But why should Watson be after narrow technical issues like some cautious undergrad, when the problem is about funding for fundamental research to improve human condition?

> The whole point is what you are saying - the "perfect" human isn't about racial selection. It's Watson's clear racism (and he admits he is racist!) that makes it so dangerous.

This has no bearing on the issue of human germline engineering, which he advocated for and wanted to use reputation earned on medical research to promote. Pachter, as well as the article he links to, tries to discredit precisely this project; defending their goobledydook with appeal to Watson's other opinions constitutes a non sequitur. Furthermore, we cannot infer, unless, again, brainwashed, that Watson, even if he was very racist indeed, wanted to somehow reify a racial hierarchy: he points to differences, but finds in all populations some disappointing aspects, even for the "first class" Jewish brains. He understood, like I do, like Olson does, that all humans are horrendously damaged; and he went as far as to suggest eventually adding non-human DNA for further improvement! Call this catroonish mad science, call this creepy, but racist? White supremacist? Talk about being small-minded.

Pachter's assertion that Watson was a narcissist who believed "American from Chicago of mixed Scottish/Irish ancestry" to be an Ubermench is nothing but vile slander. I also suspect that the notion of being critical towards your group is alien to Pachter, seeing as he ascribes to Watson some prejudice against the Irish just as he makes him out to be a self-absorbed racist.

But, most importantly, we cannot get there from here. We cannot engineer happier and more capable humans if we do not investigate what makes modern humans differ on significant traits, and we can't do that without noticing group differences attributable to ancestry in the process, and without basically confirming some stereotypes (because, all told, stereotypes are pretty accurate, and in fact more robust than most findings in social science)[1]. Either deal with it, or call openly for the end of research on group differences of intelligence, like some do[2]. It's fraught with problems, though: «...enforcement of this policy entails technical difficulties. For one thing, essentially all IRBs already try to ban such research, but they don’t do a very good job, because they don’t know enough about the subject. Probably nobody does. For example, not so long ago people felt free to speculate that modern humans might have picked a few useful alleles from Neanderthals – including ones that increased intelligence. That was before it was found that there is substantial Neanderthal admixture only in non-Africans.»[3]

But pretending to respect the research of human generic potential, all the while demonising any scientist who so much as hints at agreement with some group generalization, is hypocrisy. A self-contradiction.

Note also how Horgan reinforces his suggestion of banning the topic with "stereotype threat": «The claims of researchers like Murray, Herrnstein and Richwine could easily become self-fulfilling, by bolstering the confirmation bias of racists and by convincing minority children, their parents and teachers that the children are innately, immutably inferior. ». As usual, this seems to be bogus science.[4] This is the typical state of affairs, very weak studies with politically convenient "leftist" results used to triumphantly "debunk" robust models while, hilariously enough, accusing the other side of confirmation bias.

> anyone who has read the Nazi or Communist "scientific" justifications of their theories

Did you? Because Nazis were very disapproving of intelligence research, and Communists were into Lysenkoism, which opposed mainstream genetics[5]. I'm not at all sure there ever was a totalitarian regime which promulgated Watson's understanding of these topics.

1: https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2015-19097-002

2: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/should-rese...

3: https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2013/05/23/the-end-of-science...

4: https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/another-replication-fa...

5: https://medium.com/@cremieux/is-eric-turkheimer-a-scientist-...