Oct 18, 2007 12:51 PM

The Science and Assumptions Behind Watson's Views on Blacks

James Watson’s assertion that black people are intrinsically less intelligent than other, fairer-skinned folks has been condemned, and rightly so. But even when based in fact rather than conscience, the reflexivity and vehemence of the condemnations makes it easy to forget that Watson’s comments weren’t the isolated bile of a single intellectually sclerotic man, but […]

James Watson's assertion that black people are intrinsically less intelligent than other, fairer-skinned folks has been condemned, and rightly so. But even when based in fact rather than conscience, the reflexivity and vehemence of the condemnations makes it easy to forget that Watson's comments weren't the isolated bile of a single intellectually sclerotic man, but the perfectly predictable outcome of a set of widespread assumptions about genetics, development and humanity.

Watson told the Times of London 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." There are two assumptions implicit here: first, that intelligence has a biological and hereditary basis; two, that differences exist between groups of people whose ancestors evolved in relative genetic isolation.

The latter assumption is something that nearly everybody takes for granted. Yes, "race" and "ethnicity" are arbitrary classifications, subject to historical variability and changing social perceptions, produced by migrations and diasporas, and there exist gradations and overlaps between nominally distinct groups -- but someone whose ancestors spent millennia in the Andes is going to look different than a Maasai tribesman. And from this principle we get the Genographic
Project, race-based medicine and so on.

Then there's the other assumption: intelligence has a biological basis, in particular one that operates along classically genetic lines. This is somewhat more controversial than groups-are-different, but still quite common. Researchers around the world are proceeding along these very lines. Just look here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here,
here, here, here, here, here and here -- and that's just scratching the surface of quick-n-dirty Googling. In fact, any genes-mind-behavior findings, be they on depression or schizophrenia or any other temperament, fit this mold.

From these two generally accepted assumptions, it's inevitable that people would ask whether some races are smarter than others. If they didn't, they'd be unscientific, if not downright cowardly -- and just because we don't like what Watson said about "all the testing" saying that the intelligence of blacks is "not really" the same as "ours" doesn't make him wrong.

The science, however, does make him wrong. As neurobiologist Steven Rose told the Daily Telegraph, "No evidence that claimed to find people of African descent were less intelligent than Europeans or other racial groups had stood up to scientific scrutiny." Arguments in favor of race-based cognitive differences rely on IQ tests -- but those are only one metric, and not necessarily a good one. My old bioethics watchdog employers, the Council for Responsible Genetics, explained some of the problems with IQ last year in a race-and-intelligence primer:

The modern IQ test is a direct descendant of a measure designed by French psychologist Alfred Binet in 1905 [10]. As Steven Jay Gould points out in The Mismeasure of Man [11], though Binet originally designed his test to identify students who would need help in school, not as an overall measure of cognitive ability, his scale has come to be regarded as having laid the foundations for modern tests of intelligence. [...]
In an effort to underscore the scientific basis of these tests, researcher Charles Spearman developed a model that has come to be known as Spearman’s g [13], or the general factor of intelligence. Spearman argued that grades or scores on seemingly unrelated tasks, such as arithmetic and reading ability, are highly correlated. These abilities, he argued, combine to form an overall abstract reasoning capacity, or “g,” that can be measured. Ever since, the notion of g has held sway over decades of research on human intelligence.
Beyond statistical correlations, there is no conclusive proof that IQ tests do more than detect who might encounter difficulty with school learning. In our society, school is a pathway to success later in life. Though Spearman and others claim that intelligence is related to success in school, this claim cannot be investigated until intelligence has been properly defined.

So what is intelligence?

... even experts have not been able to agree upon which abilities are most relevant to overall intelligence. The American Psychological Association’s Report on Intelligence published in 1995 [2] highlighted the lack of consensus among scientists regarding the term and the state of intelligence testing. Citing a study by Robert Sternberg and Douglas Detterman, [3] the task force reported, “when two dozen prominent theorists were recently asked to define intelligence, they gave two dozen somewhat different definitions.” While a small group of psychologists maintain that intelligence can be measured by IQ tests, others have sought to broaden our notion of what the term means.

And even if we could define intelligence, we would then need to tease out the internal and external factors that affect it -- not just the genes we inherit from our parents, but all the relevant variables in our physical and cultural and economic environments. Science suggests that human development and behaviors and capabilities can't be explained by pointing at a few genes, but instead are very complicated. Genes are one part -- an important part, but not all-powerful -- of a vast web of influences, from the food we eat to the games we play to family stress. And this is quite contrary to Watson's gene-centric model, which leads him to make absurd predictions like this:

When asked how long it might take for the key genes in affecting differences in human intelligence to be found, his “back-of-the-envelope answer” is 15 years. However, he wonders if even 10 years will pass.

That was also a part of his controversial interview. It's received less attention than his statements about race, which were more offensive but no less ridiculous. It's telling that Watson then explained

that he has opened a DNA learning centre on the borders of Harlem in New York. He is also recruiting minorities at the lab and, he tells me, has just accepted a black girl “but,” he comments, “there’s no one to recruit.”

In other words, James Watson was actually surprised to find that black kids who grew up in Harlem weren't qualified to work at a DNA lab. (One does wonder how hard he tried -- a lot of Harlem kids end up going to prestigious high schools and colleges.) Apparently it doesn't even occur to him that black inner city kids might have a harder time attaining the formal training and institutional recognition needed to advance in science. For Watson, intelligence is all about genes. Nothing else matters.

Maybe someday we will figure out what intelligence is and how it develops -- and when that happens, Watson isn't going to be recognized as a pioneer of the genetic age, but as a false prophet.

Image: Steve Jurvetson

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