 Episode 13 -- A pigment of his imagination
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James Watson, Race, and Intelligence
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 Podcast
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Intro
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Nobel laureate James Watson got himself in hot water recently for comments he's made.
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Unfortunately, the reaction to what he's said has generated a lot of smoke, but only a little light.
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Since much of the press coverage of his comments focuses on controversy rather than science (i.e., comments are offensive, but why are they "wrong" in a scientific sense?), thought some more in-depth discussion was warranted.
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The man & the controversy
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James Watson -- now 79 years old, was one of the discoverers of the helical structure of DNA 1953, which earned him a share of a Nobel prize (along with Francis Crick & Maurice Wilkins) in 1966. Rosalind Franklin, who provided X-ray data essential to the understanding of DNA, went unhonored by the Nobels, as she had died in 1958 and Nobel prizes are not given posthumously (I'll be doing a podcast on her in the future).
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Also headed the U.S. government's share of the international Human Genome Project from 1990 to 1992 (but more on that later).
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Had served for past 50 years as a director of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a private research institute on Long Island -- and until very recently, had been Chancellor there.
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 Has a new book coming out, somewhat ironically called "Avoid Boring People: Lessons from a Life in Science" and as part of the press tour for the book, conducted an interview with a former protege that was published in the Times of London on October 14th. As part of this interview, Watson stated 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." Apparently he doesn't define the word "ours" very broadly... He recognized that most people thought all human groups are equal, but said that "people who have to deal with black employees find this not true."
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For those who aren't familiar with Watson's reputation, this is hardly his first experience with controversy. Has a reputation for making some pretty wild off-the-cuff remarks.
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Overall: smart guy, but psychologically, a piece of work
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Three fairly complex concepts to discuss: race, intelligence, genetics
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Race
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First problem with any study involving race -- it's such a sloppy thing. "Races" defined via superficial criteria, vs. anything with deeper biological meaning. Definition of who belongs in a given race is societally defined, differs from place to place.
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In most cases, societies define races via skin color and facial features -- but these have evolved very recently, and have shifted around as people have migrated.
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Race made its way into biology via assumption that race reflected an "underlying genetic homogeneity" -- been shown repeatedly, though, that skin pigment is a lousy surrogate for "most any aspect of human psysiology."
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Big problem with race in science -- medically / biologically significant populations almost always are on different scale than what society thinks of as a "race." A race is either too big, or too small of a group to be useful biologically.
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Another issue -- we're a relatively modern species -- maybe 100 - 150 K years old, appear to have started with a relatvely small population of a few thousand individuals. Likely were evolutionary bottleneck, surviving remnant of a once-larger group. At any rate, there's less genetic difference between any two humans than between any two members of almost any other mamalian species.
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Intelligence & "IQ" tests
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No concensus definition of what “intelligence” is, so tough to reliably measure it.
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Language -- many concepts of intelligence, just within English
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Binet-Simon intelligence scale in early 1900’s, wound up being first thing labelled an “IQ” test in the 1920’s.
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But this represented a misuse of the test
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1905: Binet cautions against perception that his test measures intelligence
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More recently, Steven Jay Gould in “The Mismeasure of Man” argued that intelligence tests are based on bad assumptions, and have been used as the basis for scientific racism.
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Might not be possible to design a test to reliably measure native “intelligence” across multiple cultures, filtering out issues like upbringing & quality of education. Then too, some forms of intelligence (wisdom, creativity, social skills, etc.) aren't easily tested.
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“IQ” tests may not measure intelligence, but still seem to predict future performance in school
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Genetics and intelligence
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In Watson's new book, he states "There is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically." True, but quite a few genes are involved in the human brain; how many of them could have changed much in last few thousand years?
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Watson's thinking seems to be tied to The Bell Curve, a controversial 1994 bestseller by Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray.
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The book had 5 main points
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Intelligence is accurately measurable
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Intelligence (as measured by IQ tests) is the key determinant of success in America
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Intelligence is largely genetically based
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IQ is not changeable over the course of a person's life
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Public policy in the U.S. should be based on these ideas -- essentially, the authors thought that social assistance programs only encouraged the "wrong" people (i.e., the poor) to have more children
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Critics:
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IQ tests don't accurately measure intelligence, at best measure some subset of it (and that, comingled with education and SES and other things)
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Book's analysis is based on a U.S. Department of Labor study in which thousands of American youth were (among other things) given the AFQT (Armed Forces Qualifying Test). Problem is, the AFQT isn't designed to be an IQ test, it's designed to be an achievement test -- essentially, see what you've learned (which is dependent on quality of education, family socioeconomic status, etc.).
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Book argues that IQ isn't malleable, but has been shown that IQ scores rise with an individual's education level.
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Other critics argue that the book's conclusion that IQ is the best predictor of poverty is largely a function of how the authors handled the statistics; by weighting things slightly differently, you get different results.
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In response to controversy stoked by The Bell Curve, the American Psychological Association's Board of Scientific Affairs established a special task force to take a look at it. Resulted in report -- Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns (good, if dry -- see links).
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Wrapup
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Watson's "logic" full of flaws -- tried to support with two chunks of weak evidence
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Results of IQ tests (see above)
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Apocryphal evidence (argumentum ad populum, bandwagon) -- easy to cherry-pick data you want, if only unconsciously
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Watson's pitch is an example of an all too common "appeal to improper authority" -- individual's expertise in one area, used (or puts self forward) as expert in other area. This sort of thing gets lots of media attention.
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Not the first time that somebody with a Nobel prize in one area spouts off cluelessly on an unrelated subject (been dubbed "Nobel Syndrome").
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Plenty of other notable Nobel laureates have gone "old coot"
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Could be that the aura of authority carries over for some folks, although it shouldn’t.
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Could also just be that laureates are so used to the ultra-skeptical, critical environment of research lab that once they retire, they don't functiion well without the counterbalance of their former coworkers.
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As for Watson's talk at the London Science Museum being cancelled -- personally, I'm ambivalent.
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Do people differ in their levels of intelligence? Sure, but "intelligence" is such a multifaceted concept that it's tough to accurately define, much less measure or compare. Given all this, discussions of how intelligence differs from population to population will likely always be hard to separate form cultural issues. Only way to thoroughly test impact of genetics on intelligence would be to take newborns from across the planet, raise them "identically" (however that's defined) and see what happened.
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Sources and other links
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Watson
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Race
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Intelligence & IQ testing
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Genetics & Intelligence
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