Talk:History of the race and intelligence controversy

Kudos

Kudos to you for an amazing amount of work on this. Assuming no objections on your part, I will add some photos of the various characters to liven things up. David.Kane (talk) 13:05, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for this message which I didn't see initially. However, great minds think alike :) Mathsci (talk) 08:50, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Last sentence

I have three issues with the last sentence of the opening. First, there are non-psychologists actively involved in the debate. Charles Murray is a political scientists and Linda Gottfredson is a sociologist. Second, I am not sure if the Pioneer Fund is important enough to mention in the opening. (But all your discussions of it in the body of the article are perfectly reasonable.) I just don't see the Pioneer Fund as being nearly as important as, for example, Jensen's 1969 article or the Bell Curve. Third, I think reasonable people might differ about how "small" the group pursuing this research is. I can certainly cite a dozen or more. David.Kane (talk) 13:45, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Could you explain why "psychologists" is used in the last sentence, given that many of the most prominent folks in this field are not psychologists? For example, Charles Murray is a political scientists and Linda Gottfredson is a sociologist. We need a more inclusive term. Scientist? Researcher? David.Kane (talk) 14:23, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

By the way, I am willing to grant that, given the current content in the article, mentioning the Pioneer Fund in the lead is justified. David.Kane (talk) 14:52, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Sorry that sentence in the the lede summarises what is in the main text of the article, taken directly from the secondary source (Tucker 2002). Surely you don't need every wikipedia editing policy to be spelt out to you? Linda Gottfredson is also discussed at length in Tucker, but mostly about the events surrounding the University of Delaware's reaction to her funding source.

The article by Gray and Thompson (from Yale and MIT) is a fine secondary source for the statement that "very few scientists do resarch on race and intelligence, and those that do are predominantly white". That was the 2004 article in the Neuroscience part of Nature Reviews.

You see the rule is that we don't use this talk page as a WP:FORUM, for open-ended discussion. That's what a blog is for. Any argument you give about content has to be backed by a secondary source (or possibly some other relevant wikipedia policy). Mathsci (talk) 15:13, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Help a newb

Can someone explain what was wrong with this addition to the history section and what I need to change to include it?

In 1998, Douglas Detterman, founding editor of the journal, Intelligence, published a special issue as a tribute to Arthur Jensen's research on the topic of human intelligence. Detterman's introduction to the special issue is entitled "Kings of Men," and is followed by commentary from respected scholars in-field on the integrity and impact of the contributions Jensen has made to this field. Bpesta22 (talk) 14:08, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Because it is not attributed to a secondary source. It is your own commentary. Mathsci (talk) 14:19, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

There is no Wikipedia policy which requires that a fact be reported in a secondary source. David.Kane (talk) 14:25, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Confused as to how it's commentary. It seems to be entirely factual. Given that, am I ok to add it back in? -Bpesta22 (talk) 14:31, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

(ec) I'm sorry, but there you are completely wrong. Go and read Wikipedia:RS#Primary.2C_secondary.2C_and_tertiary_sources. "Wikipedia articles should be based mainly on reliable secondary sources." That's quite clear, don't you think? We don't get to be the historians if we can't find a seconday source - Bpesta22 seems to have written those words, they're not a paraphrase of a secondary source that I can check myself. That is what WP:V says. Anyway that kind of detail in this article is WP:UNDUE and seems against WP:NPOV. Mathsci (talk) 14:45, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

"primary sources are permitted if used carefully" is the policy. Of course, if there was a secondary source which mentioned this issue of Intelligence, then we should use that. But there is no such secondary source. Once we have established that policy, we can address your (reasonable) concerns about WP:UNDUE and WP:NPOV. David.Kane (talk) 14:50, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Never for history, when there are plenty of secondary sources available. I don't think it's a very good idea to continue to twist wikipedia rules and wikilawyer like this, just to push an WP:UNDUE point of view. And talking about what's allowed and what's not allowed, what gave you the idea that you could just lift the lede of one article (which doesn't need to be sourced) and place it in the main body of another article? That is absolutely against the rules. Sources and citations are needed in the main text. I had to add them myself - what on earth did you think you were doing? Mathsci (talk) 15:21, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

I thought that copy/pasting the lead was the common way that article incorporation was handled. Which "rules" are you referring to? Can you point me toward something that would educate me on this topic? For example, see how A_Song_of_Ice_and_Fire incorporates Game of Thrones (TV series) with a similar copy and paste. (Not claiming that that is correct. Just explaining why someone like me might think it the standard procedure.) David.Kane (talk) 15:30, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Then you were completely wrong once more. Mathsci (talk) 15:47, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Can you please cite a Wikipedia policy to that effect? Again, I am not trying to be a wikilawyer. I want to educate myself on this topic so that I can better edit articles in the future. David.Kane (talk) 16:02, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

What you write is trolling. All edits in the main text must satisfy WP:RS and WP:V. That measn that they must be properly sourced form secondary sources. That means that if you copy paste something from elesehwere, which is deperecated, you have add a whole set of frsh citations, as if you are writing the material for the first time. Mathsci (talk) 19:26, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Title

I admit -- I hopped here from doing some New Pages Patrolling, fully expecting to find a nasty WP:SYNTH / WP:OR disaster... and am very pleasantly surprised to find what appears to be a well-sourced, interesting work. That said, the title seems clunky to me. Does anybody have any alternative suggestions? I for one can't think of any off the top of my head, so perhaps I'm answering my own question/concern with regard to the title, but I figured it was worth an ask. ɠǀɳ̩ςεΝɡbomb 20:30, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

I am happy to defer to MathSci since he spent so much time and energy on this article. One alternative might be Race and Intelligence (History). I expect that, over time, the main Race and Intelligence article might generate other daughter articles, so something that allowed for a consistent naming convention might be useful. David.Kane (talk) 20:56, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

That seems like a very reasonable title, and an improvement to my eyes. I, too, would prefer to defer to MathSci. ɠǀɳ̩ςεΝɡbomb 22:17, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

I like David.Kane's suggestion and agree that the present title is clunky. Perhaps we could wait a little bit. Mathsci (talk) 17:26, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Aye, let's give it a few days, or at least until when any edit conflicts surrounding the article die down a bit (don't want to add another controversy!). ɠǀɳ̩ςεΝɡbomb 13:49, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

I will leave it to the two of you, not least because I don't really know how to change article titles . . . David.Kane (talk) 13:54, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Aye aye! And for future reference, it's actually pretty easy: You just move the article to a new name (and then fix any pages that link to the old title). Anyway, I think we're right to wait a few days -- looks like this article has stirred up some controversy and a retitle, even one as innocuous as the proposed, can muck up a conversation. ɠǀɳ̩ςεΝɡbomb 15:08, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

NPOV

First of all, I'm glad to see that this section has been made its own article, and that it doesn't include the irrelevant information about Rushton writing for American Renaissance. However, I this section still has some NPOV problems that need to be addressed.

• The article provides a rather biased caricature of Jensen's views, particularly in these sentences: "In 1969 the educational psychologist Arthur Jensen published a long article reviving the older hereditarian point of view, with the suggestion that eugenics was more likely to increase the average intelligence in the US than remedial education for blacks." and "He decried the "misguided and ineffective attempts to improve [the] lot" of blacks which would only result in "genetic enslavement" unless "eugenic foresight" was brought into play, i.e. population control." In his 1969 article, the main position that Jensen advocated is that education should be tailored to each person's individual needs and limitations; interpreting him as advocating population control is both POV and a misrepresentation of his position.

• This sentence: "Although earlier in his career Jensen had favoured environmental rather than genetic factors as the explanation of race differences in intelligence, he had changed his mind following extended discussions with Shockkley during the year 1966-1967 spent at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in Stanford." This is Tucker's interpretation of what caused Jensen to become a hereditarian, but Jensen himself offers a different explanation for it. I think it should be obvious that when someone is providing an explanation for a researcher's motives that differs from the researcher's own explanation of them, it's inappropriate for us to ignore the researcher's own explanation of their motives and report someone else's interpretation of them as though it were fact.

• At the end of this section of the article, we have what's basically a WP:COATRACK of criticisms of the hereditarian position. What's more, most of these criticisms (the second, third and fourth) are rejected by the APA in their 1995 report, but the article makes no mention of the fact that these criticisms are now rejected by the psychometric community.

• This sentence: "Many critics, including Stephen J. Gould and Leonard Kamin, pointed out flaws in the analysis and unwarranted simplifications." I shouldn't have to explain how this sentence displays an obvious bias against The Bell Curve's conclusions. The article needs to take a neutral position as to whether these criticisms are valid or not.

There are some other NPOV problems also, but these are the ones that stand out to me. Unless someone can present a convincing case for why these parts of the article need to remain the way they currently are, I'll be changing them shortly, unless someone else gets to them first. --Captain Occam (talk) 21:37, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Kudos to you Occam for taking the time to improve this already excellent article. Well done! If anyone has the energy, it might be useful to have an entire section of this history devoted to the Bell Curve, pulling material from that article. Alas, I am too lazy to do that myself. David.Kane (talk) 00:15, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

I think I’ve fixed most of the major NPOV problems now, but I’m not sure if I missed anything. Is there anything else in this article that you think ought to be changed? --Captain Occam (talk) 00:19, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

You will be blocked if you continue editing out of conformity with secondary sources, This complete failure to address and use secondary sources will result in you being blocked if you continue. Mathsci (talk) 03:30, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

I noticed all of the same problems on reading through the article. These are serious and need to be addressed. --DJ (talk) 07:29, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

These are all in the sources. However, since so many editors posted here after receiving messages from Captain Occam on their talk oages, I have derferred the discussion of NPOV to the usual noticeboard. However, as mentioned below, this seems to be a classic case of WP:TAG TEAMing and might result in administrative action if it continues. Mathsci (talk) 07:34, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

The anachronistic factual arguments are probably the easiest to fix -- we can just eliminate them. We don't need a recounting of the details of arguments about things like the heritability of IQ considering that we now know much more about it. A historical recounting of people, their opinions, and pivotal events should be sufficient.

Attribution is also missing in some cases on what amount to contentious opinions by the cited sources. Adding attribution would help. Where controversial opinions are reported, we need to give a sense of how widely shared those view are if possible and what other views exist. --DJ (talk) 07:44, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Sorry but that is a summary of what is in Benjamin's textbook. This is obviously part of the history and it's nowhere else on wikipedia. I don't understand the comments about anachronistic. Are you suggesting that Ludy Benjamin is an incompetent historian of psychology? Mathsci (talk) 07:53, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Historians, as the postmodernists philosophers tell us, are a product of their culture. They present opinions, and opinions are POVs that need to be attributed and balanced for neutrality. The anachronistic facts are in the section Occam called COATRACK. We don't need an accounting of technical disputes from a fixed point in time -- let's stick with the current understandings presented in the main article.

As to a fix, these edits seem sound: [1]. Jensen (1970) is the best historical source on what Jensen meant in Jensen (1969). I wouldn't be opposed to substantially expanding the section if there really is that much to say about differing opinions about what Jensen (1969) meant and what motivated him other than his own accounting of those events. The other major source is his biography by Miele. However, the article on Arthur Jensen covers that pretty well already. --DJ (talk) 08:08, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Hmm. Are you not using this talk page as a WP:SOAPBOX? Your opinion of historians of psychology or historians in general is not relevant. If you have a view like that, why exactly are you commenting on an article within the History of psychology? As far as I can tell your only complaint is WP:IDONTLIKEIT. If a historian quotes from Das Kapital or Mein Kampf, is that anachronistic or is not instead perhaps the normal way that an academic historian recounts events by making reference to historical documents? Mathsci (talk) 08:48, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

(1) Historical narratives are POVs not objective facts. We have a clear example of conflicting narratives and cannot privilege one simply because it's in a "textbook". My objections is that this presentation violates WP:NPOV. (2) The anachronistic arguments section present one side of a very out-dated debate with the same narrative structure that one presents a present controversy. By way of example, it would be as if we presented a history of physics and then went into a long list of objections to quantum mechanisms that were raised at the time with no indication that years later those same objections are no longer part of the mainstream discussion. --DJ (talk) 16:23, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

POV-pushing by Captain Occam

• Captain Occam (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

It is unacceptable to add and remove material which does not match the secondary sources as Captain Occam has done. Any edits of this kind, which depart from the secondary sources, will be reverted and continued efforts to "sanitize" the history or alter ii will be reverted. Captain Occam risk being blocked if he removes material that he does not like. Being a die h-hard fan of hereditarianism does not entitle Captain Occam to rewrite history, removing for example the role of William Shockley. That is unacceptable POV-pushing on wikipedia. His alternative is to find other neutral secondary sources that satisfy WP:RS amd WP:V. Mathsci (talk) 03:27, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Mathsci, you’ve just reverted around 20 edits while offering only a pithy one-paragraph personal attack as an explanation. I’ve explained in detail why I think these changes are justified and necessary, both in my edit summaries and in the section above. David.Kane has also pointed out that several other users have expressed POV concerns about this content that are similar to mine; for that reason I think these changes are supported by consensus. If you object to them, it’s your responsibility to explain why you disagree with the detailed justifications that have been provided for them.

If you aren’t willing to explain why you disagree with the justifications provided for these edits but continue removing them from the article, this is a case of WP:OWNership. I’ve also warned you about personal attacks once already on your userpage. If you aren’t willing to work with the rest of us in a collaborative manner, I’ll be reporting you for this behavior at AN/I; I don’t intend to warn you about this again. --Captain Occam (talk) 04:38, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Unless you say why my summary of the secondary sources is inaccurate, your objections have absolutely zero value. Look at the books and tell me why I have paraphrased the material incorrectly. Otherwise your personal point of view is not in the slightest bit relevant. This is not a WP:FORUM, so, yes indeed, I am completely unwilling to waste my time on any discussions beyond the material on specific pages in the sources I have used or other secondary sources for the history which satisfy WP:RS. That is unfortunately wikipedia editing policy. Again it is up to you to look at the specific sources and explain whether my summaries are accurate or not. It is not my responsibility to engage in discussions which have nothing to do with secondary sources for the history: discussions like that are a waste of time for everybody involved. Mathsci (talk) 06:25, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Captain Occam, please stop leaving messages on my talk page. I know you haven't edited a wide range of articles on wikipedia. This article is neutral and not controversial. It has been created by the following process, the standard process for writing normal mainstream wikipedia articles. (a) Find a comprehensive list of secondary sources WP:RS (b) Summarise them so that the summary is verifiable. So in the case of a normal article like this, the only way you can object to material is by directly discussing the secondary sources and whether they have been accurately summarised. It is not permitted for you to make modifications without reference to the secondary sources. In fact what you are doing in that case is editing disruptively to push your personal point of view. If your intention is to edit articles in that way, you'll just be blocked. I am quite willing to discuss material in relevant secondary sources or possible inaccuracies in my summaries, but nothing else. Thanks, Mathsci (talk) 06:41, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

The problem isn’t that you’ve misstated anything in the source material you’re using; I thought I’d made that clear. The problem is something more subtle than that.

Almost all of the sources you’re using for this article are sources which take an anti-hereditarian perspective. Some users might have a problem with that, but I don’t, as long as they meet Wikipedia’s standard for reliability. However, if we’re only going to use sources that take one of the two perspectives about this topic, we need to be very careful to separate universally-acknowledged facts from the opinions of the authors. This is also necessary when we’re using sources that take a variety of viewpoints, but in that case it’s not quite as challenging to identify the information that is or isn’t contentious, because if it isn’t contentious then sources that take different perspectives will agree on it, and if it is contentious then they won’t.

Perhaps this will be clearer if I provide an opposite example: suppose we were to have an article about some topic related to race and intelligence that uses only Jensen’s writings as sources. Would it be possible to write a neutral article in this way? It would be difficult but not impossible, as long as we were careful that what we present as fact in the article is only the data which Jensen is reporting, and not the (herediterian) conclusions that he’s drawn from it. The same principle applies here also, except for the opposite viewpoint.

I know that the information I removed is in the source material, but it’s still contentious, and the only reason that isn’t obvious is because virtually every source you’re using for the body of this article takes the same perspective. The fact that other sources claim otherwise about most of these points is enough to demonstrate this. If we’re going to use only sources that all take an anti-hereditarian perspective, it’s essential that we separate facts that the authors are reporting from their own opinions, and not include the latter in the article. The only alternative to this is using different sources entirely, which would have to involve rewriting most of the article.

I’ve explained in the section above, as well as some of my edit summaries, in what ways this information is contentious/disputed. And this is what we’ll need to discuss if you want these changes to be kept out of the article. --Captain Occam (talk) 06:44, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

I don't understand this argument at all. The sources are neutral and satisfy WP:RS and WP:V. It seems you're asserting that they are anti-hereditarian just because the details of the history upset you in some way. But the authors are professional academics, experts in psychology or the history of psychology. The way the sources are evaluated is in book reviews. I think most of the texts have been extremely well reviewed in the literature. In fact William H. Tucker won several prizes for his book on the Pioneer Fund (Winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Award, 1995. Winner of the Ralph J. Bunche Award, American Political Science Association, 1995. Outstanding Book from the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Human Rights in North America.) All I can see at the moment is that some of the material in the books upsets you. But history can be like that. Mathsci (talk) 07:08, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

<- I note that you just left this message.[2] That looks like an attempt to be disruptive. This message [3] was similar. Again not the way wikipedia is usually edited. In fact this borders on WP:HARASSment and wikihounding. Mathsci (talk) 07:19, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Update And now this extra message. [4] Mathsci (talk) 10:10, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

And this now from Varoon Arya. Oh dear. [5] Mathsci (talk) 12:38, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

As I said in my last comment, I think the fact that other (equally valid) sources disagree with these claims is enough to demonstrate that they’re contentious. Going with just one example, Tucker claims that it was Shockley who convinced Jensen to become a hereditarian. Jensen himself offers a different explanation for his opinion: that he became a hereditarian as a result of reviewing the U.S. Civil Rights Commission’s report on compensatory education, which concluded that it had not produced any benefit to disadvantaged children. You’ve chosen to cite Tucker about the source of Jensen’s opinion, while ignoring what Jensen has to say about it himself. I know that Tucker is a reliable source, but isn’t it obvious that when he disagrees with Jensen about Jensen’s own opinion, Tucker’s assertion about this is not neutral?

I’ve provided several examples of things like this. You keep bringing up the fact that the sources used by the article meet Wikipedia’s standards of reliability and verifiability, but I’m not arguing against that claim. Verifiability/reliability and neutrality are two separate things, so demonstrating that something is reliable isn’t enough to demonstrate that it’s neutral. Jensen’s writings also meet Wikipedia’s standards for verifiability and reliability, but when Jensen expresses his own opinion in them about the cause of the IQ difference, his writings aren’t neutral. Do you understand this distinction, and how it’s relevant to the examples I’ve provided such as the one above? --Captain Occam (talk) 08:05, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

The article does not say that Shockley changed Jensen's mind: the word is "following" not "because" - Tucker uses "after". It gives the historical sequence events as presented by Tucker. I just summarise this. I don't understand your funny interpretation of WP:V and WP:NPOV. The relevant passage is on page 147-148 of Tucker and says a lot more in fact: [6], [7] As does the connected footnote 43 on page 255 of the book, which I have made available here.[8] Tucker's scholarship is impeccable.

Which other equally valid secondary sources are you referring to? Unless you cite books or articles explicitly I haven't got much idea what you're talking about. Tucker does not "claim" things - his history is supported by actual incontrovertible documentary evidence. But we are not here to discuss whether Tucker is right or not. You appear to be challenging a book because it conflicts with you personal point of view. The way wikipedia works, we don't discount impeccable sources like this. If there is another secondary source which says the opposite, please find it and the we can discuss it. Unfortunately, if we're talking about the Pioneer Fund, that would obviously exclude literature written by authors directly or indirectly funded by it or involved in its administration. For example Lynn's book would be discounted immediately, since it is a primary source. It can be relied on for certain details, e.g. details of the documents lodged in NY in 1937 when the Fund was set up. So by all means look for these other secondary sources and when you have produced them, we can start to discuss them. But please don't try to use primary sources such as autobiographical comments by Jensen. Mathsci (talk) 09:58, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Marxism and (N)POV

The most glaring fault of the article in its current state is the complete omission of the role of Marxist and neo-Marxist ideology in the historical development of the race and intelligence controversy. This needs correction if the article is to approach something resembling a neutral point of view. I assume that Mathsci, the primary editor, has not intentionally failed to make mention of this aspect, but is instead simply ignorant of the wider politico-historical context in which this debate has unfolded. I provide some information below in the hopes of turning both his attention as well as the attention of other editors to the need for this article to discuss both sides of the debate on equal terms.

Articles and/or books which could be reviewed as background material include:

• "A Contribution to Eysenck's Debate upon the Relationship between IQ and a Marxist Interpretation of Ideology" by Stephen Furner in: Bulletin of the British Psychological Society, Vol. 36, pp. 179-180.

• "Marxist Criticisms of IQ" by James T. Sanders in: Canadian Journal of Education / Revue canadienne de l'éducation, Vol. 10, No. 4 (Autumn, 1985), pp. 402-414

Radical Marxists critics have charged that IQ testing and IQ research, as represented by the work of Arthur Jensen, are either disguised racist ideology or pseudopsychological science. This article argues that the historical evidence marshalled in support of the first charge is both selective and irrelevant, and that the technical arguments advanced to support the second charge that IQ research is pseudoscience reflect both serious misunderstandings and misrepresentations of Jensen's views on the nature and heritability of IQ.

• "Marxism and the IQ Debate" by Michael R. Matthews in: Canadian Journal of Education / Revue canadienne de l'éducation, Vol. 12, No. 1 (Winter, 1987), pp. 184-199.

• Defenders of the Truth by Ullica Segerstråle (Oxford, 2000).

• Race, Social Class, and Individual Differences in I.Q. by Sandra Scarr, 1981.

Advocates of certain political and economic ideologies, most notably neo-Marxist and similar collectivist and totalitarian philosophies, are intolerant of the idea that not all of a person's behavior and not all social conditions are potentially amenable to the control of the political and economic system. To maintain the belief in complete economic determinism of the conditions of life, the importance of genetic factors - which are not directly subject to political or economic control - must be denied. This was the philosophical underpinning of Lysenkoism, which prevailed for many years in the Soviet Union, with ultimately disastrous consequences for the science of genetics and for its applications in agriculture in the U.S.S.R. Despite this lesson, in recent years we have seen a good deal of Lysenkois thinking in the so-called nature-nurture controversy over IQ - most blatantly promulgated, of course, by left-wing groups such as the Progressive Labor Party, the Students for a Democratic Society, the American Communist Party, and other minor, but highly vocal, political and social activist groups. (pp. 487-488)

• Intelligence: A New Look by Hans J. Eysenck (1998).

All these criticisms tend to have a political context, as one might have anticipated from the dislike expressed towards IQ testing by Hitler and Stalin, brothers-in-arms to ban any sign of objectivity from the political landscape. Modern writers who seeks to castigate IQ testing often sail under the flag of Marxism; this would include people like Stephen Rose, Leon Kamin, and R. L. Lewontin, whose book Not in Our Genes received much favourable attention from journalistic reviewers in the media, and severe criticism from experts writing in scientific journals. The same was true of Stephen Jay Gould, whose book The Mismeasure of Man has more factual errors per page than any book I have ever read. (pg. 10)

Much more can be found by anyone interested in the subject. I suspect that Mathsci, being the primary editor, will spare no effort in ensuring that the article becomes compliant with NPOV policy and will himself undertake the work of integrating material such as that presented above into the article. --Aryaman (talk) 13:45, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Comment In addition to my remarks below, all of these sources are primary, Varoon Arya. They are useless as history sources. Eysenck has been a Pioneer grantee for a long time. Concocting any content from these sources would be WP:OR and WP:SYNTH. Perhaps you can find a secondary source about this topic, but you haven't done so far. Mathsci (talk) 20:23, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

VA: Please, play nice. Much of the material you provide above is excellent. But, MathSci is a busy guy, so it is not his responsibility to add it. So, you should! Or Occam should. Or I should. Or some other editor should. The more we work together, the better the article will be. David.Kane (talk) 14:33, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

What about egalitarianism? Also, the concept of equalitarian dogma is discussed here.[9] --120 Volt monkey (talk) 15:48, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

(ec with sockpuppet) When I helped Hemlock Martinis (talk · contribs) extensively rejig the history section of Europe a few years years ago, one of the secondary references used was by Eric Hobsbawm. He wrote extensively on 20th century European history. Now, when that book was used, there was no indication at all in the text that Hobsbawm was a Marxist historian. So I would say this particular line of argument, while doubtless quite amusing to both of you, is WP:UNDUE. If you really want to have a laugh and cause a little bit of havoc on wikipedia, why not start a new spin-off article called Marxist history of the race and intelligence controversy. You could do a dry run on Marxist history of Europe, since that's still a red link. Varoon Arya did make a remark on his talk page about tiring me out prior to coming here qafter being invited here with lots of other editors by Captain Occam. So these particular circumstances might lead administrators or even members of ArbCom to interpret this curiously titled section as a piece of deliberate disruption. It's hard to tell. Mathsci (talk) 16:03, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Let's add that Hobsbawm was ahistorian and much of Marx's work is on history, so it is natural that Marx has had an influence on many historians. But marx was not a biologist. I'd love to see evidence that Stephen Jay Gould or Richard Lewontin are/were marxists. Oh, and I'd like to see evidence of unicorns too. Slrubenstein | Talk 16:37, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

A(ec) Actually, I think there's a very old version of the WP article on Race and intelligence on the psychology wiki that mentions some of the insults hurled around in the aftermath of the Bell Curve debate.[10] These are a bit similar to what happened in the 1970s to the four people who I named, who were very badly treated. The hereditarian Glayde Whitney did make remarks about "a Marxist-Lysenkoist denial of genetics". And there are other statements about scientific misconduct - both Rushton and Gottfredson had repeated problems with their universities and these are documented in Tucker's 2002 book. I suppose these items about Rushton, Whitney and Gottfredson could be added as extra detail. These are all Pioneer grantees of course and all are discussed in Tucker's book. A good secondary source might be "Science for segregation: race, law, and the case against Brown vs. Board of Education" by John P. Jackson (2005), which discusses Glayde Whitney on the first page. Should all these Pioneer grantees and their different conspiracy theories be discussed or might that be WP:UNDUE? Mathsci (talk) 16:43, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure that we want to get into details of the career of Glayde Whitney, also described in Tucker. President of the Behavioral Genetics Association - made a colourful speech about ethnic minorities and Marxists - the minutes show that the executive committee dissociated themselves from the statements of the president - and then Whitney was listed as Past President not long afterwards in his introduction to the autobiography of David Duke, the former Grand Wizard of the Klu Klux Klan. He died in 2002 and seems to have been both a racist and a Holocaust denier. Hmm. Is this what you wanted to include, Varoon Arya? Mathsci (talk) 17:12, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

In addition to the sources above, we could look at John Alcock's Triumph of Sociobiology (Oxford, 2001):

The mid-1970's were years of intense political activity on campuses, much of it initiated by left-wing professors and their students who opposed the war in Vietnam. At Harvard University, the war and various other injustices came under fire from a number of scholars of the Marxist or semi-Marxist persuasion, including Wilson's colleagues Lewontin and Gould. Lewontin and another colleague wrote about this time, "As working scientists in the field of evolutionary genetics and ecology, we have been attempting with some success to guide our own research by a conscious application of Marxist philosophy.... There is nothing in Marx, Lenin or Mao that is or that can be in contradiction with the particular physical facts and processes of a particular set of phenomena in the objective world". Marxist philosophy is founded on the premise of the perfectability of human institutions through ideological prescription. Therefore, persons with Marxist views were particularly unreceptive to the notion that an evolved "human nature" exists, fearing that such a claim would be interpreted to mean that human behavior cannot change. If our actions really were immune to intervention, then the many ills of modern societies could not be corrected. Such a conclusion is needless to say a repugnant one, and not just for Marxists. (pg. 20)

Here's the abstract of Roger Pearson's Race, Intelligence and Bias in Academe (Scott-Townsend, 1991):

This book details evidence of widespread efforts to withhold from the public any clear understanding of the importance of heredity in shaping human abilities, particularly with regard to research into the genetic basis of human behavior, with particular reference to heredity and intelligence. Eminent academic authorities such as Arthur Jensen at Berkeley, Richard Herrnstein of Harvard, Thomas Bouchard of Minnesota, William Shockley of Stanford, Philippe Rushton of Western Ontario, Linda Gottfredson of Delaware, and numerous other scholars have been criticized by Marxist faculty members such as Leon Kamin and Richard Lewontin, pilloried in Leftist publications, described in less than favorable terms in the general media, and had their classes disrupted—even suffering physical assault in some cases—by Marxist student organizations. All this is amply documented, and the result is an up-to-date book which makes entertaining reading but provides solid, documented information on what is currently happening in major segments of the university arena. What makes all this important is that the role of heredity in shaping human abilities has now been demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt by research into behavioral genetics. Yet due to a concerted campaign by Leftists within the academic world and the prevailing political climate in the media, these facts are little known to the general public. For those interested this is also a useful source book.

Of course, the abstract alone is not quotable, but it's a lead worth following up on, particularly given the title of the work.

There's nothing "disruptive" about suggesting this article make mention of the role of Marxist ideology in the history of the race and intelligence debate, particularly as an offshoot of the wider sociobiology debate (which is really little more than infighting among the branches of post-Classical positivism). It's documented in reliable sources and is obviously relevant to the topic. Segerstråle (Oxford, 2000) discusses it in depth. What, exactly, is the problem here? Is it somehow taboo to mention that the beliefs and actions of some of the most vocal opponents of hereditarianism, such as Lewontin, Gould, and Rose, were influenced by Marxist ideology? --Aryaman (talk) 11:03, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Proposal to Varoon Arya

Varoon, Roger Pearson is a Pioneer grantee, so this is a primary source for history. His role is described at length in Tucker. As far as the first quote gos, this article is not about sociobiology. If you read the 2001 OUP book by Ullica Segerstråle, which I have added to the reference and linked with a footnote into the text, she makes it clear that the race and intelligence debate should not be confused with the sociobiology debate (a common source of confusion) even if some of the players on the environmentalist side were the same; she also makes it clear that political ideology really had nothing to do with the scientific merits of the debate. That requires looking through the book as a whole, not cherry-picking quotations: she says that she wrote her book to clarify what exactly had been going on in the debate.

However I have a contructive suggestion to make, I hope along the lines of extra content of the type you want to see in the article.

Her book is an excellent source for the behaviour and ideology of the group around Gould and Lewontin. Not even Segerstråle describes them as Marxists. She is far more cautious, even if in print Lewontin at one stage made such an assertion of that kind. The allegations and counterallegations (which Wooldridge calls "insults") exchanged between these groups of scientists - words like "racist" or "Marxist" - should be handled in the same kind of cautious circumspect way in our writing, which should paraphrase secondary sources. I would certainly be absolutely against going into things like Glayde Whitney's links with the Grand Master of the Klu Klux Klan, etc. I did note that Segerstråle asserts that Gould and Lewontin chose their approach to divert attention from a possible vacuum in their own scientific careers by deliberately putting other scientists in the spotlight. I think that's discussed at length in her book.

So my recommendation is to use Segerstråle's, Wooldridge's and Tucker's books (I might have missed some) to have a slightly more refined and detailed set of comments on the activities of both sides, i.e. to amplify and possibly explain the insults traded between both sides. However, we should not act as historians - we should quote historians and what they write in secondary sources, not assemble quotes ourselves. I am totally against that. It amounts to WP:SYNTH and WP:OR.

I have listened to your suggestions several times and acted upon them: hence (1) the inclusion of the material on the Sociobiology Study Group and (2) adding Segerstråle as a reference (I had actually looked at it while finding material for (1)). Certainly the interaction on the lede of another article was positive. Slrubenstein was delighted that we could work together on the lede and I have to say that he has privately encouraged me to make the most of that excellent collaboration (I hope you're reading this Slr :) ). This material is even more neutral, so I actually don't anticipate any kind of problem.

So would you be ready to work out some not-too-extended specific content of the above kind, based on those three (or more) secondary sources, and then use that material as a basis for linking to primary sources (such as quotes)? Mathsci (talk) 13:57, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Of course I'm willing to collaborate on this. You've done a good job of researching the literature from the environmentalist perspective. There are ample connections made to the Pioneer Fund and more than sufficient examples of unqualified usage of the phrase "scientific racism". Your coverage of the literature from the hereditarian perspective, however, is far less satisfactory. Eysenck, Jensen, Shockley, Gottfredson and others have commented - some quite extensively - on what they perceive as an ideology-driven campaign to malign their characters and to misrepresent the results of scientific research to the public. Pearson identifies this campaign as Marxist in nature - and he's not alone there, either. There is sufficient material from reliable sources to support a statement to the effect that some of the most vocal opponents of hereditarian research - and Lewontin's published exchanges with Jensen in the 1970's are well-noted here, not least of all because Lewontin specifically mentioned that exchange as an example of what he would like to see done to combat "racism" in the wider academic field - have either themselves admitted to actively pursuing the realization of radical egalitarian and/or Marxist goals through their academic work or have been closely associated with those who have. The issue is significant enough that scholars have written articles (cf. above, "Marxist Criticisms of IQ" by James T. Sanders and the response "Marxism and the IQ Debate" by Michael R. Matthews, as well as "Egalitarian Fiction and Collective Fraud" by L. Gottfredson) and books on it (e.g. Pearson's Race, Intelligence and Bias in Academe). In short, the current article quite clearly asserts that hereditarianism has been historically supported and perhaps even funded by those with ideological interests - namely, racist/eugenecist ideology - but says absolutely nothing of environmentalism's (or better: environmental determinism's) support by equally ideological groups - namely those supporting radical egalitarianism and/or (neo-)Marxism. There is no discussion of potential bias in academia, and the role of the popular media in all of this goes untreated, despite the fact that it has been commented upon at length, and was itself the subject of a study published in 1987. Until these problems are corrected, we don't need a Marxist history of the race and intelligence controversy. We already have it in front of us. --Aryaman (talk) 15:35, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, what you write is nonsense. Please stop wasting my time. Mathsci (talk) 23:16, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Primary versus Secondary sources

The current version of the article uses Lynn, Richard (2001), The science of human diversity: a history of the Pioneer Fund, University Press of America, ISBN 076182040X as a source. Perfectly reasonable! I don't want to get caught up with the semantic debate over what is a "primary" and what is a "secondary" source. But if Lynn (2001) is a reasonable source for this article (and I think it is), then surely Intelligence: A New Look by Hans J. Eysenck (1998) is a reasonable source as well, right? David.Kane (talk) 21:00, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

It's only there as a link/reference not a source. It was not used for writing the article and appears alongside the actual source that was used. I put it in because it is a document that gives the precise terms of the original 1937 bequest, quoted partially in Tucker. I used the Lynn booklet elsewhere off-wiki for dating this image File:Draper.jpg. Similarly the footnote to Rushton and jensen is for the reader's convenience.Mathsci (talk) 21:15, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

So, you have no problem with another editor using, for example, Intelligence: A New Look by Hans J. Eysenck (1998) as long as he uses it correctly to, for example, cover material that is not found in a secondary source as you have used Lynn to get "the precise terms of the original 1937 bequest?" David.Kane (talk) 21:27, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Yes I do have a problem because Eysenck was a Pioneer grantee. It is a primary source. So obviously is the Lynn article. It is a history of the Pioneer Fund written by a board member and grantee. It was not used as a source but as an extra note that could be helpful for the reader (it contains a precise statement of the terms of the 1937 bequest, partially quoted in Tucker). That has now been made a little clearer in the footnote. In the same way Mein Kampf is a primary source for the article on Adolf Hitler. It appears in footnote 111 of the WP article, but the structure and content of the article has been determined using secondary sources.

Depending on the context, with appropriate qualification, the Eysenck article could be used in conjunction with a secondary source. There are plenty of secondary commentaries on Eysenck, and at least one biography from 1981. He was another Pioneer grantee and he has been involved in controversies after all. In the same way one could quote from the The Bell Curve, but it couldn't be used as a secondary source in this article. So, especially if controversial events are involved, care has to be taken: every attempt should be made to find a secondary source. Mathsci (talk) 21:59, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

As Slrubenstein has said, the Eysenck quote could definitely not be used to show that Stephen J. Gould, Richard Lewontin and Leon Kamin are or were Marxists. But the political activities of Gould and Lewontin on the one hand and Whitney on the other are described in multiple secondary sources. Mathsci (talk) 22:37, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Mathsci, I think it’s obvious to most of us that you’re applying Wikipedia’s rules about reliable sources in a very selective way. First of all, primary sources are allowed in Wikipedia, as long as they’re used with care and we avoid original research. Your insistence that we claim Jensen’s opinion to be something other than what he himself says that it is, because Jensen’s own writings are a primary source, is wikilawyering. In addition, you haven’t explained why all of the sources provided by Varoon Arya are primary. Ullica Segerstråle is not a pioneer fund grantee, nor is she one of the people covered by this article; do you have any justification for calling her book a primary source other than just that you want to exclude her views from the article?

In addition to the people who’ve expressed NPOV concerns about this article on the race and intelligence discussion page, there appear to now be three of us currently involved in this discussion who think it needs to cover more than the narrow range of views that it currently does—me, David.Kane, and Varoon Arya. I think it’s pretty clear that this is the consensus. Can you accept that? --Captain Occam (talk) 22:50, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

I noticed that you have explictly asked a number of editors who share your point of view in editing Race and intelligence to come to this page. I have notified a senior administrator, in case you try to argue that you have some false kind of consensus.

Ullica Segerstrale wrote about the sociobiology debate, which is distinct from the race and intelligence debate as the author herself points out. It is an excellent book mostly about the controversy surrounding E. O. Wilson, but not directly about race and intelligence. Moreover the author concludes that political ideology does not seem to have influenced the scientific research. It does describe the two periods of disturbance in the seventies and mid-nineties following the publications of Jensen and Herrnstein-Murray, which got mixed up with Wilson and sociobiology. These events are mentioned in two different sentences in the current article. It's not quite clear what else needs to be added, since so far nothing explicit has been mentioned. I suppose "right wing" could be inserted in front of Pioneer Fund and "left wing" in front of Science for the People: that would seem to be one likely outcome. Another less neutral and contentious outcome, which I would be totally opposed to, would be to insert "racist" in front of Pioneer Fund and "Marxist" in front of Science for the People. Extreme terms like that are best avoided in this article. Mathsci (talk) 00:03, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Mathsci, you haven't answered my question. In response to Varoon Arya's suggestion about additional sources we could use, you said "all of these sources are primary, Varoon Arya." One of the sources he suggested was Segerstråle's book, so I am asking you to support your assertion that this book is a "primary source". Are you going to support your assertion about this, or do you admit that you were wrong to claim that all of VA's suggested sources are primary?

"I noticed that you have explictly asked a number of editors who share your point of view in editing Race and intelligence to come to this page. I have notified a senior administrator, in case you try to argue that you have some false kind of consensus. "

And yet when I look at your contributions, I see that you haven't posted on anyone's talk page (either an administrator's or anyone else's) since this comment from you on Maunus's page. Bluffs like this from you would be more convincing if they weren't so easily shown to be empty. But in any case, if you want to actually go ahead and do what you're claiming to have done already, I don't have a problem with it. This page alone contains enough personal attacks and wikilawyering from you that it's pretty unlikely that bringing it to an admin's attention could work to your advantage. --Captain Occam (talk) 00:45, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

<- Could you please stop wikilawyering and trying to twist my words? The source satisifies WP:RS, but it is only tangentially relevant to the subject. If somebody suggests a specific new piece of information in the form of a new sentence or sentences that are to be added to the article. using the source then that can be discussed. So far none of you have suggested specific content changes/additions. This page is not a WP:FORUM. You might be used to prolonging discussions on Race and intelligence interminably - here all that is required is for the specific piece of content to be added either directly to the article using WP:BRD or for that content to be mentioned here. Nebulous discussions are useless. As the recent changes patroller remarked, at the moment this is a normal, neutral and well-written wikipedia article. So as I've already said, specific content changes using this source or any similar source can of course be discussed. I have no objection.

I used wikipedia email. Please redact your second paragraph. Mathsci (talk) 05:32, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

• In this post [11] to Varoon Arya's talk page, reproduced below, you claim that you have worries that you think this article is not neutral. Why do you think it's not neutral? Why do you mention me "running out of steam"? What is that supposed to mean? You give every appearance of being the organizer of a WP:TAG TEAM, discussing tactics. Is this really how you imagine wikipedia articles are edited?

I’m not sure it’s reasonable to assume he’ll be running out of steam anytime soon. You didn’t get to see much of this during the mediation case, which he deliberately refused to be part of because he objected to Ludwig as the mediator, but before the article entered mediation he could sometimes keep this up for more than a month at a time.

However, I don’t think that should be a reason for us to not work on improving the article. You, me, and David.Kane appear to all agree that the article has NPOV issues which need to be addressed, and Bryan Pesta and Mikemikev have also raised similar concerns on the race and intelligence talk page. If Mathsci is the only person who disagrees with the five of us about this, I think it’s pretty clear what the consensus is.

If your own time is the limiting factor here, though, I’m all right with waiting until whenever you’re more available. I find dealing with Mathsci to be kind of taxing, so I’d prefer to do it at a time when I’d be able to have some help from you with this. --Captain Occam (talk) 00:30, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Mathsci (talk) 05:51, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

“Why do you mention me "running out of steam"? What is that supposed to mean?”

Why don’t you ask him? If you look at my conversation with him, you’ll see that he’s the one who brought up this idea in the comment that I was responding to. You’ll also notice that I did not initially ask him to come help me with this article in particular—I told him that I’d like him to become more involved in the race and intelligence article now that mediation for it is over, without mentioning either you or this article, and he was the one who brought up your behavior for this article, and the idea of him becoming involved in it.

I’ve already explained why I think this article is not neutral, and so have a few other users. If you aren’t willing or able to understand or acknowledge this, that’s your own problem, and doesn’t require us to repeat ourselves multiple times. The important thing is that of the users who are currently expressing this opinion—me, Mikemikev, David.Kane, and Varoon Arya—none of them are users whom I specifically solicited to come help me with this article. They all reached this opinion independently of any influence from me, and the consensus among us and you is four to one. The only reason I haven’t already made another attempt to edit the article based on this consensus is because you don’t seem willing to acknowledge it, so I think it needs to be made as clear as possible by having several of the editors who feel this way participating here at once.

Until then, bluster and threaten me all you like. It won’t change anything, and I probably won’t reply again if you don’t have anything to say that’s relevant to improving the article, which is what we’re supposed to be discussing here. --Captain Occam (talk) 17:20, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

EDIT: Whoops, I forgot to mention DJ as someone else who's explained why they agree about the NPOV problems with this article. See his comments about this above. --Captain Occam (talk) 18:29, 14 April 2010 (UTC)