EditorialJames Watson tells the inconvenient truth: Faces the consequences☆
Section snippets
Unsupported by science?
The “scientific community” is a broad and inappropriately encompassing term, but to the extent such a thing exists as a social or public entity (apart from the research literature), it is fair to say it pronounced Watson’s claims not only false, but also outside the bounds of appropriate scientific discourse. For instance, the Science Museum in London responded by canceling Watson’s speaking engagement, saying:
“We know that eminent scientists can sometimes say things that cause controversy and
Our problems are not relevant to them?
In 1988 Stanley Rothman and Mark Snyderman published The IQ Controversy, the Media and Public Policy [50]. Using data from their survey of over 1000 scholars in fields familiar with IQ testing, such as psychology, sociology, and behavioral genetics [51], Rothman and Snyderman took a quantitative look at media coverage of IQ and demonstrated how this media coverage habitually diverged with mainstream scholarly opinion.
And, indeed, media reports and editorials were quick to attack Watson on the
In closing: who damaged science?
According to the media and members of the scientific community, James Watson hurt science itself.
An editorial in the top science journal Nature asserted:
“Crass comments by Nobel laureates undermine our very ability to debate such issues, and thus damage science itself” [112].
Similarly the Chicago Tribune featured this:
“The damage to Watson’s legacy from his statements may be difficult to mend,” said Jerry Coyne, a professor of evolutionary genetics at the University of Chicago.
“He’s done
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Do Raven's Colored Progressive Matrices function in the same way in typical and clinical populations? Insights from the intellectual disability field
2011, IntelligenceCitation Excerpt :The recent debate on the intellectual efficiency of sub-Saharan African populations is probably the best illustration of the importance of ensuring the absence of differential item functioning before concluding anything when comparing groups on the basis of psychometric instruments. Briefly, literature reviews on studies using western intelligence tests and their standardization norms (mostly the various versions of Raven's matrices), suggest that sub-Saharan peoples would have a mean IQ below 70 (e.g., Lynn & Meisenberg 2010; Lynn & Vanhanen 2002; Malloy 2008). Given that the difficulty of items of sub-Saharan and western samples is highly correlated and that between-groups differences in item difficulty are greater for items showing the higher item-total score correlations, some researchers have concluded that the IQ difference between African and non-African peoples reflects a true difference of g-factor rather than the influence of culturally specific factors affecting test performance (Rushton 2002; Rushton et al., 2003; Rushton and Skuy, 2000).
Raven's test performance of sub-Saharan Africans: Average performance, psychometric properties, and the Flynn Effect
2010, Learning and Individual DifferencesComment on Malloy (2008) "James Watson tells the inconvenient truth: Faces the consequences"
2009, Medical HypothesesEvolution, hypotheses, and the question of whether humans are still evolving
2009, Bioscience HypothesesJames Watson's most inconvenient truth: Race realism and the moralistic fallacy
2008, Medical Hypotheses
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A slightly different and expanded version of this editorial first appeared at: http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2007/10/james-watson-tells-inconvenient-truth_296.php.