Nobel laureate James Watson, a geneticist credited with co-discovering the structure of DNA, resigned from his position as chancellor of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island last week after making controversial comments earlier this month about the relative intelligence of blacks and whites.
Watson announced his retirement from the laboratory, where he has worked since 1968, last Thursday, and also resigned from its board of trustees.
"To all those who have drawn the inference from my words that Africa, as a continent, is somehow genetically inferior, I can only apologize unreservedly," Watson said in a statement to the Associated Press. "That is not what I meant. More importantly from my point of view, there is no scientific basis for such a belief. I cannot understand how I could have said what I am quoted as having said."
The former Harvard University researcher created instant controversy when he commented on the intelligence of Africans in a Oct. 14 article in the Sunday Times Magazine of London.
Watson told the newspaper that he was "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa. ... All our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really. ...There is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically."
Watson also said that while he hoped all people are equal, "people who have to deal with black employees find this is not true."
As a result of his comments, Watson was immediately suspended by the lab.
"The circumstances in which this transfer is occurring, however, are not those which I could ever have anticipated or desired," Watson said in a statement regarding his resignation.
The 79-year-old Watson is no stranger to making controversial comments. In the past, he said that people of color have greater sex drives and that a woman should have the right to abort her unborn child if tests determined the child would be homosexual, according to an Oct. 19 Newsday article.
"He has gotten increasingly eccentric over the last 10 to 15 years," said Richard Losick, a professor of biology at Harvard and former coworker of Watson's. "It seems like he enjoys to shock people, but he went way too far this time."
Likewise, Harvard biology professor Andrew Berry, who co-wrote "DNA: The Secret of Life" with Watson in 2003, said, "He always has edgy views, and he prides himself on jousting at political correctness."
Berry said Watson "has done a lot of important work for the scientific community and arguably for humanity."
Watson previously served as director and president of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, which conducts research projects on cancer, neurobiology and plant genetics. He received the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1962 along with researchers Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins for their published discovery of the double-helical structure of DNA.
Despite the recent negative publicity, some scientists said they hope the public respects Watson's legacy and impact on genetics.
A press release from Watson's former laboratory stated Watson had transformed the laboratory from "a small facility into one of the world's great education and research institutions." Eduardo Mestre, chairman of the laboratory's board, said in the same statement that Watson had made "immeasurable contributions" to the establishment.
