WOW

I'm not totally sure what to think of Watson's racist genetics comments. But here are my two cents:

Watson suggested that stupidity was a genetic disease that should be treated.

(1) Insensitive and controversial as it may be, I don't think it's wrong to say that intelligence (or the lack thereof) is a matter of biological hardwiring.

Often we can make up for what we fall short with hardwork and more time invested, but fixing the amount that one devotes into a task, it's indisputable that some "gets it" faster than others. It probably just has to do with how effective one's synapses in the specific area in question are.

The debate is rather on whether this difference in biological hardwiring is something of nature or nurture, or whether sufficient nurture could possibly overcome nature (alright, but if that is so it's still "nature" winning out, being consistent about our "fixing time invested" paradigm).

Now if only we can "fix" this biological setback at its core -- i.e. not just spending more time or resources to overcome it, but really to (for lack of a better word) "cure" it.

Watson was quoted as saying he was "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."

(2) I'm not sure whether he really can back up what he's claiming with data from tests. To me, that's just a number-crunching, I-ran-a-regression-and-it's-statistically-significant comment that I generally don't give too much credit for without logical arguments and explanations.

I've seen crazier claims on causality with regressions that makes no sense whatsoever, but somehow managed to be statistically significant.

It pains me to have to cite and give credit to such nonsense, but if you're doubting my claim, please see Sala-i-Martin's "I just ran two million regressions."

while he hoped everyone was equal, "people who have to deal with black employees find this is not true."

(3) Alright, now that's just uncalled for, has no scientific basis, and is clearly asking for attacks. I expect more from a guy who discovered DNA. A lot of bright people are extremely egotistic and think they (or their race I guess) are above all else, I just expected more impartial and logical arguments and hard evidence from people that build their careers (and lives, probably) on objective truths.