At the commencement of WWII, apparently German scientists published a
book by the name of something like 'One Thousand Scientists Against
Einstein'.

Einstein replied, "if I was wrong one would have been enough."

Watson is like Einstein. He let slip of what's true, what everyone
knows. And the best post so far I've seen is this one (a MUST read!):

http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2007/10/james-watson-tells-inconvenient-truth_296.php

But there's another deeper issue that scientists don't seem to think
about.....what if Watson is "wrong" in another way? He's not some
tentacled monster racist, but he's guilty nonetheless. He's misjudged
human nature, he's guilty of being too optimistic about the current
state of human affairs, and he's behaving almost like a hopeless
idealist and romantic, naively thinking that it's better to light a
candle than to curse the darkness.

"RichAsianKid" hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:fgib53$2u5j$1@darwin.ediacara.org...

Could not agree more!

"Eschatological Providence" and Truth don't gel very well.

P

RichAsianKid wrote:

That guy has too much time on his hands ;-)

Steve Sailer claims that what Watson did wrong was apologise.

http://vdare.com/sailer/071028_watson.htm

Even though Watson made it clear that he was apologising to those
who had misinterpreted his comments, the media manage to twist
it around to look as though he was confessing his mistake.

And by "the media", I'm talking about scientific journals like
"Nature":

Tim Tyler wrote:

What this points to is the paucity of the whole endeavor. No? Substitute
"temperature" for "IQ" and there is no issue. No? IQ, as a construct
embraced by what was to become "modern" mainstream cognitive "science," is
what should be called into question. Ultimately, the notion that there is
such a thing as "intelligence" is a bunch of nonsense. To say that people
display "intelligent behavior" because they possess a large quantity of
intelligence (and this I the implication) is, well, stupid.

"Bill Morse" verizonOSPAM.net> wrote in message
news:fgqisa$jd0$1@darwin.ediacara.org...

Bill Morse wrote:

Richard Lynn gives an average IQ figure for Native American Indians as
87 on http://www.rlynn.co.uk/ I believe the Arab IQ figures are
similar. So the claims you mention also appear to be true.

Glen M. Sizemore wrote:

I am unimpressed by doubts about the existence of intelligence:

``The accumulation of cognitive testing data and improvements
in analytical techniques have preserved g's central role
and led to the modern conception of g''

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_intelligence_factor

``INTELLIGENCE DOES NOT EXIST

Groups of people may differ genetically in their average talents
and temperaments ... proponents of ethnic and racial differences
in the past have been targets of censorship, violence, and
comparisons to Nazis. Large swaths of the intellectual landscape
have been reengineered to try to rule these hypotheses out a priori
(race does not exist, intelligence does not exist, the mind is a
blank slate...)''

- Steven Pinker - The Edge Annual Question - 2006.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Tim Tyler" cyberspace.org>
Newsgroups: sci.bio.evolution
Sent: Thursday, November 08, 2007 1:27 PM
Subject: Re: What if Jim Watson is wrong?

GS: I know how you feel! I am equally unimpressed by doubts about the
existence of "soporific virtue" (sv). After all, careful measurement reveals
that barbiturates and benzodiazipines possess quite a bit of it*! Science is
so dang complex! Errr...or is it philosophy? Hmmm...it is so had to tell!
Maybe you'll enlighten us, Tim?

Clearly, there is some genetic component to IQ. No amount of
education will teach a hippopotamus to do calculus. He wasn't
born with the brains for it.

Clearly, there is some difference in average IQ among different
human populations - given any particular IQ test that has been
tried.

What is not so clear however is whether the differences in tested
IQ observed between different human populations are due to
entirely to genetics, entirely to non-genetic factors, or to some
combination of the two. And if it is some combination, how can
the different contributions be measured?

There are some studies that appear to show that genetics plays a
major role. I'm not familiar enough with the literature to cite
the best studies of this, but DK cited the Minnesota cross racial
adoption study, and a twins study, to this effect. I'm not
qualified to say whether the studies were well designed, or what
the conclusions from them should be, but they did at least have
strategies for looking at genetic contribution.

This review of Flynn's book made me think that the argument here is on the
wrong track.....

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/752fcbe8-8c14-11dc-af4d-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check...

Tim Tyler seems familiar with Flynn, perhaps he would like to expound.