Topic: WE'RE STUFFED!!!

[daphne]

In University of Kiel, they carried out an experiment with students having IQs above 160. They designed a computer model simulating a failing state in Africa. That country was plagued by various natural disasters, failing industrial and agricultural infrastructure and rapturing social fabric. The students were given all of the most advanced tools and means available to our modern society and they were asked to improve the state of that society. The best result was extension of the ongoing agony by miserable 7 years... Other attempts lead to a much faster collapse. Way too complicated...

Interesting that. I wonder how the students would have done had the selection been on Emotional Intelligence and not the standard IQ? I see Africa (sub-Saharan Africa) as very much in an emotional level on development scale. Not too much on the mental level. The recent reports on Governance in Africa showed that there was not much difference between northern and southern Africa as far as those criteria went.  The island states of Mauritius, Cape Verde and Seychelles were good though. Makes one wonder if all that water, separating them from the mainland, enables them to disconnect from the ravages of Africa?

[Michael]

That is interesting Daphne - what exactly do you mean by saying it is an EI problem?

[daphne]

Africa - at least sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Africa, which I am familiar with, is rather 'emotional'. Emotions rule, not the mind. A 'model' (as in the mentioned experiment) that focused on emotional intelligence may be able to assess and manage the emotions of the individual and groups so as to integrate them into a working framework that would result in the betterment of all the population, and also at the same time fulfill the emotional need. There are 2 very distinct groups in Africa, and all fall into one or other of the groups - the haves and the have-nots. Each have-not wants to be in the have group and each in the have group wants to maintain their place there and fear becoming a have-not. In the colonization of Africa, much development of the local population was missed. The development that was missed was one that the western countries went through in past ages. It is really a development thing - as a group, not as individuals because of course there are many exceptions. Kind of like a child that misses certain steps in development. The way to fix that is to go through that development stage, which in this case is the emotional stage, hence I see EI as being more value than the usual IQ.
It's a bit more complex..    but if a model is to be found, it needs to fit. For example, here, in South Africa, they are trying to focus on education, especially the sciences. Meanwhile, the culture of education has been destroyed as it was one of the means of resistence against "bantu" education. It's now biting them in the arse and they don't know how to get out of the mess because they are applying 'logic' to something that has an emotional content.

[erik]

Emotional world view and hard facts? Tell people fairy-tales and they will put up with growing hardship?

What if some people simply cannot grasp certain facts and complexities of the world? Why do we think everybody is able to understand, evolve and adapt? Maybe there are limits to it? Dr James Watson (one of the two men who discovered DNA structure) came up with a statement that caused a global outrage - he said that Africans have different genetic set-up that does not favour very intellectual activities. Hmm... What if he is even remotely close to truth?

If individuals die and species vanish, why exactly should nations and races be exceptions? Hasn't it been said that this cycle of human development means development of rational mind with the aim of merging the knowledge verbalised with the mind with the knowledge 'seen'?

Anyhow...I just don't believe everybody can do doctorates and everybody have equal intellectual capacities. Working in education system teaches it very clearly.

From The Sunday Times
October 14, 2007
The elementary DNA of Dr Watson

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article2630748.ece

The names Watson and Crick, it has been said, have “joined Darwin and Copernicus among the immortals”. The pair’s discovery of the structure of DNA, in 1953, has been hailed by fellow Nobel laureates as the greatest single scientific achievement of the 20th century. Today the only one remaining of the two, Dr James Watson, 79, stands alone as “the godfather of DNA”.

When, sitting at a dinner in Lincoln College, Oxford, in 1996, this ageing geneticist gingerly leant over to the guest by his side – the formidable headmistress of a large girls’ boarding school – and said, “I’m looking for some girls,” he was met with an appropriately cold stare. However, when he explained he was in England to hand-pick two students, one male and one female, to live in his Long Island home with him and his wife, Liz, and work as geneticists for a year at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, it was an opportunity too good to lose. The headmistress promptly replied: “Well, funnily enough…”

It’s August and I am standing on the shimmering forecourt of the laboratory’s towering neuroscience building. “You’re doing this for the future of women in science,” my headmistress had impressed on me, 10 years earlier, as I left to start my stint at the laboratory bench. Watson, she said, had come over specifically to recruit a girl – a change from the male-dominated programme to date. Glancing up, I see a familiar figure pacing briskly over sun-drenched paving slabs towards me. At 79, Watson looks remarkably unchanged, perhaps his scant wisps of hair a touch whiter and gait a little less sure. “Ah, Charlotte,” he says enthusiastically and, pausing to give me the wide, open-mouthed smile I remember well and fixing me with intense, pale grey eyes, he presses my shoulders and plants a kiss firmly on both cheeks.

I am back in Long Island to discuss the geneticist’s latest and, he tells me, final memoir, Avoid Boring People: Lessons from a Life in Science. His early life and academic career, peppered with useful tips for “those on their way up” as well as those “on the top who do not want their leadership years to be an assemblage of opportunities gone astray”. And – as befits the ultimate memoir of a forthright scientist – an inflammatory epilogue with eye-popping theories that will, undoubtedly, leave ethicists choking with disbelief. We are not alone, however. A rotund thirty-something man asks for a photograph, puffing his chest and beaming proudly into the camera lens. Later, Watson tells me that the visitor was a science reporter who confided he has a form of schizophrenia.

The visitor’s trust is well founded. Standing just a few hundred metres from the building, vast construction frameworks jut above the campus. This, Watson’s latest project – an impressive $100m new-build – heralds a new era of genetics. It will soon become Cold Spring Harbor’s platform for unravelling the genetic causes of mental disorders such as autism and schizophrenia. He is convinced that within 10 years “we will be able to diagnose the problem of schizophrenia by looking at the patient’s DNA”.

James Watson, or Jim, as the majority of scientists call him at the lab, has an energy that’s infectious, almost childlike. Born in Chicago in 1928 into a family who believed in “books, birds, and the Democratic party”, his outgoing character comes, he tells me, from his mother, the well-liked and extrovert Margaret – a raven-haired beauty who worked enthusiastically for the Democrats, the basement of their modest house doubling as a polling station at election time. His father, James, worked for a correspondence school and was a quiet, kind character who introduced his son to books and instigated a love of biology with early-morning birding forays in the nearby park. Watson recalls that he was conditioned to accept his father’s disdain for “any explanation that went beyond the laws of reason and science”.

Caught up in the Depression of the 1930s, he slept in tiny attic rooms with his younger sister, Betty, in the middle-class neighbourhood of South Shore, playing evening games of “kick the can” and softball in bungalow-lined streets. Skinny-framed and physically weak in his teens, his only consolation from school bullies was his parents’ empathy, encouraging constant trips to buy milk shakes to “fatten him up”. He recalls how a pupil cheerfully told him how, given his social awkwardness, “none of my classmates thought I would amount to much”.

In his picture-lined office, sitting beneath a rough paper sketch of a twisting DNA helix, Watson leans back in his chair, excitedly discussing his book. “Not being boring isn’t sufficient to be a success in this world, but certainly,” he pauses, fixing me with a brilliant smile, “it helps.” He says he hopes the book will encourage people to go into science and – tilting the cover to the light points out a hidden “Other” between the words “Boring” and “People” – “One, I’m a snob; the other, I’m a realist!” He giggles in delight.

Watson didn’t grow up thinking he was particularly gifted. “I never was one of those boy geniuses who could do maths,” he admits. But he does remember his teachers liked him, commenting that: “I must have had some spark that I didn’t know I had myself.” At the extremely young age of 15, he was admitted to the University of Chicago; his mother knew the head of admissions, he says, and “I always thought I got in because they liked my mother”. For a brilliant but awkward teenager, university was the break he needed. “A world where I might succeed using my head – not based on personal popularity or physical stature – was all that mattered to me,” he writes.

Watson prefers to eat at Winship’s, the chatty, down-to-earth laboratory bar overlooking the harbour, named after my boss of the time, whom he describes as having the “second loudest laugh I’ve ever heard after Francis Crick”. He mingles enthusiastically, hands shoved deep in dark-red knee-length shorts, an orange floppy sunhat perched on his head. He remembers, as I do, being seduced by the informal and intelligent atmosphere of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, something he first encountered as a 20-year-old biology graduate on a summer course. He says that in these early days, molecular biology was a very small field and people “didn’t know what DNA was”. He was under the spell of Max Delbrück, the charismatic young German lab director who played tennis and wasn’t “stuffy”.

For Watson, the ability to socialise is a key skill, one he believes can help propel you far beyond your peers. “Gossip is a fact of life also among scientists. And if you are out of the loop of what’s new, you are working with one hand tied behind your back.” The trait is clear among his staff, who, chatting easily at the bar, have the “ungeeky” Watson touch. My headmistress recalls the geneticist wanting a “bright but not very boffiny candidate who had lots of other interests” and who, above all, was “sociable”.

When Watson arrived in the Cavendish laboratory at Cambridge University as a 23-year-old postdoc, thirsty for the truth about the genetic material in our cells, his sociable American ways encountered Francis Crick’s “extraordinary conversational ability”, and he was hooked. Suddenly it no longer mattered what Delbrück thought: “It became what Francis thinks.” The pair freely discussed their scientific findings with other researchers at Cambridge and King’s College London, and Watson says this was essential to the pair’s ability to work out the detailed structure of the DNA molecule.

But there was someone who seemed immune to Watson’s precocious intelligence and eager collaboration: the acclaimed x-ray crystallographer Rosalind Frankin – someone described by Watson and Franklin’s estranged research colleague Maurice Wilkins, who shared the Nobel prize, as “hostile”. Whereas Watson admits to never having a problem asking for advice, writing that it is better for someone to “know my inadequacies than not to be able to go on to the next problem”. Franklin seemed unwilling to risk criticism, reportedly preferring to work on DNA in isolation, jealously guarding her results. Watson comments that “avoiding your competition because you are afraid that you will reveal too much is a dangerous course”.

As he chews a melted-cheese sandwich and sips an iced coffee in the bar, he reflects on his relationship with “Rosy”. “She was possibly somewhat Asperger’s,” he says quietly, “because she didn’t seem to even want to look at people and would hurry past them. I think she wasn’t good at knowing what other people thought and so she would insult them. She had some terrible interviews with the Medical Research Council and I think she cried afterwards. She was just awkward.” Then he softens: “I tell people, instead of feeling angry at awkward people, you realise it’s not their choice. It’s awful. And I think science selects for awkward people because you think in dealing with ideas, you don’t have to deal with people. But the moment you’re in science and you realise you can’t deal with other people, you’re at an enormous disadvantage.”

It is hard to ignore the accusations that emerged around that time. In 1962, Watson, Crick and Wilkins received the Nobel prize for physiology or medicine, but by then Franklin – whose data was so crucial to the discovery – had died at the age of 37, her life cut short by ovarian cancer. But when, in 1968, Watson wrote an account of the DNA “race” in which he revealed that Wilkins had shown him Franklin’s data without her knowledge, and compounded it by being derogatory about her physical appearance, he was slammed by feminists riled by what they believed was a blatant case of sexism. Although the prize can only be shared by a maximum of three people in one category – and Franklin’s input was readily acknowledged – they claimed her contribution had been overshadowed. When, in an interview at the time, he was asked why it mattered how a woman looked, he said: “Because it’s important” – a statement surely grounded in the genteel influences of his early life, when manners mattered, and being unkind “just wasn’t the way to behave”. And occasionally, throughout the day, his “old-fashioned” ideals come through. He describes Max Delbrück’s wife, Manny, as someone he liked very much but “not the sort of wife he needed”, adding that she was a terrible cook and would never have enjoyed the entertaining and fundraising that comes with being a university president’s wife. He also refers more than once to his disdain for women turning men into “girly men”, which means “men who don’t have the courage to say anything – it’s absurd”.

Feminists are a constant source of trouble for him. I remember him turning to me the day the headline “Abort babies with gay genes, says Nobel winner” appeared in a British broadsheet 10 years ago. Eyes wild and voice uncharacteristically strained, he asked: “What should I do about the press?” He refers to the incident again at lunch. “It was a hypothetical thing,” he explains. “If you could detect it pre-natally, could a woman abort a child who was homosexual? I said they should have the right to, because most women want to have grandchildren, period. We can’t do it, but it’s common sense. Anyways,” he says, shaking his head wearily, “it was a bad day when that headline hit. I was just arguing for the freedom of women to try and have the children they want, not what is right or wrong.”

One former pupil, an eminent biologist and staunch feminist, is outraged at his account of her in his book. He describes her as having “bolted from the room” when the ex-Harvard University president Larry Summers gave his infamous lecture suggesting that the low representation of tenured female scientists at universities might stem from, among other causes, innate differences between the sexes – an “unpopular, though by no means unfounded” theory, Watson comments. “She can criticise men; men can criticise women,” he says. “People criticise me all the time and you just take it. If you enter the public arena then you’re subject to it.” On the subject of gender equality he says, adamantly: “All I care about is great science.”

But he happily admits to appreciating a pretty smile or a well-dressed physique. A love of things aesthetic is unmistakable – pictures, glass sculptures and his elegant wife, Liz, 20 years his junior. He once said that in the early days, “almost everything I ever did, even as a scientist, was in the hope of meeting a pretty girl”. However, on the subject of science, he seems impartial. He admits that Rosalind Franklin would have seen the double helix first “had she seen fit to enter the model-building race and been better able to interact with other scientists”, and makes a point of mentioning that a former female student whose career he “certainly encouraged” – who is now a high-powered biology professor – calls him “the first real feminist for women in science”. As I sit with him, another former female student is being derided for her poor personal hygiene. He jumps to her defence: “No,” he shakes his head, dismissing it. “She was very intelligent.”

We drive in Watson’s silver-grey Volvo between tall sycamores and past the laboratory basketball court – a favourite pastime for many of the staff, fulfilling his rule to “exorcise intellectual blahs” by incorporating “plenty of physical exertion

to get outside your head regularly”. The road winds down to Ballybung, the Watsons’ peach-coloured Palladian-style home perching on the edge of Long Island Sound, which serves as a tranquil retreat from the bustling campus.

The lab is undoubtedly his second legacy. When he took on its directorship in 1967 at the age of 39, it was an ailing institution whose endowment was effectively zero, but it stands today as one of the world’s foremost genetic research institutes. Last year its budget stood at an impressive $115.4m. Success, he believes, comes from having the right objectives: “Ones that are important and which are achievable.” Is he proud of the achievement? “Yes, I always wanted anything we did to be in the top five in the world. But I achieved it by encouraging people and making people think that you’re good enough to do something very good and make sure you don’t waste your life with unimportant objectives.” He says Cold Spring Harbor couldn’t survive if the science was pedestrian: “It has to be unusual or you die.”

When he took on the directorship, he split his time between Cold Spring Harbor and his professorship at Harvard. At 39 he had been captivated by the Radcliffe sophomore Elizabeth Lewis, the young assistant in his university faculty. After a lightning romance, he memorably wrote a postcard to a close friend saying:

“19-year-old now mine.” As I wait in Ballybung’s homely kitchen, Liz breezes in clutching a bunch of sunflowers to “brighten up the hall, because they are so pretty”. A dark-haired beauty with wide-set eyes and a dazzling smile that, says Watson, “would always make me feel good”; it seems clear her intelligent and solid support contributes much to the laboratory’s success.

On late nights back from the lab, I would stumble over little presents and notes on the stairs to our annexe – timely reminders from Liz not to forget a drinks party that weekend. The Watsons, I soon discovered, never stop working. The house was invariably crammed with rich benefactors and potential donors. Unaware of funding concerns then, I find out that the new buildings I saw earlier will need an additional $100m on top of the building costs, to “attract researchers”. Jim is as blatantly direct about his fundraising tactics as about everything else. He writes: “Nothing attracts money like the quest for the cure for a terrible disease.”

But the quest for the root causes of mental illness is not driven only by a lust for the truth. Of his two sons – Rufus, 37, and Duncan, 35 – Rufus lives at home, seriously incapacitated by an ability to plan ahead. “Rufus couldn’t really do his schoolwork,” Watson says. “Even though he was bright, he could never write a term paper because he couldn’t really organise his thoughts. He can handle one day and that’s all that he wants to think about.”

Rufus was first hospitalised at the time of the 1986 meeting on the human genome. Watson realised that he would never really find out what was wrong with him until he could isolate the genes. But, as more is uncovered about the causes of schizophrenia, he wonders if he himself is to blame. “I worry that I was 42 with Rufus,” he says. “I read that the frequency of schizophrenia goes up with the age of both parents.” This leads him to expound his latest socio-biological theory, that “Viagra is fighting against evolution” – because if evolution has selected for erectile-dysfunction disorder, it is to prevent older men fathering children. He suggests that “men should store sperm at 15 to be used if they want to be fathers at 80”.

He talks of the “horror and destruction” of life that can arise from having a severely autistic child, and hopes that by diagnosing autism early, “we might prevent some [autism-prone] families having subsequent children”. His mother died young, at 57. He says her heart was weakened by rheumatic fever earlier in her life, and that his father died of lung cancer. It was the quest to understand the biology of cancer that ultimately lured him from his professorship at Harvard. As the director of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, he could preside over seasoned professionals, focusing his efforts first on “recruiting scientists who cared as much as I did about the biology of cancer, and then on finding the funding they needed to make their ideas work”.

But what of the man himself? “I used to be three inches taller,” he says conspiratorially. “I used to be almost 6ft 2in and now I think I’m barely 5ft 101/2in.” His voice drops to a whisper: “You get smaller.” The other disconcerting thing for the geneticist is that, when they sequenced his DNA, he hardly had anything left of his Ychromosome – an evolutionary phenomenon that commonly occurs as men age. “I try not to think about it,” he chuckles. Acutely conscious of his physical appearance in his youth, he still finds looking at himself irksome. “The trouble is,” he says, as the photographer shows him a picture, “I don’t like the ones that look like me.” His ideal look? “Twenty-five,” he chuckles, “but I’d be satisfied with 35. A man, no matter how old, wants to think of himself as no more than 35, and to look at a wife who was 45… No! That would immediately tell you how old you are.”

As I sit on the plush tennis lawns of the nearby Piping Rock club, I am aware – as Watson powers formidable forehands cross-court – that even during his daily relaxation he is unfailingly competitive. “I play for two reasons,” he tells me. “To stay fit, and when occasionally I win a good point against a good player, I feel good.”

Does he ever reflect on his achievements?

“I don’t think back much. I’m still thinking can we find the genes for mental disease while I’m still mentally alive, and will we have stopped cancer in 10 years, and… will my tennis serve improve?”

We are waiting at a red light on the way back from tennis and, for Watson, a meeting with a potential sponsor. I remember that while I was thrilled when a sheet of familiar laboratory paper landed on my desk a few months ago, asking if I would like to interview him for his new book, I was wary of the ethical content. “If I believe something then I’ll say it,” the scientist says. “I figure, generally, at least half the time I am reflecting common sense, which is not a lie.”

Back in 1990, the journal Science commented: “To many in the scientific community, Watson has long been something of a wild man, and his colleagues tend to hold their collective breath whenever he veers from the script.” When, in 2000, he left an audience reeling by suggesting a link between skin colour and sex drive – hypothesising that dark-skinned people have stronger libidos – some journalists suggested he had “opened a transatlantic rift”. American scientists accused him of “trading on past successes to promote opinions that have little scientific basis”. British academics countered that subjects should not be off limits because they are politically incorrect. Susan Greenfield, director of the Royal Institution, said that “nothing should stop you ascertaining the scientific truth; science must be free of concerns about gender and race”.

He says that he is “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 – whereas all the testing says not really”, and I know that this “hot potato” is going to be difficult to address. His hope is that everyone is equal, but he counters that “people who have to deal with black employees find this not true”. He says that you should not discriminate on the basis of colour, because “there are many people of colour who are very talented, but don’t promote them when they haven’t succeeded at the lower level”. He writes 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. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so”.

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. In his mission to make children more DNA-literate, the geneticist explains 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.”

Watson will no doubt enthusiastically counter the inevitable criticisms that will arise. He once commented to a fellow scientist – perhaps optimistically – that “the time was surely not far off when academia would have no choice but to hand political correctness back to the politicians”. Even after a year at the lab, I am still unnerved by his devil-may-care compulsion to say what he believes. Critics may see his acceptance of “softer-science” studies – that attempt to link IQ with specific genes, but remove society and other factors from the equation – as a dangerously flippant approach to a complex issue. His comments, however, although seemingly unguarded, are always calculated. Not maliciously, but with the mischievous air of a great mind hoping to be challenged. I ask him how he placates those he offends. “I try to use humour or whatever I can to indicate that I understand other people having other views,” he explains.

As I motor back to New York, I reflect on a man who – at nearly 80 – is, and will remain, an immensely powerful and revered force in science. I wonder whether it’s possible, as his desire to shock seems so strong, that a fear of boring people really does play on his mind. Perhaps the best description of the man is from the driver. “Dr Watson’s so kind and still very young at heart,” he drawls as we leave the campus behind. “He’s got a lot of curiosity about everything and he’s always working. But to him it isn’t work: it’s a challenge to the mind. And if he runs into a problem, it’s fun time.”

[erik]

I talked to some biologists to find out what facts Watson is building his argument on. It turned out that there is a wealth of information that biologists are well aware of, but none of them is interested in publishing any of it as it will make them immediately targets for all sorts of activists.

For me the most breath taking was a fact that there are tribes in Africa that do not produce descendants with white race. To imagine - they also belong to homo sapiens, but to such an ancient strain that cannot conceive from more modern race!

Could it be, that the selection we know happened between Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal men is being played out continuously?

We are monumentally stuffed indeed as we cannot even talk about it without violating social rules and beliefs and massive amount of ill-guided emotions. Sentenced to live in lie - what a fate!

[Firestarter]

I dare say this writing is the workings of a racist, Juhani. And how you can even fathom to consider such utter bullshit is beyond me.

[erik]

I dare say this writing is the workings of a racist, Juhani. And how you can even fathom to consider such utter bullshit is beyond me.

I never expected you to get the deeper significance of it.

[Michael]

It was widely reported at the time, and yes your contacts are right - it is not a politically receptive idea. The reasons are due to the problems that have happened in the past - humanity has a tendency to use such ideas to their own fantasy and advantage. I would say they need a lot more research and comprehension before the world feels comfortable to dabble with such ideas again.

[erik]

It was widely reported at the time, and yes your contacts are right - it is not a politically receptive idea. The reasons are due to the problems that have happened in the past - humanity has a tendency to use such ideas to their own fantasy and advantage. I would say they need a lot more research and comprehension before the world feels comfortable to dabble with such ideas again.

Precisely.
The biological facts are biological facts (with no inherent social connotation) and to fit them with, e.g. views of Besant et al regarding the evolution of races so that nobody would use it as a justification for doing something is no easy task.

I wonder, however, is there really a way forward for mankind without acknowledging the death in its multitude of forms - individual, nation, race, etc.? Is there a way forward wihtout acknowledging things as they are?

[erik]

Most people in denial over climate change, according to psychologists
The majority of people in Britain are in denial about the risk of global warming in our lifetimes, according to a new study into the psychology of climate change.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/6253912/Most-people-in-denial-over-climate-change-according-to-psychologists.html

By Louise Gray, Environment Correspondent
Published: 12:01AM BST 03 Oct 2009

The Met Office has warned that if the world continues to burn fossil fuels at the current rate temperatures will rise above four degrees C in the next fifty years.

This will cause sea level rise, droughts, floods and mass collapse of eco-systems.

However Clive Hamilton, Professor of public ethics at the Australian National University, said the majority of the population is still in denial about the risks of climate change.

He compared the situation to the psychology of the British and German populations before the Second World War and said the only way to make people change their behaviour is to "ramp up the fear factor."

Prof Hamilton applied traditional psychological reactions to the threat of future risk.

In a paper presented to an Oxford University conference this week, he said people react in three different ways to a frightening situation: denial, apathy or action.

In the case of climate change, he said a minority of people in Britain are in complete denial and refuse to believe man-made greenhouse gases are causing the temperatures to rise. He said a smaller minority are taking action by lobbying Government and adapting their lifestyles through driving less, not eating meat and generally living a low carbon lifestyle.

However, Prof Hamilton said the majority of people use "maladaptive coping strategies" such as ignoring the situation, blaming someone else or simply having a good time.

He said people do this to cope with the anxiety.

"This means telling ourselves the scientists are probably exaggerating - if it was that bad surely the Government would be doing something," he said. "Or telling ourselves it is a long way off so I will worry about it then or if I change my light bulbs it will not be my fault. It can mean blaming other people like the Chinese for building more coal-fired power stations or pleasure seeking by driving fast cars, eating exotic food and living the high life."

Prof Hamilton said scientists have played down the risks of global warming for fear of overloading people with information.

"There is a widespread belief in the scientific community that the public cannot handle the truth and so they have been pulling their punches. Global warming is unique amongst environmental problems - which are often exaggerated - in that it is now clear that the scientists have been understating the true implications."

In December more than 190 countries will meet in Copenhagen to try to thrash out a new international deal on climate change. For any agreement to be struck it is likely that rich countries will have to agree to cut carbon emissions by consuming less energy.

Prof Hamilton said scientists now have a duty to inform the public about the risks of climate change so action is taken and people are ready to adapt their lifestyles.

"There is a view we should not scare people because it makes them go down their burrows and close the door but I think the situation is so serious that although people are afraid they are not fearful enough given the science," he said. "Personally I cannot see any alternative to ramping up the fear factor."

[Michael]

Is there a way forward wihtout acknowledging things as they are?

Firstly, I have taken and studied IQ tests, and found them highly questionable. Intelligence is a good idea, but measurement tests I have seen are loaded with assumptions.

Secondly, Watson subsequently said:

"To all those who have drawn the inference from my words that Africa, as a continent, is somehow genetically inferior, I apologise unreservedly.

"That is not what I meant. More importantly, from my point of view there is no scientific basis for such a belief."

(bold is mine)

Thirdly, he had to say this because the experts in the field came out and said all the research indicates he is completely wrong.

Fourthly, differences in races as the basis of 'superiority', tend to almost always be posited as a front for emotional immaturity. I confess to suffer from this myself, as from all I can see northern Europeans (to whom I owe my own lineage) have no sense of rhythm whatsoever. My own racial inferiority in comparison to the Africans in the area of natural rhythm still causes me to despise northern European music - an immaturity on my part that continues to get me into trouble with many associates who love European classical music. It happened last weekend at the Music Festival, when late one night I again displayed my musical racism by abusing classical music lovers as stupid. It was not appreciated and won me no friends. When will I ever learn?

[erik]

However one approaches the issue, it inevitably slides in one direction even here. I add this not for the sake of argument, but for the sake of clarification of what Watson was likely referring to. His problem is that he took it as proven and given. I said What if he is even remotely close to truth?

As to acknowledging things as they are - I mean change, rise and death of individuals, nations, races, etc. Some of them adapt (through mutations, etc., btw could mutation be a physical manifestation of Eagle's Command?) others don't.

Given his background in genetics, it is unlikely that Watson based his assessment on the old IQ test/Bell Curve controversy, as is generally assumed.

It is far more likely that Watson was referring to a genetic research on the determinants of brain size and capability. The leading current research on this topic examines a genetic evolution that occurred in human beings about 6,000 years ago and is believed to be an important contributing factor in intelligence.

Scientists who have researched this mutation have found evidence that it was geographically dispersed in Europe, Asia, and North Africa. Sub-saharan Africa was geographically isolated by comparison, so the mutation occured there at a much lower incidence. This is not simple IQ sampling on racial lines - it's statistical data examining for the presence of a precise genetic trait that scientists believe to be connected to the brain's size and function.

This research appeared in one of the leading peer reviewed journals a four years ago:

"Ongoing adaptive evolution of ASPM, a brain size determinant in Homo sapiens. Science, 309:1720 (2005).

Given his credentials in DNA research, it is virtually certain that Watson was aware of this work and was likely referencing it, not the tired old IQ testing debate from psychology.

[Firestarter]

The rhythm has to do not with genetics but has to do with culture and heart as well as intelligence has more to do with opportunity for education.

Firstly, I have taken and studied IQ tests, and found them highly questionable. Intelligence is a good idea, but measurement tests I have seen are loaded with assumptions.

Secondly, Watson subsequently said:(bold is mine)

Thirdly, he had to say this because the experts in the field came out and said all the research indicates he is completely wrong.

Fourthly, differences in races as the basis of 'superiority', tend to almost always be posited as a front for emotional immaturity. I confess to suffer from this myself, as from all I can see northern Europeans (to whom I owe my own lineage) have no sense of rhythm whatsoever. My own racial inferiority in comparison to the Africans in the area of natural rhythm still causes me to despise northern European music - an immaturity on my part that continues to get me into trouble with many associates who love European classical music. It happened last weekend at the Music Festival, when late one night I again displayed my musical racism by abusing classical music lovers as stupid. It was not appreciated and won me no friends. When will I ever learn?

[Firestarter]

However one approaches the issue, it inevitably slides in one direction even here. I add this not for the sake of argument, but for the sake of clarification of what Watson was likely referring to. His problem is that he took it as proven and given. I said What if he is even remotely close to truth?

Hes not and this crap is only accepted by racists.

[Ke-ke wan]

humanity has a tendency to use such ideas to their own fantasy and advantage.

Bingo!