But I like to keep it all in perspective.

I spent three years at CSHL doing a post-doc and am privy to quite a few stories that I have not found the need to publicly repeat (but I do my best to convey the general idea, and make sure that he is known for how he chooses to carry himself and his burden of celebrity, rather than as this transcendent Nobel-winning super-scientist).

Nah. That thing screams bonehead to anyone. It was an excuse to link to Razib’s interesting posts on the casual and technical aspects of genetic contributions to skin color determination, that’s all.

but c’mon, doesn’t Watson look a little like Jason Kidd to you

That post to which you guys are referring from Steve is pretty silly, so I would hope that you are not seriously considering it as a valid argument. His arguments sound like those of people who refuse to accept the mitochondrial DNA evidence suggesting that all humans have ancestors in Africa. SNP and microsatellite analysis is along the same lines (although it doesn’t trace maternity directly, like mito DNA analysis) and provides the statistical likelihood that a particular genetic variation is from one race or another. It really doesn’t matter whether there are no pictures of black people in Dr. Watson’s books. Genetic variations provide a lot more objective evidence than personal accounts of history. If Steve believes that it is impossible to be 1/6 or 1/7 black and still have predominantly white features, he needs to walk around New York more (or any Latin American country where rampant mixing occurs) to see what kind of phenotypic manifestations that mixed genotypes can produce.

Details might change the degree of relation that is purported to be black, though, no? Altering “analyses” like the above linked iSteve has conducted. Of course, there are alternative hypotheses. [cough]interloper[/cough].