Watson Surprised By Own Remarks

Nobel Prize winner, co-discoverer of DNA, and former Harvard researcher James D. Watson apologized Thursday for suggesting earlier last week that blacks tend to be less intelligent than whites.

“I cannot understand how I could have said what I am quoted as having said,” Watson said in a statement to The Associated Press. “There is no scientific basis for such a belief.”

Watson, one of the most famous biologists of the 20th century, shook the scientific community last week after his comments on race were published in The Sunday Times Magazine of London. “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 newspaper quoted him as saying in reference to blacks.

On Thursday, the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, the Long Island research institution that Watson has led to international prominence, announced it was suspending Watson as its chancellor, pending further review by its board.

A onetime colleague of Watson at Harvard, Cabot Professor of Biology Richard M. Losick, said on Friday that he was “personally devastated by the reports of what he said.”

“He has gotten increasingly eccentric over the last 10 to 15 years,” said Losick, who has known Watson for 35 years. “It seems like he enjoys to shock people, but he went way too far this time.”

Of Watson’s suspension as Cold Springs chancellor, Lecturer on Organismic and Evolutionary Biology Andrew Berry said, “It’s like a parent being cut off from their child.”

“He turned a sleepy Long Island research institute into, arguably, the greatest biological powerhouse in the world,” Berry said in an interview Friday. “It’s his greatest legacy.”

Berry, who co-wrote the 2003 book “DNA: The Secret of Life” with Watson, said he felt “it was part of my job...to rein [Watson] in” during the writing process. “He always has edgy views and he prides himself on jousting at political correctness.”

Biodun Jeyifo, an African and African American studies professor at Harvard, said Friday that although he was vehemently against Watson’s comments, he was not surprised by them.

“It’s not new,” Jeyifo said in an interview. “It’s a very small group of scientists who use their eminence to advance the most regressive views on race and intelligence.”

“He is using his scientific eminence to advance his own political and social views as a citizen,” Jeyifo added.

Jeyifo said that the public should forgive Watson if his apology is genuine.

“If his complete renunciation of what he said is true, then he should be forgiven,” Jeyifo said. “It’s a distraction.”

Now, the question of Watson’s historical legacy lingers.

“He’s going to be remembered as a racist, which is sad because he’s infinitely more than that,” said Berry, emphasizing that he condemned Watson’s comments. “He has done a lot of important work for the scientific community, and arguably for humanity.”

This is not Dr. Watson’s first controversial remark. In 2003, an Australian newspaper reported Watson as saying that pregnant women should have the choice to abort their unborn fetus if testing determined that it would be genetically inclined to be gay.

Aside from his public apology, Watson has kept silent on his remarks and has declined to be interviewed by the media.

—Staff writer Alexander B. Cohn can be reached at abcohn@fas.harvard.edu.