A Nobel Prize-winning scientist who reportedly claimed black people are less intelligent than white people has pulled out of a British book tour and gone home, his publicist said on Friday.
James Watson, who won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1962 for his part in discovering the structure of DNA, told the Sunday Times newspaper that 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”.
Kate Farquhar-Thomson, head of publicity in the academic division of publishers Oxford University Press, said Watson left because he “felt that he needed to go back to the [United] States” for discussions with his laboratory.
She could not confirm if the decision came because of a backlash over his comments, which prompted three organisations, including the Science Museum in London, to cancel his talks.
Watson, the 79-year-old chancellor of the Cold Spring Harbour Laboratory in New York state, was due to give a series of lectures promoting his new book Avoid Boring People: Lessons From a Life in Science.
On Friday, Watson suggested in a comment piece in the Independent newspaper that he may have been misquoted by the Sunday Times, saying he was “mortified about what has happened”.
In the article, Watson said he “cannot understand how I could have said what I am quoted as having said” and said there was “no scientific basis” for the belief that Africans are “genetically inferior”.
The Sunday Times stood by its interview with him, saying it had been recorded.
The Federation of American Scientists, a leading US scientific organisation, said on Thursday it was “outraged” by the remarks attributed to Watson, describing them as “racist” and “vicious”.
And black British government Minister David Lammy described them as “deeply offensive”. — AFP