From Isa Kocher:

Re: Nobel scientist suspended from job over race comments (Oct. 18): Given the history of intelligence studies, Watson is welcome to his opinion among the many, but to throw such an opinion out without overwhelming incontrovertible irrefutable evidence, as an opinion, in the known context of the scientific history and the highly contestable nature of all intelligence research to date, is an unprofessional, unacceptable, unforgivable political, as well as an anti-scientific act.

He has profoundly damaged science at a time when science is being politicized by well funded and politically powerful anti-science and anti-human rights, irrational, fascistic forces in every political arena in the world from the Dominionists, Neo-Cons and Intelligent Designers, to the bin-Ladinist Wahhabis, Christian, Talaban, Budddhist, Scientologist, granola faerie cult, and radical astrologist reactionaries on all sides.

At a time when Global Warming, ecological collapse, and world conflict face us, it is irresponsible to throw out unproven and essentially, fundamentally unprovable suppositions and speculations of a blatantly a priori racist nature into the tight competition for resources. it just makes decision making more difficult and for no good reason.

As a scientist, it is clear from 200 years of biological study that neither intelligence nor race are conceptually sound or useful as scientific categories. After Darwin and Watson and everyone since, we are no closer to defining either concepts unequivocally than we were before Darwin, at the dawn of biology. That can only mean that whatever they refer to as common sense terms, here is something other happening which we have not yet managed to articulate in a meaningful way as a research. They are relicts of an age of parsing verbs, phrenology, and canals on Mars.

Mr. Isa Kocher

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