One of the most celebrated scientists of this century Watson of the famed Watson & Crick duo who shared the 1962 Nobel Prize for describing the double helical structure of DNA seemed to have put his foot or rather both his feet in his mouth when, while promoting his autobiographical memoir ‘Avoid Boring People and Other Lessons From a Life in Science’ in London he suggested genetic reasons for lesser intelligence of Blacks. Expectedly, it created the storm leading to public opprobrium for the scientist who, till his faux pass, was a sought after speaker in any scientific gathering and after his interview became an outcaste, lost Chancellorship of Cold Spring Harbour Laboratory!

Let us read his exact words to form our own opinions.

In an interview with the Sunday Times, London, he was quoted as saying that he was gloomy about Africa’s prospects because “all our policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours whereas all the testing says not really.”  He further said that he hoped that everybody was equal, but that “people who had to deal with black employees find this is not true.” Subsequently in an interview with The Independent he said:” The overwhelming desire of society today is to assume that equal powers of reason are a universal heritage of humanity. It may well be. But simply wanting this to be the case is not enough. This is not science. To question this is not to give into racism.”

Needless to say, the intersect of race and intelligence is a veritable minefield capable of destroying many a careers. But has the reaction of international community been proper and proportionate or it has been an over the top reaction with too much focus on being ‘politically correct’ rather than ‘scientifically cautious’?

Watson’s first comments to The Sunday Times did seem uncharitable towards a race  but a life of 85 years devoted to science and devoid of controversies cannot all of a sudden transform into an yearning for newsprint space and negative publicity unless the scientist knew what he was talking about. And his subsequent comments to The Independent does show his sincerity that merely wanting equality is not enough. So what if he had reasons to say what he said?

Vilification of Watson may have been right if he had advocated ‘cleansing’ but if he was stating a ‘vague’ premise about race and its effect on intelligence from a scientific perspective then in my opinion he deserves our kudos not only for stating such an unpleasant truth but also because it will force us to have a relook at our policies framed at weaker sections.

Forgetting the social niceties and the wordings of his comments, people should look at his line ‘all our policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours whereas all the testing says not really’. ( I am aware that later he retracted his statement but my own take is that his retraction was more due to pressure than anything else.) If he is talking about tests scientifically done observing the rigors of scientific analysis then his comments need to be looked at not from the coloured (pun intended) perspectives of racism but from the perspectives of illumination.

Any scientific investigation should keep us ready that the result of science may not come to our liking. Science has no perspectives. It is right or wrong, factual or factless, revealing or revolting. Science is Boolean. It cannot be this as well as that. Our obsession with ‘political correctness’ has brought us to a stage where certain things have almost become a taboo. This boundary needs to be broken if we want to reach out further in our quest for knowledge. And if atall there does exist a relationship between race and intelligence and it is incorrect to talk about it then we need to build a new lowest common denominator of human ingenuity which would be universal to all humans regardless of race and which would not be called ‘intelligence’.

And as the Professor of Bioethics at Princeton wrote ‘No matter what the facts on race and intelligence turn out to be, they will not justify racial hatred, nor disrespect for people of other race.’ It should just be one more factoid like the Asians being genetically more prone to having coronary diseases.

In scientific investigations, many premises are built on informed inquisitiveness which are tested and discarded or otherwise after careful research. Let this be one such premise needing unbiased scrutiny. World would be richer for the knowledge, one way or the other.

After all it is always better to be even vaguely right than exactly wrong.

Mrmulliner

PS: With all the sincerity at my command, I want to submit that I donot consider myself a racist. My emphasis is only to appeal to scientific temper rather than to social temper.