I would be grateful if you could go into some more detail about this. There have been articles on HN recently that made a strong case for the genetic basis of IQ and for its validity as a measure of intelligence. It's also easy to find data about the average measured IQ in different racial groups. But there are also a variety of arguments that weaken or strengthen the case, from the Flynn effect to studies on twins, adopted children, etc. It seems to me that the issue is muddled, at best. If there is a slam-dunk argument that can finally bury the notion of intelligence differences between races, I'd like to see it articulated.
Disclaimer: I do not belong to the race with the highest supposed IQ, and I have never taken an IQ test myself, so I really have no horse in this race. Also, even if racial differences in intelligence were real, individual differences would still be more important, and it would remain unacceptable to make assumptions about someone's intelligence based on their race.
http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/tenses-diffuse-tensions...
> [I am] 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.
He's flat out wrong about what "all the testing" says, btw. We're not just bashing someone for speaking a politically unpopular truth here (I cynically suspect that we would do just that were Watson's position correct, but fortunately that doesn't seem to be the case).
> Whenever you interview fat people, you feel bad, because you know you're not going to hire them
> [the] historic curse of the Irish, which is not alcohol, it's not stupidity. But it's ignorance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Watson#Controversies
Also, he's selling the medal with the specific intent of thumbing his nose at the scientific community. He would draw much more sympathy if he had fallen on hard times due to misfortune, for instance.