According to author Arthur C. Clarke, "If a scientist tells you that something can be done, he is probably right. If a scientist tells you that something can't be done, he is probably wrong."
I have an addendum to that one: If he tells you that people with dark skin are not as bright as Caucasians, he can expect to get blasted in the media.
Dr James Watson, who shared the Nobel Prize for his work on revealing the secret of DNA, has made the rather startling pronouncement that black people are less intelligent than white people.
This is on a par with claiming that women are more temperamental than men, or that old fools are more likely to make sweeping generalisations than young post-graduates making grant applications.
All in all, it just doesn't sound like the kind of thing I'd expect a proper scientist to say. Usually any scientific statement is tempered with a heavy dose of "ifs" and "buts". In fact, the most reliable way to tell if someone is a scientist is to ask for a straight answer to a straight question.
The genuine scientist will always reply: "It depends. We need more funding - I mean we need to do more research."
I have an addendum to that one: If he tells you that people with dark skin are not as bright as Caucasians, he can expect to get blasted in the media.
Dr James Watson, who shared the Nobel Prize for his work on revealing the secret of DNA, has made the rather startling pronouncement that black people are less intelligent than white people.
This is on a par with claiming that women are more temperamental than men, or that old fools are more likely to make sweeping generalisations than young post-graduates making grant applications.
All in all, it just doesn't sound like the kind of thing I'd expect a proper scientist to say. Usually any scientific statement is tempered with a heavy dose of "ifs" and "buts". In fact, the most reliable way to tell if someone is a scientist is to ask for a straight answer to a straight question.
The genuine scientist will always reply: "It depends. We need more funding - I mean we need to do more research."
Other Nobel laureates include:
- Kofi Annan (Ghana)
- Derek Walcott (Jamaica)
- Wole Soyinka (Nigeria)
- Albert Lutuli (South Africa)
- Nelson Mandela (South Africa)
- Desmond Tutu (South Africa)
- V. S. Naipaul (Trinidad and Tobago)
You may not need to be a rocket scientist to win a Nobel Prize, but neither do you have to have white skin.
And that's a scientific fact.
