Lab revokes honors for controversial DNA scientist Watson

By MALCOLM RITTER
January 11, 2019

NEW YORK (AP) — James Watson, the Nobel Prize-winning DNA scientist who lost his job in 2007 for expressing racist views, was stripped of several honorary titles Friday by the New York lab he once headed.

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory said it was reacting to Watson’s remarks in a television documentary aired earlier this month.

In the film, Watson said his views about intelligence and race had not changed since 2007, when he told a magazine 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 — where all the testing says not really.”

In the 2007 interview, Watson said that while he hopes everyone is equal, “people who have to deal with black employees find this is not true.”

In this month’s documentary, he said genes cause a difference on average between blacks and whites on IQ tests.

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