James Watson, who shared the Nobel Prize in 1953 for deducing the double helix structure of DNA, is, after all a man of science. But when he said on October 14, 2007 in effect that average intelligence is different in different races, and was censured, it was not on the science. "All Men are Created Equal" is a matter of faith. And Watson had committed a breach of faith.
The way science is spozed to work is that he would be asked what evidence does he have supporting whatever assertion he is making, and people would evaluate the credibility and relevance of the evidence. But that's not the way these things go. He was censured for having an incorrect faith.
Discussing the matter from a scientific vantage is Created Equal, published November 18 in Slate.
Perhaps typical of discussions of the matter based on unshakable convictions (faith) is False Prophets published November 1 in The Nation. That "all men are created equal", should eventually have become taken literally might not be too surprising, nor that such a matter of faith might collide with the science. The result: misrepresentation of the science, and a final sentence that decries what she considers not a "legitimate question for debate". Of course there's that little matter of Watson's penchant to hand his critics a bounty of absurd and bigoted slurs directed at group after group, including races.
I find I am content to learn that East Asians have a higher average IQ than "white" Americans like me. That, of course, is because I'm not downstream from 250 years of having my people enslaved, followed by another 150 years of Jim Crow. Contemplating how that might feel, I might be inclined to suggest we can wait another 400 years before juggling these assertions about averages, and spend that time learning how to get over our tribalisms and learning how to get along.
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