Until recently, Dr. James Watson, the co-winner of the Nobel Prize for discovering the structure of DNA and the man most responsible for the monumental Human Genome Project, was the most revered scientist in the entire world. No longer. His own world famous Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory suspended him and forced him to retire, universities and museums have canceled his lectures, and a chorus of media and public voices now call him the most opprobrious term in modern times: “racist.”
What was his great crime? He simply uttered a few words about the undeniable scientific fact that there are IQ differences among races, as dangerous a thing to do today as saying the Earth is not the center of the universe in Galileo’s time.
Dr. Watson has echoed the other leading scientific giant of the modern age, Dr. William Shockley, in daring to speak truth about what amounts to the 21st Century equivalent to the Middle Age’s heresy: that important racial differences exist. Both of them did not in any way advocate discrimination or suppression of any race or people. Like modern day Galileos they simply wrote and spoke the simple truth and then paid a great price for their scientific honesty.
If one had to pick the greatest scientific achievements of the last 100 years, it would be easy to name the two at the very top: the development of the transistor (and its progeny the silicon chip and the resulting computer age) and the discovery of the structure of the building block of all life, the DNA Double Helix.
The transistor and its stepchild, the semi-conductor, laid the foundation of the electronic and computer ages. No invention has more transformed the world in which we now live. Not only have computers and modern electronics enhanced medicine and saved hundreds of millions of lives, but they have also advanced transportation, communication, business, and indeed every aspect of science, human productivity and creativity. Dr. William Shockley headed the team at AT&T labs that invented the transistor, and he later established Shockley Semi-conductor, the firm that launched the famed Silicon Valley and the modern computer industry. In 1956, Dr. Shockley and his team won the Nobel Prize for this monumental achievement that is the basis for the computer, electronic, and communication systems that enable you to read these lines at this very moment. It would be practically impossible to list the ways Dr. Shockley’s discoveries have affected every aspect of science and technology. Shockley’s invention has led to myriad more inventions in every aspect of human life.
The other preeminent scientific achievement of the last 100 years was the discovery of the DNA structure. History will certainly record this as having been as important as the invention of the computer, for it is the crucial scientific discovery for understanding the foundation structure of all life—and specifically our own human genes.
The discovery of the DNA structure led to the ability to cure and prevent mankind’s most deadly and debilitating diseases and ailments. Ultimately it has the potential to free mankind from every currently known disease and ailment. It enables us to produce healthier plant and animal life; it even helps us to develop pollution-eating bacteria and other innovative means of saving ourselves and our planet. Some scientists say that even super computers will one day be based on DNA molecules and will be millions of times faster than silicon-based computing.
Perhaps most importantly, knowledge of DNA has the promise to influence even our own personal health and inherent abilities; it may even be the key to improvement and advancement of mankind itself, our innate abilities and even our healthy lifespan. It ultimately means limitless possibilities for mankind. The spiral DNA Double Helix is truly a spiral stairway to the stars.
The scientists who unlocked the DNA structure were James Watson, Thomas Crick, and Maurice Wilkins. Dr. James Watson, like Shockley, was a physicist. He became an expert in the biological understanding of the cell, and like Shockley, he was the key scientist of his research group. Watson discovered the nucleotide base pairs that are the key to the structure and function of DNA. He and Dr. Crick won the Nobel Prize in 1962. Watson went on to spearhead the Human Genome Project which has now identified every sequence of mankind’s DNA, a tool of incredible power to better the lives of human beings. As the Sunday Times of London reported on October 14, 2007:
The names Watson and Crick, it has been said, have “joined Darwin and Copernicus among the immortals.” The pair’s discovery of the structure of DNA, in 1953, has been hailed by fellow Nobel laureates as the greatest single scientific achievement of the 20th century.
After winning the Nobel Prize, Dr. Watson did not rest on his reputation. He took over the Cold Spring Harbor Research facility and turned it into the premier genetics research institution in the world in the fight against cancer and other human ailments. His vision drove on the Human Genome Project, an endeavor which most scientists believe ranks as an achievement that far eclipses the moon landing. Watson also fought against the patenting of genes, saying that the knowledge and use of human genetics must be open to all scientists to lessen disease and improve the human condition.
Now, in one of the most disgraceful events in the history of mankind, Dr. Watson has been reviled, his lectures at universities and museums canceled, and he has been forced to resign from the research institution that he created.
What was his crime? He dared to simply utter a few lines scientific truth about genetics and race. Three decades earlier the same thing happened to that other giant of modern science, Dr. William Shockley. Shockley was called a “racist” and became a media-designated pariah for daring to question the new religion of biological racial equality. Egalitarianism is the incredibly silly idea that despite the wide variation of mankind’s races in physical structure and characteristics, that somehow all races must be identically equipped in mental qualities and traits. This theory was born out of religious kind of blind utopian egalitarian political thought and grafted on the biological world. Most of the scientists who have supported the race as a “social construct” mythology such as Gould, Lowentin, Kamin, Rose have in fact been open Marxist egalitarians in their political views. Unfortunately they have had strong allies in the Jewish-leftist dominated mass media, and the media bias still continues to this day.
The fact is that both Shockley and Watson are not racists in the popular definition of the term as they sought neither hatred nor supremacy over other races. In fact, they were concerned about the well-being of Black people as they were about Europeans and all mankind. But, they have felt that the truth is always a better way to address problems than self-delusion.
Many years earlier, Dr. Shockley talked about the dysgenic trends among Black populations and proposed policies to help them increase their IQ. This is how Wikipedia described it:
Shockley believed that the higher rate of reproduction among the less intelligent was having what he called a “dysgenic” effect, causing a lowering of worldwide human quality. Although Shockley was concerned about both Black and White dysgenic effects, he found the situation among Blacks more disastrous. While unskilled Whites had 3.7 children on average versus an average of 2.3 children for skilled Whites, Shockley found from the 1970 Census Bureau reports that unskilled Blacks had 5.4 children versus 1.9 for the skilled Blacks. Shockley reasoned that because intelligence (like most traits) is at least partially inherited, the Black population would, over time become much less intelligent countering all the gains that had been made by the Civil Rights movement. The Left made much of his concern about Black intelligence so as to brand him a racist because (as he stated) this stance countered their claim that all people are identical.
Shockley was certainly concerned about genetic dangers facing people of European descent, but as the above shows, he also had genuine concern about the well-being of those of African descent and of all people. He wanted every race to be better with each generation.
Watson has voiced similar concerns. He even made great efforts to help the Black community in the United States, but that, of course, had no mitigating effect on the vile attacks he suffered for simply relating the plain facts of African IQ. Nor could anyone refute the facts of what he said; all they could do was say that what he wrote “wasn’t true”—as if that would make the facts go away.
Here are some excerpts of the Sunday Times article which quoted some unguarded comments Dr. Watson made in his conversation:
He says that he is “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”, and I know that this “hot potato” is going to be difficult to address. His hope is that everyone is equal,… He says that you should not discriminate on the basis of colour, because “there are many people of colour who are very talented, but don’t promote them when they haven’t succeeded at the lower level”.
He writes that “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”.
… the geneticist explains that he has opened a DNA learning centre on the borders of Harlem in New York. He is also recruiting minorities at the lab and, he tells me, has just accepted a black girl “but,” he comments, “there’s no one to recruit.”
Everything Dr. Watson said was absolutely correct. The prospect of Africa is and has been “inherently gloomy” for centuries. Social policies have been formulated on the premise that sub-Saharan African intelligence is the same as ours, but all the testing says, “not really.” There have been thousands of scientific studies of IQ differences between the races and all of them show deep differences. He went on to say one “should not discriminate on the basis of colour,” because there are “many people of colour who are very talented, but at the same don’t promote them if they haven’t succeeded at the lower level.”
Watson, and Shockley before him, ardently defends the civil rights of all people. He wants to hire, promote and advance people on their abilities fairly and equitably. This policy is exactly the opposite of his critics who seek “affirmative action” which amounts to blatant racial discrimination against the better qualified.
He goes on to say that there is “no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically.” Certainly that is a very logical and reasonable statement, for it is logical that populations evolving in radically different environments would not develop identical mental capabilities and qualities.
One should notice that Dr. Watson condemns racial discrimination, and pointed out that there are Blacks who are very talented. He simply stated the undeniable scientific fact that different population groups do have profound differences in intelligence. The media quoted a few egalitarians that voiced the lie that there is no scientific evidence that indicates, or any “real scientists” who believe, the IQ difference between races has been influenced by heredity as well as environment. In actual fact, an overwhelming numbers of scientists admit that there is a marked difference in IQ among the races of mankind, as do even most of the egalitarians.
There have been thousands of intelligence studies that tested differing racial groups, and many of them also factored in environmental variables and strove to remove cultural bias. Thousands of carefully structured studies of intelligence involving millions of individual intelligence tests have proven beyond any doubt that a significant difference in IQ exists between Europeans, East Asians and Africans. And thousands of IQ studies have shown that intelligence as measured by IQ is at least equally determined as much by genetics as by environment. For instance, it is shown by many studies that children adopted from birth are closer to the IQ’s of their birth parents than the IQ’s of the adopted parents who raised them.
The controlled media have been full of stories, supposedly backed up by good science, which suggest that markedly lower Black IQ scores are solely the result of environment—that no “real scientist” believes that the low African IQ scores are partially due to genetic differences. In fact, three times more leading psychologists and sociologists think that racial differences in IQ were due to both genetic and environmental variation rather than being solely the result of environment.
In 1987, Rothman and Snyderman conducted a survey of 1,020 scholars in academic specialties that would give them reason to be knowledgeable about IQ.
The survey was given to members of the American Education Research Association, National Council on Measurement in Education, American Psychological Association, American Sociological Association, Behavior Genetics Association, and Cognitive Science Society. According to the report, regarding the question “The source of black-white difference in IQ”:
This is perhaps the central question in the IQ controversy. Respondents were asked to express their opinion of the role of genetic differences in the black-white IQ differential. 45 percent believe the difference to be a product of both genetic and environmental variation, compared to only 15 percent who feel the difference is entirely due to environmental variation. 24 percent of experts do not believe there are sufficient data to support any reasonable opinion, and 14% did not respond to the question. Eight experts (1%) indicate a belief in an entirely genetic determination.
Considering what has happened to Dr. Shockley and Dr. Watson, one is likely to assume that even more experts believe in genetic-influenced IQ differences in race. When the most respected scientist in the world cannot speak the truth without disgrace and vilification, many scientists would fear to answer the question candidly. The study also surveyed journalists and found the opposite view of the scientists, Most journalists surveyed believed the differences were “entirely environmental.”
So, Watson has been attacked by journalists who support a scientific minority opinion. Watson simply said outloud what experts believe at least in a 3 to 1 ratio — that lower intelligence scores for some racial groups are both genetically-influenced.
Even the egalitarians admit that a marked IQ difference exists between the races, but they claim other factors such as environment and cultural bias, rather than genes, cause differences in IQ. There are many scientific studies that disprove the idea that environmental and cultural bias accounts for the sharp IQ difference. But again it must be remembered that even those academics who argue environmental or cultural factors in IQ differences are tacitly admitting that the IQ differences do exist. When Watson said that Africans on average have lower IQs, he stated the accepted scientific fact that everyone knows but none dare say. It is a fact not changed by many explanations given. In Snyderman and Rothman’s surveys, no scientist refuted the fact that on average Blacks score lower on intelligence tests just as Watson said. The question is not whether Blacks are on average less intelligent, the question is why. Watson spoke the truth.
Watson has repeatedly clarified his position that a lower IQ does not blanketly make someone “inferior,” any more than a lower IQ White person is inferior to a high IQ White person. The fact that every one of the sixteen finalists in the hundred meter dash at the last Olympics were of African descent does not make Europeans inferior human beings; it just means Whites are, on average, slower at high speed running. Because Africans may have a lower IQ does not make them inferior human beings. It simply means that, on average, they are less intelligent, less adept at the skills of Western technology. It does not mean that every African is less intelligent, but there is much evidence that the intelligence of a group can obviously have a powerful impact on a society. In fact, Africans may be far more adapted to surviving in the climate, fauna and flora in Africa than a European. Would the fact that a European Survival Quotient (SQ) in the African jungle might lower than Africans be proof that Europeans are “inferior?”
It would be far better for the egalitarians to accept scientific reality instead of condemning truth tellers such as Watson and Shockley, the planet’s most important scientists in the last hundred years. They should be asking, “Is not the first task of science to determine without prejudice or personal bias what is true and real?” And, “If this is true, how can Black intelligence be enhanced?” Or, “How can we adapt the Western social systems used in Africa to the reality of human differences so as to make the system work better there?” For hundreds of years, Europeans have been trying to transplant our modern high-tech society to the African continent only to meet with repeated, abject failure on every level. This is in stark contrast to formerly economically primitive, but higher IQ populations in East Asia that have accomplished economic and societal miracles in just a very few decades.
I had the honor of calling Dr. Shockley a friend, even a mentor. I remember a conversation when he related how he was even shunned and reviled by academics who privately said the same things that he said publicly. He told me that more than once he was tempted to do as Galileo did and recant, but I still remember clearly his words that will remain burned into my memory all my life: he said, “How can I deny the most important fact of life on earth? I helped invent the transistor, but ultimately certain types of genes invented the transistor; it is not the transistor that has invented genes. If we lose the character of our DNA, we will lose all else in time.”
Dr. Watson clarified his position in an article in The Independent in the UK on October 19, 2007:
“We do not yet adequately understand the way in which the different environments in the world have selected over time the genes which determine our capacity to do different things,” he is quoted as saying. “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 in to racism. This is not a discussion about superiority or inferiority, it is about seeking to understand differences, about why some of us are great musicians and others great engineers.”
Yet, under an avalanche of condemnation and vile attacks, suspension from his own research facility, and even death threats, he issued an apology and a strange statement in which he said that he did not believe that Africa was genetically inferior and that science has no evidence to back up that assertion. He apologized for something he did not say. He simply said that lack of African social progress in the Western model could be caused by a lower average Western style intelligence. Such a statement does not imply blanket inferiority, unless one assumes that every human who has less than average intelligence is an inferior human being. Intelligence, of course, is only one trait that makes up the human experience. President Bush, for instance, has never shown acute mental abilities, but still many Americans voted for him and revere him. No one would say that his relatively low IQ makes him inferior. What they don’t like are his deceitful actions such as in the Iraq War.
In the end, Watson did exactly what Galileo Galilei had done 364 years earlier in the face of the Inquisition. Galileo was forced to say that there was no scientific basis for the idea that the Earth went around the sun, and that such was absurd. The wording of Galileo’s statement was, “The proposition that the sun is in the center of the world and immovable from its place is absurd, philosophically false, and formally heretical; the proposition that the Earth moves is contrary to all laws because it is expressly contrary to Holy Scriptures.”
A keen observer noted that after Galileo spoke this formal recant he descended from the dock and muttered under his breath, “Yet, it still moves.”
The Holy Writ of today’s world are now egalitarianism and racial equality—not equality of opportunity or equality of rights and respect, but dogmatic unquestioning belief in a universally identical mental capability and character among markedly different peoples. Today, no one faces execution for doubting any of the tenets of the egalitarian religion–but if the most revered scientist in the world can be thrown out of his own laboratory and university and be reviled by the media, the politicians, and the “scientific establishment” for simply stating an easily confirmed truth, how many scientists will dare in the future to come down on the wrong side of that issue?
In the end, Watson, much like Galileo, recanted. But, in light of all of his prior comments on the issue and the vicious campaign launched against him it is obvious that his recantation was coerced. I believe that Watson, like Galileo and so many others, now mutters under his breath, “It still moves.”
Dr. Shockley, though, to his eternal honor, never recanted, watered down or apologized for, or his beliefs. To the last of his days, he told me that the fight for our genetic heritage was more important than the work he did inventing the transistor. And, indeed it is.
In Dr. Shockley’s name, we carry on this fight in the sciences, in history, in psychology, and in the rest of academe; we carry on this fight in our homes and with our families; we carry on this fight in everything we do, because as Dr. Shockley said, if we lose our genetic heritage, everything else will soon fall apart as well. There are many leading scientists with the opinions of Shockley and Watson, but few with the pluck of Watson or the steely courage of Shockley. If our heritage is to survive and science will continue its march to the truth, we need many more like Dr. William Shockley.
The modern establishment is just as bigoted and dogmatic today as was the Inquisition in Galileo’s time. The label “Racist” is the 21st century version of calling someone a witch in the Middle Ages, and scientific racial understanding is called “racism” today as it was called heresy then. The scientists of the 17th century were not witches or heretics, they were bearers of light. We are not “racists” or “haters” but bearers of truth that is vital to the progress of mankind. Those of us who know the truth can take heart in realizing that the two most important scientists of mankind in the last hundred years, Dr. William Shockley and Dr. James Watson, men who have incalculably improved life on earth, share our core beliefs. Millions of others people do as well, but they must find the courage to do far more than mutter under their breath, “Yet, it still moves!”