Re: Freedom of speech and Dr. Watson
- From: Peter Bowditch <myfirstname@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 01 Nov 2007 05:36:07 GMT
Steven Bornfeld <dentaltwinmung@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Jeff wrote:
The newly formed Equality and Human Rights Commission, successor to the
Commission for Racial Equality, said it was studying Dr Watson's remarks
" in full". Dr Watson told The Sunday Times that he was "inherently
gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies
are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours ?
whereas all the testing says not really". He said there was a natural
desire that all human beings should be equal but "people who have to
deal with black employees find this not true".
His views are also reflected in a book published next week, in which he
writes: "There is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual
capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should
prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers
of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to
make it so."
<end quote>
I disagree with Dr. Watson's conclusions. I have worked with people of
different ethnic backgrounds. I have seen no evidence that people of any
ethnic background are any more intelligent that people of other ethnic
backgrounds. In fact, I have noticed a lot of minorities who are not
able to use their full intellectual capacity because of social and
economic factors. To me, it is very sad that we have to import people to
fill jobs in engineering when about 1/2 the kids in NYC and other urban
schools don't graduate high school.
Also, while Dr. Watson is correct that there is no reason to believe
that people who evolved separately need to have the same intellectual
capacity, there is no reason to believe that they should have different
intellectual capacity or that people in Watson's ethnic group are the
more intelligent ones (yes, I know exactly which racial group he is in -
he was 3 m from me when I was working at CSHL one summer, although I did
not know who he was at the time until later).
Jeff
Tough to find out some of our heroes have feet of clay.
Incidentally, back when I was an avid cyclist we'd very frequently ride
up 25A, past CSHL and the fish hatchery.
He's an old guy, but I'd expect him to be classier than Don Imus.
Steve
It looks like a parallel to Linus Pauling. A real, true hero who went
dotty in his dotage. Very sad.
Somewhere in the chaos around here I have a book about genetics
written by Watson that I picked up for $2 from the "throw out" table
at the Westmead Hospital library, and it is brilliant.
A couple of years ago I found some quacks lying about what Watson had
had to say about cancer treatments. Unfortunately, it looks like he
can't get away from this latest quote as easily.
http://www.ratbags.com/rsoles/history/2005/04april.htm#2watsonlie
--
Peter Bowditch aa #2243
The Millenium Project http://www.ratbags.com/rsoles
Australian Council Against Health Fraud http://www.acahf.org.au
Australian Skeptics http://www.skeptics.com.au
To email me use my first name only at ratbags.com
.
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