greater certainity.
And I think that if we consider our own educational experiences, it’s easier to understand innate analytical-type abilities. It is not possible for me, for example, to be a successful or ethical engineer. I am simply not capable of the mental tasks necessary to do so; I do not possess those abilities. Studying would have only helped so much. Basically, my brain is not “wired” in that way, and we can start to see why when we view my family. As Larry Summers knows, and has paid a high price for stating publicly, there is very strong scientific evidence for gender difference in brain functions (and remember any story about some great female engineer may be true but are totally irrelevant to this discussion because the topic concerns averages across time). Something similiar may well be true for race – those who study genetics for a living have come to view race as an extended family group, somewhat “inbread”, a group that has evolved discernable characteristics because of variables like isolation and natural selection.
A thought experiment:
– Premise: IQ, for the American population, follows a normal distribution, with a mean value of 100, and an SD of ~15.
– Premise: A person’s IQ score is largely a function of intractable factors – e.g., genetics – over which that person has no control.
– Premise: Our society is currently structured such that IQ is a significant – and increasingly-important – determinant of socioeconomic success. I.e., the higher your IQ, the more likely you are to be wealthy, upper crust, etc. Our society has basically morphed into an IQ-based meritocracy.
In this sort of IQ Meritocracy, low-IQ individuals will almost inevitably end up filling the ranks of the working poor, the unemployed, those without health insurance, etc. Note that these people wouldn’t be welfare queens or the “undeserving poor”; even if they work hard, are disciplined, go to school, etc., they still end up at the bottom, _through no fault of their own_, simply because, in our society & economy, rewards are doled out as a function of IQ.
Query: As a matter of justice, is society not obliged to assist – perhaps via income-support programs – such low-IQ individuals, whose position in the bottom run of the socioeconomic ladder is almost entirely the result of factors beyond their control?
My point is that even if one accepts that
1) IQ does measure intelligence;
2) Some people are smarter than others;
3) IQ/intelligence is largely a function of genetic factors; and
4) IQ is a meaningful factor in socioeconomic outcomes
…”right-wing” public-policy recommendations do not intractably follow from such acceptance.
Confession: The above argument was cribbed from one of the later chapters in “The Bell Curve”.
MI, I would concur. I think wage subsidies (or perhaps an expanded Earned Income Tax Credit) are an appropriate policy in line with Catholic Social Thought about ensuring that everyone can live through the fruits of his labor.