Source: THE SUNDAY TIMES: FOREIGN NEWS, December 31, 2000

DNA Pioneer Hit by Race-Sex Row

Jonathan Leake and Sophie Petit-Zeman

JAMES WATSON, the scientist who jointly discovered the structure of DNA, has shocked academia with a speech suggesting a link between skin colour and sex drive.

The Nobel-prize winner left an audience of academics stunned when he suggested that darker-skinned people have stronger libidos. He then flashed slides of bikini-clad beauties with miserable expressions onto a screen to illustrate a second theory that fat people are unambitious - and said he would not hire them.

About 200 researchers had gathered at Berkeley University in California for the lecture, but by the end many had walked out in disgust, accusing Watson of sexist and racist comments. Last week there were calls to stop him making any more scientific presentations at Berkeley.

Watson's latest remarks have opened a transatlantic rift. Some American scientists accuse him of trading on past successes to promote opinions that have little scientific basis.

Watson, 1962
Photograph: Anthony Barrington-Brown

Their British counterparts argue that subjects should not be off limits just because they are politically incorrect. Watson has discussed links between fatness and libido before, but has never pushed the link with race to the same extent.

Suggesting a link between skin colour and sex drive at the lecture last month, Watson told his audience: "That's why you have Latin lovers," adding: "You've never heard of an English lover. Only an English patient."

Among the outraged was Susan Marquesee, professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at Berkeley. She walked out after Watson suggested that men found fat women sexually attractive, and used a slide of a dejected-looking Kate Moss to "prove" that thin women were more miserable. "There wasn't any science," she said. "These aren't issues one can state as fact."

Susan Greenfield, president of the Royal Institution, who knew Watson when he was working in Britain, defended his outspokenness, although she was not at the lecture. "I think it is right to make bold and sometimes provocative connections," she said. "Nothing should stop you ascertaining the scientific truth; science must be free of concerns about gender and race."

Watson's speech was ostensibly about the role of a protein called pom-C in promoting happiness. Pom-C is involved in the production of various hormones, including melanin, whose concentrations determine skin colour; beta endorphins, which control mood swings; and leptin, involved in fat metabolism.

He suggested that concentrations of these hormones might be increased by sunlight and described how men injected with melanin in an experiment had experienced surges in their libido. This, he said, implied that people exposed to the sun would experience surges in melanin levels, boosting sex drive.

He illustrated the point by contrasting slides of bikini-clad girls with others of veiled Muslim women, suggesting that the latter's sun-blocking clothes served to reduce their sexual appetites.

Watson's other controversial assertions included the notion that people living in northern climates drink more alcohol to compensate for the unhappiness they suffer through sunlight deprivation.

Last week, anger at Watson's talk was growing among American academics, especially at Berkeley. Thomas Cline, professor of genetics, said the lecture had "crossed over the line from being provocative to being irresponsible because the senior scientist failed to separate fact from conjecture".

Cline said the talk had been "more embarrassing than having a creation scientist up there". He added: "If he wants to give a talk like this in his living room, that's his business, but to give it in a scientific setting is wrong."

Lewis Wolpert, professor of biology at University College London, however, supported Watson. "One should take Watson seriously," he said.

"I am adamant that reliable science has no ethical content; it describes the way the world works and how we are. One cannot censor reliable science because one does not like what it tells us."

Last week, Watson was unavailable for comment. A spokesman at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory confirmed the gist of his remarks and said he would soon publish a scientific paper on the subject.

Francis Crick, Watson's collaborator in his pioneering DNA work in Britain, was also unavailable. Crick and Watson have long since parted scientific company, and Crick now researches the workings of the brain and consciousness.

The two men were awarded the Nobel prize in 1962 after deducing the double-helix structure of DNA, the molecules inside genes that contain the blueprint for life.

In 1990, Watson launched the human genome project, which has since unravelled the structure of DNA. Now in his early seventies, he remains president of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories in New York state, one of the world's most prestigious research centres.

History suggests, however, that even Nobel laureates can trade on their reputations once too often. Among those who have fallen from grace are William Shockley, the British scientist who won a Nobel prize in 1956 for inventing the transistor.

He was ostracised after suggesting some races were genetically inferior, and recommending that people with IQs under 100 be paid bonuses if they agreed to be sterilised.