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Celebrated DNA scientist chastised for racially charged comments: "All our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really."

A world renowned scientist caused outrage recently when he claimed that black people were less intelligent than white people, calling the idea that "equal powers of reason" were shared across racial groups was a fantasy.

James Watson, a Nobel Prize winner for his part in unraveling DNA code who now runs one of America's top research centers, was denounced for comments he made ahead of his arrival in Britain for a speaking tour. The geneticist reopened the debate about race and science in a newspaper interview in which he said Western policies in Africa were based on the assumption that blacks and whites were of equal intelligence, when testing suggested otherwise. He claimed that genes responsible for levels of human intelligence could be found within a decade.

Dr Watson told The Sunday Times that he was "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours whereas all the testing says not really". He said there was a natural desire that all human beings be equal but "people who have to deal with black employees find this not true". His views can also be found in a book scheduled for publication in which he writes: "There is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so."

The resulting outcry is similar to the response to a book published in 1990 by American political scientist Charles Murray, which identified varying IQ levels as genetic, and discussed the implications of a racial intelligence divide. The book was condemned as a work of "scientific racism"

Anti-racism activists called for Dr Watson's remarks to be evaluated in the context of racial hatred laws. A spokesman for the 1990 Trust, a black human rights group, said: "It is astonishing that a man of such distinction should make comments that seem to perpetuate racism in this way. It amounts to fueling bigotry and we would like it to be looked at for grounds of legal complaint."

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