Lab revokes honours for controversial DNA scientist Watson
NEW YORK — A research lab has revoked its honorary titles for James Watson, the Nobel Prize-winning DNA scientist who lost his job there in 2007 for expressing racist views.
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York said Friday it was reacting to Watson’s remarks in a recent TV documentary. In the film, Watson said his views about intelligence and race had not changed since 2007, when he suggested black people are less intelligent than whites. He attributed the difference to genetics.
The laboratory called his latest remarks reprehensible and unsupported by science.
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His son Rufus said in a telephone interview that his 90-year-old father is now in a nursing home, following a car crash in October.
Watson shared a 1962 Nobel Prize for co-discovering that DNA was a double helix.
Malcolm Ritter, The Associated Press
