In Defense of Dr. Watson

It seems you’re never too old to learn new lessons — at age 79, Nobel Laureate James Watson is learning one that former Harvard president Lawrence Summers knows well: If you have something politically incorrect to say — and wish to keep your job and reputation — you have two options: Shut up or shut up.

The man who co-discovered DNA’s double helix is being lynched over his comments on the uncomfortable topic of race and intelligence. Dr. Watson told the Times of London two weeks ago 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.”

The uproar over Watson’s remarks echoed the controversy at Harvard two years ago, when academic inquisitors crucified then-President Summers for daring to suggest that innate differences between genders might be among the many reasons fewer women succeed at the highest levels of science. It took Summers’ enemies more than a year to force his resignation; it took Watson’s less than two weeks. Five days ago, he retired as director of his Long Island lab.

But that might not be the end of it. Some are calling for Watson to be prosecuted under Britain’s hate-speech laws. A spokesdroid for London’s Science Museum, one of several venues to cancel Watson appearances, parroted the popular sentiment that the scientist had gone “beyond the point of acceptable debate.”

Acceptable debate. Chew on that.

When we deem something acceptable or not, we make a value judgment; science, I’ve always been taught, should be a value-free domain — exactly why religious fundamentalists find it so threatening. I think Harvard’s Steven Pinker had it right during Summersgate, when he responded to accusations that the president had gone too far: “Good grief,” he said, “shouldn’t everything be within the pale of legitimate academic discourse, as long as it is presented with some degree of vigor? … That’s the difference between a university and a madrassa.”

Debate may be unnecessary at times, to be sure — when the topic is Holocaust denial, say, or whether there are homosexuals in Iran. But it’s essential when we’ve yet to settle the question at hand — in this case, how to explain the stubborn gaps in average I.Q. seen between whites (100) and blacks (85), not to mention the higher average I.Q.s of Asians (106) and Jews (115)?

Those who believe we’ve solved this puzzle are deluding themselves. Says the American Psychological Association’s 1996 task force on intelligence (led by Cornell’s own Professor Emeritus Ulric Neisser, psychology): “The differential between the mean intelligence test scores of Blacks and Whites (about one standard deviation, although it may be diminishing) does not result from any obvious biases in test construction and administration, nor does it simply reflect differences in socio-economic status … At present, no one knows what causes this differential.”

Watson’s opinion that the answer lies partly in our DNA isn’t extreme among his peers. In fact, it’s likely the mainstream view if scientific opinion is anything close to what it was in 1987, when a survey of I.Q. experts found that those who attributed the black-white gap partly to genetic differences outnumbered 3-1 those who chalked it up strictly to environmental factors.

From my own layman’s reading of the recent scientific literature, I believe that most — if not all — of the gaps between those of European and African ancestry could be accounted for by obvious historical legacies (poverty, racism, slavery and colonialism among them) and other, less obvious non-genetic explanations (the phenomenon of stereotype threat comes to mind, as do the geographical endowments explored in Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel).

Yet do I categorically dismiss the notion that racial groups who exhibit clear external differences may have small internal differences as well? Absolutely not. If anything, I agree with Watson that “there is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so.”

Wanting something to be true can unduly influence our conclusions. But true scientists resist this temptation. True scientists don’t foreclose avenues of inquiry simply because they fear what they may learn. True scientists form hypotheses, judge them against the facts and revise them as those facts demand. Ideologues, on the other hand, reach their conclusions in advance, seeking the facts that fit their preconceived notions and dismissing those that don’t.

Sometimes the answers at which we arrive are troubling — inconvenient truths, so to speak — and there’s never been a shortage of people seeking to shut up those who challenge society’s dogmas.

Galileo’s heliocentric theory of the cosmos challenged the popular understanding of man as the center of the world. Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection challenged the Bible’s creation account and even the notion that an intelligent designer was needed to explain complex life on earth.

Today, regrettably, is no different.

Oil companies seek to undermine the scientific consensus that man is fueling global warming because they don’t want to believe that their actions are endangering the planet. Pro-life activists pretend that embryonic stem-cell research holds no potential because they don’t want to believe that they’re inhibiting the development of cures that could save millions of lives. And the P.C. thought police shout down men like James Watson and Lawrence Summers because they don’t want to believe that we might not be created equal after all.

When I see society sacrificing science at the altar of ideology, I remember the 19th-century woman who responded to Darwin’s theory thusly: “Let us hope it is not true, but if it is, let us pray it does not become generally known.”

Must we all imitate this woman and, worse, ostracize those who don’t?

The truth is, I share the popular anxiety over race and science — the two have an uneasy history, to say the least (as the grandchild of three Holocaust survivors, I don’t need anyone to remind me). That said, I can’t think of a case where scientific obscurantism served humanity in the long run.

I hesitated writing this column because, well, I don’t like making enemies. I won’t be surprised today if I find an inbox flooded with hate mail and a mysterious drop in my Facebook friend count. It’s happened before. Oh well ... I guess I’ve never been very good at learning my lesson.

Ben Birnbaum is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences. He can be contacted at bbirnbaum@c­or­ne­llsun.com. Infomaniacs Anonymous appears Tuesdays this semester.