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James Watson's Nobel Medal Sells For $4.1 Million
An anonymous reader writes Scientist James Watson, who has issues with women, Africans, and the scientific community, has became the only living Nobel laureate to sell his medal after it fetched over $4 million at auction. "Watson told Nature that his motivation for selling the medal is a chance for redemption. He plans to donate some of the proceeds to Cold Spring, where he still draws a $375,000 base salary as chancellor emeritus, and also to University College Cork in Ireland to help establish an institute dedicated to the mathematician George Boole. 'I'm 52% Irish,' Watson said by way of explanation."
buy it!
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
He still came out a winner? Just like the guy who sold the basketball team to Paul Allen for $2 billion.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
He could use some of that money to set up a memorial of some kind for the memory of Rosalind Franklin, or make a big donation to Rosalind Franklin University.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
Nope, he committed the error of thinking he had the Truth, and justified it with his interpretations.
... of Playboy, Penthouse and Hustler.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
He's guilty of confirmation bias. He's as bad as Jefferson saying blacks can't be educated because Jefferson never met an educated black man. But since educated black men exist now, Watson's worse. Ignorant at best, intellectually dishonest at worst.
You'd think he'd be smart enough to realize that selling it would cost him more in taxes than just keeping it. Oh wait, he still made tons of money.
Differences among individuals classified as being of the same race are greater than the differences between races.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...
I guess there's some money in being a Nobel laureate - even having "no income outside of academia" (as mentioned elsewhere).
And is that in Dollars or Pounds?
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
You are probably right about the confirmation bias. But one should be able to make that argument without hounding someone out of a profession. That is more-or-less what happened here.
I would also note that almost no one here is actually a scientist, much less a Nobel prize winner. So no one is all that qualified to debunk his idea. There are certainly falsifiable points in his premise on race (and probably plenty of research to support it). All that need be done is produce and make the argument, and the issue should be closed. But no, that's not sufficient, he has to be punished.
This is a classic case of claims of "Science!" being used as a cover for political correctness. More like "Science! (so shut the hell up)".
What is the point in buying a Nobel medal? I can only think of somebody who want to fraud people, but a simple google search would expose them.
http://www.mueller-public.de - My site http://www.anr-institute.com/ - Advanced Natural Research Institute
As opposed to what? You make it sound like there is this giant leftist conspiracy when out and out the new-right, third position,. and the right have made it damn clear they want to do even worse to the left, and the left is guilty of no more than protecting themselves. The "mob" you reffer to is the body of top scientists, and if he's not guilty of racism, he's guilty of supporting ideas proven scientificly false. At very least he's promoting bad science. Just because he won a noble prize in one field of science does not make him expert in all others. Many other scientists went on to support things of dubious merit after doing real science.
He sought the truth, as best any one human can
He made biased claims based on his political views, not scientific research. He then hung his scientific credibility on them.
He didn't tell the truth, he flat out lied, using his position of academic credibility to forward lies based on his political biases. Thats fucking terrible. Your terrible too for not being able to distinguish opinion of a scientist, and scientific work.
Who in their right mind would pay 4 million for *his* Nobel prize? I know pure gold doesn't really tarnish... but that thing is tarnished.
The opinions stated herein do not necessarily represent those of anybody at all. Deal with it.
somehow I don't think he's actualy selling it because he needs the money.
please keep your unfounded bigotry, misapplication of statistics, and wild conspiracy theories and "what ifs", and recycled propaganda from the last age of kings to your blog.
I would also note that almost no one here is actually a scientist, much less a Nobel prize winner.
There are plenty of scientists here. And I don't need t obe a Nobel prize winner to know that for instance ESP does not exist (unlike Brian Josephsson). You don't need to have a Nobel prize to know when a prizewinner is talking crap.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
a crime, has he been arrested?
He's as bad as Jefferson saying blacks can't be educated because Jefferson never met an educated black man.
Jefferson was worse, because he had, in fact, met an educated black man. He should have known better.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Except your missing the fact that the opinions of a scientist are not equal to science.
Your treating science as a religeon, something men in lab coats say and you unquestioningly believe.
Science is a method. Its not believing unquestioningly what scientists say. Science has standards for ascertaining truths based on observation. Watson's claims are not backed by science, but by his own personal prejudices and political views. That alone is good reason to kick someone out of the scientific community.
For science to work you must be able to state an unpopular opinion and not get slaughtered for it.
I'm not for sure how substantial his claims were but there is no denying that there are differences between races.
How many white people do you see in professional sports? And there is a reason we split men and women
sports apart. An average male athlete would have no problem competing at the olympic level in many sports
if they were allowed to compete on the female side. I've heard somewhere that an average 50 percentile male is
stronger than 90%+ females. Even pointing this out though can get you persecuted and heaven forbid someone
mentions that there are IQ difference between races.
We're talking about a very smart guy that helped discover DNA. If he says that there is a DNA element to
intelligence (and everyone knows there is) and that it varies by race (again, this is a no brainer) then what is
the big deal, he's speaking the truth. Now how much is based on race/genetics is a nature/nurture debate
that we're a long way from solving but the fact that there is a genetic basis to intelligence is undeniable however
much people stick their heads in the sand and try to deny it.
"Granting one self absolution smacks of self fullfillment or seeking godhood.. which is not exactly a selfless act."
Shhh ... don't tell that to Bill Gates ... it's okay when you have more money than God.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
The latter is exactly my point. I would think the man's premise would be quickly and easily refuted. And it was and is.
But the "community" couldn't let it go at that. He had to be punished for the way he thought, because it made everybody feel better.
ascii-art console slot machine software
omg, someone fork Debian immediately! we can't let this go undistributed.
You are probably right about the confirmation bias. But one should be able to make that argument without hounding someone out of a profession. That is more-or-less what happened here.
No it's not. The guy has continued to revise his books and memoirs and other publications in recent years, which is more than you can say for most 86-year-olds. He has continued to publish new scientific ideas in recent years.
What actually happened is that he wrote a memoir about his life which was intended for a POPULAR audience, and in the early stages of gearing up for his book tour, he made the remarks everyone's been talking about. Most of his appearances on that book tour were then cancelled, because of reactions to a public figure who basically implied that the science on the genetics of race was settled (when it's really not -- there may be some studies that appear to agree with his claims, but there are about as many that show the opposite) and then made racist implications on the basis of this.
He was not at all "hounded out of a profession," unless you consider "being a public intellectual" a profession. Show me evidence that people have refused to publish his research or took away memberships in academic societies or whatever -- then you can say he was "hounded out of the profession." He wasn't. He did lose a high-profile administrative position, but he continued to advise and do research at that place. He just lost his audence to talk to the public, which he should, given that he has a long history of saying rather nasty things and claiming a scientific basis for them when there generally isn't.
This is a classic case of claims of "Science!" being used as a cover for political correctness. More like "Science! (so shut the hell up)".
Huh? Look, you want to be a "normal scientist" and go about your day, doing research, publishing papers, whatever -- that's great. And chances are if you make some crass or racist remark to some random friends, nothing's going to happen to you.
But if you want to be a world-famous scientist and live in the public eye, you are subject to public scrutiny -- which means when you say something that's not true AND offends people in the process, you might lose your public audience.
That has nothing to do with "science." It's just the reality of being a public figure. It would be one thing if this were a single off-hand comment from Watson. It was not. He has a history of saying things that are racist, sexist, homophobic, etc., and he's been doing it for decades. (He's also, frankly, a bit of a kook in his old age, but that's a separate issue.)
You want press? You get to accept what press you create for yourself....
What is this "punishment" fetish? Was he prevented from speaking or selling his prize or posting racist rants on his blog or wherever?
Is this purely a "social" punishment you're so frightened of? Do you want to legislate how society should treat Watson when he spouts racism that is easily refutable by my own personal experience (he said "anyone who's had a black employee knows I'm right about blacks being inferior" or something similar)? But if someone like me says something you disagree with, then it's okay to punish them socially?
Is that the double standard you're espousing here?
For science to work you must be able to state an unpopular opinion and not get slaughtered for it.
Agreed. Has anyone discounted any of Watson's other scientific discoveries on the basis of this remark? I don't think so. And if not, science is still working as it should.
We're talking about a very smart guy that helped discover DNA.
I'm sensing a fallacious appeal to authority coming up....
If he says that there is a DNA element to intelligence (and everyone knows there is)
Yes, that's a true statement.
and that it varies by race (again, this is a no brainer)
If you're looking for the place where your post went from "misguided appeal to authority" to "racist rant," this is where it happens. Exactly why is it a "no brainer" that intelligence varies significantly by race?? I've personally met some very smart people of all sorts of races, and I've met idiots from all sorts of races too. I don't feel like I've accumulated enough data to say it's a "no brainer" that one race is smarter than another -- what dataset do you have access to where you feel like this is a "no brainer"?
Also, you referenced IQ earlier, and now you're talking about "intelligence" -- are you rejecting the idea that different races might have evolved different sorts of intelligence if you're presuming they've evolved differently enough to have different adaptations in this area (and maybe those localized adapations might not be measured as precisely as a test designed mostly by white people to test white people)? I'm just mentioning one of many problems with IQ as a proxy for "intelligence," even if there were obvious differences... which there aren't. When you control for demographics and other social aspects, a lot of racial differences narrow significantly.
then what is the big deal, he's speaking the truth.
The big deal is when he made these remarks, he was no longer just some smart young scientist. He was an 80-year-old dude with a history of making racist, sexist, and homophobic remarks with little basis. And, let's be honest here, even many great scientists aren't always going to be "at the top of their game" anymore at 80 years old.
So your appeal to authority here is problematic in a number of ways -- a guy was recognized for an achievement more than a half-century ago, he's old, he tends to say things that aren't true or well-thought-out in public, and yet you just assume he "speaks the truth"?
Why? THAT does not strike me as a very "scientific" attitude.
"I would also note that almost no one here is actually a scientist, much less a Nobel prize winner. So no one is all that qualified to debunk his idea. There are certainly falsifiable points in his premise on race (and probably plenty of research to support it). All that need be done is produce and make the argument, and the issue should be closed. But no, that's not sufficient, he has to be punished."
Remember Diogenes of Sinope?
Where were Diogenes's credentials? He was homeless. Science doesn't care about credentials, just the evidence. My own evidence speaks out against the Watson quotations I've read on here. I think he doesn't get out enough to meet blacks who are intelligent. Or listen to Louis Armstrong, for example.
So should Watson. Listen to some Jelly Roll Morton.
Where's the prior restraint, in Watson's case?
The buyer was probably not Al Sharpton.
And in the words of the article he "draws a $375,000 base salary as chancellor emeritus" which according to this calculator puts him in the top 2% of Americans. This is assuming that he had no other academic income which we do not know to be the case. Heck, The Double Helix is available right now in five different formats, and so must being in some income.
Efforts to pain Watson as beleaguered and impoverished are bizarre to say the least.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
You are probably right about the confirmation bias. But one should be able to make that argument without hounding someone out of a profession. That is more-or-less what happened here.
No, it isn't. Watson proved himself incapable, after a good 39 years as Chancellor of the Cold Harbor Laboratory, a publicly funded scientific research institution, to continue to successfully function in that position. Like it or not, carrying out such a prominent, highly-paid job puts demands on a person to act and speak responsibly, with the object of maintaining the image of the institution who trusts him to represent it.
A programmer who can no longer the job he is paid to perform gets fired.
A scientist who can no longer the job he is paid to perform gets fired.
A Chancellor who who can no longer the job he is paid to perform, well, he becomes Chancellor Emeritus with a $375,000 salary.
NB: The claim that it is up to everyone else to debunk Watson is incorrect. As a man of science he had the responsibility of being able to support his assertion.
Sorry, affirmative action for influential wealthy white men does not wash. Nothing unfair here.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
I don't care what you say. Say whatever you want, I am a conservative, so I don't think it's a good idea to censor speech.
Thwe Watson case is an absolutely classic case of PC bullying.
If he says that there is a DNA element to intelligence (and everyone knows there is) and that it varies by race (again, this is a no brainer) then what is the big deal, he's speaking the truth.
Or just confirmation bias by a racist old guy.
Learn to love Alaska
For science to work you must be able to state an unpopular opinion and not get slaughtered for it.
No. You need to be able to present your research without being slaughtered for it. When it comes to opinion, scientists have the same rights and are subject to the same criticisms as anybody else.
How many white people do you see in professional sports?
Heaps.
Cricket, for instance, is dominated by white guys in Australia and England. On the other hand, India, Pakistan and the West Indies have very strong teams - why? Because cricket favours places where kids can play the game in the street. Genetics don't enter into it.
Another example: Aussie Rules versus Rugby. Aussie Rules has a disproportionate number of Aboriginal players, whereas Rugby (in Australia/NZ) is dominated by Maoris and Islanders (Samoans, Vanuatans etc). Are Aboriginals genetically pre-disposed toward Aussie Rules, or is it actually because they grow up playing and loving Aussies Rules (Whereas Samoans grow up loving and playing rugby)?
"Irish" is a race now?
Conservatives think it's fine to censor speech they don't agree with. Like the Bonghits 4 Jesus Supreme Court case, where conservatives were very happy that the speech was censored. Typical conservative hypocrisy.
I've personally met some very smart people of all sorts of races, and I've met idiots from all sorts of races too.
And that ... is supposed to negate the possibility of average differences? How?
You don't have to have a dog in this hunt to think that something's lacking in that thinking.
No more ramen spectroscopy for him!
Ezekiel 23:20
This says he's in the world's top 0.02% percent. Unless he has a lot of debts, he's very well off.
Ezekiel 23:20
But one should be able to make that argument without hounding someone out of a profession.
Wait a minute, you would't hound a scientist out of a job if he suffered from confirmation bias? That's like keeping a driver who gets drunk.
Ezekiel 23:20
I believe that's about legal inequality, not about politicians dictating mandatory results of scientific measurements.
Ezekiel 23:20
If you're looking for the place where your post went from "misguided appeal to authority" to "racist rant," this is where it happens. Exactly why is it a "no brainer" that intelligence varies significantly by race??
Because it is a no-brainer that if you grab two random groups of individuals and measure ANY trait within them, you'd expect to find a difference in the mean. That is true no matter what the groups are, or what the trait is. Heck, if you grabbed 500 white people, took two samples of 50 out of that group, and compared just about any trait between the two groups of 50 you'd find differences. Hence the reason statisticians are interested in things like standard error.
Black people and white people tend not to inter-marry. I'm not saying that it never happens - only that it doesn't happen NEARLY as often as intra-racial marriage. That makes it all the more likely for genetic drift to make some genes become more predominant in one population vs the other.
Would you expect the genes that govern skin color to be any different between the average african-american and somebody of european descent? Then why not other genes?
Consider the abstract of Genetic Similarities Within and Between Human Populations:
A black from sub-Saharan Africa can donate organs to a white from Northern Europe, but not necessarily to another black from sub-Saharan Africa.
How has he been censored? Is there prior restraint on his book? How has he been destroyed? Will $4.1 million help him or "destroy" him further?
The hyperbolic paranoia in the above post is ubiquitous amongst conservatives. They see everything as a mortal threat. They're like precious little princesses who can't sleep because there's a pea on a mattress 100 feet below them. Prima donna whiners.
Come to Canada and publish something in the media calling bitumen tar instead of oil and you'll see how crazy the conservatives become about political correctness. It's gotten to the point where no-one dares call that tar like substance tar.
Conservatives have a long history of censoring things they disagree with. They just don't notice as to them it is proper
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Wish I could get punished to the tune of $350,000 a year. Besides unlike him, I have enough intelligence to live on that.
Actually I can't decide if he's a scammer or so stupid that he's truly broke.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
His remarks about Africans were in fact based on IQ test results. How is that not science?
Did they correct for leading causes of low intelligence such as malnutrition?
Were the tests culturally targeted? A century ago the IQ test was introduced and used to show that Eastern Europeans had lower IQ tests. Tests that had questions like who won the world series or what does Smith & Wesson (sp?) manufacture. These tests were used to limit immigration into the States as science had proved that Slavs were stupid.
Funny enough the guy who basically invented the IQ test and vigorously backed the results even with people pointing out all he was doing was measuring knowledge of American culture eventually did a 180 and came to believe the IQ test was pretty well useless for testing intelligence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
For science to work you must be able to state an unpopular opinion and not get slaughtered for it.
true, but thats not whats at stake. This is science, not art, there are real unmovable standards in science. The issue is not that his claims were offensive, but un-scientific. In fact, most of the "science" in racism was disproven long ago, and it was only "science", much because it was paid for by special intrest groups to become science.
I'm not for sure how substantial his claims
OK, stop right there. It looks like we are talking about two diffrent things. I am demanding that science be science, and your letting science be "worship of men in white lab coats". I am sure how substantial his claims are. Completely unsubstainiated. This is the issue at hand. You seem rather sure of yourself for someone who isn't even sure his political opinions are valid science. This leaves a giant hole in your logic
How many white people do you see in professional sports? And there is a reason we split men and women sports apart. An average male athlete would have no problem competing at the olympic level in many sports if they were allowed to compete on the female side. I've heard somewhere that an average 50 percentile male is stronger than 90%+ females. Even pointing this out though can get you persecuted and heaven forbid someone mentions that there are IQ difference between races.
That is casual observation and not science. Thats my point. It also contradicts what you said earlier. While you are entitled to your political views, your not entitled to pass off casual observation as science. As far as IQ diffrences between races, there is no scientific proof. There are a few books such as IQ and the Wealth of Nations, but they are not scientific, as their methodology is horrible.
We're talking about a very smart guy that helped discover DNA.
His discovery of DNA was science. As in he did scientific experiments and proved it using methods of science. DNA is not his opinion. DNA is not accepted because "He's a smart guy, and thinks it exists". This is science, he did experiments and proved it. He made casual observations as proof.
I don't think you know what science is. Its not simply listening to men in white lab coats.
However, if this were the case, and its not, you could not dismiss the fact that every other scientist on the planet refutes this, and PhDs and ground breaking scientists like Noam Chomsky say things almost dirrectly the opposite on a daily basis. I mean by your very own logic, Chomsky is really smart(and did ground breaking research at one point a long time ago), shouldn't we all worship every word that comes out of his mouth. Again, he likes to say political things unpopular with the mainstream. But of course, you'll respond to this with some form of leftist conspiracy, only believing the scientists you want.
The problem with people like you, is you don't rely on concrete logic, or worry about reproducable tests(condition of science), you are seeing what you want to see nothing more.
average diffrences
again, you see what you want to see. Your misapplying statistics. a few points of order:
1. IQ test is considered bunk, and even if it wasn't, there are a whole plethora of tests, that yield varying results. Its very much not a mesaure like grams or meters which is absolute, and solid. 2. There are no good scientific studies on race and IQ that factor out things like education and poverty, and conclusively prove discrepencies. you don't have to a horse in this race just to see bad methodology.
Its the same when they say "an assault on traditional values", and the "homosexual agenda", when they really mean "the state is going to stop using force to cram their ideas down someone elses throat". Not only is it a bit of projection, its almost a bit of a conspiracy to attack other people with competing ideas
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...
Most human genetic variation is found within populations, not among them.
Individuals are frequently more similar to members of other populations than to members of their own population.
Thus, I share little with you, though you are presumably of my race. I feel more kinship to blacks than to whites like you.
Because average differences are less than differences between any two individuals of the different groups. Often enough that you can't make blanket statements like Watson did, about "Anyone who's ever had a black employee..."
Must be Irish on his mother's side. Second X chromosome and mitochondrial DNA.
Oh for fucks sake.
The greatest ireland gave to the world is the best artists and scientists that shat on the face of the idea of race.
I have not a hair of irish, and i can see this. Why cant you?
NO SIG
In the last article, there was a quote from him saying that he planned to use the money from the sale of the medal to buy art to donate to various organisations, apparently thinking that this was a way to buy back some respectability. I don't know if this will work...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
In fact, most of the "science" in racism was disproven long ago, and it was only "science", much because it was paid for by special intrest groups to become science
I don't think that's entirely fair. A lot of racist ideas follow quite logically from hypotheses that make sense from Gregor Mendel's work. The fact that they were falsified by the mid 1900s doesn't mean that they were any less science any more than the luminiferous aether and other discredited hypotheses.
All science is about ideas that are wrong. The way that you can tell that it's science is that, over time, ideas are replaced with less-wrong ideas, until eventually they're sufficiently close an approximation to reality that people lose interest in studying the difference.
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Drawing any meaningful conclusion from that evidence is pretty hard.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Woosh...
It's not a joke about the Irish, it's about using Watson's own flawed (or at least ill-researched) logic in an ironic way to link negative properties to his Irish DNA using silly stereotypes.
Widely accepted only among braindead yanks, who seperate the world into black, white, brown, yellow, and the race of Islam.
As the GP pointed out there isn't a single "intelligence" trait, and your argument doesn't address that. IQ tests measure a very specific ability, and one which has been improving in all races for decades. IQ is affected by many environmental factors too, and it's hard to deny that some races have, on average, much more favourable environments to live in, even within a single country. People can learn to do better at IQ tests with practice.
At most we can say that the evidence suggests that some races are intelligent in different ways, similar to how some people learn visually and some learn through experience. To leap to "black people are dumb", as Watson did, is ridiculous.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Because it is a no-brainer that if you grab two random groups of individuals and measure ANY trait within them, you'd expect to find a difference in the mean. That is true no matter what the groups are, or what the trait is. Heck, if you grabbed 500 white people, took two samples of 50 out of that group, and compared just about any trait between the two groups of 50 you'd find differences. Hence the reason statisticians are interested in things like standard error.
Yes, all of this is true. And I think you've just proved my point. All sorts of "differences" can show up in random groups. The question is whether those differences are significant and meaningful (i.e., not caused by improper control groups or other confounding factors).
The variance among people of any given race in intelligence is larger than variance between races. So the question is whether those relatively minor variances seen between races are meaningful.
Black people and white people tend not to inter-marry. I'm not saying that it never happens - only that it doesn't happen NEARLY as often as intra-racial marriage. That makes it all the more likely for genetic drift to make some genes become more predominant in one population vs the other.
As I also said in my post, when you have appropriate control groups, most of that apparent disparity disappears. And even if it doesn't disappear completely, that doesn't mean that IQ is the sole measure of this monolithic entity called "intelligence" -- there could be many other things that lead to smart decisions and success in life other than that measured on an IQ test. (I'm not saying IQ doesn't measure something, but that doesn't mean it's the only thing....)
Would you expect the genes that govern skin color to be any different between the average african-american and somebody of european descent? Then why not other genes?
We could rephrase this question and say something like, "Would you expect the genes that govern where the heart is located inside the chest to be any different between the average african-american and somebody of european descent?" Answer -- probably not much. "Then why not other genes?"
The amount of COMMON genes between races is HUGE compared to minor differences. Those differences exist. But why would you automatically assume that any particular genes MUST be different when the vast majority of them are the same?
Look -- regardless of all of this, the reality is Watson didn't make a nuanced statement like this, "Oh, yeah, variance can reasonably happen between any group." He said nothing like that. He basically said he thought Africa was unlikely to improve its condition because black people are stupider.
That's not a nuanced statistical argument. That's stating something as a fact, and there just isn't enough evidence to support such a claim. The OP I was originally responding to was arguing that Watson's statements should be believed because he speaks the "truth."
So what I was responding to was an OP who was agreeing with a blatantly racist claim that is not supported by scientific evidence, not some nuanced "Oh, there might be some random variance" hypothesis....
Well, for a start, you immediately qualified "Irish". That should be enough to end this but let's run with "Gaelic Irish". What of those from the same gene pool who are not Irish? They could be Germans, Americans or even Japanese. Many of those genes probably came from the vikings anyway.
"Irish" is not a race. Though as others have said, the notion of race is stupid anyway. All you have are locally adapted phenotypes of the one human race.
The term "Irish race" is pretty well-attested in 19th and early 20th century Amercian usage, along with German Race and a bunch of others.
Race is culturally constructed, and the lines Americans draw with race are historically determined by either slavery and its legacy, or immigration. Skin color is a more important pretext to race now than it was in the past, because now most immigrants to the US aren't coming from Europe.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
He's particularly well-off considering his paying gig amounts to a sinecure.
I'm surprise the Nobel committee allows people to sell their medals. When people win Oscars, for example, the Academy won't let them keep their statue unless they sign an agreement giving the Academy a $1 buyback option on it. The statues all have a little plaque in the back saying, in so many words "this statue is bound by contract and cannot be sold without the written permission of the Academy."
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
2. There are no good scientific studies on race and IQ that factor out things like education and poverty, and conclusively prove discrepencies.
you don't have to a horse in this race just to see bad methodology.
One reason there are not any good studies is because it's a taboo topic.
No professional would risk their career testing something like this. It would be suicide.
What's left is a bunch of fringe people on both sides that have bad methodologies.
If you want good, rigourous studies then you need to allow the studies to take place.
It's very hard to have a study take place when just vocalizing an opinion gets you
crucified before the study even begins.
He basically said he thought Africa was unlikely to improve its condition because black people are stupider.
Although this is definitely on the extreme side of things and I don't necessarily agree with it there
is some evidence for it. Google the "lead crime hypothesis". If say the average IQ of africans
is 10 points lower than the average IQ of north americans, this might be enough to destabilize the
region. 10 points doesn't sound like much but it means there are alot more really dumb people and
alot less really smart people which might be enough to halt progress.
Again, Watson shouldn't be shooting stuff like this out of his mouth without evidence but that doesn't
mean his hypothesis is completely bogus.
*any* accepted? Okay. Look at their skin color. That's a rather widely accepted definition that makes them the same race as English, French, Spaniards, Greeks, and even Persians and Arabs.
Anyone who can lump all of those groups together and say they share some common identity because they have "white" skin is simply proving how stupid racism really is.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
1. IQ test is considered bunk, and even if it wasn't, there are a whole plethora of tests, that yield varying results. Its very much not a mesaure like grams or meters which is absolute, and solid. 2. There are no good scientific studies on race and IQ that factor out things like education and poverty, and conclusively prove discrepencies. you don't have to a horse in this race just to see bad methodology.
Ah, but the tests themselves being crap does not prove that there isn't an average difference, which sounds like what you're saying.
Insufficient Data
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As far as IQ diffrences between races, there is no scientific proof. There are a few books such as IQ and the Wealth of Nations, but they are not scientific, as their methodology is horrible.
Of course there is no scientific proof. There is no scientific proof against it either because no
one is allowed to study it so the only books that get written are by fringe people who are racist
and trying to prove an agenda. Whether it's worth studying is obviously debatable but it should
be allowed to be spoken about and studied without being criticized.
What is this "punishment" fetish? Was he prevented from speaking or selling his prize or posting racist rants on his blog or wherever?
He claims he was excluded from academic positions or somesuch. So, financial loss.
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Cry me a river and pass out the begging bowls.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Or maybe he just wants his book to sell better. Hmm: http://science.slashdot.org/co...
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In the last article, there was a quote from him saying that he planned to use the money from the sale of the medal to buy art to donate to various organisations, apparently thinking that this was a way to buy back some respectability. I don't know if this will work...
His way back to respectability would be a full retraction of his idiotic comments on race. But he probably just thinks it's all some Politically Correct Conspiracy organised by black lesbians anyway.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
visited upon a man who had the gall to believe differently than the mob and say so.
why people fall for this leftist claptrap is beyond me.
Paedophiles and child rapists believe differently than the mob. That doesn't make their beliefs valid.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
IQ is not intelligence, nor capacity for intelligence. There are plenty of studies that show that you can increase IQ with training and preparation, which goes against what people are using IQ to measure in the first place: genetically "gifted" intelligence.
In your example, the IQ to economics correlation (1) has far too small a sample size, and (2) is the result, not the cause. Poor areas tend to have lower IQs because when you don't have enough money to live, much less to get schooling, you have a lower IQ.
Also, North America is incredibly rich in natural resources, something which much of Africa is not.
No one is getting offended by his use of "science", and this is severely tangential to his more important point.
And regardless, his point that more current studies that demonstrate differences between races are largely biased, untrustworthy studies is true.
Pfft. People going on about PC bullying and censoring have little concept of how serious censoring actually gets, and how common it is even in current times.
People coming out in outrage at a popular guy saying something blatently offensive and ignorant is not censorship.
The government making it illegal to say certain things is censorship.
The fact that it's not illegal to say things is why everyone is free to criticize Watson.
And before you call that de facto bullying or some other nonsense that demonstrates how little you know about bullying, consider that Watson saying something so unpopular might be an indication that he's wrong! How else do you think we are supposed to respond to people who are wrong? And especially to someone disguising his personal bigotry as science.
He got "punished" by not achieving more success.
He's a whiney baby that can't accept that he did something wrong.
If a civil engineer said that marshmallows were what we should build bridges out of, he would get similarly "punished." And unless he retracted it, that civil engineer would probably never get hired again and would lose any significant academic positions he held.
Try it yourself. If you hold any position of responsibility, say something stupid that proves you're incapable of performing your job and see how long you hold on to your job while insisting you're right.
IQ is just a measure of intelligence, and I agree not a perfect one.
That's not the point. The point of the "lead crime hypothesis" is that
if there is a shift downward in intelligence or a shift upward in violence, etc...
then this shift although minor might have significant effects by pushing
people below some threshold. Africa also has the problem of "brain drain"
where alot of highly intelligent people escape and move elsewhere causing
further stagnation. Just like "generational poverty" here in the USA there
are multiple factors playing together but I don't think it's safe to completely
ignore the population's intelligence when trying to figure out how to solve the
problems in africa.
I've lived in a number of places around the world. If there's any difference it's smaller than the margin of error for tests.
Cultural and religious differences have far greater effects (people put up with bad shit because they're brainwashed into believing they're inferior/deserve it/will have a better life next time round), as does access to education.
Sure, I'd agree that nurture has a much bigger impact than nature.
We're just throwing a lot of anecdata around here, unfortunately. It seems like people have quite a problem with, when they see an argument they disagree with, they say, "Not only are you wrong, there is no possible way that you could ever be correct"...and in this case, well, yeah...scientifically, it *is* possible that they're true to some extent. We just don't have any proof of it so we should assume there is no correlation.
Your opponent can be wrong without being an utter and total fuckwit.
(no offense, stoatwblr--you're one of the politer people I've talked to on /. lately)
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Sorry, but this being Slashdot, there are only two races: white males of European descent and black males of African descent ; )
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I don't think that's entirely fair. A lot of racist ideas follow quite logically from hypotheses that make sense from Gregor Mendel's work. The fact that they were falsified by the mid 1900s doesn't mean that they were any less science any more than the luminiferous aether and other discredited hypotheses.
fair enough, scientific racism is as scientific as "luminierous aether". Anyone talking about either outside the context of history herein year of of lord 2014, is a blithering fucking idiot.
Of course there is no scientific proof.
Say it again, there is no scientific proof that diffrences between races are greater than diffrences between inviduals. In fact there is proof in the opposite.
There is no scientific proof against it either because no one is allowed to study it
What, are they being shot or something?
it so the only books that get written are by fringe people who are racist and trying to prove an agenda.
you don't say. Its always been this way. Much of the funding for "social darwinism" in the late 1800s was funded by wealthy racists with agendas.
Ah, but the tests themselves being crap does not prove that there isn't an average difference, which sounds like what you're saying.
So you want me to prove a negative?
In this conversation, we went from someone have "absolute indeniable proof", to "we don't really know, but you can't make a hard stance otherwise". even if there was an average diffrence, you still need to prove that is soley genetics responsible. Then you need to prove that the diffrence is bigger than the margin of error. Then you need to prove that its also bigger than the variation of IQ between *inviduals*.
Which is also funny, because IQ was started soley for political reasons. They were invented to for the soley determination of someone's ability to succede in western civilization, and then proven to be utterly useless.
It's a no-brainer that you'll find statistically insignificant differences between two samples of the same population. That means nothing.
It is possible that intelligence varies by race,. but I haven't seen any good evidence for it. (I've seen loads of crap evidence.) Lacking strong evidence, it can hardly be called a "no-brainer".
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
That make sense from Mendel's work? I was unaware that he had a method to measure the intelligence of peas.
Intelligence is a complicated phenomenon, and not really comparable to the texture of pea pods.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
His profession is intellectual. Demonstrating extreme intellectual dishonesty is absolutely a valid disqualification for working in an intellectual field. Hurting people in the process by promulgating racist bullshit is a good reason as well.
Also, he wasn't a scholar that studied the fields relevant to his reality-free claims. So literally everybody who posts in this thread is just as qualified as he is to talk about race (and I'm sure many are more qualified).
Finally, arguments matter more than qualifications, and his arguments were absolute dreck. I know people who have yet to graduate from high school who are far more knowledgeable about race than this douche canoe.
"There is more of a distinction between Ford Cars (i.e. more differences between the F-150 and the Focus) than there are between Ford's catalogue and Dodge's catalogue."
Right, so can you say anything about the "intelligence" of a Ford car compared to a Dodge car, just based on one sample? The chance that the Dodge shares the same "intelligence" or "reliability" as the Ford can be greater, for any two cars selected at random, than the Ford compared to another Ford.
Say it again, there is no scientific proof that diffrences between races are greater than diffrences between inviduals. In fact there is proof in the opposite.
Difference between individuals is greater than differences between races
is not the same as saying there are no differences between races.
There will always be outliers but there is no denying there are difference
between races. There are even diseases that attack certain races more
than others and medicine specifically targetted at those diseases.
Heck, there are traits that are specific to a particular religion like
Amish are more likely to be born with 12 fingers. Any isolated group
will start to have divergent traits. Average skin color isn't the only
difference between africans and caucasians. It would be shocking if
average intelligence, average height, etc... was exactly the same.
Whether the difference is significant is up for debate but there are
definitely going to be differences in any group isolated and allowed to
drift. I would argue that there are probably also significant differences
between the different regions of africa and definitely differences
between blacks living in africa and the ones that have lived in the
USA for several hundred years. The conditions in africa and the conditions in
the USA over the past several hundred years have been considerably
different so it only makes sense that certain traits that were advantageous
in one place and not that other were probably passed on more.
The same could probably be said of the differences between europeans
and americans. There were several selection biases that probably started
it out skewed like religious persecution. It very well could even explain
why americans on average are more religious that their european counterparts.
Sure, there's cultural influences but I wouldn't be surprised if there was
a slight genetic component too.
again, you see what you want to see. Your misapplying statistics. a few points of order:
I didn't say anything about what I want to see. I asked if what you said negated the possibility of average differences, since you seemed to think it did, from the context.
There will always be outliers
except its not "outliers", its a good chunk of the population.
Amish are more likely to be born with 12 fingers
thats truely outliers. Outliers in statistics are generally considered more than three standard deviations away from the norm.
Whats that? Statistics? Do you not believe in that too?
The rest of your post is filled with bold speculation, and causual observation, and "what ifs".
I'm not saying you're not entitled to your views, I'm just saying its not science.
Him saying "absolute undeniable proof" does not give you license to say "no possible way that could ever possible be true."
Remember kids, absolutes are never right!
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The rest of your post is filled with bold speculation, and causual observation, and "what ifs".
I'm not saying you're not entitled to your views, I'm just saying its not science.
That's kindof the point of this article. So James Watson states an opinion based on
his casual observation and bold speculations and gets railroaded for it.
Here is an interesting article about it: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
Skip down to the "known facts section":
1) No one has a firm handle...
2) No one has a firm idea...
3) No one has proof...
4) As for "race", it's a sticky muck...
5) Like "intelligence", the term "race" is ill-defined...
Note that this is an article that comes out AGAINST James Watson but clearly admits
that noone knows. So a man was crucified for stating an opinion in a largely gray area.
Here is another quote from James Watson:
If someone's liver doesn't work, we blame it on the genes; if someone's brain doesn't work properly, we blame the school. It's actually more humane to think of the condition as genetic. For instance, you don't want to say that someone is born unpleasant, but sometimes that might be true.
and another:
We're not all equal, it's simply not true. That isn't science.
and another:
Our goal should be to understand our differences.
and another:
Ultimately, we'll help the people we discriminate against if we try to understand more about them; genetics will lead to a world where there is a sympathy for the underdog.
James Watson firmly believes that there is a strong genetic component to intelligence and personality.
This doesn't instantly make him a racist. It makes him fall on one side of the nature/nurture debate
that is still very much up in the air. This isn't just some random part of him, if he didn't strongly believe
in the nature side then it's very probable that he would have never discovered the DNA that gave him
his nobel prize.
Thus, I share little with you, though you are presumably of my race. I feel more kinship to blacks than to whites like you.
Sounds like you and I have something in common. I have lots of black friends, but I tend to avoid people judge a man's character solely on the basis of a rational argument.
As the GP pointed out there isn't a single "intelligence" trait, and your argument doesn't address that. IQ tests measure a very specific ability, and one which has been improving in all races for decades.
Well, it seems more likely that IQ measures a collection of many abilities that are loosely related, and that all of those abilities are likely governed by many more factors of which some are genetic.
However, my point remains that those genetic factors are going to have frequency distributions, and it is very likely that they're going to be different in different populations just like virtually every other allele that has been studied.
Look -- regardless of all of this, the reality is Watson didn't make a nuanced statement like this, "Oh, yeah, variance can reasonably happen between any group." He said nothing like that. He basically said he thought Africa was unlikely to improve its condition because black people are stupider.
Interesting. That seems like a rather stupid thing to say...
Him saying "absolute undeniable proof" does not give you license to say "no possible way that could ever possible be true."
but it does give me a license to say "social darwinism was thrown out ~100 years ago". put this in the dustbin of history along with lumineferous aether