PA Dr James Watson 
 
 Not very long after James Watson finished his Nobel Prizewinning work on the structure of DNA in 1953, he started firing off some eyebrow-raising comments about his fellow man: that fat people don't get hired because they lack ambition; how sunlight (and darker skin) is the source of the "Latin lover" libido; what he found distasteful in the appearance of his female research collaborator, Rosalind Franklin. 
 
 But as the great geneticist slunk back to the U.S. on Friday  his sold-out U.K. tour for his new book called Avoid Boring People: Lessons from a Life in Science canceled after the apparently racist remarks he made to Britain's Sunday Times Magazine last weekend  it's clear that Watson's latest provocation is not one he'll shrug off lightly. Indeed, Watson, 79, says he is "mortified" by the imbroglio, and apologizes "unreservedly" for the offending comments, in which he suggested black people are not as smart as whites: he told the Sunday Times' Charlotte Hunt-Grubbe that he is "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa," since "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours  whereas testing says not really." Watson also told Hunt-Grubbe, who lived and worked with him as a lab assistant in Long Island a decade ago, that even though he would hope all people are equal in intellectual capacity, "people who have to deal with black employees find this not true." 
 
 Condemnation was swift. Watson arrived in the U.K. midweek to promote his new book, which will be out Oct. 22. He was scheduled to speak Friday at the Science Museum in London, but the museum announced the day before that it would cancel the event, as Watson had "gone beyond the point of acceptable debate." The University of Edinburgh then axed Watson's scheduled appearance for Monday, calling the scientist's remarks "entirely incompatible with the spirit" of the lecture series in which he was supposed to participate. And an event organizer in Bristol, which had booked the DNA pioneer for Oct. 24, dropped Watson as well, saying the Sunday Times Magazine remarks were "unacceptably provocative." 
 
 By noon on Friday, a beleaguered Watson had canceled his remaining engagements and was flying back to the U.S. "His decision to leave the country, I believe, was due to things going on at Cold Springs Harbor," says his publicist Kate Farquhar-Thomson, referring to the Long Island lab where Watson is chancellor. Though Farquhar-Thomson declined to speculate what those "things going on" might be, odds are they include the lab board's decision yesterday to suspend Watson's administrative responsibilities. 
 
 No one seems more shocked by the statements than James Watson himself. "To all those who have drawn the inference from my words that Africa, as a continent, is somehow genetically inferior, I can only apologize unreservedly," Watson said in a statement he issued at the Royal Society Thursday. "That is not what I meant. More importantly from my point of view, there is no scientific basis for such a belief." 
 
 And on that much at least, he's right. For one thing, science has no agreed-upon definition of "race": however you slice up the population, the categories look pretty arbitrary. For another, science has no agreed-upon definition of "intelligence" either  let alone an agreed-upon method to test it. All kinds of cultural biases have been identified in IQ tests, for example. If there is something fundamental in our brains that regulates our capacity to learn, we have yet to separate its effects from the effects of everything that we experience after we're born. 
 
 Still, even with the offensive and unreasonable remarks that appeared in print, it's hard not to feel a little bit sorry for Watson. The man Charlotte Hunt-Grubbe describes in The Sunday Times Magazine is less an arrogant bigot than an enthusiastic if misguided old man, someone who does not quite understand that people won't always take his provocative remarks as innocently as he intended. Even Watson seems shocked by the comments in the magazine. "I cannot understand how I could have said what I am quoted as having said," he said in yesterday's statement. (The Times Online reports today that the Sunday Times Magazine interview was recorded and the publication stands behind its story.) 
 
 But there was a time about 10 years ago, writes Hunt-Grubbe in her piece, when she, then a lab assistant, found Watson distressed over a British newspaper headline: Abort babies with gay genes, says Nobel winner. Hunt-Grubbe asked Watson about that incident again when they met for their recent interview. "It was a hypothetical thing," Watson tells her. Someone had asked a question about aborting homosexual babies, and Watson believed mothers "should have the right" to decide when they have a baby. "I was just arguing for the freedom of women to try and have the children they want, not what is right or wrong," he continues. To be sure, picking and choosing your kids' traits is controversial enough. But it's not necessarily prejudicial. Given Watson's stature in scientific circles and his complete retraction of the Sunday Times Magazine remarks, let's hope these race comments, too, have been misunderstood, and that Watson is not just an obsolete product of a bygone time. ||||| International prestige, a hefty gold medal, and a check for close to $1 million: that’s what you get if you win a Nobel Prize. 
 
 This year’s prize is worth 8 million Swedish kronor, around $970,000. That’s a slight increase from the past two years, though much less than the amount awarded from 2000-2011, when it fluctuated between 10 million and 11.7 million kronor (the latter in 2001, the prize’s 100th anniversary), the largest prize amount in the award’s history. 
 
 But the money bestowed with the honor is hardly the only way to profit from becoming a Nobel laureate. 
 
 Last year, James Watson, one of the three people awarded the Nobel Prize in 1962 for the discovery of DNA’s double helix structure, auctioned his Nobel medal for $4.7 million to a Russian billionaire (who gave the gold back to the beleaguered scientist). The biologist fell on hard times after telling the UK’s Sunday Times in 2007 that he felt “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.” 
 
 After the quote was published, Watson was kicked off of all of the company boards on which he served, and various speeches and appearances were cancelled amid the backlash. As Al Jazeera America details, even seven years later, his reputation—and bank account—hadn’t recovered. Auctioning his medal was a last-ditch effort for some extra income (and perhaps a little extra attention). 
 
 The only other living Nobel laureate to auction a medal is Leon Lederman, who won a share of the physics prize in 1988 for the codiscovery of the subatomic particle muon neutrino. Lederman suffers from dementia and needed the money to pay for hospital bills, his wife Ellen Lederman told the AP. His gold sold for $765,002 in an online auction earlier this year. 
 
 Lederman’s auction price ranks fourth on the list of most profitable Nobel sales, according to NBC News. Watson’s $4.7 million bounty takes the top spot, while his physicist colleague Francis Crick’s award sits at number two after it was sold for more than $2 million in 2013. Last year, a private collector auctioned Argentine scholar Carlos Saavedra Lamas 1936 Nobel Peace Prize for $1.1 million. 
 
 And auctioning off the medals may be becoming a trend: In July, the prize awarded to Hans Krebs for the discovery of the citric acid cycle hammered for $425,535 at Sotheby’s. 
 
 Beyond that, while the prize money isn’t enough for retirement, many Nobel laureates can use the cachet that comes with being a recipient as a means to give talks, sit on company boards, or write books. Many are also approached by private businesses and organizations to work as consultants or full-time employees—though for most the money isn’t the point. 
 
 “Most scientists who do Nobel-quality work do not get into the game to get rich,” Daniel Kelves, a professor of history and medicine at Yale, told Live Science in 2010. Rather, he said, it’s the ability to work with other high-profile professionals and draw attention to the fields they’ve dedicated their lives to that is the true reward. 
 
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– One of the scientists who helped unfold the structure of DNA is putting his Nobel Prize on the auction block, and James Watson says it's because he's broke after being ostracized by the academic community over racist remarks he made seven years ago, the Atlantic reports. "No one really wants to admit I exist," he tells the Financial Times, labeling himself an "unperson." The remarks were made in a 2007 Sunday Times article, in which he admitted to feeling "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 tacked on that even though some would say black people were as intelligent as whites, "people who have to deal with black employees find this not true." Those weren't the first incendiary statements he's made: As Laura Blue pointed out in a 2007 Time article, Watson has also said fat people don't get jobs because they lack ambition, that sun and dark skin creates a "Latin lover" libido, and that a female colleague widely credited with expediting the DNA discovery didn't dress well. But while Blue writes that it's "hard not to feel a little bit sorry" for Watson, whom she calls "less an arrogant bigot than an enthusiastic if misguided old man," Adam Rutherford says in the Guardian that "no one is interested in his racist, sexist views" and that "it turns out that just like DNA, people are messy, complex, and sometimes full of hideous errors." Meanwhile, his Nobel is expected to net between $2.5 million and $3.5 million when it's up for auction on Thursday, according to a Christie's statement. (Maybe he just needs to watch some Jon Stewart.)