Radio Renaissance - Jared Taylor - The Disgraceful Shaming of James Watson
Aired: 2021-01-24
Duration: 08:03


=== James Watson's Legacy (06:53) ===

[00:00:04]  Hello, I'm Jared Taylor with American Renaissance.
[00:00:07]  James Watson is the most distinguished scientist living today.
[00:00:12]  He shared the Nobel Prize with Francis Crick in 1962 for discovering the molecular structure of DNA.
[00:00:19]  Other Nobel laureates have called this discovery the greatest single scientific achievement of the 20th century.
[00:00:26]  James Watson ran Cold Spring Harbor for 35 years and built it into the top molecular genetics research laboratory in the world.
[00:00:35]  He played a key role in the Human Genome Project, which has already started a revolution in medicine, biology, and psychology.
[00:00:44]  And now, at age 90, James Watson is an object of hate and contempt.
[00:00:50]  His downfall began in 2007 when he wrote a book called Avoid Boring People.
[00:00:56]  That contained the following sentence.
[00:00:59]  There is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically.
[00:01:09]  That same year, he explained that sentence to a reporter.
[00:01:13]  He said he was, and I quote, 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.
[00:01:25]  Whereas all the testing says, not really.
[00:01:29]  In other words, different groups evolved separately, and there is probably a genetic basis for differences in average intelligence.
[00:01:37]  This view is supported by an immense body of scholarship and is consistent with everything we see when we open our eyes and just look around.
[00:01:48]  But we live in a world gone insane.
[00:01:52]  We're supposed to at least pretend to believe egalitarian nonsense, and so the sky fell on James Watson.
[00:02:00]  He immediately issued a servile apology.
[00:02:04]  I cannot understand how I could have said what I am quoted as having said.
[00:02:10]  He then went on to say there is no scientific basis for his views.
[00:02:16]  But heretics are not allowed to recant.
[00:02:20]  Cold Spring Harbor fired him as boss of the lab, and Henry Kelly, a former president of the Federation of American Scientists, said, It is a revolting way to end a remarkable career.
[00:02:33]  But the apology did get Dr. Watson something.
[00:02:37]  Cold Spring Harbor let him keep his honorary titles of Chancellor Emeritus, Professor Emeritus, and Honorary Trustee.
[00:02:46]  Even so, speaking engagements and award ceremonies vanished, and James Watson became a non-person.
[00:02:55]  Well, last May, he briefly re-emerged.
[00:02:58]  There was a meeting at Cold Spring Harbor where Eric Lander, a bigwig scientist at Harvard and MIT, offered a short toast to Dr. Watson's vital contributions to the Human Genome Project.
[00:03:12]  And he was mercilessly attacked.
[00:03:15]  for saying something nice about a wicked man.
[00:03:19]  Dr. Lander groveled as follows.
[00:03:22]  His views are abhorrent, racist, sexist, anti-Semitic.
[00:03:27]  I was wrong to toast.
[00:03:28]  I apologize.
[00:03:30]  And so James Watson sunk once again into obscurity.
[00:03:35]  Until this month.
[00:03:37]  PBS aired a documentary called Decoding Watson, in which he was asked if he still had the same views on race.
[00:03:45]  The scientist got the better of the man.
[00:03:48]  He said he takes no pleasure in the differences between blacks and whites and wishes there weren't any, but genes are part of it.
[00:03:58]  Again, the sky fell.
[00:04:00]  Dr. Watson's old lab went into a frenzy and issued the following statement from which I quote.
[00:04:08]  Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory unequivocally rejects the unsubstantiated and reckless personal opinions of Dr. James D. Watson.
[00:04:19]  His statements are reprehensible, unsupported by science.
[00:04:24]  Let's stop right there.
[00:04:26]  I have no fewer than 13 books in my personal library, rigorously scientific books that support Dr. Watson's statements.
[00:04:35]  Besides these books, there are countless articles in scientific journals about their genetic basis for group differences in intelligence.
[00:04:43]  1,200 people work at Cold Spring Harbor.
[00:04:47]  Is every one of them lost in a hermetically sealed cocoon of complete ignorance?
[00:04:55]  Or are they just spineless cowards lying through their teeth because they're afraid of the ignorant fanatics who run this country?
[00:05:04]  But let's get back to their miserable statement.
[00:05:06]  The laboratory condemns the misuse of science to justify prejudice.
[00:05:12]  Right. The world's greatest living scientist misuses science.
[00:05:16]  No. He says he wishes there were no racial differences.
[00:05:20]  But the evidence suggests that there are.
[00:05:23]  This is science triumphing over emotion.
[00:05:26]  That's exactly what it's supposed to do.
[00:05:29]  And here's more mush from Cold Spring Harbor.
[00:05:33]  The statements James Watson made in the documentary are completely and utterly incompatible with our mission, values, and policies, and require the severing of any remaining vestiges of his involvement.
[00:05:48]  And with that, Cold Spring Harbor stripped him of all his remaining honorary titles.
[00:05:54]  Are they going to dust the lab for his fingerprints and rub them all out too?
[00:06:00]  This is like...
[00:06:01]  The commies, who used to doctor photographs of old Bolsheviks to erase the comrades they'd hauled out and shot.
[00:06:09]  Today, the authorities don't shoot people who fail to tow the party line.
[00:06:14]  They just drag them through the mud, destroy their reputations, fire them from their jobs, and feel immensely superior about it.
[00:06:23]  Geneticist Joseph L. Graves, for example, is now saying, Racism suspends all rational judgment.
[00:06:30]  It takes people who are otherwise brilliant and gets them down roads that are intellectually unsupportable.
[00:06:36]  The website The Scientist says, The science jerks and bigots should be shunned, no matter if they have a Nobel Prize.

=== Ashamed to Speak (01:20) ===

[00:06:45]  Now every lefty ignoramus can think he is superior to one of the greatest intellects of our time.
[00:06:53]  Last October, James Watson was in a car accident.
[00:06:57]  His son says he has, quote, very minimal awareness of what's going on.
[00:07:03]  He cannot speak for himself.
[00:07:06]  So I'll speak for him.
[00:07:08]  His treatment has been beyond appalling.
[00:07:12]  Mark Twain once said, This is one of those times.
[00:07:22]  I'm ashamed to be a member of the species that has put on such a spectacle of ignorance, vanity, cowardice, and spitefulness.
[00:07:32]  The truth will emerge, no matter how hard the fanatics try to hush it up.
[00:07:38]  James Watson is as much a pioneer and a bold thinker at the end of his career as he was at the beginning.
[00:07:45]  Thanks for watching.
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[00:07:55]  That's on YouTube at Amran Podcasts.
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