Ignorant, Racist, Bigoted, Stupid, White Supremist HILLBILLIES!

Hello Redyellowblackdog, Well, I guess we'll just have to wait the 10-15 years to see if Dr. Watson is correct, or if he actually was abducted by ignorant, racist, bigoted, stupid, white-supremist, Hillbillies. While we wait, we might consider that Dr. Watson's inflamatory remarks might just prompt certain groups and individuals to prove him wrong. What a welcomed day that would be! A little reverse psychology has been shown to produce amazingly positive results. The one sentence that I find particularly intriguing is: "However, opponents argue IQ tests are culturally biased and say lower average scores among blacks can also be explained by social rather than genetic factors." The burning question is: And, what are those opponents doing to counter any such social factors that may have lead an internationally renown molecular biologist to erroneously label as genetic deficiency? Hmmm, has anyone ever considered the impact of sustained nutritional deficiency on intellectual development? One undeniable, underlying failure of any comparison between Africans, and Europeans, is the premise: all things being equal ....

I know I'm going to get my head handed to me for this but I think he may be right about Africa for the wrong reason. Africans will score lower on standardized IQ tests than Europeans but that's largely because of cultural bias in the test design. I'm white and my IQ ranges from a low of 132 to a high of 178 depending on which test I take. That being said, attempts by liberal white Westerners to help Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America will almost always fail because they all start with the logic that everybody in the world who has a brain things exactly like a liberal white westerner. And they don't. I still laugh when I remember my misspent youth in South America. It was truly hilarious to see people trying to grasp why things that worked so well in Manhattan apartment didn't seem to get results at all in the middle of a Venezuelan rain forest.

Hello Redyellowblackdog, I'm not sure whether you've seen this or not, but I thought I'd share the link. This is a follow up to the recent article about Dr. Watson. http://news.independent.co.uk/sci_tech/article3075664.ece

I was watching BBC news tonight, They had a piece on Dr. Watson. It is amazing how quickly he is back peddling at this point. His position now seems to be that he did not say what he said. The sad thing about this is the comfort that it gives to racists. I have worked in sub-Saharan Africa and found that there is nothing slow about African people. At the time I was there, in the early 60s, they were labouring under a huge handicap. In the Congo, where I was, there were only two high school graduates. Belgium was probably the worst of the colonial powers, but the others were not far behind. They looked at the indigenous people as a workforce to do the grunt work, but did not want to educate them "above their station." Sadly, the colonial powers have now been replaced by a corrupt ruling class. If the African can ever free himself of the yoke of oppression, I think, we will be amazed at what they can accomplish. I hope I live to see them have the chance.

do you live in africa? i do. i think dr watson should first widen his studies to other races as well. he should give the same IQ test to amazon people, billy-bob in arkansas and eskimos. but i also think theres more to his theory. i am not a racist but i am very dissapointed in africans this week.

Ironic. You wish for Watson to stop generalizing, but you blame "ignorant, racist, bigoted, stupid, white spremist HILLBILLIES" for brainwashing him. See the hypocrisy? Hillbillies is a term for those who inhabit remote, rural, mountainous areas (widely used in America for those who live in the Appalachia), not synonymous to redneck or racist. The articles seems to frame the thought that Watson is a racist. Yes, I do agree that he has no tact. He's one of those people who will use science to justify racism, which is not what a true scientist should do. But his theory is nothing new - it's been proposed various times throughout history. The theory of different races having different features has been scientifically proven. For example, African athletes who hail from certain areas of Africa have longer calves than their European or Asian counterparts. This is proof that different races have differences in the way we are born. The scientist was attacked for saying such blasphemous and racist comments. All he did was measure the calves of Africans, Asians, and Caucasians. Intelligence is also something along the same lines. It's a shame many scientists are fearful of doing studies on the differences between races because of the heat, as seen by the authors of the Bell Curve. As long as there is scientific proof, studies shouldn't be attacked. It's how people use this information that should be questioned, not the study itself. But yes, he is a racist old man - important to the field of DNA study, but nevertheless racist.

Wow! I sure don't know how else to explain this story. However, my guess, and it's only a guess since I was terrible in science, that there are many factors contributing to the intelligence and IQ of people from different cultures and geographical locations. Environment (social and physical), nutrition, physical conditioning or the lack of it, I'm sure there are many others I'm not thinking of or am not aware of. I'm a WASP from Pennsylvania; what does that make me? Annie

Hello redyellowblackdog!:-) I Hope you don’t mind me popping up with different perspectives!:-) I haven’t read the research of Dr. Watson, so I can’t really comment on it unless and until I see the work. I, however, see that people put too much stock in IQ. I personally don’t think that IQ is an objective measure of someone’s intelligence. There are too many factors that govern our score on IQ test, however balanced it may be. There was some user here who questioned whether religiosity causes lower IQ or is it that lower IQ people choose religion. You can read my response here: http://www.mylot.com/w/discussions/1164060.aspx?p=2 (#14) As I said that I can’t directly comment on Dr. Watson’s work before reading it, however if lower IQ should be taken as basis for conclusion that it’s genetically so, then following conclusions can also be made: 1. Females are genetically inferior to men in terms of intelligence because their average IQ score is 3-4 points less than males as some researches have shown. However men’s IQ range is wider i.e. they cover both the lowest and highest IQ ranges while females remain in between. 2. Americans are genetically inferior to Europeans who further are inferior to East Asians, especially Japanese, Hong Kong, South Koreans etc since East Asians have highest average IQ scores in the whole world. There is a considerable difference between IQ scores of East Asians and Americans (7-8 points) However, I won’t believe the above conclusions for my own reasons. My partner has a very high IQ, She will beat me up, so don’t tell her what I said in point 1, LOL! Joke aside, The reason why I don’t take IQ that seriously is because it is already a controversial measure of intelligence which doesn’t take into account many factors as yet. One of the most important factor, that I think, is exposure and environment. If two brothers are brought up in different countries or environments such that one has the best exposure, a child can get, and the other has the least, keeping all other things common, I believe that the brother who has best exposure will score higher than the other. The reason for my belief is that, generally, a city child scores higher than a villager. There are other factors like nutrition, law and order, family issues etc. A cool and calm mind will definitely score higher than a disturbed one. Similarly, within the same ethnicity, there is a large disparity in IQ score based on what social class, region and group one belongs to or even if someone belongs to a discriminated class e.g. lower caste Hindus in India score lower than higher caste Hindus. In Britain, Irish and Scottish have lower IQ scores than English and in Northern Ireland, Protestants score higher than Catholics. More interesting is Israel where Jews score higher than Arabs and within Jews, western Jews score higher than Eastern Jews. Indians and Pakistanis who have a chance to good education score higher than Americans and Europeans (about 10% of Indians and Pakistanis that I know here have scored above 150, 50% above 130 and 40% above 115, there is only one who scored 105 which is still above average). There is also another interesting point. The world average IQ score is falling, though very slowly. In 1950, it was about 91.64 which has come down to 88.76 in 2007 and projected average IQ for world in 2027 is 87.70. Also, Intelligence itself can’t do anything unless it is combined with other factors. After all, America is a super power despite having lower IQ than East Asians and Europeans. Even USSR had even lower average IQ than many of the poor and failed states. Let’s just hope for a more intelligent world!:-)