James Watkins v. Political Correctness

Ignoring the countless blogger opinions, the most believable stories I have found about James Watson’s supposed racial comments are from CNN and Bloomberg. I say "supposed," because I will not accredit to him what Watson himself does not claim to recall. The backlash was huge, to the point of ending a noted scientist’s career. In any case the part I find most interesting is that the backlash does not involve a challenge for Watson to come forward with evidence. London’s Science Museum representatives are even quoted as saying "Watson’s words had gone beyond the point of acceptable debate." What I take that to mean is, "We don’t debate politically incorrect science." Worse yet, "We don’t debate politically incorrect scientists." By no means construe me to agree with the statement accredited to Watson, but should any scientific claim be dismissed or embraced simply on the grounds of popular opinion? The view so hot that evidence can not be considered by the scientific community (just like Creationism). The CNN article ends by digging into other questionable statements
Watkins made in the past, none of which are out of line with the theory of evolution that Watkins espouses. The Bloomberg article says "Watson’s comments in the London newspaper were in the same vein as some of those on intelligence, class structure, race and individual success in the 1994 book, The Bell Curve." Funny that this insult would be tossed into the ring, since the authors of The Bell Curve attribute its eugenic foundations to Charles Darwin on page one. I think it is time Darwinists admit the obvious, yet politically incorrect conclusions to which their theory leads. If the evidence does not support the superiority of one race over another (and it doesn’t), then the evidence does not support their theory. (See my Sep 21, 2007 blog for further clarification.) If Watkins did say what is attributed to him, at least he was being consistent with his theoretical basis. Any espousers of a scientific theory who avoid its natural conclusions for political correctness are either deceiving the public, or deceiving themselves.

This entry was posted on November 2, 2007 at 10:57 pm and is filed under Culture & society, Science and faith. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.