James D. Watson, the co-discoverer of the double helix structure of DNA and a towering figure in twentieth-century science, died on November 6, 2025, at the age of 97. His passing has reignited a fierce debate over his complex legacy—a legacy that is as celebrated for its scientific achievements as it is marred by his controversial and widely condemned remarks on race and intelligence.
Watson, alongside Francis Crick, unveiled the structure of DNA in 1953, a breakthrough that fundamentally changed biology and medicine. This discovery earned Watson, Crick, and Maurice Wilkins the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, cementing their names in the annals of scientific history. As The Guardian reported, “Nobel prize winner shaped medicine, crimefighting and genealogy, but later years marred by racist remarks.”
Watson’s scientific contributions extended far beyond the double helix. Crick’s sequence hypothesis, which built on their DNA work, revealed life’s information as a chemical language—one that some, like philosopher of science Stephen Meyer, argue points to intelligent design. “Such a language—a digital code (every language is a code)—is reasonably inferred to have come from a mind: an intelligent designer,” Meyer wrote in Signature in the Cell (2009). Yet, Watson himself remained an avowed atheist, famously declaring in 2003, “Every time you understand something, religion becomes less likely.” According to Science and Culture Today, Watson doubled down on this worldview, stating, “Well I don’t think we’re for anything. We’re just products of evolution.”
But it was Watson’s views on race and intelligence that ultimately overshadowed his scientific legacy. In 2007, he made headlines for stating, “All our social policies are based on the fact that [African] intelligence is the same as ours, whereas all the testing says, not really.” He later asserted in 2019, “There’s a difference on the average between blacks and whites on IQ tests. I would say the difference is genetic.” These comments sparked global condemnation. Le Monde described Watson as “the Nobel Prize-winning biologist who helped discover the double-helix structure of DNA later faced global condemnation for racist comments about Black intelligence.”
Major outlets including The Atlantic, The Independent, and Science echoed similar sentiments, noting that Watson’s later years were “marred by widespread condemnation following racist remarks, including assertions about the intelligence of Black people.” The backlash was swift and severe: Watson lost his leadership role and all honors at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, and was compelled to sell his Nobel Prize medal at auction for $4.1 million—though, in a twist of mercy, the successful bidder returned the medal to him.
Watson’s remarks were not limited to race. He also ventured into controversial territory regarding gender, once stating, “I think having all these women around makes it more fun for the men but they’re probably less effective.” His musings on the future of intelligence were equally provocative: “If there is any correlation between success and genes, IQ will fall if the successful people don’t have children.” Such statements have been widely criticized as elitist and in poor taste.
The global scientific community, as well as the media, have largely agreed that Watson’s comments crossed a line into bigotry. As The Atlantic put it, “Watson was notorious for his bigotry.” Yet, some observers have suggested that the debate over his legacy reflects broader tensions in science and society—particularly around the boundaries of free inquiry and the influence of social and political norms.
Reflecting on the aftermath of Watson’s comments, some writers have questioned whether merely speculating about group differences in intelligence should be considered inherently racist. One article, published shortly after his death, cited Watson’s own words: “There is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically.” The piece argued that, while Watson’s statements betrayed “a callous elitism and, well, simple bad taste,” the rush to label all such speculation as racism may stifle scientific inquiry. “Crying ‘racism’ to silence a line of inquiry we don’t like is disingenuous and intellectually lazy,” the author contended, referencing biologist Jason Malloy’s 2008 editorial that criticized the media and scientific community for punishing Watson for violating a social and political taboo, rather than for actual scientific misconduct.
The debate over Watson’s legacy is also a debate about the limits of free speech in science. The 1975 Woodward Report, commissioned by Yale University after campus protests, famously defended “the right to think the unthinkable, discuss the unmentionable, and challenge the unchallengeable.” Yet, as the recent article observed, “Fifty years after that commission, we’ve made breathtaking progress… in the opposite direction.” Today, certain topics—such as group differences in intelligence—are largely off-limits in mainstream scientific discourse, a shift attributed to the rise of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives and a broader cultural recoil from research perceived as potentially harmful.
Still, the scientific story does not end with DNA. Recent research, highlighted in David Klinghoffer’s 2025 book Plato’s Revenge: The New Science of the Immaterial Genome, suggests that genetic information is not confined to DNA alone. Biologist Richard Sternberg’s work points to significant genetic information residing outside the cell, challenging the idea that DNA alone can explain cellular operations. As Klinghoffer notes, “There simply isn’t enough information in the physical genome to account for cellular operations.” This complexity further undermines simplistic attempts to link genetics to group differences in intelligence, suggesting that science itself argues against the kind of racial determinism Watson espoused.
Watson’s life and legacy have even become fodder for popular science discussion. In a recent episode of The Guardian’s science podcast, Ian Sample and Madeleine Finlay described Watson’s story as “complicated,” acknowledging both his Nobel-winning discovery and the controversy that followed him to the end.
As the world reflects on the passing of James Watson, the verdict is anything but simple. He was a brilliant scientist whose work revolutionized our understanding of life itself, but also a man whose public statements ignited outrage and forced a reckoning with the ethical boundaries of scientific inquiry. Whether history ultimately remembers him for his genius or his failings, one thing is certain: the conversation about James Watson, science, and society is far from over.
