Watson said he was sorry for the comments in an appearance at the Royal Society in London.

“I am mortified about what has happened,” he told a group of scientists and journalists. “I can certainly understand why people, reading those words, have reacted in the ways they have.

“To all those who have drawn the inference from my words that Africa, as a continent, is somehow genetically inferior, I can only apologise unreservedly. “That is not what I meant. More importantly from my point of view, there is no scientific basis for such a belief.”

Watson, who shared his Nobel Prize with Francis Crick and Maurice Hugh Frederick Wilkins, has long been on record as saying there is a genetic basis for intelligence — something undisputed by other scientists. But experts deny there is any such thing as race on a genetic level.

Watson’s interview comments prompted an unusual outpouring from other scientists.

“The comments, which were attributed to Dr James Watson earlier this week in the London Times, are wrong, from every point of view — not the least of which is that they are completely inconsistent with the body of research literature in this area,” Dr Elias Zerhouni, director of the National Institutes of Health, said in a statement.

“Scientific prestige is never a substitute for knowledge. As scientists, we are outraged and saddened when science is used to perpetuate prejudice,” Zerhouni said.

“The Federation of American Scientists is outraged by the noxious comments made by Dr James Watson that appeared in the Sunday Times Magazine on October 14th,” said the group, founded by Manhattan Project atomic physicists. “At a time when the scientific community is feeling threatened by political forces seeking to undermine its credibility, it is tragic that one of the icons of modern science has cast such dishonor on the profession,” added Federation of American Scientists President Henry Kelly.

... contd.