Noble peace prize winner deemed a racist
According to CNN:
Nobel laureate biologist James Watson was suspended from his job after saying that black people are less intelligent.
Watson, 79, who was in the 1962 Noble prize for discovering the structure of DNA was suspended from administrative responsibilities by the board of trustees at New York’s Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.
Watson has formally apologized Thursday for his comments.
In an interview on October 14 that Watson gave to the Sunday Times, quoted him 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."
Watson also asserted there was no reason to believe different races separated by geography should have evolved identically, and he said that while he hoped everyone was equal, "people who have to deal with black employees find this is not true."
"I cannot understand how I could have said what I am quoted as having said," Watson said during an appearance at the Royal Society in London. "I can certainly understand why people, reading those words, have reacted in the ways that they have."
"To all those who have drawn the inference from my words that Africa, as a continent, is somehow genetically inferior, I can only apologize unreservedly. That is not what I meant. More importantly from my point of view, there is no scientific basis for such a belief."