Nobel Prize winner sets off firestorm with comments about blacks

Last update: October 18, 2007 - 8:04 PM

NEW YORK - James Watson, the 79-year-old Nobel laureate lauded for his work in DNA, has set off an international furor after telling a London newspaper that tests show black Africans are not as intelligent as whites.

Watson, chancellor of the renowned Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York, has a history of provocative statements about social implications of science. But several friends said Thursday he's no racist.

And Watson apologized and says he's "mortified."More importantly, I cannot understand how I could have said what I am quoted as having said," he said in a statement. He did not, however, suggest he was misquoted.

A profile of Watson in the Sunday Times Magazine of London quoted him as saying that he's "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."

While he hopes everyone is equal, "people who have to deal with black employees find this is not true," Watson is quoted as saying. The newspaper said the interview was recorded.

Reaction was sharp. In London, the Science Museum canceled a sold-out lecture he was to give there today, and Mayor Ken Livingstone said his comments "represent racist propaganda masquerading as scientific fact." In the United States, the Federation of American Scientists said it was outraged, and Watson's employer distanced itself from him.

Friends and colleagues struggled to explain Watson's comments, but weren't surprised by them.

"Jim has a penchant for making outrageous comments that are basically poking society in the eye," said Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute.

Mike Botchan, co-chairman of the molecular and cell biology department at the University of California, Berkeley, said the Nobelist's personal beliefs are less important than the effects of what he says.

"I think Jim Watson is now essentially a disgrace to his own legacy. And it's very sad for me to say this, because he's one of the great figures of 20th-century biology."

ASSOCIATED PRESS