Poetic justice for Watson?

Written byAlison McCook

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There's an interesting "P.S." to the story of James Watson's early retirement after public outcry when he told a UK newspaper that he believed people of African ancestry were less intelligent - he has 16 times more genes of African origin than the average Caucasian. The company deCODE Genetics performed the analysis using Watson's entire genome, which he linkurl:released publicly;http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/53415/ this year. "This level is what you would expect in someone who had a great-grandparent who was African," linkurl:Kari Stefansson;http://news.independent.co.uk/sci_tech/article3239366.ece of deCODE Genetics told The Independent. "It was very surprising to get this result for Jim." Stefansson linkurl:visited;http://science-community.sciam.com/thread.jspa?threadID=300005381 the offices of Scientific American weeks ago to discuss the project. In October, Watson linkurl:stepped down;http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/53766/ as chancellor of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York after his remarks, which sparked strong public criticism. Neither Stefansson nor a representative of deCODE Genetics responded to requests for comment and a copy of the analysis about Watson's genome.

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