A word on Watson…

That a scientist who uncovered the very structure of the code of life should be called out on racism feels like a huge blow to the standing of biology. But there is a good reason for it not to be – we need to separate the science from the scientist.   

Back in 2007 Dr James Watson – who is about as famous as it is possible to be for a biologist – lost his job because he said black people were less intelligent than white people. He apologised at the time, but has recently doubled-down on this view in a new documentary aired on US television.

So what on Earth is he doing? A self-crowned individualist, naturally averse to a diplomatic middle ground, Watson has always courted controversy and has defaulted to a position of ‘rougue academic’ throughout his career. Perhaps this time it’s different. Perhaps he thinks he has a genuine take on the evidence and feels obliged to say so. But I don’t think so.

When it comes to the meat of the matter – the testing of the intelligence of people from Africa – extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence. So, where then, is this knockout data? He is very quiet on that matter. And that is a problem because this is a double whammy of controversy. The idea that there is some kind of biological underpinning to intelligence itself is something that attracts dispute. And, of course, the idea that there could be differences in that biological underpinning between different groups of people is deeply controversial. As is understandable.

He was correct on the matter he is remembered for and nothing more

So what are we to make of this – it is rather a mess. But actually there is a simple way, I think, to make sense of a situation where a hero of biology seems so keen to jump to a non-scientifically justified view. Watson won a Nobel Prize for an incredible breakthrough in the structural chemistry of DNA. He has never been considered a bioethicist nor is he an expert in the elucidation of intelligence in a population, let alone the genetic contribution to that. It is tempting to assume a great scientific thinker and practitioner is great in all dimensions, but why would it be so? Essentially here we have a formerly brilliant scientist who has a loose mouth and some ill-informed opinions on an area where he is not an expert.

In Watson’s case, we didn’t recognise him in the first place for his rounded opinions – those honours were for something quite specific. For all I know he could genuinely believe the evidence points toward such a worrisome conclusion, or he could be an old racist. Which is clearly a worrying dilemma, the solution to which is to perhaps seperate the man from the science: He was correct on the matter he is remembered for and nothing more. In the same way I don’t read Newton for his odd beliefs on alchemy or the occult. Nor does anyone, he is remembered because of his work on classical mechanics, optics and calculus. All else is historial commentary.

Just because you are a great structural biochemist speaks nothing of your clear-thinking in other areas. 

Phil Prime Editor