Talk:Race and intelligence

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Anti-racism

Anti-racism includes beliefs, actions, movements, and policies adopted or developed to oppose racism. In general, anti-racism is intended to promote an egalitarian society in which people do not face discrimination on the basis of their race, however defined. By its nature, anti-racism tends to promote the view that racism in a particular society is both pernicious and socially pervasive, and that particular changes in political, economic, and/or social life are required to eliminate it. --Jagz (talk) 21:36, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

That's nice. Why are you telling us that? JettaMann (talk) 02:23, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

"any doctrine of superiority based on racial differentiation is scientifically false, morally condemnable, socially unjust and dangerous, and that there is no justification for racial discrimination, in theory or in practice, anywhere" United Nations DeclarationELDRAS (talk) 14:17, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

"It is time to stop committing the 'moralistic fallacy' that good science must conform to approved outcomes."[3] --Jagz (talk) 22:57, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Agreed, good science does not have predefined outcomes. that is why racist science, like that sponsored by the Pioneer fund, Rushton etc., is such bad science - they twist anything to achieve their racist ends. Like some editors. Slrubenstein | Talk 00:15, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Please stop being belligerent. --Jagz (talk) 02:34, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

tag frenzy

Can t this go on the talk page. There are way too many redundant tags on the page. Also: "The discussion page may contain suggestions" is a joke. The talk page is so cluttered that I couldn't find any suggestions. --71.184.193.227 (talk) 13:11, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

No. It needs to go on the article page because readers need to be informed of any concerns someone has pointed out. We cant assume readers will check the discussion page, and I am pretty sure guidelines ask to place it on article and not discussion. Brusegadi (talk) 05:47, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Read the tag itself, it answers the question. It belongs on the article to point to the discussion.LeadSongDog (talk) 17:25, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Remove the Manipulated and Controversial Data - for Better Consensus!

The IQ scores are not the benchmark in the determining the national IQ, the result can be manipulated and altered to give certain countries a significant advantage over others, especially in the western world which suffers from skin colour bias. These IQ scores can be used to reject people with dark skin in preference to light skin by assuming that they are of lower IQ. Chinese are light skin and are more acceptable to white men especially the chinese girls which are softer target for western males because of their stronger tilt towards multiple sexual partners. These IQ scores are nothing but a form of scientific racism, a old wine in a new bottle, to practice racism with a reason and even get a legal recognition for their evil deeds. You go and check the IQ score of a rural poor in developing countries who are illiterate and malnourished and brand whole country as of lower IQ is nothing but a consiparacy by the racist west. The IQ scores are more relevant in the countries where there is less social divide between the socio-economic condition of the urban middle class and rural populace. This article can be improved by removing the biased and manipulated data compiled by western editors to achieve the cause of white supermacist and vested interests. General discussion on race and intelligence with neutral point of view should be encouraged.--Himhifi 00:44, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

You forgot to use the word Nazi. --Jagz (talk) 00:57, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

http://groups.uni-paderborn.de/rindermann/materialien/PublikationsPDFs/07EJP.pdf -- see Figure 2 --Legalleft (talk) 04:22, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Chinese girls do What????? This is bizarre. Can you provide a source to substantiate this racist statement that oriental girls are more promiscuous and into orgies?Die4Dixie 14:25, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Western males are more tilted towards what???? It's not just unsubstantiated, it's unintelligible. Please strikeout.LeadSongDog (talk) 17:30, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Article is biased, and written with racist POV of vested interests- requires cleanup!

The neutrality of this article is in doubt as it is contain racist point of view of vested interests who are trying to propogate there POV and false notion that bilogically race do exist and there is a direct correlation between the intelligence and colour of the skin. The data presented in the article is of little credibility or relevance which has been counter challenged and proved unauthentic by several authors of repute and should be removed. The neutrality check of this article should be carried out.--Himhifi 01:45, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

What specifically is your problem with the article? You need to state specifics. As the article states, "The contemporary debate on race and intelligence is about what causes racial and ethnic differences in IQ test scores." If you wish to present another POV, you can add it provided you cite your sources. --Jagz (talk) 19:40, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm planning to take the POV tag off the article in a few days because there has been no discussion. --Jagz (talk) 20:06, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Race-IQ Gap Remains

Here is a 2006 article press release from Rushton:

"Despite widespread claims that the gap is closing between Blacks and Whites in educational achievement and intelligence test scores, new research shows the 15-point IQ difference is as large today as it was 100 years ago."[4]

--Jagz (talk) 11:28, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Different opinions on this with Nisbett having another.Ultramarine (talk) 16:15, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

It may be useful to present this difference of opinions in the article. This is the article by Rushton and Jensen upon which the above press release is based. [5] --Jagz (talk) 22:41, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

I second that. I think it would be useful to present the difference of opinion. --DavidD4scnrt (talk) 05:37, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

We can possibly present this in the Policy implications section. --Jagz (talk) 15:14, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Mainstream view

It appears that the mainstream view among the experts in the early 1960's was the predominantly environmental explanation for the IQ gaps but now the mainstream view among experts is that there is a significant genetic component. That being the case, I'm not sure why there is such a fervent effort among some editors to remove possible explanations for how this genetic component came into being. --Jagz (talk) 19:03, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

No evidence for what mainstream view is. No reason to give numerous Pioneer Fund theories similar to one another. Enough to mention Rushton's as one example.Ultramarine (talk) 19:10, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Also, Gottfredson's theory does not discuss racial differences. Could be in an IQ or human evolution article.Ultramarine (talk) 19:23, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

You should leave your Pioneer Fund personal biases out of Wikipedia. Please start now. --Jagz (talk) 18:00, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

No, the Pioneer Fund is not a reputable scientific organization, it helps us identify fring groups. When editing the article on evolution we use affiliation with creation science institutes also to identify fringe groups. Slrubenstein | Talk 18:07, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately for you, your opinion about the Pioneer Fund is not supported by the Pioneer Fund article. It's an opinion that appears to be held by those opposed to their reseach. Even if it was a universally accepted opinion, you would be guilty of condoning guilt by association, a type of prejudice/discrimination. --Jagz (talk) 18:21, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

The Pioneer Fund's status is questionable and it does push a specific agenda. It is wise to be wary. Although at times the race and intelligence issue is a scholarly debate it is also a political debate. The article needs to avoid the double-danger of references, research and opinion being read only in one context.Nick Connolly (talk) 19:00, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Jagz, I do not judge someone's guilt by association. Notability is indexed by a number of things. Research funded by the NSF is probably notable; research published in a prestigious peer-reviewed publication is probably notable. How else do you think we index notability in the scientific community? Similarly, funding from the Pioneer Fund or publication in a minor journal created specificially to publish specific views is an index of non-notability. This is not guilt by association, this is acknowledgment that "notability" is always a measure of standing within a community. Slrubenstein | Talk 19:54, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't disagree with the recent edits -- describing Rushton's book is probably enough to cover the topic -- but the justification (based on Pioneer fund backing) is mistaken. Pioneer funded the MInnesota twins research which was subsequently published in Science. The funding of a research project doesn't tell you much about the notability of the research -- it's hard to imagine how it could in any direct way. --Legalleft (talk) 20:08, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Respectable journals, especially in controversial subjects, always require that the author list any potential bias or influence. Source of funding is one such possible factor. Like the tobacco industry sponsoring research on lung cancer and smoking. No evidence of actual errors in the research is needed. So funding is important.Ultramarine (talk) 20:34, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

The Pioneer Fund article says, "Its stated purpose is to advance the scientific study of heredity and human differences. The fund focuses on projects it perceives will not be easily funded due to controversial subject matter." It seems that its purpose is to help remedy the discrimination researchers face in getting funds for their controversial research instead of being an actual source of bias. --Jagz (talk) 22:50, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

All -- doesn't this have absolutely nothing to do with Pioneer fund? The question was undue weight and notability. I pretty much agree that it's difficult to distinguish Rushton and Lynn's theories, so given that Rushton's book is pretty notable and Lynn's articles less so, it makes sense to describe the one and not the other. And all that has nothing to do with the Pioneer fund. Or am I missing something? --Legalleft (talk) 23:16, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Ultramarine states above that there is no evidence what the mainstream view is. --Jagz (talk) 18:08, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

reaction time and BW IQ gap

here's a recent paper: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.intell.2007.07.004 --Legalleft (talk) 21:45, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Correlations between IQ and reaction time are low.Ultramarine (talk) 22:09, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

i am not familiar with the doi organization. while the mere fact of my not being familiar is not to say that it is not a reliable source - the fact that its advertising sponsors send out phishing pop ups lends little to its credibility. And i did not see anything in the abstract where the authors identify reaction time as a facet of intellegence - they seem to be arguing that it is a correlating factor. Did I miss it or do you have some other source that says reaction time is part of intellegence? TheRedPenOfDoom (talk) 02:46, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

doi = Digital object identifier. reaction time = ECT (elementary cognitive task) = basic measures of information processing. Google around and you'll find more. Correcting for attenuation, the correlation between IQ test scores and ECT performance is about 0.5 (J. Grudnik and J. Kranzler, Meta-analysis of the relationship between intelligence and inspection time, Intelligence 29 (2001), pp. 523–535.) --Legalleft (talk) 03:19, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

hmmm there doesn't seem to be an article on elementary cognitive task. Anybody want to help write one?Nick Connolly (talk) 03:31, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

REACTION TIME? THINK SPRINTING !!!!!!!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.139.0.185 (talk) 22:19, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Caution: The study is not yet peer reviewed. LeadSongDog (talk) 17:43, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Sure it is. The proof wouldn't have been posted if it didn't survive peer review. 165.123.139.232 (talk) 22:13, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

No it hasn't been published. Thats why it is marked as "Corrected Proof". It may shortly be published and then we can see if it made it into a journal that can be considered a WP:RS. TheRedPenOfDoom (talk) 22:37, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Corrected proofs have been peer reviewed. It's common practice to publish the review-formatted manuscript before a final formatted manuscript is published. From the page under the link:

Note to users: The section "Articles in Press" contains peer reviewed accepted articles to be published in this journal. When the final article is assigned to an issue of the journal, the "Article in Press" version will be removed from this section and will appear in the associated published journal issue. The date it was first made available online will be carried over. Please be aware that although "Articles in Press" do not have all bibliographic details available yet, they can already be cited using the year of online publication and the DOI as follows: Author(s), Article Title, Journal (Year), DOI. Please consult the journal's reference style for the exact appearance of these elements, abbreviation of journal names and the use of punctuation. There are three types of "Articles in Press": Accepted manuscripts: these are articles that have been peer reviewed and accepted for publication by the Editorial Board. The articles have not yet been copy edited and/or formatted in the journal house style. Uncorrected proofs: these are copy edited and formatted articles that are not yet finalized and that will be corrected by the authors. Therefore the text could change before final publication. Corrected proofs: these are articles containing the authors' corrections and may, or may not yet have specific issue and page numbers assigned.

There are no content differences between a final published version and the corrected proof. In many disciplines, the corrected proof is retained in an open source repository, and will often be the most read version of the document. All that's missing from the corrected proof is assignment to a particular space in an upcoming issue of the journal. --Legalleft (talk) 01:59, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

race and intelligence [and its correlates]

an article about race and intelligence would also rightly discuss its correlates, such as school achievement, income, etc. several of the paragraphs removed by TheRedPenOfDoom (talk · contribs) directly discuss race (e.g. IQ and the Wealth of Nations) whereas others are themselves the topic of discussions regarding race (e.g. the Ashkenazi intelligence stuff). That should all be restored. --Legalleft (talk) 07:29, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

the items removed did not include identifying the correlations by the published authors thus being clear violations of WP:SYN - all analysis and conclusions in WP articles must be the result of third party reliable sources - not strung togethter by WP editors. TheRedPenOfDoom (talk) 12:08, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Discuss on this Talk page then. --Jagz (talk) 12:17, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

I see you have added tags to the article but have not initiated discussions specific to the tags. You should initiate the discussions. --Jagz (talk) 13:44, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

TheRedPenOfDoom -- but (as I tried to explain above) they do discuss race. You'd have to read the sources to know whether they do or not. Most prominently, IQ and the Wealth of Nations / IQ and Global Inequality does explicitly, getting into details such as estimating the average national IQ from the racial demongraphics of the country. --Legalleft (talk) 17:01, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Show the analysis made by the sources. The analysis by third parties wasn't there in the cited material. It appeared to be violation of WP:OR / WP:SYN. It was therefore removed.TheRedPenOfDoom (talk) 17:07, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Also, let's please ensure we resolve this issue here on the talk page before reintroducing this material in the article, as per WP policies. Also, other further objections are that tables such as found in IQatWoN are national IQ values, therefore largely ethnic rather than racial; also they are highly controversial, and they certainly cannot be presented without the full context of what's controversial about them, and finally adding them would again put undue weight on theories adhered to by a very small minority of academics in the field.--Ramdrake (talk) 18:26, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

I disagree. All the data can be regarded from one POV as being largely ethnic rather than racial. The racial v ethnic issue is a fundamental aspect of this, as race as a biological criteria is itself in dispute AND even if it weren't the data is largely based on using ethnicity as a proxy for race. Is that a big problem for people who claim an intelligence-IQ link? Yes indeed. Should it therefore be avoided in the article? Absolutely not, expunging data based on ethnicity would make the article confusing and even more open to POV biases.Nick Connolly (talk) 18:56, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

The map that was removed is neither ethinic nor racial data- it was National IQ scores. To jump from national scores to 'race' or 'ethnicity' is not allowed under WP:SYN - therefore it cannot be included. TheRedPenOfDoom (talk) 19:16, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

For the national IQ map, it's much simpler than that -- the connection is explicitly made in the original source, the book IQ and Global Inequality. Therefore, it is not SYN to present it in this article. Please read the book to confirm for yourself if you doubt it. Otherwise, assume good faith when I tell you that I have confirmed the connection. --Legalleft (talk) 20:28, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

You would need to include the quotes from the original source. Without attributable third party analysis, it is SYN.TheRedPenOfDoom (talk) 20:33, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

There's no room to quote vast sections of a book. Look it up in a library. I can put various excerpts here, but that seems absurd. We can't quote at length from the hundreds of sources cited. --Legalleft (talk) 20:38, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Look at Table 9.6 "The intelligence of nations categorized by race" or any of the ~100 other references to race in the book. --Legalleft (talk) 20:40, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

(e/c) Doesn't matter if I read the source and see it there. You can't include analysis in the article with out attributing it to the WP:RS that is doing the analysis. TheRedPenOfDoom (talk) 20:44, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't have a clue what you're talking about. I'm saying that the book where the map is found talks about the data in the map in the context of racial differences in IQ. The analysis is done in the book where the map comes from. What part of that doesn't make sense? --Legalleft (talk) 20:49, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

If that is indeed the case, you need to find a way to accurately reflect what ever the processes (analysis/synthesis of data) were undertaken by the author(s) of the book to create a map of nations that somehow reflects race.TheRedPenOfDoom (talk) 20:58, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Not to mention that the matter of undue weight hasn't been addressed yet, as this is a very controversial piece of research, and represents a very small minority opinion.--Ramdrake (talk) 21:29, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Agreed.TheRedPenOfDoom (talk) 22:07, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Dear TheRedPenOfDoom, I think you are misunderstanding the issue of synethsis in articles. An article should be an adequate representation of the issue. In this case the issue is an unresolved partly-scientific, partly-political debate in psychometrics about the relation (if any) of race and IQ. In that debate, far beyond the walls of Wikipedia and prior even to the existance of the WWW, all sorts of arguments and data have been thrown about. The synthesis you are objecting to is not that of the editors of the article, but of the assorted academics who have contributed to the discussion over many decades. National IQ is relevant to the article because it is VERIFIABLY part of the issue the article describes. Is National IQ actually a big enormous red-herring? In my opinion yes it is, but that has nothing to do with the article. The article should not be edited on the basis of the quality of the underlying ideas but on the basis of which arguments/data can be verified as having played a role in the external academic debate. Both critics and advocates of a Race-IQ link would probably include National IQ in a survey of the topic, the latter if only to debunk it. Nick Connolly (talk) 21:54, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

I am quite aware of the disputed nature of the topic outside Wikipedia. However, I am specifically objecting to SYN by the editors of the Wikipedia article who are attempting to include a map of IQ by nations under the rubric that it is somehow related to the topic of 'race' and intellegence. If the map under discussion is indeed on topic for this article, it is up to the editors who wish to include it to provide the analysis from the source that shows how national IQ scores are related to the topic of 'race and intellegence'.TheRedPenOfDoom (talk) 22:01, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure of your point here. If you are aware of the debate then surely your objection isn't SYN but that the map wasn't properly explained in the context of race & IQ. If that is your point then why didn't you just add some text to explain it? That would have reduced the net amount of typing in the world by, erm, lots. Suggestion reinstate the map and add better explantory text eg "Attempts to measure national IQ has played a role in the ongoing debate over Race and IQ". Nick Connolly (talk) 22:10, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

No - it is SYN for WP editors to take a map of national IQ scores and drop it into an article on 'race and intellegence'. If the source of the map does indeed make claims somehow linking national IQ scores to race, and I will state that it is entirely possible that someone does try to make that claim, it is not my responsibility to read the book and summarize the authors arguements. That is the responsibility of the editors who want to include that information in the wikipedia article - and so far it has not been done. Therefore the map does not belong.TheRedPenOfDoom (talk) 22:22, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

I think we may have to agree to disagree on the issue of synthesis and editorial responsibility. In the meantime do you agree with my suggestion? Reinstate the map with a better (none synthetic) explanation as to why the map appears ina Race IQ article. Seems like a happy compromise :) Nick Connolly (talk) 22:37, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

What I have continually stated in nearly every one of these posts is that the map of national IQ would need to have the analysis that somehow claims to link 'national' IQ to 'race' summarized or quoted from the source material before it could be considered for inclusion. However, since, as Ramdrake has indicated, there may also be concerns about undue weight, you may want to show a draft of your proposal for re-inclusion here or in a sandbox to gain concensus prior to adding that material to the article.TheRedPenOfDoom (talk) 22:55, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Consensus is a wonderful word. I note that in this case to achieve consensus I really need to find a form of words that would be agreeable to you. My mind reading powers are not what they where after that unhappy incident with the martian milkfloat. So perhaps you could suggest a form of words that you'd find agreeable? Cordially Nick Connolly (talk) 23:01, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Next time I am at a library I will see if they have the book. If they have the book I will see if I am able to find a coherrent way to express how someone is attempting to conflate current national IQ scores to race. TheRedPenOfDoom (talk) 16:26, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

So in the meantime you wouldn't actually have a way of judging whether the form of words I might put up is fiathful to the source or not. How about you assume good faith, let me fix up the issue of National IQ - and in the event of you looking it all up and thinking it should say something different you can then change the wording later. Nick Connolly (talk) 19:07, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

I changed the caption of the current average IQ map. It may fix the problem. --Jagz (talk) 03:51, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

The addition to the caption had no relation to the topic of the article as far as I could see and was removed. It would seem to be appropriate to add to the 'See Also' section a link to WP article on "National IQ rates", if such an article exists. However, there is no need within this article to continue the conflation of current 'National' identities with ethnicity/race. TheRedPenOfDoom (talk) 16:20, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

I disagree with you and believe the caption should be changed back to the way I had it as shown below. It is a good compromise. Instead of including the other map, we can just include a link to the article with the map. --Jagz (talk) 17:24, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

File:AverageIQ-Map-World.png

Contemporary average IQ of the indigenous populations of the world according to Race Differences in Intelligence. For the average IQ of all people settled today, see IQ and Global Inequality.

You are continuing to conflate 'national' IQ and race/ethnicity. National IQ rates are not the topic of this article. TheRedPenOfDoom (talk) 17:33, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

The authors of IQ and Global Inequality think that national IQ has a lot to do with race. Who are we to say otherwise? --Legalleft (talk) 17:46, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

That is the nub of the issue. IMHO the national IQ is 1. probably meaningless and 2. probably not comprable across populations and 3. tells us nothing about race and IQ anyway. BUT my opinion isn't what the article is about and it is verifiable that notable people in notable works on the topic of IQ and group variations in intelligence really, really, really do think national IQ is relevant to race. Are they wrong? Probably. Are they motivated by racism or some sinister variation of right wing politics? Probably. Does that have a bearing on this article? Nope. What I assume to be a well intentioned attempt to police the veracity of this article is having the (unintended) effect of disrupting it. RedPenofDoom, you seem to be saying you haven't read the reference - in which case you can't claim synthesis and your objection stands only on a lack of proper explanation. The correct thing to do is to add a short account of how national IQ gets thrown into the academic argy-bargy of Race and IQ. Nick Connolly (talk) 19:07, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

(e/c w/Ramdrake below) The point is that no one has included how these authors (or anyone) has converted nationality into race. You need to include their analysis of how they managed to accomplish this - or the article is in violation of SYN. TheRedPenOfDoom (talk) 19:18, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Well I keep suggesting that we do exactly that. I'm happy to do the leg work if one of you two can't. We could have fixed it all in the time we've spent on this conversation. I'll make the edit later.Nick Connolly (talk) 19:46, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Nick, here is a critique of one of the two studies. As you can see, some of the same concerns are raised.:

IQ and the Wealth of Nations. A Critique of Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen's Recent Book

Thomas Volken

Recently Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen have presented evidence that differences in national IQ account for the substantial variation in national per capita income and growth. However, their findings must be considered as highly problematic. The authors neither make use of state-of-the-art methodological techniques nor can they substantiate their theoretical claims. More precisely the authors confuse IQ with human capital and fail to adequately discuss the causal sequence of their argument.

Hope this helps.--Ramdrake (talk) 20:30, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

OK useful. Critical appraisal of this sort of research enhances its notability.Nick Connolly (talk) 23:58, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

In case that wasn't obvious, I totally agree with TheRedPenOfDoom: conversion of "national IQs" (such as they are) into "racial IQs" is SYN at best. Above all, it is intellectually dishonest to present them as legitimate science when they have been so highly disputed.--Ramdrake (talk) 19:33, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

It isn't synthesis by an editor of WP but synthesis by a referenced third party. The first is naughty, the second isn't. Nick Connolly (talk) 19:46, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Actually, I can supply sources to the effect that the view such as represented in those books is held by a small minority of researchers only, and is thus close to being a fringe view. From this perspective alone, one can challenge the inclusion of this theory in the article. I don't have time now, but I'll be back soon with those... and yes, they can already be found in the list of references of this veyr article (or one of its previous version).--Ramdrake (talk) 19:13, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Smallish. In the field of IQ testing its a largish minority. This is why it isn't as clear cut as it may seem.Nick Connolly (talk) 19:46, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Actually, in the field of intelligence, it's not even a majority then. However, many try to pass themselves off as a majority.--Ramdrake (talk) 20:30, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

You are right. The field of intelligence is massive and cross-disciplinary. IQ testing is a much smaller field and although the race-IQ view is a minority it 1. has some heavyweights involved and 2. is provocative research. That second point is the biggest issue -demonstrating that Jensen et al are wrong is motivating factor in psychometric research. The minority view is heavily influential - for example the concept of stereotype threat etc. Race and IQ is a big topic in intelligence testing and directly pertinent to making sense of the history and research trends in the subject. This isn't like creationists and biology - creationist "research" has no (or very little) impact on biology as an actual subject.Nick Connolly (talk) 21:09, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

• Here is the section you removed from the article:

"Some people have attributed differential economic growth between nations to differences in the intelligence of their populations. One example is Richard Lynn's IQ and the Wealth of Nations. The book is sharply criticized in the peer-reviewed paper The Impact of National IQ on Income and Growth. Another peer-reviewed paper, Intelligence, Human Capital, and Economic Growth: An Extreme-Bounds Analysis, finds a strong connection between intelligence and economic growth." --Jagz (talk) 21:00, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Indeed - That material was removed because as you can plainly see, the sources quoted/cited are discussing the supposed impacts of 'national IQ' and not race. TheRedPenOfDoom (talk) 21:31, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

If that is your position then it was removed in error. Read the source [[6]]

Lynn and Vanhanen (2002:23; passim)

have claimed that the widespread assumption that the peoples of all nations have the same average level of intelligence is seriously incorrect and that therefore these national differences in intelligence are bound to have significant effects on national economic development and rates of economic growth. The argument is however twofold; in the first part, it is hypothesized that average national IQs are different because IQ is mostly determined by race-dependent genetic predisposition. The second part of the argument supposes a substantial link between national IQ

and economic success.

The critical reference given explicitly refers to race. VERIFIABLY "IQ and the Wealth of Nations" makes contentions about race and IQ, contentions that have been criticised (IMHO thoroughly debunked) in cited references.Nick Connolly (talk) 00:26, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Because the material removed did not include the connection made by the authors in the source material, it was properly removed. If you/another WP editor can find some way of including the source materials' connection of nationality to race without giving UNDUE weight, please feel free to post your suggestions. TheRedPenOfDoom (talk) 15:38, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

You are allowed to read quoted sources :) . The sources confirm the connection, do you agree?Nick Connolly (talk) 19:43, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

I do not feel that the above mentioned content meaningfully adds to a reader's understanding of the topic of the article and am therefore not willing to spend my time attempting to craft words to make the content appropriate for the article. But thanks for offering me the opportunity! TheRedPenOfDoom (talk) 20:00, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Your feelings should, of course, be respected but we must strive for dispassionate criteria. The criteria has to be on the basis of whether there has been academic debate on this issue by known experts in the field and/or in scholoraly journals. That way we avoid POV and WP:UNDUE in the nearest thing to an objective way. No? If you have better criteria that we can hold Legalleft and Jagz to as well then do tell, before this talk page takes over Wikipedia :) Nick Connolly (talk) 20:15, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

There is also the problem that the connection as purported by the authors has been severely criticized as being bad logic and bad science. If we were to include the material, we'd need to include criticism of the purported connection, and the resulting section size would almost certainly violate WP:UNDUE.

If the issue has been discussed (and yes, debunked) then giving that discussion sapce wouldn't be WP:UNDUE. As I keep pointing out the basis for including things isn't if the science is sound (if it where then the article would "there is no significant evidence of a link between race and IQ" and nothing else) nor is it a matter of counting up numbers of supporters v detractors. The basis has to be the significance within the whole discussion. Arguably within the wider discussion the view of a vocal minority gets undue weight BUT that isn't the same as the ARTICLE giving undue weight. It isn't Wikipedia's job to tell the IQ testing community that they should send Jensen or Lynn to Coventry. This is basically the same conceptual error RedPenofDoom is making with synthesis. Undue weight, synthesis etc aren't criteria that we apply to sources from beyond Wikipedia. Arguably psychologits and psychometricians shouldn't feed the trolls, but they do (probably because they are big, loud and influential elder trolls). Also by avoiding certain aspects of the Jensenites you avoid the substantial criticism. That criticism is far more than debunking - it has been a spur for more sophisticated psychometric approach to intelligence testing. Lastly the national IQ data and dodgy pseudo-evolutionary arguments that have been published that argue (for example) that colder-climes were the spur to evolving greater intelligence is out there and not out-there in a fringe-press sort of way but in scholraly peer-reviewed journals. Unless it is addressed the article will appear both incomplete and out-of-date.Nick Connolly (talk) 19:43, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

"the same conceptual error RedPenofDoom is making with synthesis" - My statements and stated concerns of SYN have all applied to Wikipedia editors/the way the content within the Wikipedia article is presented and not to the original source material. If I have been unclear about that, I am sorry. TheRedPenOfDoom (talk) 20:06, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

My point is that I believe you made an error. That the synthesis (linking National IQ to the issue of race and IQ) was made external to Wikipedia rather than by the editor. I think I have now established that this was indeed the case and that if the editor who included this material made an error it wasn't one of synthesis EVEN IF if may have looked that way :) Nick Connolly (talk) 20:15, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

I guess that I just don't see any practical difference to the article between an editor's whole cloth SYN and an editor adding material without including/referencing the analysis done by the published RS. Analysis in an article needs to be attributed to attributed to the party making the analysis, and in this instance there were missing components. TheRedPenOfDoom (talk) 20:39, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

With all due respect, I disagree. Would, for example the article on Earth have a long section discussing the concept (and debunking thereof) of the Flat Earth concept? Would the article on Evolution have a long section explaining the pros and cons of the Creationist concept? No. I'd say we treat this article the same way. These theories, if they go anywhere, belong in the Scientifc Racism article.--Ramdrake (talk) 19:48, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

BINGO! think about it! Proponents of a flat Earth are an utter irelevance to current geology. Proponents of creationism or ID have almost zero effect on biology. Biologist don't conduct research or improve their methodology to counter creationists, they don't need to. Both groups are an irrelevance to the actual content of the discipline (except in a deep historical sense). No prominent geologist over the past few decades have been flat-earthers, no biologist of great significance has been a creationist in recent times. That doesn't hold for the field of intelligence testing. The race-IQ debate is an active discussion within the IQ-testing academic community and within its peer-reviewed jounarls - it acts as a motivator of research and other research is often discussed in terms of its role in the debate eg the Flynn effect. The ideas might be wrong but their relationship with the mainstream is not like that of flat-earthing, creationism or holocaust denial (or even aquatic ape theory). A closer analogy would be climate sceptics but without the slam-dunk IPCC position, perhaps to climate sceptics in the 1980s when the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis wasn't as well established as it is now. Psychometrics just isn't strong enough to slay this particular beast yet. I suspect once the elderly proponents of the race-IQ link die off the issue may get less airplay in the journals, but who knows? Like it or not the various flawed hypotheses of the race-IQ proponents are of academic significance and do get space in the relevant journals. Hence the article should, in general, cover those issues that have recieved coverage within peer-review that are affirm or deny a race-IQ link. To do otherwise is POV. Nick Connolly (talk) 20:05, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

I disagree that mentioning an idea or concept would constitute undue weight. --Jagz (talk) 19:57, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Needs editing: High-achieving minorities

Most of this section of the article was removed recently. Let's see if we can edit and improve it here. I request that RedPen not participate because he contested it and also Ramdrake to not participate for now. --Jagz (talk) 14:14, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Jagz, you just CANNOT ask other editors to not participate because they disagree with you.

I don't do things just because I don't agree with people or their message. It is more complicated than that. I know you probably don't believe what you said though, it was just kind of fun for you to say it. --Jagz (talk) 17:12, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

For starters, I find it's a bad idea to try to reintroduce ethnic differences in this article. Also, there is no explicit link between intelligence and the Nobel Prize (just a widely assumed link, but that's not good enough). Attribution of the Nobel prize has obviously as much to do with the presence of high-level research facilities in a given country than with a purported higher ethnic intelligence.--Ramdrake (talk) 15:51, 19 March 2008 (UTC) --Ramdrake (talk) 15:51, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Will you please stop stirring up trouble in all articles you participate in? Everything was going peaceful until you decided to start participating again. All of RedPen's objections would have been addressed had you not intervened. --Jagz (talk) 16:40, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

What you call stirring trouble, I call trying to make the article more neutral, or at least less biased. Furthermore, there are several other editors besides myself who object to many of your edits. Please remember that WP is not a license to edit what you want whichever way you want; it's meant for editing within the consensus of editors. If your edits can't find consensus, then ask yourself how encyclopaedic and neutral they really are. Go ahead, label me an anti-racist if you will; I'd rather be mistaken for that than for the contrary.--Ramdrake (talk) 16:48, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

I have moved the "High-achieving minorities" section in question to my Sandbox here: [7]. Let's see if we can edit and improve it there. I request that RedPen not participate because he contested it and also Ramdrake to not participate because I don't feel it would be helpful. --Jagz (talk) 16:59, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

It appears very counterproductive to attempting to build concensus to try to exclude the voices that have concerns about material in the article. In fact WP:BRD would suggest that you and I would be the primary editors of the contested content so that we reach an agreement. But ... its your sandbox. Just keep in mind that my concerns for that material were that no WP:RS were making the claims that 'success' was an aspect of intellegence. TheRedPenOfDoom (talk) 17:30, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Don't worry, you'll get a crack at it later. There is just no sense continuing an edit war now on a draft section. It would have been easier to have left the section in the article and edited it while discussing on the Talk page. Taking it out makes it more difficult. It was counterproductive. --Jagz (talk) 17:38, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Tagging this article

I've tagged this article again, as it seems there is a definite push from at least one editor to impart a racialist POV to the article again. The numerous attempts at inserting lengthy and multiple racialist theories when these theories are endorsed by a handful of people is just one example; trying to present extremely controversial studies (such as the tables from IQatWoN) without mentioning they're far from mainstream is another. Work needs to be done to present the racialist POV as the extremely controversial position that it is, with few adherents, rather than as the mainstream position, which it manifestly isn't.--Ramdrake (talk) 15:59, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

If there is no discussion, I'm taking the tags off in about a week. --Jagz (talk) 17:06, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

The initiation of the discussion is right there Jagz.

• inserting lengthy and multiple racialist theories when these theories are endorsed by only a handful of people
• present extremely controversial studies (such as the tables from IQatWoN) without mentioning they're far from mainstream
• present the racialist POV as the extremely controversial position that it is, with few adherents, rather than as the mainstream position

Until those concerns are met or shown to be without basis, then the tags stay. It is up to YOU to address those concerns if you want to remove the tags, not just ignore the concerns then claim there was "no discussion" and remove the tags. (This instance is different than the tags that appeared a few weeks ago (and subsequently were removed by you). Those tags did not come with any specific concerns to the talk page. )TheRedPenOfDoom (talk) 17:19, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

You need to discuss specific items. --Jagz (talk) 17:33, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

What references do you have that state what is and is not mainstream? --Jagz (talk) 19:19, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Simple: just read up on the matter. Pretty much any researcher related to the Pioneer Fund isn't mainstream. That includes Rushton, Lynn, Gottfredson, and a number of others. When you start reading Neisser, Lieberman and the multitude of researchers who are mainstream, then you'll see.--Ramdrake (talk) 19:29, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Ok, let's discuss. I've expressed the issues I see. How do you plan to address them? The ball is in your court.--Ramdrake (talk) 19:15, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Your mind is in a different space than mine obviously. I have no idea how to reply to your generalizations. --Jagz (talk) 19:21, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Take your time to answer, that's fine. The tags can certainly wait. :) --Ramdrake (talk) 19:29, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

It looks like this may require an RfC but it won't be this week. Sorry if the article does not support your vision of the world. --Jagz (talk) 19:39, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Jagz, the problem is not that this article does not support Ramdrake's vision of the world. The problem is that this article does not comply with our policies of NPOV and NOR, and it does not provide an adequate account of the notable debates among respected scholars. It sounds like you are projecting - you are scared that science does not support your vision of the world. Well, sorry. Get used to it. We who wish to work on an encyclopedia should have open minds, and not come her trying to push our own racist agendas. Slrubenstein | Talk 10:21, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Hiya Jagz! So nice of you to respond to my comment. You know, when you requested that two editors not participate in editing this article, I myself had no idea how to respond! So good to be communicating, now, isn't it! Slrubenstein | Talk 15:06, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't wish to communicate with you anymore. --Jagz (talk) 20:37, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Comment on the three preceding sections

I doubt that the three preceding sections - race and its correlates, high-scoring races, and tagging the article - will go anywhere because all three issues suffer from the same fundamntal problem. These three discussions just provide more examples of the ill-conceived nature of this article that starts with an imprecise topic. "Intelligence" is a vague and ultimately meaningless term that can be described an infinite number of ways - why not make it "IQ scores" which is specific, concrete, and what most of this article really is about, anyway? The confusion between "race," "ethnicity" and "nationality" is another example of sloppy thinking - sloppy thinking which is abundant in fringe theories but not the top scientific research. There is one body of literature that looks at the role of heritability in the difference in IQ scores, and this literature works through twin studies which is the most scientifically reliable way to get at the question. Race, ethnicity and nationality are all social constructs and inevitably bring in socio-economic status, or (for nationality) various development indices. Indeed, there is a separate body of literature on SES and IQ score variation, and that too could be a meaningful article.

The only excuse for a single article on race and intelligence is specifically to do one thing Wikipedia articles are not supposed to do which is forward fringe theories, because it is only in fringe theories that the issues are presented in such an unscientific and muddled way. This is why Jagz and others will always be confused by POV violation tags, or accusations of promoting fringe theories ... with the title "Race and intelligence," one can only provide fringe theories. Mainstream scientific discussions are always slightly of to the one side or another, and in fact form distinct, i.e. non-overlapping (and thus meriting different articles) bodies of research.

It is also why this article will always be plagued by violations of NOR, specifically in the orm of synthesis. "Race and Intelligence" can only be discussed in an NPOV and NOR compliant way by bringing together separe bodies of research, which will require synthesis on the part of editors to make it work.

Good luck, fellas, but as long as you have an article designed to promote fringe theories, you will always have these kinds of conflicts.

By the way I know some views on race and intelligence are too notable to exclude from Wikipedia, or rather, let me say, do merit encyclopedic attantion. Murray and Hernstein's The Bell Curve is one example. But it just proves my point - it is a book that has not really been engaged by scientists - I mean either social scientists studying SES and IQ variation, or population geneticists and biologists looking at heritability and IQ variation (except to trash the book). For this reason, I think that such work merits its own article. We do have entire articles on books ... we have an article on Guns, Germs and Steel ... and I see no reason why we shouldn't have an article on The Bell Curve and its reception. But general (meaning, topical) articles should be based on notable views from reliable sources and in this case we need more precise language that reflects the research that is out there and that leads to two different articles. Slrubenstein | Talk 19:55, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

"Human intelligence is one of the most important yet controversial topics in the whole field of the human sciences. It is not even agreed whether it can be measured or, if it can, whether it should be measured. The literature is enormous and much of it is highly partisan and, often, far from accurate." (Bartholomew, D. J. (2004). Measuring intelligence: Facts and fallacies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press., p. xi). --Legalleft (talk) 03:01, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

And this should be covered extensively in the article on human intelligence. But most virtually all of the notable literature this article or people working on it have cited refers to actual test score gaps. I think many conflicts could be avoided if we limited ourselves to this more clearly defined issue, and had an article (or two) whose titles reflected this focus. Slrubenstein | Talk 10:19, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Let me put it another way - and I am truly really seriously sincerely genuinely trying to be constructive with what I think is a simple, easily addresed point: "race" and "intelligence" are both ambiguous terms - for some, race is biological, for others it is an SES or marker for SES. As Legalleft points out, intelligence too can mean many things. As long as the title of this article is race and intelligence, editors will reasonable want to cover both meanings of race and debates over its meanings, and debates over meanings of intelligence. Then there are various permutations over the different ways different meanings of race relate to different meanings of intelligence. The opportunities for this article to become overwrought will necessarily multiply endlessly. Evidence of the soundness of my reasoning? The edit history of the article itself. Identifying more precise terms, whose relationships are addressed by large bodies of notable literature, will spare us a good deal of controversy and conflict. Slrubenstein | Talk 10:19, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

It is a constructive suggestion but I'm afraid it doesn't work. Wikipedia doesn't get to decide the terms in which an external debate are cast. The extended, decades-long argument is over race and intelligence. Much as I'd like to Three Stooges style knock the heads of assorted psychologist together and shout "listen up knuckle heads, keep the speculation to a minimum - this is supposed to be science" I can't. Consequently the reality is that there really is a race-intelligence debate which is full of confused ideas, poorly defined terms and sudden leaps of inference. That is what has to be documented, not the debate we'd rather they had had.Nick Connolly (talk) 20:26, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

"Wikipedia doesn't get to decide the terms in which an external debate are cast." is precisely my point. Casting the debate in terms of race and IQ is popular in the popular media, but not in the mainstream scientific community. In the mainstream scientific community, people who look at differences in IQ scores between people of different self-identified races examine the issue in terms of sociological factors, not biological ones. In the mainstream scientific community, those scientists who are concerned with the heritability of IQ do not look at differences between races - there is a huge literature based on twin studies. The problem with this article is that it does not draw on these two large bodies of literature. Indeed, it would be hard to fit both literatures in one article (without a Wikipedia editor violating SYNTH) because the two discussions are separate. The attempt to connect race with heritability is made only by fringe scholars. So the situation is this: a few Wikipedia editors have decided to dedicate an article to a fringe view, and systematically to ignore the terms in which the external debate is cast by scientists. That is the problem. Slrubenstein | Talk 21:45, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes and no. The field of intelligence testing is large and it is true that the use of race as an explantion of intergroup differences in IQ is a minority opinion. However firstly the race explanation is of historical significance and secondly there exist a large critical literature from modern researcher who posit other explanations (or critique methodology) that are cast in terms of race-intelligence debate if only to explain why there is no such connection. That debate is of significance both in historic and contemporary terms. Racially based hypotheses have an impact the goes beyond a mere fringe theory. They are of significance enough to be the cause of debate and further scholarly rebutall within the wider discipline. For example Denny Borsboom excellent debunking of Kanazawa's evolutionary claims [[8]] comes from an academic primarily focused on IRT rather than IQ, demonstrating the extent to which this debate has wide impact. The debate exists and it is a difficult one to document because the counter-argument is wide and complex, multi-levelled and multi-disciplinary. However, that counter-argument verifiably exists and hence although seperate fields of inquiry exist, scholars in those fields have joined the fray overtly (i.e. explicitly mentioning race and intelligence for the purpose of debunking hypotheses that link them). I think it is demonstrable without synthesis to show an ongoing debate in terms of race and intelligence which has had a significant influence on research in IQ, sociology and psychometrics. Nick Connolly (talk) 22:53, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Then, if you wish to present these fringe theories, they should be presented as they are in the real world, as the highly disputed fringe theories that they are, in fact bordering on pseudoscience. They should not be presented under the guise of being the current state of the art mainstream research, as nothing is further from the truth. This research is conducted by a handful of researchers, most of them being affiliated to one another (some through the Pioneer Fund), and their theories are highly debunked. If this are framed this carefully (as say, "creationist science" is properly framed), then indeed it might be worth an article. What I most strongly object to is presenting them as if they were mainstream, legitimate science with a large following; nothing is further from the truth.--Ramdrake (talk) 00:01, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

That is a valid point. I dusted off my copy of Ashley Montagu's 'Race & IQ' (ed) which if you haven't read is a comprehensive debunking by various authors of Jensen's position and the Bell Curve's position. He does refer in his introduction as how one account for "differences in indiviudal abilities and group achievment of the different 'races'?" as a legitimate question. The answer to the question is not, of course, that somehow one group is genetically inferior. I'd see this article as being about that question and what was, historically, the default answer and how opinions have changed and diversified. It is like dealing with creationists but in this case we don't have a Darwin (or a DNA) because the ambiguity and lack of a deep theory of intelligence cuts both ways. Much of the structure is here. I think the right approach is to evolve this article towards a stable POV free survey of a controversial topic while bearing in mind that this is not the Intelligence article, the IQ article, the Psychometrics article or the Race article. Imagine an intelligent person who finds themselves embroiled in a debate on race and intelligence - I'd hope they'd be able to come to this article and have a good idea what positions will be argued and what data will be thrown at them.Nick Connolly (talk) 02:28, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Genetically different does not infer genetically inferior. Statements like this appeal to emotion and add nothing to the discussion.--Die4Dixie 14:33, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Um, we are talking about claims that genetic differences lead to superior or inferior IQ scores, so obviously this is about inferiority and superiority. Slrubenstein | Talk 17:24, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, I have to say this is the most reasonable and constructive approach to the article I have heard. It sounds to me like you are talking about an article that addresses a "meta-scientific" debate, one that is embedded in popular culture to an extent to which mainstream scientists must in some way acknowledge. I see some value in this. I do not think that it would be a substitute for a solid article on research on SES and IQ score variation (drawing largely on work by soiologists, anthropologists, and other social scientists), and another article on the heritability of IQ (drawing largely on work by population geneticists and developmental biologists, especially twin studies). Slrubenstein | Talk 11:34, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. It would not be an article on mainstream current research on SES and IQ score variations, but it could be encyclopaedic if presented from the side of a popular debate. These theories aren't scientifically notable, but they have certainly garnered the attention of a segment of the population, at least in the USA. Care would need to be taken to properly represent the debate outside the USA, as, AFAIK, the debate is much less notable there.--Ramdrake (talk) 13:39, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

*The current Achievment gap article could do with some work for example. I think the earlier points about undue weight make more sense in that context - i.e. what is the current state of research into achievment gaps between ethnic groups. This article then can be the 'whats all this fuss about race and IQ all about then?' article. For this a NPOV standard can be used - to be included the research has either appeared in a scholraly peer-reviewed jounarl or has been discussed in one (perhaps critically). That means Jensen or Lynn's views get a proper airing but not the views of some mindless racist. This standard allows for both race-IQ hypotheses and debunkings of them and is consistent with other controversial topics.Nick Connolly (talk) 19:37, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

The purpose of this Talk page is to discuss this article. --Jagz (talk) 13:47, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

In case you can't read this very section, this article and its orientation are precisely what we're discussing here. If I didn't know better, I'd think you're having severe comprehension problems.--Ramdrake (talk) 14:26, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Why don't you do an RfC on the article splitting idea? You can also consider doing an RfC on the neutrality of article. --Jagz (talk) 15:22, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Whether or not the consensus of editors wants to split the article, at this point I have no committed opinion. However, my point is that your previous comment that this section isn't discussing the article was totally off-base. You may want to dial down your attitude. If you do, I'll dial down mine, I promise. :)--Ramdrake (talk) 15:32, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

This has been repeatedly discussed in the past to no avail. --Jagz (talk) 15:52, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Ramdrake, I am sorry you just do not get it. Slrubenstein, Nick Connolly, and Ramdrake were having reasonable exchange of ideas, leading in a constructive direction. This very possibility firghtens and upsets Jagz. As soon as he sees a few people working towards some kind of constructive engagement, he simply has to intervene with a meaningless, unconstructive comment. It is his attempt to derail the constructive discussion we were having. The only thing to do is ignore it. I made a point, Nick made a point, I made a point, you made a point - let's just wait for Nick or other grown-ups to join us in our grown-up, reasonable, and constructive discussion. Understand tht any time this happens Jagz will try to derail the discussion. Just ignore it. Slrubenstein | Talk 17:40, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

You keep talking about the same things over and over. --Jagz (talk) 17:54, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Many comments today (including some of my own) appear to be veering from constructive content comment towards divisive/derisive commentary and personal attacks. Perhaps we should all have a cup of tea.

For the record, you can include me as one who is intrigued by and probably supportive of the possible realignment of this article that is being discussed. TheRedPenOfDoom (talk) 18:23, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

See Alun's comments, and my comments, in the race section below, as to why the reorganization I propose would be an improvement. Slrubenstein | Talk 21:23, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Race

In a recent article, Leonard Lieberman and Fatimah Jackson have called attention to the fact that although the concepts of cline, population, and ethnicity, as well as humanitarian and political concerns, have led many scientists away from the notion of race, a recent survey showed that physical anthropologists were evenly divided as to whether race is a valid biological concept. Noting that among physical anthropologists the vast majority of opposition to the race concept comes from population geneticists, any new support for a biological concept of race will likely come from another source, namely, the study of human evolution. They therefore ask what, if any, implications current models of human evolution may have for any biological conception of race.<ref>Leonard Lieberman and Fatimah Linda C. Jackson (1995) "Race and Three Models of Human Origin" in ''­American Anthropologist'' Vol. 97, No. 2, pp. 232-234</ref>--Jagz (talk) 22:39, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Excellent point! It is worth reading the article to find out (1) precisely how they define "race" and (2) what they conclude. Slrubenstein | Talk 22:53, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

"Some geneticists have long argued that human genetic variability is so profound that race is not a scientifically useful label. Others point to clear disparities in health outcomes to argue that race matters. Recent research has found clusters of genes that can be used to identify broad racial categories like white, African-American, Hispanic or East Asian." http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/18/washington/18nih.html?ref=us --Jagz (talk) 22:39, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Race is the word that English speaking people use to describe the categories "white", "black", "Asian" and so on. The extent to which human population genetics structure reflects those labels is of secondary concern. Even if there were no correspondence between population structure and racial labels, the continued pervasive use of those labels in research and in society would explain existence of discussions of "race and intelligence". Racial groups also differ in a myriad of social/cultural ways. In the 1960s the prima facie explanation of racial group differences in IQ scores was social-cultural-economic. Yet the discussion was still about race per se -- 'why do white children tend to score better than black children on tests?'. --Legalleft (talk) 22:50, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Race in Biology

Actually I can cite several sources that directly contradict you claim. One of the best review articles is Keita et al. (2004)[9] that states "'Race' is applied in formal taxonomy to variation below the species level." and "..the correct use of the term 'race' is the most current taxonomic one, because it has been formalized. 'Race' gains its force from its natural science root." and go on:

Current systematic theory emphasizes that taxonomy at all levels should reflect evolutionary relationships11. For instance, the term 'Negro' was once a racial designation for numerous groups in tropical Africa and Pacific Oceania (Melanesians). These groups share a broadly similar external phenotype; this classification illustrates 'race' as type, defined by anatomical complexes. Although the actual relationship between African 'Negroes' and Oceanic 'Negroes' was sometimes questioned, these groups were placed in the same taxon. Molecular and genetic studies later showed that the Oceanic 'Negroes' were more closely related to mainland Asians.
Arguments against the existence of human races (the taxa 'Mongoloid', 'Caucasoid' and 'Negroid' and those from other classifications) include those stated for subspecies10 and several others15. The within- to between-group variation is very high for genetic polymorphisms (approx85%; refs. 16,17). This means that individuals from one 'race' may be overall more similar to individuals in one of the other 'races' than to other individuals in the same 'race'. This observation is perhaps insufficient18, although it still is convincing because it illustrates the lack of a boundary. Coalescence times19, 20 calculated from various genes suggest that the differentiation of modern humans began in Africa in populations whose morphological traits are unknown; it cannot be assumed from an evolutionary perspective that the traits used to define 'races' emerged simultaneously with this divergence15. There was no demonstrable 'racial' divergence.
'Race' is a legitimate taxonomic concept that works for chimpanzees but does not apply to humans (at this time). The nonexistence of 'races' or subspecies in modern humans does not preclude substantial genetic variation that may be localized to regions or populations.

So the word "race" has a formally recognised taxonomic meaning, but it does not apply to human variation based on current concepts of "race" or subspecies. On the other hand "race" is used arbitrarily by non scientists and may well have very different meanings in different environments. As Keita et al. state

'Race' is not being defined or used consistently; its referents are varied and shift depending on context. The term is often used colloquially to refer to a range of human groupings. Religious, cultural, social, national, ethnic, linguistic, genetic, geographical and anatomical groups have been and sometimes still are called 'races

The Race, Ethnicity, and Genetics Working Group of the National Human Genome Research Institute advise geneticists thus:

One way for geneticists to ease the dilemma they face is to try to move beyond racial, ethnic, or ancestral categories in their work (Ota Wang and Sue 2005; Shields et al. 2005). Rather than using racial, ethnic, or ancestral labels as proxies for much more detailed social, economic, environmental, biological, or genetic factors, researchers can try to measure these factors directly. For example, controlling for socioeconomic status by use of census tract data can substantially reduce the excess mortality risk observed in disadvantaged minority populations (Krieger et al. 2005). Similarly, genotyping to estimate biogeographical ancestry can be a better control for population substructure than self-identified race, ethnicity, or ancestry (Shields et al. 2005)......When the use of racial or ethnic categories in research is deemed necessary, researchers can avoid overgeneralization by using labels that are as specific as possible. Today many genetic investigations label populations with the same loose terms used by the public (Sankar and Cho 2002; Clayton 2003; Collins 2004; Comstock et al. 2004). But labels such as “Hispanic,” “Black,” “Mexican American,” “White,” “Asian,” “European,” or “African” can have ambiguous or contradictory meanings among researchers, research subjects, and the general public. Use of such broad labels without careful definitions can impair scientific understanding and imply that distinctions between socially defined populations are genetically well established....A number of journals, including Nature Genetics (Anonymous 2000), Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine (Rivara and Finberg 2001), and the British Medical Journal (Anonymous 1996), have separately issued guidelines stating that researchers should carefully define the terms they use for populations, and some journals have asked researchers to justify their use of racial or ethnic groups in research.[10]

Genetics publications take the utility of their research very seriously, and geneticists know the pitfalls of overly simplifying when it comes to human biological categories. When social sciences make claims founded on concepts outside their field of expertise they have just as much duty as geneticists to properly define their research groups. When a social scientists, such as a psychologist for example, makes a claim that a constructed category of people in a society has produced a significantly different result from a different socially constructed category within the same society, this it is reasonable to take them at their word as long as their theory for explaining this difference is based on social sciences. As soon as they remove themselves to the field of biological sciences, for example by claiming that the differences in the results are due to innate genetic differences, then the criteria for defining their categories are required to be just as vigorous as we would expect for a research biologists. If these scientists want their research to have validity in the field of biology, then they need to meet the same set of criteria that biologists set themselves for group definition. Or in other words, to claim that social construct A is different to social construct B because of reasons founded in society is reasonable. But to claim that social construct A is different to social construct B for biological reasons is not reasonable, in this case the social scientists need to be held to the same standards group identification as geneticists and biologists use for themselves. If a social scientists wants to make claims about "biological differences", then they need evidence firmly grounded in biology, and not grounded in social constructs. But I digress.
My initial point was this: The term "race" is not "the word that English speaking people use to describe the categories "white", "black", "Asian" and so on." It is a word that is sometimes used to mean these categories, and sometimes used to mean completely different categories. It has a specific and well understood meaning in the biological sciences, but the biological sciences have shown over and again that humans do not meet the criteria set for classification into "races". I've made this point several times before on this page, but many people here do not want to accept what biology tells us, only what non-biologists using non-biological categories claim is a the product of "biological differences", i.e. they accept the tiny bits of pseudoscience that support their own racial prejudices and biases. Alun (talk) 14:35, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Possible copyright infringement above. --Jagz (talk) 14:40, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

How population geneticists use the word "race" is not necessarily how it has been used in the research reported in this article and in many ways diverges from the meaning that the (English-speaking) audience of this article will understand. Thus, fixed and precise definitions are neither necessary nor desirable where they interfere with the mission of writing an article that can be understood by a general audience. --Legalleft (talk) 21:15, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

It is precisely BECAUSE different groups use the term to mean different things that in this article we need to be ABSOLUTELY precise in defining how each source is using the term so that an unknowledgeable reader entering the topic will not be confused.TheRedPenOfDoom (talk) 21:42, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Legalleft, your response doesn't even approach a convincing argument. You claim that the "English speaking world" use the term "race" consistently, so that everyone "understands" the constructs under investigation. I provide a quote above from a paper that specifically states the opposite, regardless that the quote is from a paper written by geneticists, these geneticists are not talking about the technical use of the word race, they are talking about everyday use of the word "race". I'll include the quote again so there's no confusion:

'Race' is not being defined or used consistently; its referents are varied and shift depending on context. The term is often used colloquially to refer to a range of human groupings. Religious, cultural, social, national, ethnic, linguistic, genetic, geographical and anatomical groups have been and sometimes still are called 'races'.[11]

Besides this specific quote that undermines your claim, your contention amounts to original research. I see no reason why I should be expected to take your word that your set of categories are universal normal English colloquial usage, how do you know? Do you know the way this word is used colloquially in every English speaking country? Can you provide a source that states that in every part of the English speaking world, these "races" are always used specifically and absolutely to mean the same social constructs? Can you show evidence that if I were to visit Australia, then everyone would understand that when I say "race" I am always and invariably referring to "the categories 'white', 'black', 'Asian' and so on."? And that if I were then to visit South African and used the same set of terms, people would automatically understand that these terms encompass the same set of categories? Are the labels consistently used? I know for a fact that in the UK it has been common for any person of non-European ancestry to refer to themselves as "black". See Black British where it states "Historically it has been used to refer to any non-white British national." and "In some circumstances the word "Black" still signifies all ethnic minority populations." I have myself heard people of Indian sub-continental descent refer to themselves as black in the UK. It is also true that in the UK the term "Asian" is invariably used to refer to someone of Indian subcontinental origin, but in the USA I get the impression that it is primarily used to mean someone from the far East (though I'm no expert in US social constructs). Besides what do you mean by "Asian"? You claim it is a universally understood "race" in the "English speaking world", but what are it's referents? Does it include the indigenous peoples of Siberia, Han Chinese, Indian people, Pakistani people, Arabs, Turkish people, Kalash etc. all as part of the same Asian "race"? And exactly what "race" is "so on"? I've never heard of that one. You claim the use is consistent and specific in the "English speaking world", but you yourself do not seem to be able to list these invariant categories. So what do you actually mean? Do you include "Hispanics" as a "race"? Are "Hispanics" different to "Latinos"? Do "Hispanics" constitute part of the "white" category you list, or are they comprised of people from different "races"? Your claim that these are universally known and understood categories is not only not supported by any sources, you do not even seem able to list them yourself. It's not good enough to take the attitude that "everyone understands what I mean", because they do not. What you, specifically as an American (I assume), understand as a set of socially constructed categories is not the same set as someone would understand who lives in a different social environment, which clearly would have it's own specific set of social constructs. Even within the USA you have not provided any evidence that these constructs are always used consistently. Likewise you have no reason whatsoever to assume that the categories your society constructs are identical to the constructs of other societies, even if those societies happen to speak the same language as you. Alun (talk) 20:56, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Race in the Social Sciences

Here is the definition of "race" forwarded by Eric Wolf in his 1982, Europe and the People Without History. This book was itself a synthesis of forty years of research by a host of cultural anthropologists. It was one of the most important books to come out in culural anthropology in the 1980s. I would not claim that all cultural anthropologists agree with it or love it, but I would wager that all cultural anthropologists would include it in their list of top ten books to have come out that decade. All would consider his views "notable" even if they do not share them.

The opposing interests that divide the working classes are further reinforced through appeals to "racial" and "ethnic" distinctions. Such appeals serve to allocate different categories of workers to rungs on the scale of labor markets, relegating stigmatized populations to the lower levels and insulating the higher echelons from competition from below. Capitalism did not create all the distinctions of ethnicity and race that function to set off categories of workers from one another. It is, nevertheless, the process of labor mobilization under capitalism that imparts to these distinctions their effective values.

In this regard, distinctons of "race" have implications rather different from "ethnic" variations. Racial distinctions, such as "Indian" or "Negro," are the outcome of the subjugation of populations in the course of European mercantile expansion. The tern Indian stands for the conquored populations of the New World, in disregard of any cultural or physical differences among Native Americans. Negro similarly serves as a cover term for the culturally and physically variable African populations that furnished slaves, as well as for the slaves themselves. Indians are conquered people who could be forced to labor or pay tribute; Negroes are "hewers of wood and drawers of water," obtained in violence and pu to work under coercion. These two terms thus single out for primary attention the historic c=fact that these populations were made to labor in servitude to support a new class of overlords. Simultaneously, the terms disregard cultural and physical diferences within each large category, denying any constituent group political, economic, or ideological identity of its own.

Racial terms mirror the political process by which populations of whole continents were turned into providers of coerced surplus labor. Under capitalism these terms did not lose their association with civil-disbility. They continue to invoke supposed decent from such subjugated populations so as to deny their putative decendents access to upper segments of lthe labor market. "Indians" and "Negroes" are thus confined to the lower ranks of the industrial army or depressed into the industrial reserve. The function of racial categories within capitalism is exclusionary. They stigmatize groups in order to exclude them from more highly paid jobs and from access to the information needed for their execution. They insulate the more advantaged workers against competition fro below, making it difficult for employers to use stigmatized populations as cheaper substitutes or as strikebreakers. Finally, they weaken the ability of such groups to mobilize politically on their own behalf by forcing them back into casual employment and thereby intensifying competition among themfor scarcde and shifting resources.

While the categories of race serve primarily to exclude people from all but the lower echelons of the industrial army, ethnic categories express the ways that particular populations came to relate themselves to given segments of the labor market. Such cateories emerge from two sources, one external to the group in question, the other internal. As each cohort entered the industrial process, outsiders were able to categorize it in terms of putative proveniance and supposed affinity to particular segments of the labor market. At the same time, members of the cohort itself came to value membership in the group thus defined, as a qualification for establishing economic and political claims. Such ethnicities rarely coincided with the initial self-identification of the industrial recruits, who thought of themselves as Hnovarians or Bavarians rather than as Germans, as members of their village or their parish (okiloca) rather than as Poles, as Tonga or yao rather than "Nyasalanders." The more comprehensive categories emerged only as particular cohorts of workers gained access to different segments of the labor market and began to treat their access as a resource to be defended both socially and politically. Such ethnicities are therefore not "primordial" social relationships. They are historical products of labor market segmntation under the capitalist mode.

I quote Wolf extensively because I think he fits in with some claims made by Legalleft. But i have a larger point to make. Now, this view of race is radically different from the one presented by Alun. But this does not indicate a debate between evolutionary biologists or population geneticists and cultural anthropologists. That they happen to use the same popular term - race - is perhaps a coincidence; as technical terms, these are homonyms, really two completely different words, that mean completely different things, and are used in completely different contexts. Only lay people would mix them up, which is why there is some confusion among lay people (which I suggest explains why they are drawn to fringe theories that have no standing among scientists, biological or social). There is simply no reason to connect this definition of race to the one advanced by Alun. We are citing two incomensurate bodies of literature, bodies of literature that are concerned with different questions and different methods for answering their quesions. They might belong in one article on "race" that tries to cover the entire spectrum of views of race held by academics, but that is the only conceivable framework that would include both literatures. To put them in the same article on race and intelligence would be like having an article on Monkeys and intelligence, and have one section refer to cercopithecoida and another section refer to a made-for TV pop-music band. Slrubenstein | Talk 09:02, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

That's really a brilliant analysis Slr! Of course it's obvious to anyone who actually knows what they are talking about that the term "race" (which I just managed to type as "arce" and that made me laugh) is not, and never has been, used consistently as Legalleft claims. Even the terms "white" and "black" are not at all as clear cut as Legalleft is trying to claim, and that's a citable fact. Alun (talk) 21:12, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

'High Achieving Minorities' -> Variations by ethnicity

While the previous subject heading is incorrect I am not sure why the following material was removed from the article. If the sources are reliable sources, it seemed to be some of the only on topic material in the article.

Some IQ subtest profiles show variations by ethnic group. Ashkenazi Jews, for example, demonstrate verbal and mathematical scores more than one standard deviation above average, but visuospatial scores roughly one half standard deviation lower than the White average, whereas East Asians demonstrate high visuospatial scores, but average or slightly below average verbal scores. The Asian pattern of subtest scores is found in fully assimilated third-generation Asian Americans, as well as in Inuits and Native Americans (both of Asian origin).

Any comments? TheRedPenOfDoom (talk) 14:30, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

It's too abbreviated and incomplete. The quality is very poor. --Jagz (talk) 14:42, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

The sources are poor quality? TheRedPenOfDoom (talk) 14:58, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Your not going to improve the article by being disagreeable. --Jagz (talk) 15:08, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

??? TheRedPenOfDoom (talk) 15:09, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Read it. It sucks. --Jagz (talk) 15:16, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

It does not tightly define some of its use of terms and some of the wording is still angled POV, but what specifically do you mean when you say 'it sucks'? TheRedPenOfDoom (talk) 15:24, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

The section fails to explain how these groups can be considered minorities since it is a relative term. East Asians are not minorities in East Asia for example.
Ashkenazi Jews- They have higher average IQ in US and Britain than in Israel, possibly by World War II migration of disproportionate numbers from right side of bell curve (those more well off) See Race Differences in Intelligence
East Asians demonstrate high visuospatial scores- how high?
The Asian pattern of subtest scores is found in fully assimilated third-generation Asian Americans, as well as in Inuits and Native Americans- what does this have to do with the price of tea in China?
The section no longer discusses achievement, just test results. There is another section in the article for discussing test results. --Jagz (talk) 16:10, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Your comments are applicable to most of the current article - My orignal pruning of the article grabbed only some of the most obvious low hanging material. I will be happy to continue to get more crap out the article this weekend. TheRedPenOfDoom (talk) 16:14, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

This is what the article looked like on January 1, 2008.[12] --Jagz (talk) 16:33, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

So ...it has been a not very good article for several months at least? TheRedPenOfDoom (talk) 17:11, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

That was after all the sub-articles were merged into this one after an AfD discussion. In October 2007 it looked like this:[13] --Jagz (talk) 18:13, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

So, (I am just guessing here since you have not provided me really anything to go on) your point is that the article has been in piss-poor shape for over 6 months? Agreed. But that is no reason to let it continue to wallow in that state. TheRedPenOfDoom (talk) 01:03, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

I think it's getting better. The article got unlocked on February 1. I didn't do much until February 1. The vast majority of what's in the article now has been in there a long time, just organized differently. It's best to remove things a little at a time or else it becomes a pain for everyone else. --Jagz (talk) 01:27, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Dogma (equalitarian/egalitarian)

The following paragraph was in the article but Ramdrake repeatedly removed the second sentence:
In 1961, the psychologist Henry Garrett coined the term equalitarian dogma to describe the then mainstream view that there were no race differences in intelligence, or if there were, they were solely the result of environmental factors. Garrett contended that Jews spread the dogma and that most Jewish organizations "belligerently support the equalitarian dogma which they accept as having been 'scientifically' proven" (Garrett, 1961 a, p. 256).

Garrett was a racist; this is typical of the racist crap we do not want racists to put into the article. Slrubenstein | Talk 22:25, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Don't be belligerent. --Jagz (talk) 00:40, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

It is you who are being belligerent by posting an anti-semitic comment, out of context. You aren't bringing it upo in the context of any discussion, you had to create a new section for it. That suggests to me that you are just responding to my criticizing you for pushing a racist POV, and since you believe I am Jewish you post an anti-semitic remark. Slrubenstein | Talk 21:22, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm not familiar with Garret, but he does seem to be notable enough to be included as the subject of a WP article, though the sources seem to be autobiographical. Right or wrong he may be pertinent to the history of this topic. I think that we need to carefully walk the fine line between a whitewash of the history and promoting inflammatory racism, especially from non-notable sources. Considering the brevity of the history section, we should limit the discussion to fairly mainstream views. I’d like to know more about how widespread his effect was at the time. --Kevin Murray (talk) 14:27, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Hi Kevin. If I understand you correctly, it would be important to mention Garrett and his views as long as they are placed in context. I have no problem with that. I do have a problem with just plopping him in. According to Wikipedia's biography of him, he was a segregationist and racist 9and i had no hand in writing Wikipedia's article on him!) and this background information about his own personal politics and political agenda are I think essential to presenting an honest and balanced account of his ideas. Slrubenstein | Talk 15:18, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Was his work well known at the time and waws he influential? If not then I don't see him as relevant. Clearly what ever we add should be in context. --Kevin Murray (talk) 00:17, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Here is Egalitarian fiction and collective fraud by Gottfredson. --Jagz (talk) 21:18, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Request for Comment

The article is currently tagged, stating, "The neutrality of this article is disputed." Is the article sufficiently neutral? Please be specific and suggest improvements.

Comments by editors of article

• No it is not sufficiently neutral that the NPOV tag should be removed. TheRedPenOfDoom (talk) 18:56, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Please specify your reason. --Jagz (talk) 18:57, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

I believe that comments from outside readers will provide the most insight and that further elaboration from me at this time is just a waste of electrons.TheRedPenOfDoom (talk) 22:16, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Umm...The reason given is "it is not sufficiently neutral". I don't think it could be more obvious. Alun (talk) 19:31, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your input Alun, I am looking for a more detailed answer.--Jagz (talk) 19:35, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

A more detailed example is no, the entire article is non-neutral ab initio. The very title is essentially a POV nightmare. The two main words: Race and intelligence presume the existence of 1)Race, and 2)Intelligence as meaningful terms in the context.

Further, the article goes on to use tests of "IQ" as measures of intelligence as if intelligence were measurable with a single value on a single scale. This is not a neutral point of view, and is widely debated.

Further, the methodology is flawed, you cannnot compare test scores of disparate tests, different IQ tests give different scores to the same individual. And different cultural influences and social norms affect the responses -- by people within different cultures -- to the SAME test.

This article is a waste of time. This is an encyclopedia, we should at least acknowledge scientific reality... or put the "fictional universe tag" on this one. User:Pedant (talk) 22:56, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

• Confusing and bity. I think as well as there being tension between editors who fall on either side of the basic question there is also confusion about what purpose this article serves. Valid concerns about synthesis and undue weight have been raised but I'm of the opinion that these arise primarily out of the fact that much of the published peer-reviewed research is of poor quality. This issue isn't exactly like a scholarly dispute, nor is it quite a science versus pseudoscience but it shares features of both. Finally the issue splits along two major US political fault-lines: the perception by conservatives of leftist academic bias and social inequality based on race/ethnicity. POV minefield but either that is dealt with here or a plethora of POV forks.Nick Connolly (talk) 19:48, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Actually, it might be even worse than that. There is a strain of thought, represented by Turkheimer's comments here, which states that anyone who happens to disagree with the position he holds is deserving of opprobrium. Notably a position which Ceci and Flynn disagree with him about. An editor who held the same position as Turkheimer would feel morally compelled to minimize the POV they dislike. --Legalleft (talk) 21:09, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
• Can be improved, I believe the significantly genetic view is still controversial among social scientists so maybe the article could be clearer on that. The genetic view does seem to be more plausible than the views that the hill on Mars is a face, the moon landings were fabricated, or that the World Trade Center collapse was a controlled demolition that the US government was involved in. If the article was rewritten indicating that the genetic view is pseudoscience, as an engineer I would consider the article amusing. --Jagz (talk) 05:08, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
• Don't know -- but I'm sure it would be much easier to improve the article if the neutrality issues were enumerated or at least made more specific. --Legalleft (talk) 21:09, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Comment -- What would help is to find a heuristic for selecting which details are salient and which are not. For example, I imagine there doesn't need to be an entire section for Clancy Blair's gF' theory, as (IIRC) there has been no experiment work done on it since Blair's initial publication. Perhaps the "biotechnology" section can go too. OTOH, there really does need to be more on minorities other than Blacks and also more on the social and economic consequences of group differences. --Legalleft (talk) 21:23, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
• Not neutral - Note that the article is highly volatile, so making a statement about its neutrality at a certain point in time is tricky. The article seems like a battleground of POVs, it needs more cohesion. Brusegadi (talk) 07:32, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
• Not neutral - In its present state, which like Brusegadi said is highly volatile. POV seems to give undue weight to widely criticized studies, trying to present them as uncontroversial, mainstream research.--Ramdrake (talk) 10:49, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
• Not Neutral The lead says the article does two things. First, "Seeks the causes of any differences that appear in the measurements" - this is legit, there is a huge body of literature in the social sciences on the social, economic, and psychological causes of differences in test scores. But while the article mentions this, it does not give due weight to this body of literature by any stretch of the imagination. Second, "seeks to determine whether human intellectual abilities vary between races." This is entirely unacceptable. For one thing, Wikipedia articles never seek to determine anything; they provide accounts of notable views. But even if we were to read (or rewrite) this as saying that it will cover views of scholars who seek to determine this, it is still unacceptable as it is just a tarted up way of suggesting some races are naturally superior to others. That is just plain racism, and bad science. Indeed, there are scientists who do seek to determine this, and they are not only racist scientists, they are bad scientists who represent a fringe view among researchers. And the problem is, this article gives undue weight to these fringe theorists. The belief that some races are inherently superior is indeed a notable view, but not among scientists; it is notable among the gneral public. But the article doesn't present a good account from say media studies, or comunications scholars, or social scientists about the ways Westerners tend to biologize social difference, even though this literature exists. Instead, it elevates the fringe views of a few racist scientists (typically pscyhologists who have no training in evolutionary biology or population genetics) and presentes them as mainstream science. That is a clear NPOV violation. Slrubenstein | Talk 13:00, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
• No. I'm not really a major editor of this article, but I have been on the talk page a bit recently and done a small amount of editing, so I'll put my two penneth here. There's been some attempt to make this article neutral, but it's an uphill struggle. When I tried a little while ago to include some observations regarding the non-independence of biological systems and environment all I got an edit war and scorn.[14] [15] Clearly there was an attempt to keep the information out the article, or to move it to an inconspicuous place. No sort of acceptable reason was given for this, the reasons varying from some nonsense about "behaviour genetics" (sic) (the source did not even mention behavioural genetics, and neither did my edit), "it's not relevant" (which was demonstrably not true") to "it's not important" (even though the authors of the several articles were stating that it was directly relevant and important to the subject at hand). And it wasn't like it was an article written by an obscure scientist, it was by Richard Lewontin.[16] [17] [18] There was clearly a concerted effort going on to either remove the edit, or at least give it as little prominence as possible. There was, and still is, a serious attempt to promote one pov while suppressing or giving as little prominence as possible to any information that does not support this pov. It is absolutely evident that some editors of this article are neither interested in neutrality nor acting in good faith, and if this means that I'm not assuming good faith, then tough, one can assume good faith for only a certain amount of time, but eventually it becomes obvious that it is pointless to assume good faith because it becomes obvious that other editors are not acting in good faith. This article is bound to be a magnet for certain types of people with an axe to grind, and they'll never act in good faith. The article certainly hasn't got any better recently, with even my small, but relevant, edit having been removed, with the only mention of Lewontin now being rather obscure and somewhat dishonest. Alun (talk) 22:06, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
• Not Neutral - While proponents of "race"-based intelligence differences have been largely successful in cloaking their propositions with what seems on its face to be valid science, I would submit that without a falsifiable hypothesis, what is being expressed is dogma, not science. That is to say, if one starts off with the hypothesis, "any group of 100 randomly chosen black people will have a lesser average IQ than any group of 100 randomly chosen white people", one can go out, perform the experiment, and generate results. A negative result falsifies the hypothesis. This of course assumes that we can come to some sort of agreement as to what constitutes a "black" person and what constitutes a "white" person (a definition which yields widely differing results depending on whether or not you consider internal or external identification). An equally robust hypothesis could be, "any group of 100 randomly chosen people with friendly last names will have a lesser average IQ than any group of 100 randomly chosen people with unfriendly last names" - in this case, the determination of what is "friendly" and "unfriendly" is the arbitrary social distinction being proposed.

With sufficient caveats (i.e., we have no concrete definition of "race", we have a somewhat more concrete but not totally accepted definition of "intelligence"), one can certainly describe correlations, but we cannot assign causality. For example, we typically imagine that eating too much and exercising too little cause weight gain - but the equation can work the other way as well, where weight gain causes eating too much and exercising too little (see Gary Taubes 'Good Calories, Bad Calories' lecture at Berkeley). In the same vein, it may be that in our retrospective analysis, lesser intelligence causes someone to be black, rather than being black causing lesser intelligence. While counter-intuitive, such inversion of causality is not necessarily improper since we may in fact be more likely to consider someone "black" if they have lesser intelligence (certainly some of the R&I proponents such as Rushton do regularly).

One of the questions I regularly ask people I disagree with is, "what would change your mind about this issue"? I consider it an important question for myself as well. In this case, I would change my mind about this issue if and only if - 1) we had a genetic test and specific definition of race used uniformly by all studies being considered as pertinent; that is to say, every intelligence test given included in its results would contain the individual DNA of the test taker, and this DNA code could by analyzed and categorized by an algorithm into a specific "race" category 2) we had a clear universal definition of 'g' which every intelligence test given yielded the same results for an individual regardless of age, diet, education or disease 3) intelligence tests were done under similar conditions of sleep/food availability. My suspicion is that we won't ever have a genetic definition that does not yield contra-commonsense results (i.e., a genetic definition that may categorize one sibling as one race, and another sibling as another race, or a genetic definition that categorizes someone who is "obviously" black like Nelson Mandela as white, or someone who is "obviously" white like Margaret Thatcher as black), but I am willing to be proven wrong.

In any case, glossing over these critical caveats is sufficiently POV-pushing to require a significant amount of work. --JereKrischel (talk) 14:16, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Comments by outsiders

• Not Neutral per the reasons given by Slrubenstein. The asininity of the theory and the article itself is simply astounding. I could go on, but I'll just get truly nasty. Suffice it to say that the article, and the theory it fails to present in an NPOV manner, are shit. &#0149;Jim62sch&#0149;^dissera! 17:56, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
• Not Neutral I'm going to give the same reasoning as Jim and Slrubenstein. This is pseudoscience, and it should be presented in the same manner as any other pseudoscientific theory on Wikipedia. We are giving undue weight to crap. And I'm seeing way too many anti-semitic Slr--I'm Jewish and lot less tolerant than Slr is. This is a sickening article. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 18:03, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
• Not Neutral From the reading I have done on this issue over the years, the impression I have is that this is an extremely amateurish attempt at an article, and is not particularly encyclopedic. It does cover some (although I think not all) of the historic studies which have a somewhat biased view. However, the mainstream or other side of the issue seems almost entirely absent. The scientific criticism seems quite weak and almost absent, which is disturbing when NPOV is supposed to be our guiding principle here. I will confess I have not read all of this article, but I read enough to be quite disappointed.--Filll (talk) 20:19, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
• Not Neutral The premise and title of the article are flawed from the start. This article is an embarrassment to Wikipedia. As it stands, there seems to be very little content that can be salvaged to use in a good article... and I've seen good articles, this sir, is no good article. User:Pedant (talk) 23:03, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
• Not Neutral, but not hopeless As most everything has been discussed on this talk page ad nauseum, I won't go into to much detail. I agree that this article definitely gives undue weight to those arguing for a significant difference of intelligence amongst races, but at the same time I don't feel that their work constitutes a fringe theory or pseudoscience. There are many scientists with good credentials that hold these views, but as it is an inherently highly controversial subject, its detractors are quick to brand it a pseudoscience. I think in essence there hasn't been convincing evidence shown on either side of the argument, but the burden of proof is on those that suggest there is a difference- thus this article must devote more to those who defend nurture over nature, as is implicitly suggested in the opener but not really carried out in the article. DJLayton4 (talk) 03:35, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
• Not Neutral Not even remotely in the neighborhood of neutral. It is racist and based on questionable material; the academic literature that should be cited is mostly missing. It's all written from one side, the side that does not represent the best thought on the question. Woonpton (talk) 04:13, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
• Not neutral The article is bias against black people, depicting them as somehow less intelligent than other races. Yahel Guhan 05:49, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
• Not neutral Though I find that both sides of the argument receive reasonably equal and adequate attention, the article on the whole does seem to indicate that intelligence is related to race, without really addressing the doubtful nature of that conclusion. As far as I am concerned, the evidence presented is inconclusive, though to my mind leans heavily toward nurture rather than nature. I'd like to see a more neutral tone, as well as perhaps some follow up of criticism of the both sides from the perspective of race politics, i.e., how do people outside the scientific community view Jensen and his contemporaries? How do they see the argument that IQ disparity can be explained with reference to the social hierarchy, access and quality of education, and the western bias of intelligence testing? This article needs more politics to balance out the overabundance of science. Legianon (talk) 16:54, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
• Reasonably neutral, but inadequately synthesized (version discussed: [19]) Meticulously reading through the article, I can't help getting the impression that a lot of people pasted the abstracts of their favorite papers verbatim and thought that is all there is to it. This doesn't really lead to a conflict with the NPOV policy, except with respect to undue weight for fringe theories, but it makes the article difficult to read. (Please note that "Not neutral" does not mean "I don't agree" or "Bad writing".) Also, a list of minor issues:
  • General: has some "proseline" elements. The words "black" and "white" are often incorrectly capitalized ("Black").
  • The Snyderman and Rothman study was published in 1988, showing a liberal media bias on the reporting of race and intelligence. The study indicated the media gave a misleading impression of what the mainstream view is in the scientific community regarding the relative importance of genetic and environmental factors in explaining individual and group differences in IQ. It found that the media regularly presented the views of those who stress that individual and group differences may be substantially genetic as a minority view, however, their 1987 survey of expert opinion found that the opposite was true. This is incomprehensible unless you have studied American politics and know what this "liberal bias" is. Second, it's American-centric; there are media elsewhere too. Third, an encyclopedia should report, not repeat.
  • In recent years, the belief that there are no race differences in intelligence or potential Use "notion" instead of "belief".
  • Three paragraphs after "Test results" could be split for readability.
  • Repeating, in section labelled Environmental, to the extent that there are any genetically-driven racial differences in intelligence, these gaps must either emerge after the age of one, or operate along dimensions not captured by this early test of mental cognition.
  • The SOAR program produced gains equivalent to 120 points on an SAT test. What is a SAT test and how it is graded? (Rhetorical question, I could find out if I wanted.) This should be expressed in relative terms, like "improves probability of matriculation by 66%", for example.
  • Utility of research: Charles Murray, a conservative political pundit at the American Enterprise Institute has used their conclusions to criticize social programs based on racial equality that fail, he claims, to recognize the realities of racial differences. Why is this mentioned here? Is Charles Murray a notable politician? --Vuo (talk) 21:25, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Reorganizing the article

When I and others started pruning and reorganizing the article after it was unlocked on February 1, I expected that environmental factors would be by far the predominant view; however, surprisingly, as the article developed, it became clear that this truly wasn't the case. The significantly genetic view is far more prevalent than I expected and it was in the article all along, just buried. It appears that the environmental view was prevalent in the early 1960's and people who expressed disagreement could possibly be fired from their jobs questioned these views put their careers at risk; this was perhaps partly in reaction to Nazi Germany and the Civil Rights movement in the USA. It seems that the tide has turned since then in favor of the significantly genentic view and there are probably quite a few "closet" believers we will never know about because of policitical correctness or fear of being labeled a racist, etc. I was never expecting that the article would show this but that is how it has turned out. --Jagz (talk) 19:57, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

I know of no evidence that someone airing racist views in the 1960s was at serious risk of losing their job, except perhaps if they worked for the ACLU or B'nai Brith. It also seems to me that the strongest data about the relationship between poverty and social stigmatization and low IQ scores emerged in the 1980s and contines to emerge, as in the very important recent book by Flynn. I have a simple prediction to make: if someone does there research relying on the internet, they will find much material claiming that IQ differences between races reflect innate differences. if one conducts their research through a sample of the most prestigious peer-reviewed journals in the social or life sciences, and books published by academic presses, they will find much material documenting environmental causes. Slrubenstein | Talk 20:21, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

To Jagz: if you're judging by the slant of the article as it was back early this year, yes, it was still of course slanted on the side of the racialist view. This is because that is how the article was originally written, in conformity with the views of a handful of editors who took a WP:OWN attitude to the article, and eventually left sometime in 2007. Since then, no one has had the time to do a systematic overhaul. However, I can tell you this: if you overhaul this article based on the relative weight of the different views when the articles were merged, you will still have an article which is in violation of NPOV. The only way to remedy this is to have someone go through the actual scientific literature on the subject (as opposed to the crumbs we can access on the internet) and rewrite the article accordingly.--Ramdrake (talk) 20:35, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

What about research funding bias? --Jagz (talk) 20:37, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes, certainly. I'm taking you mean the Pioneer Fund?--Ramdrake (talk) 20:42, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

My prediction is that if someone rewrites the article heavily favoring the environment view, it will in time be changed back to a balance similar to what's in the article now and it won't be because of anything I did. If you'd like, go ahead and try. --Jagz (talk) 20:50, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree with your prediction under one condition: it will come true only if POV-pushing racists continue to use this article to forward their fringe views. If editors follow our NPOV guidelines and do serious research, however, I would have to reject your prediction. Slrubenstein | Talk 21:19, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Are you expecting a change? --Jagz (talk) 21:34, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Do I expect the article to change? Indeed I do. In a section above, my "comment on the preceding sections," I explained what I thought was a fundamental problem with this article; that there should be two different articles; that trying to create one article will inevitably push it to fringe POVs; with the sole exception of you, people responded favorably to my thoughts. Then, in the section on "race," Alun and I provided further explanation as to why any attempt to ground this discussion involving race in sound science would require two different articles, otherwise this attempt will continue to violate NPOV. Someone put in an RfC as to whether the POV tag was warranted and whether the article complies with NPOV and now there is an overhwelming majority of editors who agre, this article is fatally flawed and privileges a fringe POV and misses entirely mainstream science ... so yes, given that we know this article is a POV mess and that an accurate account of mainstream science requires two articles, I'd say that we can all expect not only a change but a big change. Or did you mean, do I expect you to change and stop pushing a fringe, often racist, POV? One can always hope! Slrubenstein | Talk 23:27, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

LOL --Jagz (talk) 01:42, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Slr is correct: the issue is socio-economic in scope (environmntal, if you wish to eschew the sociological term), not "racial" (for whatever that term is worth -- not much in my opinion, but so be it). &#0149;Jim62sch&#0149;^dissera! 15:58, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

As stated in the article:

"The January 1997 issue of American Psychologist published eleven critical responses to the American Psychological Association (APA) report, most of which criticized the report's failure to examine all of the evidence for or against genetic contributions to racial differences in IQ.[20] Charles Murray, for example, responded:

Actually, there is no direct evidence at all, just a wide variety of indirect evidence, almost all of which the task force chose to ignore.[21]"

As long as this indirect evidence keeps getting ignored by social scientists, there will be many people who will not blindly accept your view that the issue is only socio-economic in scope; that will be seen as smoke and mirrors. --Jagz (talk) 16:17, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Indirect evidence is their pathetic excuse for no evidence. Slrubenstein | Talk 00:10, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Then it is like religion. --Jagz (talk) 04:32, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

I propose:

I propose that we extract any factual information this article may contain, scrap the rest, research the relevant literature, and write a new article to replace this one. And maybe it would need a new title at that point. Which is a lot like deleting the article. Which I would also support. User:Pedant (talk) 23:09, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, the issue continues to be what of it is "factual." 165.123.139.232 (talk) 22:28, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Page protected to stop edit war

Please solve the disputes on the talk page, and not by reverting the article back and forth between preferred versions. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 23:18, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

We'll do our best, thanks.--Ramdrake (talk) 23:21, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Everything was peaceful after the article was unlocked on February 1 until you decided to start participating again. --Jagz (talk) 22:34, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Jagz, be warned, do not violate WP:NPA. You do not own this article and cannot dictate who can and cannot participate. Since Ramdrake knows a lot more than you do, and is a better editor, I'd say his involvement is ndespensible. Slrubenstein | Talk 00:09, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Please stop being belligerent. --Jagz (talk) 02:36, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Jagz, this is a difficult enough topic without inflaming things further. Knock off the personal attacks and snide remarks. Raymond Arritt (talk) 02:42, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Now that the page has been protected

We have about one week (March 29) to come up with a plan. I would say we should first take a look at the RfC responses and some of the last sections; IMHO, they did contain some useful suggestions about what to do with the article.--Ramdrake (talk) 23:21, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

How to move forward

I have a procedural and a substantive suggestion for moving forward.

Procedural suggestion

My first suggestion is that we avoid researching this article in an unconstructive way. In my experience, here is the least constructive way to research an article, especially one on a controversial topic: begin with a personal belief, for example blacks are less intelligent than whites, or there are no differences in IQ, or IQ doesn't exist; whatever the belief is it leads one to start with clear ideas about the contents or structure of the article. Then insist on an article that caters to that belief, and they they just go out looking selectively for whatever sources would fit their belief. Obviously this second method leads only to bad scholarship - one ends up taking things out of context and misunerstanding them, or making connections between different sources when none exist.

What would be the opposite procedure? Do not start with a proposal about the contents or structure of thye article. Instead start by trying to identify reliable, verifiable sources; we can then distinguish between different kinds of debates (like, the debate over the reason ofr a certain average heritability of intelligence among single-chorion twins among biologists; the debate over funding for public education in the US among politicians and policy-makers; research on racist representations of diferent groups of people, largely by historians and sociologists) and between notable views, like Phillips 1993 and Stromswold 2006, and fringe views, like Rushton, in one discussion among scientists. It is by doing this kind of research that people figure out merits an encyclopedia article or articles, and what they should cover/include.

In other words, start with an open-minded question: what do the most respected scientists doing the actual research think? For me the answer to my question would come from reading the most notable books and scientific articles to see how the scientists themselves frame the issue. We might discover that there is a major controversy these scientists are debating and it actually is not about genetic versus environmental causes for the IQ gap at all, but something else. What? i have no idea - that is my point, let's not make any assumptions.

How do we know what are the best books and articles? I have a few suggestions that are meant to generate a list of publications we can all agree are notable among scholars: see if we can get syllabi for graduate school courses on the topic and see what books and articles they assign. See what books are published by university presses, and see if they were well-reviewed in the major relevant journals (in psychology, anthropoloogy, sociology, biology). Then see what other books and articles these books cite as authoritative. See what articles have come out in major peer-reviewed journals, and see what books and articles these articles cite as authoritative. I know one needs access to a good library to do this kind of research ... but I think this is the kind of research one must do to write a great encyclopedia article.

Let me be very concrete and propose a task we could divide up and do over the next week: I am saying it is premature to come up with a title until we have trawled the literature. I also think we have enough people who know enough to know how to do this, even before knowing what the right titel for an article would be. We are concerned with the following key words: "race", "intelligence", "genetics", "environmental" and either "SES" or a proxy (social or status would probably work). I suggest anyone with a good library and therefore a good reference librarian request a search for articles with these keywords in the major relevant journals. These would be:

• Interdisciplinary

• Critical Inquiry
• Public Culture
• Social Science Research
• Social Text

• Anthropology

• American Anthropologist
• American Ethnologist
• Annual Review of Anthropology
• Cultural Anthropology
• Current Anthropologist
• Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power
• American Journal of Physical Anthropology

• Communications (includes media studies)

• Communication Theory
• Human Communication Research
• Public Opinion Quarterly

• Education

  Review of Educational Research

• Educational Psychology

• Child Development
• Education Psychology
• Education Psychology Review
• Journal of Learning Science

• Genetics

• American Journal of Human Genetics
• Annual Review of Genetics
• Genetics and Development
• Genome Research
• Nature Genetics
• Nature Review Genetics

• History

• American Historical Review
• Comparative Studies in Society and History
• Journal of Modern History
• Journal of Social History
• Past and Present

• Sociology

• American Journal of Sociology
• American Sociological Review
• Annual Review of Sociology
• Journal of Historical Sociology
• Law and Society Review

• Psychology

• American Psychologist
• Annual Review of Psychology
• Behavior Genetics
• Behavioral Brain Science
• Biological Psychology
• Cognitive Psychology
• Psychological Bulletin
• Psychology Review

I have provided a long list of journals precisely in an attempt to capture a wide range of approaches and views. However, I bet many of these journals have not had any relevant articles in the last few years. So while I realize this is a lot of journals, I bet if we restrict searches to all keywords, I bet the results would be managable. I am pretty sure I got the leading journals in these relevant disciplines but yes, it would be great if there were other editors who could sy "no, this is not a respected journal" or "Add the following to the list ..."

A keyword search of these major journals would not I think assume or imply any particular point of view. As I said I think that if we use enough keywords, the results will be managable but perhaps someone can suggest a way to further limit it (for starts, we can ask the reference librarian to search just the past three years. I bet that won't turn up much and we will want to expand it to the past five or even ten years.

The result will be a determinate set of articles that would tell us what the main debates are which would dictate to us the articles and article titles and contents. The key point is not to cherry-pick sources or quotes we like. I have no idea whatr this process would yield; that is the whole point.

But if we want to slide over this stage, based on what I know, I believe this method would lead to three articles, which leads me to my substantive proposals:

Proposal One: "Controversies over Race and IQ in Popular Culture"

This article is ostensibly about debates concerning the relationship between race and intelligence; much of it seems to be about the view that racial differences cause differences in IQ. This is a nonsense view among scientists. But it seems to be a view popular among many non-scientists. So let's call a spade a spade. I see this article as following on some discussion from above:

The field of intelligence testing is large and it is true that the use of race as an explantion of intergroup differences in IQ is a minority opinion. However firstly the race explanation is of historical significance and secondly there exist a large critical literature from modern researcher who posit other explanations (or critique methodology) that are cast in terms of race-intelligence debate if only to explain why there is no such connection. That debate is of significance both in historic and contemporary terms. Racially based hypotheses have an impact the goes beyond a mere fringe theory. They are of significance enough to be the cause of debate and further scholarly rebutall within the wider discipline. For example Denny Borsboom excellent debunking of Kanazawa's evolutionary claims [[22]] comes from an academic primarily focused on IRT rather than IQ, demonstrating the extent to which this debate has wide impact. The debate exists and it is a difficult one to document because the counter-argument is wide and complex, multi-levelled and multi-disciplinary. However, that counter-argument verifiably exists and hence although seperate fields of inquiry exist, scholars in those fields have joined the fray overtly (i.e. explicitly mentioning race and intelligence for the purpose of debunking hypotheses that link them). I think it is demonstrable without synthesis to show an ongoing debate in terms of race and intelligence which has had a significant influence on research in IQ, sociology and psychometrics. Nick Connolly (talk) 22:53, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Then, if you wish to present these fringe theories, they should be presented as they are in the real world, as the highly disputed fringe theories that they are, in fact bordering on pseudoscience. They should not be presented under the guise of being the current state of the art mainstream research, as nothing is further from the truth. This research is conducted by a handful of researchers, most of them being affiliated to one another (some through the Pioneer Fund), and their theories are highly debunked. If this are framed this carefully (as say, "creationist science" is properly framed), then indeed it might be worth an article. What I most strongly object to is presenting them as if they were mainstream, legitimate science with a large following; nothing is further from the truth.--Ramdrake (talk) 00:01, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

That is a valid point. I dusted off my copy of Ashley Montagu's 'Race & IQ' (ed) which if you haven't read is a comprehensive debunking by various authors of Jensen's position and the Bell Curve's position. He does refer in his introduction as how one account for "differences in indiviudal abilities and group achievment of the different 'races'?" as a legitimate question. The answer to the question is not, of course, that somehow one group is genetically inferior. I'd see this article as being about that question and what was, historically, the default answer and how opinions have changed and diversified. It is like dealing with creationists but in this case we don't have a Darwin (or a DNA) because the ambiguity and lack of a deep theory of intelligence cuts both ways. Much of the structure is here. I think the right approach is to evolve this article towards a stable POV free survey of a controversial topic while bearing in mind that this is not the Intelligence article, the IQ article, the Psychometrics article or the Race article. Imagine an intelligent person who finds themselves embroiled in a debate on race and intelligence - I'd hope they'd be able to come to this article and have a good idea what positions will be argued and what data will be thrown at them.Nick Connolly (talk) 02:28, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, I have to say this is the most reasonable and constructive approach to the article I have heard. It sounds to me like you are talking about an article that addresses a "meta-scientific" debate, one that is embedded in popular culture to an extent to which mainstream scientists must in some way acknowledge. I see some value in this. I do not think that it would be a substitute for a solid article on research on SES and IQ score variation (drawing largely on work by soiologists, anthropologists, and other social scientists), and another article on the heritability of IQ (drawing largely on work by population geneticists and developmental biologists, especially twin studies). Slrubenstein | Talk 11:34, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. It would not be an article on mainstream current research on SES and IQ score variations, but it could be encyclopaedic if presented from the side of a popular debate. These theories aren't scientifically notable, but they have certainly garnered the attention of a segment of the population, at least in the USA. Care would need to be taken to properly represent the debate outside the USA, as, AFAIK, the debate is much less notable there.--Ramdrake (talk) 13:39, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

I still think the key to an NPOV article is to find reliable, notable sources first, however, and then decide on the contents and structure later.

Montagu's book is good, but here are three other, more recent, and I think essential for the article I am proposing or any comparable article on the popular beliefs about race, or racist science:

• The Problem of Race in the Twenty-First Century. Thomas C. Holt. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002. 146 pp.
• Race in Mind: Race, IQ, and Other Racisms. Alexander Alland Jr. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002. 219 pp.
• The Funding of Scientific Racism: Wickliffe Draper and the Pioneer Fund. William H. Tucker. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002. 286 pp.

(Anyone who doubts that Rushton and Hernstein and Murray are fringe theories and wants to know what good sources are, should read these books!!) Is there any chance Ramdrake and Nick Connolly could divide up these three books along with Montagu's book and write a first draft of this proposed artcile, using their won discussion above as a starting point for clarifying the scope of the article?

Draw on major popular magazines (Time, Newsweek) and newspapers to see how the popular media reports the issue. Also, look for articles in the major media studies journals:

• Communication Theory
• Human Communication Research
• Public Opinion Quarterly

To see how they analyze the portrayal of this issue in the medial.

"Constructing Paper Dolls: The Discourse of Personality Testing in Organizational Practice" Majia Holmer Nadesan. Communication Theory, Volume 7, Issue 3, Page 189-218, Aug 1997,

"Poverty as We Know It: Media Portrayals of the Poor" Rosalee A. Clawson; Rakuya Trice The Public Opinion Quarterly > Vol. 64, No. 1 (Spring, 2000), pp. 53-64

"Race, Public Opinion, and the Social Sphere" Lawrence Bobo The Public Opinion Quarterly > Vol. 61, No. 1, Special Issue on Race (Spring, 1997), pp. 1-15

It is also worth looking at:

• Public Culture
• Representations

for possible analyses of this issue in popular culture.

"The Regents on Race and Diversity: Representations and Reflections" Marianne Constable Representations > No. 55, Special Issue: Race and Representation: Affirmative Action (Summer, 1996), pp. 92-97

"The Trope of a New Negro and the Reconstruction of the Image of the Black" Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Representations > No. 24, Special Issue: America Reconstructed, 1840-1940 (Autumn, 1988), pp. 129-155

"Individual Fairness, Group Preferences, and the California Strategy" Troy Duster Representations > No. 55, Special Issue: Race and Representation: Affirmative Action (Summer, 1996), pp. 41-58

"Darwin's Savage Mnemonics" Cannon Schmitt Representations' > No. 88 (Autumn, 2004), pp. 55-80

Proposal Two: "The Heritability of IQ"

What do people mean when they claim that racial differences cause differences in IQ? According the the lead, it sounds like some people think that race stands for biological differences. In the "Race" section above Alun demonstrates that for biologists race is subspecies and there are no meaningful human races in a biological sense. The question is whether there is a genetic component to differences in IQ scores and this question has nothing to do with "race." Study on the biology of IQ hinges on twin studies. Here is a fair sample of the major sources:

To start us off, I propose we look at these articles:

• Bouchard, Arvey, Keller, Segal, 1992, Genetic Influences on Job Satisfaction: A Reply to Cropanzano and James,” Journal of Applied Psychology 77(1): 89-93
• Devlin, Daniels, Roeder 1997 “The heritability of IQ” Nature 388: 468-471
• Jacobs, Van Gestel, Derom, Thiery, Vernon, Derom, and Vlietinck, 2001, “Heritability Estimates of Intelligence in Twins: Effect of Chorion Type,” Behavior Genetics 31(2): 209-217
• McCartney, Harris, and Bernieri, 1990, “Growing Up and Growing Apart: A Developmental Metanalysis of Twin Studies” Psychological Bulletin 107(2) 226-237
• Phelps, Davis, Schwartz, 1997, “Nature, Nurture and Twin research Strategies” in Current Directions in Psychological Science 6(6): 117-121
• Plomin and Loehlin, 1989, “Direct and Indirect IQ Heritability Estimates: a Puzzle” Behavior Genetics 19(3): 33-342
• Race, Townswend, Hughes, 285-291, “Chorion Type, Birthweight Discordance, and tooth-Size Variability in Australian Monozygotic Twins” Twin Research and Human Genetics 9(2) 285-291 (no, not about IQ – but as it is about other clear phenotypic traits it provides a good benchmark for assessing the value of twin studies and the various factors one must also take into account)
• Reed, Carmelli, Rosenman, 1991, “Effects of Placentation in Selected Type A Behaviors in Adult males in the national Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute Twin Study,” Behavior Genetics 21(1) 1-19
• Segal, 19999, Entwined Lives: Twins and What They Tell us About Human Behavior
• Sokol, Moore, Rose, Williams, reed, and Christian, 1995, “Intrapair Differences in Personality and Cognitive Ability Among Mynozygotic Twins Distinguished by Chorion Type,” Behavior Genetics 25(5) 456-466
• Stromswold, 2006, “Why Aren’t Identical Twins Linguistically Identical?” Cognition 101(2): 333-383

I repeat, the point is not to cherry-pick quotes that we agree or disagree with. The point is to examine reliable sources to find out - yes, find out, as if e may actually learn something new - what the notable views are. From what I gather from this literature, most of the current scholarship - mainstream scholarship - on IQ scores is not even concerned with the debate "is it environmental or is it genetic." There is a body of literature, and I provided many citations above, and obviously an article on this research must be organized around the most notable and mainstream views on the matter - it should include all notable views ... but I think that the major notable views should be the principle factor in the organization and presentation of the article.

Virtually all scientific research on the genetic determinants of variation in IQ scores is based on twin studies and above (perhaps now in archived talk) I provided a bibliography of major (i.e. from major peer-reviewed journal journals, and which are frequently cited) articles. These studies indicate an ongoing debate between scientists who measure the heritability of intelligence at .40, and others who measure it at between .60 and .70. In addition to these contrasting calculations, there is a debate over the effects of of the shared prenatal environment - some argue that identical blood supply should lead to greater similarities between monochoriatic twins than dichorionic twins; others argue that competition for blood supply should lead to greater differences between monochorionic twins than dichorionic twins. I think we need to have a good article that provides a clear account of this research and these controversies.

Perhaps someone who has training in genetics and access to these journals could take the first step in sketching out an article on Heritability and IQ.?

Here is the existing article: Heritability of IQ. --Jagz (talk) 18:57, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks - the article is indeed a start but does need work. But you are right about this being the article in which to address the heritability of IQ. Since this article exists, I think we can reserve other articles (like the present one) for other issues. Slrubenstein | Talk 19:40, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

The article also confuses heritability with inheritance. Heritability is a measure of the contribution of genes to variance, the article states this specifically in the section "Heritability calculations", but in the introduction it states "The degree to which IQ, or intelligence quotient, is passed down through the generations has been the subject of extensive research. " This is untrue, heritability does not measure this, it attempts to measures the relative contribution of genes to the Variance of a phenotype. Regardless of the validity of IQ as a measure of phenotype (something not necessarily accepted by many scientists), heritability does not measure the contribution of genes to a phenotype. As such it is a relative measure. When we can control for environment, then the genetic contribution to variance in a trait that is under both environmental and genetic influence will be high, when we can control for genes the environmental contribution to variance will be high for the same trait, the measurement is not a fixed, constant for any given trait, but varies depending upon the study design etc. The article is also incorrect in claiming that "Heritability is defined as the proportion of variance in a trait which is attributable to genetic variation within a population." Heritability is the proportion of variance in a traight that is attributable to genetic variation when we control for environment. This article seems to have been written by someone whith a pov to push who does not know what they are talking about. Alun (talk) 06:25, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

It is a pretty poor article, but that's not important here. -- The article is also incorrect in claiming that "Heritability is defined as the proportion of variance in a trait which is attributable to genetic variation within a population." -- That one is correct. You can estimate heritability by a number of methods, some of them don't involve controlling for environment, such as MZ twins reared apart. http://psych.colorado.edu/~carey/hgss/hgssapplets/heritability/heritability.intro.html --Legalleft (talk) 06:32, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm sure it is possible to measure heritability without controlling for environment. But we are not discussing the estimation/measurement of heritability, we are discussing the definition of heritability.

Heritability refers to the genetic contribution to variance within a population and in a specific environment.[23]

In this article Stephen Rose also states that heritability estimates are little more than an example of GIGO, which is the opinion of a reliable academic source and therefore citable on Wikipedia. Alun (talk) 07:32, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

That's not the same thing as "controlling" for environment as the term is commonly used, but rather a matter of the fact that the heritability of a trait is a function of the existing genetic and environmental factors in a population when you measure it. If the genes or environment changes (if the population changes), you can't necessarily say what the heritability is any longer. Also, one can cite Rose or Kamin or whomever, but they're opinions are extremely marginal. See Not in Our Genes. --Legalleft (talk) 15:39, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Without controls no scientific experiment is ever valid. The measurement of heritability is clearly more applicable when the environments of the individuals under investigation can be assumed to be relatively uniform, it was invented for measuring crop yields, where environment can be relatively easily controlled. Likewise the measurement of environment can only be done when genetic factors are relatively homogeneous (or why bother to use identical twin studies? this is controlling for genetics). I don't know how the term "control" is "commonly used", but I do know how it is used in science and that's how I was using it. Alun (talk) 07:14, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Heritability estimates in humans are not performed the same way they are in experimental systems. You rely on natural experiments and estimate the partitioning of the variance based on these natural experiments: twins, other familial relations, siblings, etc. The only sense in which there's a control is that, for example, twins reared apart are assumed to have no shared environmental variance, whereas adopted family members are assumed to have no shared genetic variance, and so on. For references see: Lynch, M. & Walsh, B. Genetics and analysis of quantitative traits (Sinauer Associates, Sunderland, Massachusetts, 1998). or better yet Falconer, D. S. & Mackay, T. F. C. Introduction to Quantitative Genetics (Longman, Harlow, 1996). --Legalleft (talk) 23:13, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Proposal Three: "IQ and SES"

In the "Race" section above, I explain how for anthropologists races have nothing to do with biology. Anthropologists and sociologists do howeve recognize races as social constructions. What this means is that "race" is a marker of social differences. So if someone says that race may cause difference in IQ, they could be saying that social factors cause differences in IQ. Indeed, social scientists argue that to understand differences in IQ between races we have to look at non-biological stuff. By the way, we might want to include various achievement scores given to school children at different ages. In any event the book by Flynn is robably the state of the art in current research on the matter and would be invaluable.

James Flynn, What is Intelligence

But we should also just put the terms "IQ" and "SES," or even "race" and "intelligence," into search engines for these journals and see what we come up with.:

• Review of Educational Research
• American Anthropologist
• American Ethnologist
• Anthropology Quarterly
• Cultural Anthropology
• Current Anthropologist
• Journal of Anthropological Research
• American Journal of Sociology
• American Sociological Review
• British Journal of Sociology
• Journal of Historical Sociology

Again, I do not know what we would come up with - that is my whole point, this is unbiased - but whatever we come up with would reflect good solid scholarship.

I did a search of some anthropology journals and came up with this:

"Institutionalized Racism and the Education of Blacks" Arthur K. Spears Anthropology & Education Quarterly. Jul 1978, Vol. 9, No. 2: 127-136

Blacked Out: Dilemmas of Race, Identity, and Success at Capital High. Signithia Fordham . Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. 411 pp.

"Social Stratification and the Socialization of Competence" John U. Ogbu Anthropology & Education Quarterly. Apr 1979, Vol. 10, No. 1: 3-20.

Minority Education and Caste: The American System in Cross-Cultural Perspective. John U. Ogbu .

"High-Stakes Accountability, Minority Youth, and Ethnography: Assessing the Multiple Effects" Kris Sloan Anthropology & Education Quarterly. Mar 2007, Vol. 38, No. 1: 24-41.

"The Comparative Motor Development of Baganda, American White, and American Black Infants" Janet E. Kilbride , , Michael C. Robbins , , Philip L. Kilbride American Anthropologist. Dec 1970, Vol. 72, No. 6: 1422-1428.

"The Collection and Analysis of Ethnographic Data in Educational Research" Stephen E. Fienberg Anthropology & Education Quarterly. May 1977, Vol. 8, No. 2: 50-57.

"Social Economic Status and Educational Achievement: A Review Article" George Clement Bond Anthropology & Education Quarterly. Dec 1981, Vol. 12, No. 4: 227-257.

Interrogating "Blackness": Race and Identity-formation in the African Diaspora Crosscurrents: West Indian Immigrants and Race. Milton Vickerman . New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1999. xi + 2)1 pp.

Black Identities: West Indian Immigrant Dreams and American Realities. Mary C. Waters . Cambridge, MA, and London, UK: Russell Sage Foundation and Harvard University Press, 1999. xii - 413 pp.

I haven't read these so I have no idea what view they support- again, that is the idea of not cherry picking.

You can use this article, it needs help: Environment and intelligence. --Jagz (talk) 19:00, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

No, this can just lead to more confusion. Geneticists debating the heritability of IQ address, among other things, fetal environment. This is not about reproducing an arbitrary and unscientific distinction between genes and environment, this is about adequatly representing notable bodies of research and scholarly debates. There is a body of research (some of which i cite) that addresses social and economic status, this is much more precise than "environment". Slrubenstein | Talk 19:38, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

There's nothing arbitrary about distinguishing between genes and environment when it comes to population-wide individual variation (as compared to individual-level causation) -- unless you are generally criticizing the methods of behavior genetics. Also, while issues such as chorion and prenatal effects are discussed in the literature, you have to dig pretty deeply to hit that level of detail. At that level, the primary literature is too complex for a novice to summarize (or even catalog). Bouchard and McGue's massive review reported this on chorion [24]:

The applicability of the equal environmental similarity assumption extends to the prenatal as well as the postnatal environment. In utero, twins can be distinguished in terms of whether they share a chorion, and thus have a single placenta. MZ twins can be monochorionic (MC) or dichorionic (DC) depending on the timing of their division; DZ twins are always DC. MC twins almost always share the same placenta and if this makes them more similar than DC and DZ twins we may have a specific example of violation of the trait-relevant equal environment assumption (Prescott et al., 1999). A small number of studies comparing very small numbers of MC and DC twins suggested that MC twins are more similar than DC twins on some, but not all, measures of mental abilities (Melnick et al., 1978; Rose et al., 1981). A greater number of small-sample studies (Brown, 1977; Welch et al., 1978; Sokol et al., 1995; Gutknecht et al., 1999; Riese, 1999), however, failed to replicate these chorion effects. Moreover, a recent, large epidemiological study (Derom et al., 2001) using a near-representative sample from the East Flanders Prospective Twin Survey could not replicate the specific effects previously reported and found no chorion effect on total IQ (rMC = .83, n = 175 pairs; rDC = .82, n = 95 pairs; rDZ .44, n = 181 pairs). This latter study did report a chorion effect for two different mental ability measures, but the effects were very small, prompting the authors to emphasize caution and the need for replication. Nevertheless, careful assessment of twin placentation at birth would be highly desirable and significantly improve the quality of twin studies. It would also be very useful to parents and physicians as some rare physical disease processes occur in MC twins that do not occur in DC twins (Machin, 2001). For these diseases chorion type is a trait-relevant environmental variable. Generally speaking, however, twins do not differ in terms of their disease related characteristics (Andrew et al., 2001), but see Phelps et al. (1997) for arguments regarding viral influences on schizophrenia, Phillips (1993) for arguments regarding placentation and the fetal origin of disease hypothesis (i.e., that adult-onset disorders are affected by in utero stress and trauma), and subsequent defense of the twin method by a number of investigators (Braun and Caporaso, 1993; Duffy, 1993; Leslie and Pyke, 1993; Macdonald, 1993; Christensen et al., 1995). An entire issue of the journal Twin Research was devoted to the fetal origin of disease hypothesis (Lambalk and Roseboom, 2001), but none of the articles dealt with behavioral phenotypes. Fortunately, inferences about the nature and existence of genetic and environmental influences on individual differences in behavior do not rest solely with twin studies....

Also in that review they critically discuss the Devlin et al Nature paper. That kind of analysis is beyond the scope of a wikipedia editor. Thus, a reliance on 2ndary sources is essential. --Legalleft (talk) 05:28, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Proposal Four: How to deal with theories that are fringe among scientists but notable in popular culture?

I would propose additional single articles. So, for example one article on J. Philippe Rushton, that goes into great detail about his book and its reception. One article on The Bell Curve that goes into its arguments and the reception. (e.g. The Bell Curve Wars: Race, Intelligence, and the Future of America Steven Fraser , ed. New York, NY: Basic Books, 1995. 216 pp.)

The idea is simple: to comply with NPOV, we need a way to include notable views in Wikipedia while keeping fringe and pseudoscientific views out of articles on scientific topics/areas of research. Specific articles on controversial books seems like the most elegant way to accomplish this. After all, what is notable is the controversy provoked by the book - not the contribution of the authors' views to any scientific research. So let's have articles on those controversial books!

Discussion of four Proposals

It is my believe that the method I propose is the best method for producing NPOV and NOR compliant, truly encyclopedic articles that do justice to the range of actual scientific researchy. I have proposed a minimum of three, perhaps up to six or seven, articles that would together provide comprehensive comverage of these issues while avoiding all the problems that have made this article a collosal waste of time, and useless to our readers. Slrubenstein | Talk 00:38, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

One item that needs to be done once this article is unprotected is slap a Pseudoscience cat on it. This article is essentially a science article, so we should not give undue weight to fringe theories. The fringe theories should be mentioned only as a section called Popular but very unscientific theories (OK, we can clean that up), with verified and reliable references stating where they are mentioned, and certainly adding verified refutation of the fringe theories. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 17:26, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Pseudoscience is not a determination we should make without imposing our own POV. The point I've made repeatedly still remains: the views people find objectionable (for good reason) are still views that get coverage within peer-reviewed journals within the domain of IQ-testing. Yes much of the research is flawed, and is flawed in three fundamental ways; a lack of a clear theory of intelligence, poor understanding of the relation between IQ and intelligence and weak methodology in studying the differences. However much of those criticisms cannot be confined solely to those proposing a race-IQ link. Gardener's multiple intelligences, explanations of the Flynn effect, hypothesis behind SES and IQ, stereotype threat can all be regarded as weak science and arguably pseudoscience. This inevitable in a science which is still stumbling around in the dark. In short the above does not bring peace to the edit war. That edit war will only be resolved by including those views which do appear in referenced literature - no other solution is possible because those views easily meet the core criteria of Wikipedia which is VERFIABILITY - they are easily and comprehensively referenced. Consequently they can and will keep popping up without an editor engaging in vandalism. After all even if we cast the discussion in terms of SES (as indeed the historical discussion in the UK was primaily about I and social class) then a supporter of Jensen's view or proponent of the Bell Curve can still point to research which suggests that varitaions in SES may have a race/genetic origin. You need a better answer than that those views aren't popular. The danger is this issue metastatising into multiple articles.Nick Connolly (talk) 20:21, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

I must side with Nick on this point, that few researchers have actually called the "Race and IQ" studies actual pseudoscience (although they have been largely debunked, and called "fringe" repeatedly. Is there a Fringe Theory cat we could slap on this rather than a pseudoscience tag, just for the sake of complete honesty?--Ramdrake (talk) 22:34, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Pseudoscience is a definition, much like scientific method defines science. It does not always require a citation to prove it so. However, I'm sure we can find one. The casual reader needs to know that this so called "theory" is in fact unsupported by anything scientific, but those who engage in it utilize a process called "pseudoscience." The anti-semites and racists will believe whatever they want, but our job is to present it in a manner so that the innocent bystander doesn't come to this article and think, "yeah, there's evidence that some race is dumber than another one." OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 23:59, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

In this case I'd regard that as a definite POV imposition on the article. The methodological problems with the Race IQ claims would extend to many areas of psychology. These claims lie within an academic discipline and within the limits of that discipline.The people who have proposed such links are not minor fringe figures within intelligence testing but figures of some note in their own right . The discussion (and debunking) of these theories has taken place within scholarly peer-reviewed journals. Whilst the race-IQ claims may (like holocaust denial) be motivated by racism and promoted by racist groups that doesn't mean that the race-IQ claims are of the same pseudo-scholarship as holocaust denial. Seperating our distaste for the views that underpin the claims for the disputed evidence for the claims is important if a stable article is to be created. I agree with Orangemarlin that the innocent bystander is the person we should be thinking of, but we don't want that same bystander to be swayed by claims that supposed evidence has been hidden. We aren't doing that innocent bystander any favours if they don't come away adequately briefed. Nor should we pretend that there is a slam-dunk counter-explanation that transcends the methodological flaws in Jensen et al's work. The reality is we don't know why IQ varies across groups or whether there are heridtary differences between groups or even how big those differences are. That gap in our knowledge means that the more race based theories aren't as thoroughly debunked as we might like. Pretending otherwise is an error.Nick Connolly (talk) 03:31, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

If it's any help, Francisco Gil-White is one of the few who actually called it "pseudoscience".--Ramdrake (talk) 00:28, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, that works for me. Can we use it? OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 02:59, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

smile you could but be prepared for a meta-argument about the argument. Once the argument comes down to which is the mainstream position and which is the fringe position the other side aren't unarmed. The next step after that is the meta-meta-argument in which all and sundry argue about which bit of research about which bit of research is the mainstream position is the proper kind of research and so on... Nick Connolly (talk) 03:31, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

There is also the fact that Francisco Gil-White is also a somewhat fringy character in his own right. Since he is an anthropologist, maybe Slrubenstein would be more familiar with his works and the controversy about him. I'm no anthropologist myself.--Ramdrake (talk) 12:37, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Nick Connolly is correct (in everything I've read from him about policy).. Picking up where his comment left off. You can't categorize an article as Pseudoscience when there isn't a signficant scholarly consensus that the topic is pseudoscience. Categories appear without annotations, so be careful of NPOV when creating or filling categories. Categories that are not self-evident, or are shown through reliable sources to be controversial, should not be included on the article; a list might be a better option. Wikipedia:Category. --Legalleft (talk) 03:53, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Legalleft, there isn't a significant scholarly consensus that the "pro" side of research is pseudoscience, but there is an easily demonstrable scholarly consensus that it is sloppy science. That, and the fact that the one peer-reviewed journal which publishes a significant number of these studies Ingtelligence, has several Pioneer Fundees (including JP Rushton as the head) on its review board should speak amply for itself.--Ramdrake (talk) 11:31, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

There is little understanding in science now of the biology of race, what intelligence is, and the biology of intelligence. An article about race and intelligence is mostly speculation from both the environmental and genetic standpoint. It is my understanding that the AfD on this article showed that people do not want this article split up as they called for all sub-articles to be merged with this one. They also did not want this article deleted. The fact is that environmental factors only show their effects via genes and that people are genetically different, so trying to separate environmental factors from genetics is impossible. --Jagz (talk) 12:38, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Nonsense, human variation (both physical and genetic) has been extensively studied. Biologists understand how variation is distributed within the human species, and have concluded that there is no biological justification for the subdivision of our species into subspecific categories. Our taxonomy is well understood and our biology has been more extensively studied than the biology of any other organism. Any claim that human variation is somehow not "understood" displays either a lack of knowledge or a fundamental bias. Obviously we don't know everything, but to claim little understanding is simply wrong. Alun (talk) 12:44, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Actually, we do currently have little understanding. The proposition that there exists "no biological justification for the subdivision of our species into subspecific categories" only illustrates what little understanding we currently possess. We could equally state that there exists "no environmental justification." However, it is likely this proposition will not hold up. We're already seeing dings in the armor. We only need our eyes to see that there is variance in phenotype among humans. We could, if we chose to, divide humans into blue-eyed humans, brown-eyed humans, and neither blue-eyed, nor brown-eyed humans. Whether there is utility to such distinctions is dubious. We are currently witnessing a trickle of data coming out in rather high profile journals that define the biology behind such differences. Furthermore, the nature vs. nurture dichotomy has recently died. We know now that plasticity exists, i.e. "nurture" can change how some genes are expressed and how they act after being expressed; however, we also know that the phenotypic expression of some genomic changes/mutations/SNP/etc. cannot be compensated for regardless to changes in the environment. The big question, in relation to this article, is whether the genomic correlates of phenotype will stratify across traditionally held concepts of race. The mainstream of academia says no; however, in the last ten years or so have we have acquired more sophisticated tools to address this question. Thing is, no one wants know the answer.165.123.139.232 (talk) 22:51, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

You shouldn't use the word nonsense any more, it is offensive. --Jagz (talk) 13:03, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Jagz, no one here is saying that individual differences in IQ aren't at least partly genetic; in fact, there is good evidence that they are at least in part genetically driven. What most editors (and the majority of the scholars in related subjects) object to is introducing the notion of race, which in the human race species is entirely an empirical, social construct, and use it as a valid proxy for human genetic diversity. While there is good evidence for a genetic cause to individual differences in IQ, there is no direct evidence for group differences in IQ, much less racially-based. That a dozen or so researchers publish a gazillion papers trying to demonstrate that this isn't the case doesn't change the fact that mainstream science has oft deconstructed such arguments and found them faulty, even sloppy thinking.--Ramdrake (talk) 12:50, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

What about the AfD? Actually, I believe this article survived two AfDs. --Jagz (talk) 13:19, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

The AfD has nothing to do with this. In fact, several editors from the latest AfD thought the article needed to be rewritten extensively (some even from scratch). The AfD was not a license saying the article was balanced, NPOV or anything of the sort. It was just a consensus that the subject was noteworthy enough to be kept. It didn't say anything about how correct or incorrect the science behind this field of research is.--Ramdrake (talk) 13:35, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

The proposals essentially involve deleting an article with the name "Race and intelligence", do they not? The AfDs seemed to indicate that the consensus is to not delete this article. The AfD also seemed to show that people do not want the article broken up into sub-articles. No? --Jagz (talk) 13:59, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

No, the proposals essentyially involve a complete rewriting of the subject matter, and possibly a change of title, if appropriate. The need for a complete rewriting has already been raised several times in the different AfD. People didn't want the subject broken up into several different articles, but the proposal is to write this one as the fringe science that it is and to write another one on the legitimate science of IQ heritability studies. Not sure why you'd be confused here.--Ramdrake (talk) 14:11, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

• Here is my request for a rewrite of the article from last year.[25] --Jagz (talk) 14:52, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

I am not sure Jagz's comments are useful - the proposals I made above make it clear that intelligence is heritable. Tere is no debate over that. There is some debate ove the actual heritbility, and an article should go into it. And whether one of us is interested in this or not, geneticists are debating the influence of fetal environment in twin-studies and this is highly relevant and we should cover that as well, t least in some article. Jagz brings up the AfD - old history, but maybe because he recently put in and RfC on the neutrality of this article and the overwheloming majority say it violates NPOV. An article with such NPOV problems either needs to be completely rewritten or replaced by other articles. At the time of the RfC there were no clear, workable alternatives. Let's see if can develop some. I have proposed three specific articles.

I also used the word "pseudoscience" which I now fear turns out to be a red-herring. If several constructive editors take issue with my use the word, let's just drop the matter, I take it back, okay? ersonally I do have serious qualms when psychologists start to make claims about fields of knowledge outside their own disciplinary expertise (e.g. evolutionary theory); I would be just as skeptical of an anthropologist making original claims about astronomy. But no Wikipedia article can suggest that an entire academic discipline is pseudoscience and that was not my intention.

Finally, about Gil White: disclaimer, I know him personally. Bracketing our personal relationship, I would say that his claims about psychology itself as being pseudosciece are fringe. In fact, he had a tenure track position in the University of Pennsylvaia's psychology department and one could say he is as much a psychologist as anthropologist. Be that as it may, he was dismissed from his position and much of his work is controversial. Did he call psychology pseudosicence in a peer-rviewed publication? If so tht may count as a reliable source and as long as we identify him as a controversial figure perhaps it could go in. But if it came from his website I would not include it.

Rather than argue about pseudoscience, perhpas others could start revising, reformulating, or building on my proposals? Slrubenstein | Talk 13:50, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

SLR, I have no more wish than you to argue about R&I research putatively being pseudoscience. Gil-White's comment about this was in his online self-published book "Resurrecting racism", so I have reservations possibly just as severe as you about including it. However, the question which is bugging me is this: how can we fairly, neutrally represent a field of research which (as my father used to say) is famous for being infamous? What I mean to say is that the volume of science dedicated to debunking the theories of Rushton, Murray, Lynn and co. is to the best of my knowledge larger than the even very prolific writings of these authors. If you also figure that many may also have found the theories unworthy of a dignified response, this is a field with far more debunkers than proponents, whether or not we want to call it pseudoscience. That is why I originally asked if there was a clear "Fringe theory" cat distinct from the pseudoscience category. The pseudoscience tag may not apply in all rigor, but reality commends that this be treated with a fair warning to the reader that this isn't seen by many as good science in any sense of the word. Constructive suggestions and comments most welcome.--Ramdrake (talk) 14:05, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

• SLR, you state, "Jagz brings up the AfD - old history, but maybe because he recently put in and RfC on the neutrality of this article and the overwheloming majority say it violates NPOV." It is unfair of you to publicly question my motives in this manner. --Jagz (talk) 14:09, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Ramdrake, you write, "how can we fairly, neutrally represent a field of research which (as my father used to say) is famous for being infamous? .... a field with far more debunkers than proponents ...." I think we should skip the semantic argument over pseudoscience entirely and stick with the point that you so clearly make. I believe that in these cases, the matter is best served by articles on the specific controversy itself. If The Bell Curve is notable because it spawned loads of critiques, especially in trade presses or intended for popular audiences, and is not part of any notable scientific debate, I think it is too fringe to be included in any article on a scientific debate. But the controversy itself is notable. This is my fourth proposal: we have an article already on The Bell Curve; cover the controversy there. We have an article on on Race, Evolution and Behavior - cover the article there. This is a content fork: some articles cover controversial books (proposal four). My proposals two and three are meant to cover notable scientific debates. Slrubenstein | Talk 14:21, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't see any merit in the kind of a priori rewrites being proposed. For example, the *precise* heritability of IQ in the US population (mostly from data on whites) has little importance to the scholarly debate regarding the cause of group differences. The solution -- there are similar, shorter-than-book length articles on this topic in the secondary and tertiary literature. Just model the article after them. Here are many from the external links section:

• APA Task Force Examines the Knowns and Unknowns of Intelligence
• Statement on "Race" and Intelligence. American Anthropological Association. Adopted December 1994.
• Mainstream Science on Intelligence. Intelligence, v24 n1 p. 13–23 Jan–Feb 1997
• James Flynn and Charles Murray debate – news summary
• June 2005 issue of Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, Vol. 11, No. 2.
  • Thirty Years of Research on Race Differences in Cognitive Ability J. Philippe Rushton & Arthur R. Jensen
  • There Are No Public-Policy Implications Robert J. Sternberg
  • What if the Hereditarian Hypothesis is True? Linda S. Gottfredson
  • Heredity, Environment, and Race Differences in IQ Richard E. Nisbett
  • The Cultural Malleability of Intelligence and Its Impact on the Racial/Ethnic Hierarchy Lisa Suzuki & Joshua Aronson
  • Wanted: More Race Realism, Less Moralistic Fallacy J. Philippe Rushton & Arthur R. Jensen
• Race, Genetics and IQ Richard E. Nisbett (PDF)
• The Inequality Taboo Charles Murray archived version
• The Black-White Test Score Gap (1998) online (page-image) version of ISBN 0-8157-4609-1

All one need do is *report* what's written in this articles and others like them. It should be fairly easy and most of the article content is already aimed in that direction. --Legalleft (talk) 18:24, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Also, it's probably advisable to keep the level of technical detail to a minimum. The level of complexity reported in a magazine such as The Economist or Scientific American is probably where we want to limit most discussions. That itself should limit the agglomeration of esoteric details. --Legalleft (talk) 18:34, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Legalleft, it seems you are making a priori judgments. I merely observe that there is a considerable body of research, including debate among scientists, cncerning the heritability of IQ. I think this encyclopedia should have an article providng an account of this research and debates. That is all. That this body of literature happens to address things you personaly are interested in, or that I personaly am interested in - or not - is neither here nor there. You seem to want to cherry-pick sources that address a qustion you are interested in. I want to avoid cherry-picking and write encyclopedia articles about (among other things) questions scientists are interested in. Slrubenstein | Talk 19:35, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

(1) My aim was less ambitious than that and (2) I appear to have misunderstood your suggestion. However, if I understand your suggestions correctly now, it means that there is very little take-away for this article. It also means that the point which I intended to make originally still stands: anything written by scientists about both race (widely-construed) and intelligence (widely-construed) should be written up, making as much use of journalistic style and the organizational structure of available source materials as possible. That means making as little use as possible of attempts at grand organizational schemes that presume one or another theory about what is true about the topic (this is what thought you were suggesting) -- just simple reporting, sub-topic by sub-topic. Lastly, (3) I wasn't saying that there shouldn't be articles in wikipedia about each of the topics you listed, just that this article isn't appropriate for all of the material that should be covered under each topic. --Legalleft (talk) 22:13, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Yet another proposal

Based on Slrubenstein's ideas and above comments I think it is clear some forking is inevitable. Based on Ramdrake's comments and others there are clear concerns about undue weight and the unsoundness of much of the methodology in works that have advanced claims about Race & intelligence. However Legalleft and others have (IMHO) legitimately attempted to include in the article research that has been discussed in peer reviewed journals (if only critically).

• Suggest rename the article "Race and IQ" or perhaps with a modifier such as "debate" or "controversy" (though consider POV issues there also). (The current article and the Jensen et al position centres around IQ scores and the intelligence issue is speculative, so it is not imposing a POV to refer in the title to IQ rather than intelligence). The article then stands primarily as an overview of claims of a link between race, IQ and hence intelligence and how those views have been debated. This way the views of Jensen et al get their day in court but likewise the extensive debunking literature gets a sensible place to live within its proper context (i.e. journal articles explicitly criticising Jensen's views make less sense in a more general article about IQ and heredity). Many links already exist to the associated articles such as The Bell Curve and The Mismeasure of Man so some pruning can be done. I think this is pretty much in-line with what Slrubenstein has already suggested. The other articles that they suggested can then avoid being dragged into same edit-war situation by making this article the proper place to explain those issues which may be notable within IQ-testing but are fringe in comparison to a wider domain (eg anthropology, genetics or cognitive science). Nick Connolly (talk) 00:02, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
• Weak support -- I suppose that helps to emphasize the psychometric origins and emphasis of the discussion. No particular word choice is going to be perfect, however, and that change does bring certain problems. For example, "IQ" would tend to exclude some measurements that are otherwise relevant. Also, IQ itself is a "vehicle" in the language of Jensen (1998) not the "construct" of interest. I don't have any better suggestions. --Legalleft (talk) 05:34, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Other measures wouldn't be excluded if given in the context of correlation with IQ.Nick Connolly (talk) 18:45, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

• it's better than what currently have TheRedPenOfDoom (talk) 05:38, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
• Comment Most of us agree that this so-called "theory" is bogus, and is unsupported by the vast wealth of research. It is notable, and it can retain it's current title. If you read Intelligent design, which is also a bogus theory, you'll note that it is accepted for what it is, an attempt by Christians to force feed an anti-science and anti-evolution stance on US schools. It is clearly stated what it is and what it is NOT in the lead. We aren't giving undue weight to the anti-science POV pushers by acknowledging that this issue has some unfortunate supporters. But with verified and reliable references, we must write most of the words debunking this theory logically. Most admins will support that effort, and keep the racists out of this article. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 05:47, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Obviously this is going to spin off topic, but it must be pointed out that this comment is almost completely inaccurate. The accurate bits are (1) intelligent design is pseudoscience and (2) public discussion of this topic does damage science. However, the black-white difference in performance on tests designed to measure cognitive abilities is one of the most precisely quantified value in all of psychology. It has been an active topic of research since at least the 1970s, and has spawned a massive body of research literature which has evolved over time. Moreover, there is much more to the topic than the very contentious issue of causal hypotheses, about which, for example, The Bell Curve had very little to say. --Legalleft (talk) 06:09, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
    • That was a bit insulting. So, in the spirit of insults, do you know anything about intelligent design? Apparently not, because it is also the subject of intensive research, most of which I personally dismiss, like I dismiss the research for this article, but that doesn't mean someone doesn't believe in it. And I would contend that psychology has about as much interpretation and no "black/white" differences as does religion. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 14:36, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
      • I don't mean to be insulting, and thus used language like "inaccurate" rather than "wrong". However, your opinions are apparently not well informed. :) Intelligent design involves little to no actual research and is mostly obfuscation -- it has none of the character of normal science. The difference in average test scores by self-identified racial and ethnic groups in the US is a plainly observable and extremely well documented fact (also known as the Achievement gap when applied to "achievement" test scores), toward which much research has been directed -- ultimately with the aim of ameliorating whatever problems are causing the gaps. It is clearly controversial and people react strongly to all aspects of the topic, but that doesn't change the fact that this research operates as normal science (to the extent that any social science can be described as such). --Legalleft (talk) 15:55, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
        • I think the point here is NPOV. Legalleft says that ID research has none of the character of normal science and i am sure he believes it. But ID proponents sincerely believe that they are doing good science. Wikipedia cannot take sides concerning the sincerity of beliefs about right or wrong. That is why we have NPOV - so that views we judge differently can all be accomodated. In Wikipedia, content forks are allowed but not POV forks; all articles must comply with NPOV. My proposal was an attempt to create certain content forks that would facilitate coherent NPOV articles. Slrubenstein | Talk 16:17, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
          • • The difference between ID and this topic is that this one occurs within the subject domain and that subject domain itself has methodological flaws. 18:45, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
          • Right. Proposals 2 and 3 are definitely solid ideas, although I just assumed those topics were for the IQ article anyway. --Legalleft (talk) 16:31, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Proposals 2 & 3

Reading through the above the discussion I think there appears to be consensus that Slrubenstien's proposal 2 (An article on intelligence and heredity) and proposal 3 (an article on intelligence/IQ and socioeconomic status) make sense and are basically uncontroversial. Perhaps those articles should be started, whilst the role of this one is still under discussion? Maybe once we agree on what this article isn't, there may be more consesnus on what it is. Nick Connolly (talk) 18:53, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Fringe views

What are the so called "fringe" views and how do you know that they are fringe? --Jagz (talk) 14:25, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Here is a prior discussion of "fringe" in general.[26] --Jagz (talk) 14:43, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Article should present contemporary debate

As the article states, "The contemporary debate on race and intelligence is about what causes racial and ethnic differences in IQ test scores."[27] The debate includes genetic and environmental factors and these points of view are presented in the article.

No, the debate does not include genetic factors; people who say so are fringe ... and so here we go again, Jagz insisting we keep the article an NPOV-violating, fringe POV-pushing mess. Why not give others a chance to work our way out of this mess with some better alternatives? Slrubenstein | Talk 12:43, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

So there you go again, criticizing someone for making a comment. --Jagz (talk) 13:38, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

So there I go again, criticizing you for making a disruptive and unconstructive comment. Slrubenstein | Talk 13:52, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Slr, don't you just love the victim mentality? This article is NOT going to be much fun. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 14:37, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Can we keep the discussion on this page limited to the content of the article pls? TheRedPenOfDoom (talk) 14:52, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

The contemporary debate does include the issue of genetics as a causal factor, and has since at least 1969. The 1987 survey by Snyderman and Rothman suggests it was far from a fringe view at that time among those in IQ research. All of Flynn's work stems from an attempt to get around the heritabilty paradox that Jensen recognized. Flynn, Gottfredson, Turkheimer, and Ceci were discussing the topic in November 2007 [28], and there have been myriad public debates at various venues over the past few years, including the Flynn/Dickenson vs Murray debate at AEI and in the literature in 2006. --Legalleft (talk) 15:46, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Secondly, the genetic hypothesis at least has the status for this topic that the multiregional hypothesis has for the evolution of modern humans. It matters less what the current vote-count is for one hypothesis or the other so much as the existence of evidence and arguments in both directions has shaped contemporary understanding. Moreover, the existence of theories such as the Dickens-Flynn model or Templeton's "Out of Africa again and again" theory make no sense unless you understand the background of competing theories. --Legalleft (talk) 16:06, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Legalleft, I'd be cautious with the Snyderman and Rothman poll, as it has been called a push poll more than once. I'd rather stick to the APA statement on the Bell Curve to figure out where the mainstream opinion really lies. I wouldn't either say that the genetic hypothesis has a status comparable to the multiregional hypothesis (unless you can find a WP:RS which says so); I'd say we're considerably benath that in credibility.--Ramdrake (talk) 18:21, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

I haven't read anything about push polling, but I would assume that the date (1987) means that it can't be taken to represent current opinion accurately -- a lot of new data is available and just psychometrics in general has evolved. However, it's probably a decent reflection of views at the time. My overall point being that (1) there's more to this topic than the causal hypotheses, and (2) Jensen's hypothesis is an integrated part of the literature, not something on the fringe. --Legalleft (talk) 23:08, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Every pro-genetic study has been spit on. --Jagz (talk) 03:55, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Please keep your comments in civil terms. As I noted earlier, this topic is difficult enough without unnecessarily inflaming the discussion. Raymond Arritt (talk) 04:49, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

This topic has been getting discussed for over six years. Don't single me out. --Jagz (talk) 10:38, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Then, please refrain from making unconstructive comments and you won't be singled out. Your comment on pro-genetic studies for example was unconstructive.--Ramdrake (talk) 10:42, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Genetics determine hair color, eye color, height, weight, skin color and all anthropological features such as bone size and length, cranial shape and muscle distribution et cetera. It is just common sense that gentics also determine intelligence. If you deny that, you might as well deny the existance of DNA while you are at it. The only reason this is such a contentious subject is because of the high value we, the white culture, place on intelligence. It has been a defining mark of our race and culture for millenia. Therefore to us, questioning one's intelligence is seen as an insult, thus politically correct folks seek to equate all man with the same intelligence. --Confederate till Death (talk) 10:44, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

True genetics determines much of our phenotype. However, there is still debate as to how much of a given person's intelligence is determined by genes, and how much by environment, be it placental, maternal or whatever. Nobody is denying that humans aren't born equal in intelligence, and nobody is denying that genes plays a role in this. The crux of the debate is whether the social construct of race (which for reasons Alun has already explained, isn't a valid biological construct) is an appropriate proxy for human genetic diversity in the case of variations of intelligence in humans. While the construct of race seems to be a good proxy for human genetic diversity in some cases (in particular relative to some diseases with a gfenetic predisposition factor), the overwhelming majority of researchers have spoken out that this construct is not a good proxy in the case of variations of human intelligence. I don't know how to make this any plainer in English.--Ramdrake (talk) 10:56, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

I think when we are discussing differences between White, Orientals and Negroes, the racial boundaries are very clear. Ambiguity in genetics may only begin to be found when one begins comparing Germans with Dutch, for example. Or English with Germans for that matter, due to the relatively recent invasions etc of the isles. The fact is Whites, Orientals and Negroes have evolved completely seperately and along different lines for hundreds of thousands of years. --Confederate till Death (talk) 11:16, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

It is clear, Confederate, that you know way more about racist philosopies than you do about actual science. Perhaps you would like to take a few months or years and learn about science and genetics and come back when you have a better grasp of the subject. TheRedPenOfDoom (talk) 11:55, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

RedPen, I do know where you're coming from, but let's try to WP:AGF on this and refrain ourselves from WP:BITE, however tempting that is. Thank you for understanding. :)--Ramdrake (talk) 11:58, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Confederate, sorry to call you on this, but some of what you say is demonstrably false. Skin pigmentation differentiation in humans in only a few thousand years old, not hundred of thousands of years old. Secondly, if you read modern studies on genetics you will find that the color scheme doesn't really fit human genetic diversity: there is more diversity within the "Blacks" in Africa alone than there is in the rest of humanity. The racial boundaries are on the contrary extremely fuzzy and subject to interpretation. I can send you some good science paper link regarding this if you're interested.--Ramdrake (talk) 11:53, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

OK confederate, care to support your claims with a reliable source? I know of no reputable biologist who would claim that "Whites, Orientals and Negroes have evolved completely seperately and along different lines for hundreds of thousands of years." In fact I would go as far as to say that this claim could only possibly be made by someone who is completely ignorant of even the very basics of human evolution, so I'd like to see the source for this claim. Wikipedia requires that you support your claims with reliable sources, so please show us your sources to support your claims. I've read a great deal about human genetic variation and evolution from reputable scientific journals over the last couple of years and nothing I have read supports what you are saying. This appears to be little more than a folk idea of "race". Alun (talk) 12:08, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Guys, you're sort of arguing past one another. --Legalleft (talk) 23:08, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

POV pushing

"POV pushing is a term used on Wikipedia to describe the aggressive promotion of a particular point of view, particularly when used to denote the promotion of minor or fringe views. While calling someone a "POV-pusher" is always uncivil, even characterizing edits as POV-pushing should be done carefully. It is generally not necessary to characterize edits as POV-pushing in order to challenge them.

If you suspect POV-pushing is happening, please remember to assume good faith and politely point out the perceived problem either on the article's talk page or the user's talk page. If the problem persists, consider filing a request for comment, get a third opinion, or if appropriate, file a report at fringe theories noticeboard. There are other options available to resolve such situations explained at dispute resolution."
--Jagz (talk) 09:58, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Not sure where you're getting at. Why are you quoting policy at us?--Ramdrake (talk) 10:36, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

I believe you know the answer already so I will not reply. --Jagz (talk) 10:46, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

I understand what Jagz means. he means that he now perfectly understands what pov-pushing is, after all he's quoted the policy. Therefore he is clearly stating that he has realised that the promotion of minor or fringe views is not acceptable on Wikipedia. As such I am looking forward to him engaging more constructively with the promotion of more mainstream poonts of view regarding this article. Alun (talk) 11:06, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

If you have any further dissatisfaction regarding POV pushing, please follow the policy. --Jagz (talk) 11:19, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

One should always follow the neutrality policy Jagz, then pov-pushing doesn't need to come into it. Pov-pushing is unacceptable here and can lead to a ban from editing if it is persistent. Alun (talk) 11:53, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

WikiProject Neutrality

This is a possibility to help resolve the neutrality problem. Go to the project link to find out more information.

Wikipedia:WikiProject Neutrality aims for promotion of the neutral point of view (NPOV) guidelines as set out in WP:NPOV, removing bias from articles and helping to resolve POV-related disputes.

The goal of this WikiProject is to help to better establish Wikipedia as a legitimate encyclopedic source by removing bias from Wikipedia. Its focus will be on pages which contain visible bias towards some political or racial group, as this is the most flagrant form of NPOV violations on Wikipedia, however it endeavours to ensure that all articles are sufficiently neutral.

--Jagz (talk) 10:28, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Jagz, tha latest RfC on this specific question returned an overwhelming consensus that this article isn't neutral. You were the only one thinking it was neutral enough. Now you seem to want to refer this article to another WP mechanism to ask the same question. Do you really expect it will return a different opinion? Or are you in fact forum-shopping in order to try to find someone who'll agree with you?--Ramdrake (talk) 10:36, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Your post seems to be inflammatory so I will not reply. --Jagz (talk) 10:44, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

No, I am asking a legitimate question, and I would appreciate your response. The motivation of your edits is what's in question here.--Ramdrake (talk) 10:58, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

I am suggesting a mechanism by which the neutrality problem of the article can possibly be resolved. --Jagz (talk) 11:06, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

I can't see any suggestions above, just a statement about the project. I'm all in favour of neutrality, but clearly there is a consensus that this article is not neutral. If Jagz is looking for the inclusion of more editors in this article who are interested in neutrality, then I welcome this move, just as I welcome his new found interest in countering pov-pushing. This is a big step forward for this article. Alun (talk) 11:10, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

I included a link to the project above. You can read about it there. --Jagz (talk) 11:17, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

The fact that the neutrality of how drastic the difference of intelligence between races is is in question here is disgusting. For far too long these differences have been shoved under the rug and lead to 'equal' treatment for inequal parties leading to victimisation and negligence towards those who require more need, or more facilitation through societal methods.

Most of the "OMGOMG POVPOV" posts I've seen on this article over the years are people very likeminded to myself for the most part, however I read the article first and foremost and realised it's not legitimised racism, but social observation. To say there IS no difference IS racism. To say that an African goat herd from some isolated region does not require special needs in a new country of settlement compared to a technology toting educated and savvy Japanese businessman settling in the same nation is beyond racism, it's farcical.

Whilst I know the posters here have good intentions, it's this ignorance of differences of races that breeds the neglect and the coming around of 'victim-culture' and victim groups. At present this is a big issue here in Australia, where the Aboriginies are treated as equals and social welfare projects had previously treated them as such before they realised this political correctness and throwing money at a problem wasn't addressing the key issues that they needed help of a different kind.

I submit that inequality is not racism, that equality is different to equal rights. All should be afforded equal rights, and those inequal to the 'average man or woman' should be afforded more rights and assistance from those around them, be it the state in more forward nations, or philanthropic groups or community groups in more hardlined conservative nations.

The bottom line is, if you claim this article is NPOV because you are offended by the fact that there is a drastic difference in intelligence between races, your argument is flawed and DIRECTLY responsible for the vicious cycle that our world is in today. Read the article, read the facts. Sure, if some racist dimwit pipes up and is like "LOL BUT U AZNS HAV LITTLE WEEWEES" even I'll roll my eyes and NPOV at that. But for the love of $deity, please stop NPOV flagging and CENSORING this bloody article.

As for censoring, the following image keeps being removed, this image allows an amazing visualisation of where we, as a human race, need to focus our efforts of development and aid of fellow man, and it should be kept on this page. I was SO dissapointed to come here in reference to something for a colleague and find the page in it's current state, censored and locked up.

Calculated and estimated national average IQ of people settled today according to IQ and Global Inequality.

Please leave the above included in the article. And please, everyone just settle down and use logic and reasoning ration than emotion and passion to do the right thing. 122.107.42.146 (talk) 05:34, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

That's hilarious. I can only assume it is a joke. Alun (talk) 07:15, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

How is that hilarious, or a joke, Alun? Look at Rhodesia, and look at Israel. We build an entire country and basically hand it to the Negro Rhodesians (now Zimbabweans) and they destroy it. Now look at the Jews, 5.2 million were euthanaised and the rest treated rather badly. Now they have built their own country and are purportedly taking over ours. There is a huge disparity between the abilities of the races, even when one (the Negroes) is given a huge head start, and the other has half their population forcibly euthanaised. --Confederate till Death (talk) 07:24, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Look at Botswana or South Africa. If it were not for AIDS these countries would be performing extremely well. One of the major problems in Africa is that it was divided without considering ancient tribe divisions. Did you know that when choosing two people at random in Uganda, the probability that they belong to different ethnic groups is above 90%? Did you know that there is some positive correlation, ceteris paribus, between ethnic homogeneity and income? So, yes, there are differences in income and no, they are not due to intelligence. For example, national income in these countries can be low, but the income earned by natural residents can be much higher. If intelligence were the difference, you'd expect Africans to do poorly everywhere. Finally, I have studied economic growth and economic development for a few years now and there is not one theory that mentions innate ability to explain income divergence. So, I have to agree with Alun on this one. On Israel, they had many well educated individuals when they started out, education that any black man would have not been able to obtain back in the more-racist days; and Israel also gets much foreign aid from the US, not that would cause any fundamental difference. Brusegadi (talk) 07:42, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Comfy, this is not a forum for you to push your racist agenda. This is a talk page to discuss the article. It's hilarious because racists like yourself and the above anonymous user seem to think that you can come here, leave poorly worded, often illiterate and always ignorant rants and somehow think you should be take seriously (and perversely you are claiming to be part of the "intelligent race" when you leave these rants). Wikipedia is not a chatroom, it is not a forum for racists, we only use reliable sources here, we don't include any old crap just because an editor believes it. We don't publish your or the above editors beliefs. I can't remember a single time you have provided a reliable source to back up a claim. You make ridiculous assertions that you seem to have invented, and then you expect to be taken seriously. I'm still waiting for a reliable source that shows that "whites, blacks and orientals" have been reproductively isolated for hundreds of thousands of yours, another daft claim. I suggest that if you want to leave racist claptrap on the internet then there are many more places where you would be more welcome, but this is an encyclopaedia, it is not here to publish your odious drivel. Alun (talk) 07:53, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

This topic necessarily requires the discussion of contentious racial issues. Insults like racist name calling violate WP:Civil and WP:NPA. --Jagz (talk) 13:56, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Civility and NPA vios are hardly the issue here: the issue is the affront to the intellect by parties who feel so inferior that they need to proclaim their superiority based upon their wilful misreading of fact and a reliance on philosophies born of ignorance. Besides, to be honest, based on the WP:CIVIL and WP:NPA guidelines, one can spew hatred so long as one is "nice" about it. &#0149;Jim62sch&#0149;^dissera! 20:19, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Maybe this topic is too controversial for you to be involved in. --Jagz (talk) 20:36, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

I am sorry to hear that this discussion is too controversial for you, Jagz. The Rfc found the article in violation of NPOV. If this is too controversial, just walk away. If you want to join us in fixing the article, follow the consensus. IF you see things so fundamentally different from the rest of us, perhaps we need mediation. Slrubenstein | Talk 21:26, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

I doubt it (BTW, it should be "involved with"). However, I despise stupidity and ignorance, and am more than happy to dispel or destroy both. You figure it out from there. &#0149;Jim62sch&#0149;^dissera! 21:20, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Newton never claimed to have gravity figured out.[29] Maybe we can learn something from that. --Jagz (talk) 22:18, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Uh, OooohKaaay. De profundis clamo te, Iagz, mihi veritam monstratur. &#0149;Jim62sch&#0149;^dissera! 22:27, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

I believe that the consensus of the community is that he was and now he's been indef'ed. Time to move on. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 18:29, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

I havn't the time right now to write a cited reply, but simply calling me a racist will not make the facts disappear. That is always the first defense tactic of a liberal, living in his life of denial. Perhaps exploring reality will prove more rewarding for you. At least give it a try. --Confederate till Death (talk) 11:30, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Define reality. &#0149;Jim62sch&#0149;^dissera! 20:20, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Belgium French/Flemish status

Ok I just had a look at the table and agreed with most of it. It's a fact Jews are the heighest class in Israel and whites in New Zealand etcetera. It is however not true the French speakers (Walloons) in Belgium are the upper class. I don't know what kind of source is used but I have lived in the Netherlands and Belgium all my life and I can tell you: the Flemish (Dutch speaking) region is by far the richest part of Belgium. Lots of Flemish want to seperate themselves because they feel they are financing the poor French with their hard work. Almost all big cities and indutries lie in the Flemish region and most the French-speakers are (relatively) poor farmers. This is a well known fact, evidence is everywhere, for instance here: [30](...)Since Flanders is richer and has significantly lower unemployment than Wallonia(...) So, it is a fact the richer Flemish are the majority, and the Flemish part of the country is culturally and economically more important. How then can it be you call the Flemish the lower class? Baldrick90 (talk) 23:37, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

This should be removed from the table because the Flemish and Walloons are primarily geographically separated. --Jagz (talk) 04:14, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

They also speak different languages. --Jagz (talk) 22:34, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Beware of many of the tables in this article, they are from fringe sources. Brusegadi (talk) 07:48, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

The table in question does not differentiate between intelligence tests and achievement tests (learning) so it can be removed on that basis alone. --Jagz (talk) 12:10, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Results from achievment tests aren't irrelevant and, with some caveats, are correlates with IQ/g. If we are taking the broad-brush approach I wouldn't delete something on that basis. EG the national IQ data included data from PISA if I remember rightly.Nick Connolly (talk) 19:16, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

In this instance I am with Jagz -the source that the table is from should really provide the analysis that 'achievement test scores are a facet of intelligence'. TheRedPenOfDoom (talk) 21:07, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

The PISA 2006 results for schoolchildren 15 years of age show that the Flemish outperform the Walloons.[31] --Jagz (talk) 14:51, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Strange as it may seem, something being "wrong" is not a reason to remove it from an article, unless it is wrong in the sense lots of sources directly say the one source is wrong. A better approach to the issues is to revisit the source and see what the point being made was. If its possible to make the same point while redacting the table, then make it shorter on the basis of selecting the most important example and leave out the rest. I imagine you'll find that the French/Flemish example is not very important and can be left out. Secondarily, there's nothing special about an "IQ" test that makes it relevant to the article that isn't also true of an achievement test. Just note what kind of intrument was used in the assesement and that should be sufficient. "IQ test" isn't a single thing but a wide range of research instruments, some of which are less good as measuring what IQ tests try to measure than certain "achievement" tests. --Legalleft (talk) 22:44, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

I also thought about the fact that this information was wrong and shouldn't be there maybe. Especially since there are sources that point to the opposite. Most recently some more comparative information was released about school results in mathematics, physics,... all over the world. The Flemish were amongst the top ones while the Walloons were quite a bit lower. Even with a somehow less demanding school system over there. Besides that, the Walloon part hasn't been the richest for quite a while. At the moment the country is mainly held together financially because of the input from the Flemish area.

Mediation, anyone?

Folks, it looks to me like we have opinion issues about this article which may best be resolved with outside help. Thus, I just want to test the waters: who would consent to mediation, formal or informal?

• Consent to mediation formal or informal is fine. Ramdrake (talk)
• Consent to mediation If others feel that mediation will help the article move forward, I will actively participate (as much as growing workload will allow) TheRedPenOfDoom (talk) 17:06, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
• Consent every little helps - but I think there is more consensus than there appears to be. The talk page is for debating the article and too often we are debating the issue or worse yet the politics underneath the issue. I suggest an Assume Not Racist and a Assume Not Part of a Politically-Correct Conspiracy to Hide the Truth policy applies before replying :) Nick Connolly (talk) 19:10, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Comment Nick Connolly is 100% on target here. --Legalleft (talk) 22:57, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
• Consent although the consensus is that this article is a POV mess, pushing pseudoscience. There seems to be POV-pushing, which won't make any mediator happy. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 20:56, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
• Consent Obviously something is very wrong here. &#0149;Jim62sch&#0149;^dissera! 21:29, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
• OK. Why not? Alun (talk) 13:39, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
• OK --Legalleft (talk) 17:01, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
• Yes as I see no alternative - this article has been stalled with NPOV violation charges for ages. Slrubenstein | Talk 18:20, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
• Yes, I agree to mediation by a member of the Wikipedia:Mediation Committee. --Jagz (talk) 01:20, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

You would need to file a formal request at Wikipedia:Requests for mediation. Please note that unless everybody involved agrees to mediation, the request will not be accepted. Tim Vickers (talk) 20:19, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

As far as I'm concerned, Tim Vickers is 100% ruled out as mediator because of derogatory statements Slrubenstein made about me on his Talk page. --Jagz (talk) 00:31, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

I really haven't read enough of the background on this dispute to assess individual editors' contributions to this situation, Jagz, so I can't make any comment on personal issues. Please realise, however, that I'm not actually one of the team of mediators who deal with these requests, so I wouldn't be involved in running the mediation. Tim Vickers (talk) 01:10, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Folks, here is a link directly to the mediation page.--Ramdrake (talk) 18:21, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm not going to participate in mediation but you can go ahead without me. You can do what you wish with the article. --Jagz (talk) 12:33, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Considering that Jagz wants to withdraw from mediation, I'd like to ask the other editors i there is still a need for mediation, or if we are all in some agreement about what to do with this article? Please let me know.--Ramdrake (talk) 19:53, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

specific problems

I tried to figure out from the edit history what was happening before the article was locked. I appears that editors had issues with particular sections (sometimes just sentences) of the article. If possible, could editors please outline any problems with particular sections below. I'll start. --Legalleft (talk) 23:21, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

1 History

2 Contemporary issues

2.1 The Bell Curve

2.1.1 "Mainstream" statement

2.1.2 American Psychological Association response

2.2 Policy implications

2.2.1 Achievement gap

2.2.2 Eugenics

2.2.3 Biotechnology

Is this important overall? Perhaps a better focus to this section is attempts at remediation. That sort of fits with the under-developed 5.Interpretations section below. --Legalleft (talk) 23:21, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

3 Test results

3.1 Increases in IQ scores over time

3.2 Reaction time

4 Nature and nurture

Plant diagram -- someone wanted to remove it. Is there something wrong with it. It's very famous, but not often well explained. In this case, I think it's well explained (because I wrote the caption ;) ). --Legalleft (talk) 23:31, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

4.1 Viewpoints of notable scientists and researchers

4.2 Genetic

4.3 Environmental

4.3.1 Health

4.3.2 Stereotype threat

4.3.3 Quality of education

4.3.4 Racial discrimination in education

4.3.5 Caste-like minorities

The table itself could be shortened to present fewer examples. Perhaps those that are most emphasized in the original source, or those which have been cited as examples in other sources. --Legalleft (talk) 23:31, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

5 Interpretations

This probably needs to be expanded. The contemporary national IQ map could go here. --Legalleft (talk) 23:21, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

6 Criticisms

6.1 Outdated methodology

6.2 Fluid gF'

Concept is too new. Importance can't be known yet. --Legalleft (talk) 23:21, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

6.3 Utility of research

6.4 Test construction

6.5 Source of funding

Add http://www.pioneerfund.org/Gordon.pdf --Legalleft (talk) 23:34, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

I honestly don't think that we should include materials from pioneer fundees (Miller, 1994, The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, No. 6 (Winter, 1994-1995), pp. 58-61) Gordon had at that stage received around $210,000; unless that material appears in a peer reviewed journal article or similar --JonathanE (talk) 08:58, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

That would make for a very strange article. Assume for the moment that you want to explain how race and IQ are not connected - the key texts that argue that they are not connected explicitly mention the work of people like Arthur Jensen who has had Pioneer Funding, some have even appeared in the jounarl Intelligence which has some Pioneer associations. You can't debunk these ideas without explaining them and you can't explain them without talking about (and referencing) key proponents such as Jensen or Rushton or Eysenck. The article would make no sense as it would amount to arguments by people who think there is no connection between race and IQ stating why ideas we haven't explained, by people we don't mention, are wrong. It would be like the Climate change denial article studiosly not mentioning anybody who'd been funded by Exxon Mobil. The answer is to include notable ideas, include notable attempted debunking and include a reference to the role of the Pioneer Fund (and link to the main Pioneer Fund article). Let people join their own dots.Nick Connolly (talk) 10:11, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

The question is, what is this article about? Jensen - regardless of his funding - is very notable in the scientific community for having opened up a debate that most scientists consider to have dead-ended. That debate is really a historical moment in IQ research. Since Jensen, others - notably Rushton, and The Bell Curve have kept a certain kind of debate going, but it is not notable in the scientific comunity - in the scientific community they are fringe and have no place in an article on the scientific debates. On the other hand, they are notable in popular culture, and if this were an article on a debate in the media and in popular culture, they would be included. Looking at all the elements listed, I see a mess that just tries to mix too many apples with too many oranges, some lettuce, and mayonaise. Bluch. There are some important things in here, but it doesn't serve any of them (or our readers) to try to mesh them in one article. Slrubenstein | Talk 11:18, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Yeah but in a way apples, oranges, lettuce and mayonaise is what we have. Its like the spaghetti bolognaise I had in a hotel in Romania once - instant noodles, spam and ketchup. But if that was a common occurence we'd still need an article on noodles, spam and ketchup even if it was fringe (or pseudo) bolognaise. This is the bad-Romanian-bolognaise article. For the tasty italian dish you need to go next door :) Nick Connolly (talk) 11:33, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Except you need to make it perfectly clear that that concoction isn't what people legitimately call "spaghetti bolognese", it just tries to pass itself as the real stuff. The same way, the debate around Rushton's hypotheses isn't the reasl scientific debate, just a wannabe debate that catches the popular fancy.--Ramdrake (talk) 11:38, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Oranges and mayonnaise? Berrk! But seriously, I agree with Slrubenstein here that we must keep the line separating scientific debate from popular debate. The merits of Rushton's hypotheses aren't widely discussed in the science papers - except to be pointed out as an example of deficient science.--Ramdrake (talk) 11:30, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

I thought we'd settled that. Content fork into articles discussing the demonstrable facts about heredity-IQ and SES-IQ. Those are worthwhile articles and they can have brief links to this one, thus stopping those articles getting embroiled in this quagmire. This article is then what is it that the Race-IQ people think, why do they think it and why do people claim they are wrong. That way the reader goes away fully briefed and ready to do battle in the war-of-ideas.Nick Connolly (talk) 11:39, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Have we settled that? If so, great - but Jagz's edits suggest to me that he rejects that approach, and I am not sure about Legalleft's position. But if we agree on the content fork, then to respond to Legalleft's question about the contents of this article: we simply remove anything that is represented as actual current scientific discussion concerning variation in IQ scores, and refocus this as about a popular controversy, perhaps modeled on the Intelligent design article. Slrubenstein | Talk 11:55, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

No, that I disagree with. The suggestion is that discussion of race differences in IQ and related variables is not science. What is acceptable (and IMO obvious) is not the put debates about the within group heritability and gene/environmental factors affecting IQ in an article about racial group differences in IQ. Those should be in IQ or some article spun out of IQ. Thus, it's the characterization of this as a "popular" rather than "scholarly" controversy which is unacceptable. It can be about both, but certainly not just the one. --Legalleft (talk) 23:19, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

My point, exactly. Thanks, SLR. --Ramdrake (talk) 12:21, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Why not just do it all within the current article? --Jagz (talk) 12:24, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Again, just so as not to mix legitimate science with popular debates. That's already been explained several times above.--Ramdrake (talk) 12:27, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Jagz is just being belligerent. Jagz knows the answer to his question already. He knows because I have explained in detail why we cannot do it all in this article. I explained in my 19:55, 19 March 2008 comment. I explained in my 10:19, 20 March 2008 (UTC)edit. I explained why in my 21:45, 20 March 2008 (UTC)edit. I explained why in my 11:34, 21 March 2008 (UTC) edit. I explained why in my 09:02, 22 March 2008 (UTC) edit. I explained why in my 23:27, 22 March 2008 (UTC). I explained why in my 11:34, 21 March 2008 (UTC) edit. I explained why in my 19:40, 24 March 2008 (UTC) edit. I explain why in my 19:38, 24 March 2008 (UTC) edit. I explain in even greater detail in my 00:38, 23 March 2008 (UTC) edit. And I explained why in my 11:18, 28 March 2008 (UTC) edit, which was just on ehour and six minutes ago, and just about six inches above this comment. Now, why does Jagz ask why not do it all in this one article, when we have painstakenly explained in great detail why not? He has never explained why he disagrees with our explanations, he just keeps asking us why, why, why, and every time we answere, he again asks why. This is not a discussion, it is not a debate - that would require him to explain why he disagrees with our reasons and reasoning, and why he believes his reasons and reasoning are better. But he does not do that. Why not? I can imagine only two possibilities: first, either he is one of the stupidist morons to ever stick around Wikipedia, and he just does not understand why the vast majority of people who responded to his RfC find this article in violation of NPOV, and he just does not understand population genetics or sociology, or he just doesn't understand our plain-English explanations. But of course, I do not think this - he has apparently made good edits to articles on scouting, so he obviously is not a stupid moron. This leaves only one other possibility: he is deliberately disruptive and beligerent, and refuses to read or take seriously our comments on this talk page. Well, Jagz, either way, you should just go away. If you are incapable of participating in an adult conversation, just leave. Or, wait - does what I am saying bother you? Do you insist on participating in this discussion? Well, how about mediation? We need to take some steps to rein in your insulting, beligerent, disruptive edits. But if you simply refuse to read and respond to my answers to your questions, I have to say I see no point in responding to or taking seriously anything you have to say. If you don't like it, too bad. Deal with it. Slrubenstein | Talk 12:57, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Then I do not agree with your proposal. --Jagz (talk) 13:19, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Jagz, please state your reasons for objecting, or else your objection becomes logically pointless.--Ramdrake (talk) 14:43, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

I think it is important for people to know the science or lack of it behind the popular debate. May as well just keep it in this article but maybe reorganize it to separate the two. Having it all in one article will make it easier to update in the future as new research becomes available. Additionally, I have experienced school desegregation first hand. --Jagz (talk) 16:00, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Nick's proposal. I just want to clarify a few things. I think you suggested earlier that the article could be renamed "Race and IQ", I support this idea. When you say this article is about "what .. the Race-IQ people think" who exactly are we talking about? For example Rushton has some very spaced-out ideas about r/K selection, would we include this sort of thing? Or do you just mean the basic sophistry about heritability and "race" that Jensen has been pushing? I think we should just stick to the basic formulation of Jensen and include it in the article. It's very simple, he basically believes that (1) "race" is a biological reality, (2) that heredity can be used to show that genes have a greater influence on a trait than environment, therefore the difference in test scores is due to genetics and (3) that IQ is a measure of "intelligence. Then all we need to do is give the opposite points of view that (1) race is not a biological phenomenon (and there are thousands of papers that can support this), (2) that heredity is not a measure of the relative contribution of genes to a trait and (3) that IQ measures are neither objective nor reproducible (in fact Layzer (1974) states "we do not know what an IQ test .. is supposed to measure"). Then we have basically summed up the evidence and given all points of view except for fringe ones. Alun (talk) 14:02, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Alun, if that were an accurate characterization of the various POVs, then truely this would be a worthless topic on which to build an article. Fortunately, the scholars involved hold much less riduclous positions, and so there is something worth describing here. For example, here's chapter 12 of Jensen 1998 book, which describe causal theories of group differences. [32] --Legalleft (talk) 23:42, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Alun, IMHO, I see two ways to do this:

• As you've pointed out, do the point and counter-point summary of the racialist position.
• Go through the main theories of the most notable proponents of the racialist position, and summarize from there. Of course, we'd need to be careful to avoid too much redundancy, and we need not go through all the theories of the main proponents (re: Rushton's r/K theory). This would be trickier, and involve more research, but in the end it might make clear that we haven't ignored anybody notable, and would avoid editors adding their pet notable theory (whether it be Rushton's, Lynn's, Murray's, or whomever's).--Ramdrake (talk) 14:41, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Nick is right. This article can't and shouldn't be "about" the heritability of IQ, the environmentalibility of IQ, or the genetic/environmental determinants of IQ first and foremost because those topics are about differences within groups (within families) not between groups. Secondly, because there's a literature about race and IQ that's different than the heritability of IQ literature. They connect only in so far as the Jensen/Flynn heritability paradox problem is an issue. Lastly, it's just a bad idea to try to answer meta questions when you have a topic as controversial as this. Stick with the newspaper style of reporting attributable facts/opinions and leave it at that. The content of the article should look something like the content of the current article +/-. --Legalleft (talk) 17:05, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Respectfully, I really don't think it should. This article, according to consensus violates NPOV. We need to change presentation significantly, and clearly label as such those theories which are fringe and those which are mainstream. Otherwise, we would be misleading the reader.--Ramdrake (talk) 18:05, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Ramdrake's right, we have an overwhelming consensus that the article is not neutral, so I can't see how it makes any sense to then claim that the content should remain largely unchanged, it's the current content that makes it non-neutral. Alun (talk) 18:33, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Disagreeing ... To aim towards progress, could you enumerate some of the problem as I tried to do above. I don't believe there are any theories which are obviously "fringe" (by the wikipedia definition) currently presented in the article. By my understanding, it would be safe to say that a theory which has been published in a peer viewed journal would not readily be classified as fringe. A theory which has attracted hundreds or thousands of citations would definitely not be fringe -- it would obviously be important/notable even if not "mainstream" (whatever that means). Secondarily, I caution against making claims about how widely supported or not a position is based solely on our own analyses. If a source says X is outside of the mainstream, then attribute such a claim to the source (provided basic notability is met on all sides). --Legalleft (talk) 20:43, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

(1)"I don't believe there are any theories which are obviously "fringe"" how is what you believe relevant? Wikipedia works by consensus and not by the beliefs of it's editors. Alun (talk) 12:52, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Actually, you are supposed to use Wikipedia:Fringe theories for guidance on what is fringe. --Jagz (talk) 15:38, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Right. That's the basis on which I was making that claim. "Fringe" theories are more or less non-notable, and thus inappropriate for an encyclopedia. The main content of this article is certainly notable. --Legalleft (talk) 23:09, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

(2)"it would be safe to say that a theory which has been published in a peer viewed journal would not readily be classified as fringe." Not true. Many theories that have been published in peer reviewed journals have bee discarded, that's the point of science, we produce theories, but they cannot all be correct, some theories that have been published in peer reviewed journals would now be considered "fringe". Foe example no one would dispute that Geosyncline was once a well supported theory, but it has been superceded by Plate tectonics, one would not now claim that postulating the relevance of Geosyncline theory is anything other than fringe, likewise the Multiregional hypothesis would now be considered fringe. The publication of a theory in a peer reviewed journal does not de facto make it non-fringe. Alun (talk) 12:52, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

As a technical point, re-read the article on the Multiregional hypothesis. In updated forms (e.g., introgression of locally-adapted ancestral variants) it is still a hypothesis that attracts support (a recent paper in PNAS for example). Further, without a published analysis to say what views are ascendent among which scholarly communities, we cannot do much to judge that issue (per 4 below). This line of reasoning is, I believe, expressed more clearly in Nick's essay. --Legalleft (talk) 23:09, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

(3)"A theory which has attracted hundreds or thousands of citations would definitely not be fringe". You've made this point before about Jensen's 1969 paper, but as I pointed out to you, only a tiny fraction of the citations for this paper are actually in support of it. The overwhelming majority either cite it as poor science or are neutral about it. As such this claim is also bogus. Now if it attracted hundreds of thousands of citations because t had become the academic consensus you might have a valid point. Alun (talk) 12:52, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

(4)"I caution against making claims about how widely supported or not a position is based solely on our own analyses." I agree, which is why I have stated that we should cover the main theories point by point and give the alternative points of view to each, including how the evidence may not fit the theories and how it can be interpreted in different ways. This is the only way to achieve neutrality, obviously. I don't see any problem with this. Surely you can't be suggesting that we should not give the alternative points of view? That would be a direct breach of the NPOV policy and is the main reason why currently the article is not considerd neutral, currently the article concentrates on the theories while more or less ignoring the science that contradicts them. If you are serious about neutrality then clearly you need to change your position. Alun (talk) 12:52, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

A lot of the racialist views have been published in Intelligence. Since that journal has several hereditarians on its board of review (including Rushton heading the board), one can legitimately ask how properly peer-reviewed it is regarding hereditarian views. I mean, it publishes many of Rushton's articles, and Rushton himself heads the review board. Just my personal opinion, but it sounds incestuous to me. Also, the sheer number of citations isn't an indication of scientific propriety. I'm sure creationism has many thousands of citations, and it's generally not regarded as science. I can supply several citations that Rushton's theories are bad, even sloppy science, if that'll convince you.--Ramdrake (talk) 20:57, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

The Olympics has a lot of citations but that isn't science either. --Jagz (talk) 21:26, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

(1) Do you have any citable evidence supporting this claim? For example, is this is a common complaint about the journal that its peer review is worthless? (Given that it invites and publishes rebuttals, it's hard to see that this is the case.) Has Elsevier or the academic institutions at which the editorial board members are faculty done anything about their scholarship? The point of those rhetorical questions is not to say that no one holds those views, but to say that it's inappropriate for editorial judgment to be based on that kind of reasoning in the absence of strong literature support for such a view. (2) IIRC, there has been only 1 paper published in a peer reviewed journal that proposed a creationist theory and that paper was subsequently "depublished". Intelligent_design#Peer_review --Legalleft (talk) 21:35, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Does Intelligence have a policy regarding listing possible bias such as funding? If not, why in such a controversial area? Ultramarine (talk) 09:41, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

other comments

You do realize that organization of the article is not the problem. How about reliable sources that can be verified? That's my problem. Oh, and undue weight given to a fringe theory. So, from my position, organization of the article ranks about #5 on the list of problems. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 23:26, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

I didn't mean to address organization, but specific content in individual section. I don't see a reliable source or fringe view problem. I think we've discussed this before. --Legalleft (talk) 23:34, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

I think this is helpful. I disagree with Orangemarlin, sourcing is not a problem nor is undue weight so long as we are clear about what the article is for.Nick Connolly (talk) 00:19, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

I find it awkward that the Minnesota Transracial Adoption Study is mentioned in such a way that few people will notice it. The study quite clearly indicates that group differences in cognitive ability are real, substantial, and genetic. If this article was NPOV it would report the majority view as just that, the misguided majority view, but not as the rational or scientific one.

Certainly, objectively measured environmental influences should be mentioned, but the pseudo-scientific musing of quotable figures should be removed since they distract from a factual article. --Zero g (talk) 15:15, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Actually, the authors of the study, Scarr and Weinberg interpreted their results that racial group differences in IQ are due to environment only. It's the reinterpretation by Lynn which argues that the data clearly supports a hereditarian alternative. So, no, the group differences cannot be said to be genetic based on this study.--Ramdrake (talk) 15:27, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Regardless of interpretation issues, I think it's true that MTRAS should be more prominently mentioned. I had in mind that a section addressing attempts at remediation, which MTRAS is an example of, would be an appropriate place to expand on that topic. Other attempts include pre-school type intervention programs such as Head Start. --Legalleft (talk) 17:16, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, Head Start is a matter of policy. This is really a different topic from the science (good or bad) related to the subject. Also, I'd like you to precise why the MTRAS should have more prominence?--Ramdrake (talk) 18:05, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

This kind of discussion, which is not leading to a consensus, is a perfect example of why we need mediation. I have no idea if he would accept but I would like to propose User:Tim Vickers. To my knowledge he has never edited this article (if he has, it must have been a minor edit a long time ago) and I have no idea what his views are. But he knows science, and he knows Wikipedia policy. Legalleft, Alun, and Ramdrake - would you agree to asking him? Slrubenstein | Talk 18:25, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Sounds like he's very well qualified. Personnally, I'd say go for it.--Ramdrake (talk) 19:28, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

The more the merrier. To be honest I'm a bit lost as to what the problem is now. Nobody seems to actually disagree with Slrubenstien's content fork proposals. The current circular argument seems to be on whether the views are fringe or not (an issue we know we can't resolve permanantly but know that we can deal with by citing sourced opinions as to whether the views are fringe or not). The NPOV issue is, I think, due to mislabelling. The article isn't a summary of current scientific opinion on links between race and intelligence - I don't think such an article is possible as there really isn't an distinct opinion. For most disciplines it is a non-question. The only purpose this article can serve is to describe the opinions of Jensen et al and their critics - which what is does now but cack-handely. As the article is not going to go away (see past AfDs) the only solution is an article on the controversy - a solution which Slrubenstien has already proposed, which I keep plugging and which nobody has yet said is a bad idea. Now I've gone and broken my don't clutter up the talk pages anymore rule. I'm going to keep on adding summative opinions here:User:Nick Connolly/RaceIQEssay Am I genetically predispositioned to enjoy long rambling arguments? Nick Connolly (talk) 19:45, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Anyone who has identified themselves with their real name on Wikipedia and has a good career at stake can hardly be expected to be an impartial mediator in this debate. --Jagz (talk) 19:29, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Jagz, in all logic, someone who uses his real name and thus places his reputation at stake in this kind of endeavour should make a good, impartial mediator, on the contrary. To act otherwise is to risk losing credibility to his name. Honestly, I can't follow your logic here.--Ramdrake (talk) 19:47, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Jagz's point, I suspect, is that the issue of race and intelligence is so highly charged as to make it difficult for people to assert a view sympathetic to Jensen etc. It is not an unreasonable point, but I don't believe Jagz is correct.Nick Connolly (talk) 20:14, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm correct in the USA. The British press recently caused Watson to retire so it's difficult for me to believe it would be much different in UK. --Jagz (talk) 06:40, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

"I am correct in the USA." So, truth is relative? Watson retired in the USA but he did not retire in Brittain? Huh? Slrubenstein | Talk 10:29, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

At this point lets just assume that we all said the various things that we would say about Watson. That we all took each others opinion about his comments seriously, debated them amicably and moved onto other matters...Nick Connolly (talk) 06:54, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Jagz, are you then arguing that "views sympathetic to Jensen etc" are indeed 'fringe' because 'no respectable scientist' would want to be associated in any way with them? TheRedPenOfDoom (talk) 10:10, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Dismissing the genetic view is unscientific. There is no sound reason to dismiss it. New information about the effects of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) is still being discovered. I'm not convinced that it is a fringe view today but there is probably a difference in what some scientists believe and say publicly. Why should they become embroiled in the controversy unless it is unavoidable? --Jagz (talk) 14:26, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

I still dont see how that addresses my question: If even seeming to provide neutral mediation in a discussion concerning "views sympathetic to Jensen etc" would somehow be seen a 'supporting' a concept that is so detrimental to a scientist's reputation that you fear that no scientist would be willing to do so under her/his real name - doesnt that clearly identify the topic as a 'fringe view'? TheRedPenOfDoom (talk) 14:42, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Choice of mediator is described at [33]. I brought up a potential conflict of interest. To determine fringe per WP guidelines, use WP:Fringe. I do not believe it would be characterized as fringe on that basis per WP guidelines. --Jagz (talk) 15:16, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

I am still not seeing any general conflict of interest potential except for the 'fringe science' link. can you be more explicit in your reasoning behind why you feel threr is potential conflict of interest?TheRedPenOfDoom (talk) 18:12, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Nick, you say no one has objcted to my proposal but Jagz has, repeatedly, like here. More important, Jagz refuses any informed reasonable discussion. In the many months he has been participating in this talk page he has pushed only one POV - a racist view that simply disregards any actual discussion of mainstream science. He has never responded constructively to my comments, or Alun's, or Ramdrake's, except to dismiss or insult us. Even now, he is trying to subvert any attempt at mediation by making ad hominem attacks against Tim Vickers - and Jagz does not even want to participate in any mediation!! That is because he is a troll; he sinmply wants to use this page to promote his racist views, and he does not want to see any constructive work done on the article. So we have a dispute and it needs resolving. He took the first step himself, by posting an RfC. The RfC didn't go his way so now he doesn't want to take any further steps to resolve any disputes. Slrubenstein | Talk 16:46, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Acknowledged, although this seems to be an objection without a corresponding argument. Lets just say nobody has given a substantial reason for NOT following your proposal. If Jagz would like to put forward a case or a proposal then we should consider it. Currently I don't believe that he has - although I may well have missed it given the current multi-threaded talk page.Nick Connolly (talk) 19:00, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Most of the editors on this article have already proven my point by persecuting me for not rejecting the genetic view. Rejecting the view would be unscientific and if I did so I would consider myself a putz. --Jagz (talk) 19:20, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Again, Jagz, by the same token, you would need to consider seriously "creation science" and a whole bunch of disputable science to say the least. The proponents of "creation science" are dead serious about the fact that they are doing science, so why is it that anyone gives themselves the right not to take their science seriously? Because there is consensus that this isn't science worthy of the name. Similarly, race and intelligence theories (for the most part - such as Rushton's and Lynn's theories) aren't taken too seriously by a (majority) consensus of experts in the field. On that basis alone, we can label it as fringe science. I'd direct you, if you want an example of such consensus, to the Lieberman paper "How Caucasoids Got Such Large Crania and Why They Shrank", which I linked to in the last section below. That is but one example.--Ramdrake (talk) 22:25, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Ramdrake, we are never going to see eye to eye so give your fingers a rest. --Jagz (talk) 22:44, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Fine, then please understand that by reiterating your objections and by failing to address the objections of others to your position, you are just placing yourself out of the consensus. However, consensus must happen with or without you. Don't be surprised when it happens without you.--Ramdrake (talk) 22:57, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

I can't see how creation science comes into play here. I don't believe it is in the article so it seems to be off topic. --Jagz (talk) 10:20, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

It is not off-topic, it is an anaolgy. A-N-A-L-O-G-Y. If you do not have a dictionary you can use Answers.com. Slrubenstein | Talk 10:29, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Lets try to keep discussion focused on how to move ahead on the content of the article.TheRedPenOfDoom (talk) 10:56, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't have to consider creation science because it is not in the article. Genetics is however in the article and has been in there a long time. There are too many discoveries being made in genetics now to discard it. It's not like it was in the 1930s. --Jagz (talk) 10:44, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit conflict] Jagz, you are not alone in the view that anyone publicly discussing race and intelligence risks attack (briefly discussed here: [34] elsewhere: "Gottfredson (1998, 2005) has correctly pointed out that findings of racial influences on intelligence are deeply disturbing to many social scientists who are then motivated to attack reports of differences." [35]) and that social forces align to reward those who are speak contrary to the subject. --Legalleft (talk) 17:16, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

SLR, It may help to clarify what mediation does and does not mean. For example, the role of the mediator. --Legalleft (talk) 17:16, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Mediation LeadSongDog (talk) 23:04, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Jagz, that genetics has been in the article a long time means nothing: there is no rule in Wikipedia that the longer something has been in the article the harder it should be to discard. This is just irrational. We discard things that violate our policies or are inaccurate or irrelevant. You write, "There are too many discoveries being made in genetics now to discard it. It's not like it was in the 1930s." Alund has provided a detailed explanation of how discoveries in genetics since the 1930s should lead us to deiscard the discussion of genetics, or most of it, from this article. Now please tell me what discovering in genetics since the 1930s you have in mind that you that you think requires us to devote a substantial portion of this article to genetics? You mention "many" discoveries in genetics. Please explain to me just one discover in genetics since the 1930s that shows a link between race and intelligence. Just one. It is time for you to put your money where your mouth is. Slrubenstein | Talk 12:50, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

My point was that there is no sound scientific reason to discard the genetic view, especially in light of the new genetic discoveries (in general) that are being made. Whether it should or should not be in the article will, I believe, be addressed by mediation. It is something that was put into the article by someone else and was allowed to remain for an extended period of time. I can't see creation science ever making it into the article for any length of time so I'm not going to discuss it, even as an analogy. Let's save this discussion for mediation. --Jagz (talk) 15:20, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Jagz, the way this works is that if there is a specific discovery in genetics that supports the genetic view, it should go in. So far, there haven't been any. Therefore, your argument doesn't apply. We can certainly wait for mediation, but everyone here has been asking you for specific points to support your position, and so far, everything you have supplied are generalizations such as the one above. Somehow, I suspect the mediator may also come to the same conclusion. This sounds like, as you've been told more than once already, that you want to ask the other parent again. What would really be helpful would be for you to bring up specific points to try to support your position.--Ramdrake (talk) 15:43, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

To clairfy, "the mediator assists two or more parties in order to help them achieve an agreement on a matter of common interest." (emph added) While I agree that the mediator will likely "ask you for specific points to support your position" - it is in the service of helping the mediator help us arrive at a mutually agreeable point to move forward. Not because the mediator is some type of final judge of the validity or value of content or approach. (except "Where the position of one disputant is clearly unreasonable, fringe, or based on a strong point of view, the mediator is not required to subvert the integrity of the encyclopedia in order to reach a resolution.") TheRedPenOfDoom (talk) 16:12, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Why don't you ask Legalleft first. He is much more knowledgeable than I am. I think he is in favor of having the genetic view presented. --Jagz (talk) 17:21, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

If you can talk him into it, I'll go along with it. --Jagz (talk) 17:32, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

No Jagz, you wrote "There are too many discoveries being made in genetics now to discard it. It's not like it was in the 1930s." Obviously you are claiming to know of "many" discoveries in genetics. I am trying to go easy on you. I am asking you to provide just one. Were you just bullshitting us? You said there have been "many discoveries" that should be discussed in this article. Tell us about just one. Just one. Surely you can do that, can't you? Slrubenstein | Talk 16:02, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

No Jaqgz, I am not going to ask Legalleft because I am not responding to what he wrote, i am responding to what you wrote. You wrote, "There are too many discoveries being made in genetics now to discard it. It's not like it was in the 1930s." What exactly are you referring to? You said you know something, now tell us what you know. Or, if you really do not know, stop BSing and just leave this page. That is right, if you really do not know anything about the topic, you should not be involved in improving the article on the topic. Oh, do you know something? Well, you said you know of many discoveries in genetis since the 1930s about the link between race and IQ. So please, tell us, tell us about just one of these discoveries. Slrubenstein | Talk 19:39, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Unacceptable caption

I just read the caption on the graph in the Race and intelligence#Increases in IQ scores over time. "William T. Dickens and James R. Flynn write that blacks have gained 5 or 6 IQ points on non-Hispanic whites' between 1972 and 2002. This graph shows the gains for various tests.[62]" (emph added) If that is a direct quote, it needs to be identified as such otherwise it is unaceptable, sloppy, POV language. TheRedPenOfDoom (talk) 15:34, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Huh? What's the problem? --Legalleft (talk) 17:10, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

The sloppy 'gained points on' phraseology is not adequate for an encyclopedia and comes from a non-neutral point of view.TheRedPenOfDoom (talk) 18:53, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

More remarkable is the missed observation that the IQ scores of the groups changed, demonstrating that either the test did NOT measure an intrinsic characteristic of the tested groups or the cohorts were not selected by objective and neutral methods. LeadSongDog (talk) 18:11, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

That's a common misconception. IQ tests are not measures of "intrinsic" but rather of actual behavior -- the same way a ruler is a measure of actual rather than intrinsic height. re: "gained points on" -- right that's rather colloquial, but as you recognized it might be a direct quote. i thought maybe there was a deeper problem. --Legalleft (talk) 22:48, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

"IQ tests are not measures of "intrinsic" but rather of actual behavior". Quite Ll, Which just goes to show that the whole "it's genetic" argument is little more than a load of old cobblers. If it's actual behaviour rather than intrinsic behaviour then the difference can't possibly be due to "genetics" as wingnut racists keep claiming. Let's face it this really is fringe claptrap and we should treat it as such, the whole edifice is based on deliberate distortions and innuendo with little or no real evidence, these "theories" are based on at best a fundamental ignorance of science, and in the worst cases, such as Jensen, downright distortions of the facts (i.e. lies), and this is citable, so we should cite it.

Greg and Sanday make a clear distinction between the magnitude of the genetic contribution to a given trait (which cannot be measured for intelligence) and the extent to which the variability of a trait is due to genetic factors (which is supposedly measured by heritability estimates). Jensen seems to be aware of this distinction.....Jensen, however, does not follow through with the logical implications of this statement when he says in the same article that the control of highly heritable characteristics is usually in the organism's internal biochemical mechanisms and that traits of low heritability are usually controlled by external environmental factors. Jensen also confuses estimates of the variance in IQ scores with the magnitude of genetic contribution when he rejects the hypothesis of genetic equality between black and white samples reported by Kennedy, Van de Riet, and White (1963) on the basis of an analysis of the variances in the distribution of IQ scores for the two samples. The rational for rejecting the hypothesis of genetic equality between the two samples is based on the ubiquitous heritability estimate of 0.8 for the white population. Sanday (1971) " On the causes of IQ differences between groups and implications for social policy" Race and IQ Montagu (ed.)

We have many reliable sources that deconstruct the ideologiews of these people, to create a neutral article it is high time we included some of the cornucopia of evidence that does not support people like Jensen. This article does not meet the requirements of neutrality, and never will until we start to include opposing points of views to those of racists like Jensen. Alun (talk) 10:43, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

"Let's face it" ... LOL ... no, you're mistaken. I believe you also once argued that no phenotypic differences between racial groups *could* be attributable to genetic differences. In the case of this quote, the author is mischaracterizing people's positions. Flynn does a much better job of describing Jensen's views -- as does this article. There's a reason that this debate has lasted for decades: because there's hard intellectual substance behind it. --Legalleft (talk) 12:57, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Fringe theories Noticeboard

I listed the article at Wikipedia:Fringe theories/Noticeboard for advice from outsiders on what they consider to be the fringe theories in the article. --Jagz (talk) 19:08, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Jagz, it sounds for all the world like you're forum-shopping again. Fine, let the editors from the Fringe Theories Noticeboard have a say on what is and isn't fringe. You won't get a different answer from the one you already got.--Ramdrake (talk) 19:37, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

::[36] --Jagz (talk) 19:56, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

[37]--Ramdrake (talk) 20:12, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Fringe theories has good advice for this article.Nick Connolly (talk) 20:10, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

I withdrew the listing. --Jagz (talk) 23:34, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Proposed guidelines

Time to have a nice cup of tea and a sit down. Tea will be served here User:Nick Connolly/RaceIQEssay in my drawing room. A set of guidelines I think would help and a proposed direction for the article as an article about a POV which is really what we have anyway. Don't feel you have to comment here or there, just mull it over. —Preceding comment was added at 10:11, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

• I've added a lead paragraph on what I see as the purpose and direction of the article. User:Nick Connolly/RaceIQEssay plus some tweaks and typos Nick Connolly (talk) 22:21, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

• Yes -- The policy suggestions are very good. I would quibble with the description of the history of the topic to some extent, but that's an area where my reading is weakest so I stand to be educated. I would also quibble with the characterization of this as only being about genetic theories (described in various places in the talk page as the views of 'race people'). I don't believe (for example) James Flynn or William Dickens think of themselves as 'race people' but they are engaging directly with the work of Jensen et al. -- asking the same questions, working with the same data, etc. Others operating in the same paradigm include: Sternberg, Scarr, Nisbett, Neisser, etc. All believe the cause of racial group differences are environmental in nature. Moreover, there is more to the topic than the causal theories (although they tend to attract the most controversy.) --Legalleft (talk) 23:13, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
• Thanks. I see your point. What I'm trying to say is that the main focus of the article is the 'race people' POV and that this is why people are objecting about its neutrality. The 'racial' view is the protagonist in the plot and because of its provocative role will end up taking centre stage in any article based on looking at race and intelligence. The enviromental view clearly is relevant but it also goes far beyond race and IQ and hence doesn't get adequately covered - and also gets distorted by appearing through a race-IQ lens. Slrubenstien's suggestion of content forking is the solution I think. This article should focus on the POV and reactions to the POV both as a spur to other research and critics.Nick Connolly (talk) 00:15, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
• Thank you very much for spending time preparing a well thought out proposal. I have some concerns, but as I am thinking them through I am not sure my concerns align with WP guidelines and policies - I will get back after I have a chance to give my thoughts more consideration. TheRedPenOfDoom (talk) 01:05, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
• Thanks RedPen. I've tried to make the guidlines specific instances of more WP policies and ethos. Of course it may well be that such policies err in some way and that this article is exactyly the place where they fall down! Thoughtfulness is a good thing :) Nick Connolly (talk) 02:26, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
• I've added some links to the Wikipedia policies at the bottom of the essay. Gosh this is more fun than editing the proper article...Nick Connolly (talk) 06:47, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
• Very nice essay. This is how I see the article progressing.
  • History. Covering eugenics and testing in the 1920's how this led to a change in US immigration policy, including discussion of the whitening of eastern/Mediterranean Europeans in the USA, how they suddenly became white and "intelligent".[38]
  • Jensen, his 1967/1969 papers, what they say, why they say what they say, the basis for his "genetic" hypothesis. Counter arguments, who disagrees with Jensen, why they disagree with him, work published that refutes/contradicts Jensen.
  • Flynn, the Flynn effect, what is it, why does it appear to contradict genetic theories about group differences. Counter arguments to Flynn
  • Rushton, his theories (r/K selection etc.), what are they, his evidence etc. Counter arguments to Rushton.
  • Lynn, his ideas and theories (i.e. northern Europeans being more "intelligent" than southern Europeans, men more "intelligent" that women). Who disagrees with him etc.
  • Etc. any other notable theories/people who publish work regarding race/intelligence.
  • Section on media coverage.

Basically we give the main theories about links between "race" and "intelligence" and describe them and the evidence for them, then we give counter arguments. That's neutral, that explains the "stste of play" for the debate, that gives all points of view. We don't need to explain "race and intelligence" in the article, we need to give the theories and their counter arguments. Alun (talk) 11:33, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

• I think that is a sound structure you are proposing. Treat the main figures/controversies in roughly chronological order. Nick Connolly (talk) 18:45, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

I have strong objections to any article that presentes Rushton and Lynn's views as anything other than fringe pseudoscience. Jesnen is an important figure who raised an important question some time ago. He also proposed an answer which all mainstream scientists have rejected. This is not uncommon in science. Jensen remains an important figure for having raised the question; his answer is now really just of historical interest. Slrubenstein | Talk 16:50, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

The article should have adequate account of critics of Jensen et al. The framing of the article will not assert that these are scientific theories and there will be links to the content fork articles that describe current thinking on heredity and intelligence and SES and intelligence. We can't, as editors, say 'this is pseudoscience' but we can present expert opinions on that matter. The word 'claims' should be used extensively and supposed facts should be directly attributed (eg a map of national I should be prefigured as "X claims national IQ can be estimated and compared"). Anything that is not established science (i.e. most of this) should not be asserted as fact. IRT psychometricians would claim that IQ isn't a measure, anthropologists would claim that Jensen doesn't use race coherently, etc etc. This may end up being a circus for weasel words but that is the least worst outcome.Nick Connolly (talk) 18:45, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

There's a risk in overemphasizing personalities. There are people who've written important things about the subject who aren't well known. A topic based rather than personality based construction will work better for that reason. Rushton and Lynn's theories are notable so much as they have attracted attention from others. By that criteria, Lynn's national IQ estimates are notable and Rushton's r-K argument is notable. In the topic based content, you have two topics rather than two personalities: international test scores and evolutionary theories. That leaves room for Diamond's GGS theory to counter Rushton, and it leaves room for the various reanalyses of Lynn's data (pro and con). Addendum: Lynn is also notable for contributions which supported the discovery of the Flynn effect and for theories related to the cause of the Flynn effect, but those are somewhat tangential to this topic. --Legalleft (talk) 20:12, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I understand your concern with over emphasising personalities, but the work of people like Jensen, Lynn and Rushton is very closely associated with them and there are only a few people who are making the sorts of absolutist genetic deterministic claims that these people make, so the work becomes inextricably linked to these individuals. If we don't explicitly link a theory with the researcher who postulates it, then we appear to be implying that the theory represents a consensus view. The way I see it this whole "race"/"intelligence" debate became relevant in the modern world because of Jensen's 1967/1969 papers. Because he is the one who re-introduced this sort of thinking, then we need to discuss his specific reasoning and why he has drawn the conclusions that he has. Has he modified his position, if so how etc. We can then expand upon this by including some of his more up to date work and the work of others who agree with him. Then we include the work of people who dispute the conclusions that he has drawn. We don't need great detail, just to include the basic results they have obtained and the reasoning behind their conclusions. This is how we achieve neutrality. I have a lot of sympathy with Slr's position that Rushton and Lynn's views are fringe, but then I wonder if we are just making an arbitrary decision to include or exclude some theories based on what we think is fringe or not, what are the criteria for identifying a "fringe" point of view? I personally have some problems with the idea of minority and fringe views, sometimes it is obvious what is a fringe view, Steady state theory is now a fringe view, but it was promoted by the very well respected astronomer Fred Hoyle, the reason it is fringe is not because it is necessarily bad science, but because the overwhelming majority of astronomers support the Big Bang theory, indeed the Big Bang is usually portrayed as if it is a "fact". The problem in this article is that it is much more difficult to determine what a "fringe" view is because the debate is not constructed around distinct "theories" that compete (unlike Steady State vs Big Bang), we basically have Jensen who does not really have a "theory" as such, just a claim that his evidence supports an "innate" biological difference, and then counter claims that he has either misrepresented or misunderstood the science, these counter claims include all sorts of things from critisism of what IQ actually measures to the social construction of "race" to critisisms of how heritability is calculated etc. I think Nick made this same point quite recently. The only person who has attempted to offer some sort of actual theory (i.e. tried to give some sort of causal relationship between "race" and "intelligence") is Rushton. Besides there are plenty of sources that give comprehensive counter arguments to Rushton and we need to include these. How we deal with Rushton and Lynn is going to be tricky, we can explicitly state that these are fringe theories, but then we need a source that states this. We can certainly claim that these are controversial ideas and that there is much opposition to them, but personally I just don't know how we identify what is and what is not "fringe". I tend to think that on the whole the best thing to do is to include all relevant work, whether we think it is "fringe" or not, give the theory, give the critisisms and allow the reader of the article to draw their own conclusions having been given all points of view. That way at least we cannot be accused of censorship, but it does mean that we need to include a great deal more specific critisism of the work of these people. Given the amount of critisism of people like Lynn, Jensen and Rushton it should be obvious to the impartial reader that not only is this not consensus opinion, but that the overwhelming majority of researchers in the field reject biological deterministic reasoning on scientific grounds. I'm not sure I'm expressing myself very well, and I've waffled a bit. All the best. Alun (talk) 05:41, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Alun, your descriptions are inaccurate. It's impractical to respond point by point. Instead, I'll quote Jensen (1998):

The relationship of the g factor to a number of biological variables and its relationship to the size of the white-black differences on various cognitive tests (i.e., Spearman’s hypothesis) suggests that the average white-black difference in g has a biological component. Human races are viewed not as discrete, or Platonic, categories, but rather as breeding populations that, as a result of natural selection, have come to differ statistically in the relative frequencies of many polymorphic genes. The “genetic distances” between various populations form a continuous variable that can be measured in terms of differences in gene frequencies. Racial populations differ in many genetic characteristics, some of which, such as brain size, have behavioral and psychometric correlates, particularly g. What I term the default hypothesis states that the causes of the phenotypic differences between contemporary populations of recent African and European descent arise from the same genetic and environmental factors, and in approximately the same magnitudes, that account for individual differences within each population. Thus genetic and environmental variances between groups and within groups are viewed as essentially the same for both populations. The default hypothesis is able to account for the present evidence On the mean white-black difference in g. There is no need to invoke any ad hoc hypothesis, or a Factor X, that is unique to either the black or the white population. The environmental component of the average g difference between groups is primarily attributable to a host of microenvironmental factors that have biological effects. They result from non-genetic variation in prenatal, perinatal, and neonatal conditions and specific nutritional factors. ... In brief, the default hypothesis states that the proximal causes of both individual differences and population differences in heritable psychological traits are essentially the same, and are continuous variables. The population differences reflect differences in allele frequencies of the same genes that cause individual differences. Population differences also reflect environmental effects, as do individual differences, and these may differ in frequency between populations, as do allele frequencies. ... Research will be most productively focused not on whether or not genes are involved in population differences, but in discovering the relative effects of genetic and environmental causes of differences and the nature of these causes, so they can be better understood and perhaps influenced. ... Thus far the quantitative implications of the default hypothesis have been considered only in theoretical or formal terms, which by themselves prove nothing, but are intended only to lend some precision to the statement of the hypothesis and its predicted empirical implications. ... Probably the most rigorous methodology presently available to test the default hypothesis is the application of structural equation modeling to what is termed the biometric decomposition of a phenotypic mean difference into its genetic and environmental components. This methodology is an extraordinarily complex set of mathematical and statistical procedures, an adequate explanation of which is beyond the scope of this book, but for which detailed explanations are available. ... A highly similar methodology (using a less restrictive model termed the biometric factor model) was applied to a much larger data set by behavioral geneticists David Rowe and co-workers. ... The default hypothesis that the difference between the black and white group means on the single general achievement factor has the same genetic and non-genetic causes that contribute to individual differences within each group could not be rejected. The data fit the default model extremely well, with a goodness-of-fit index of .98 (which, like a correlation coefficient, is scaled from zero to one). The authors concluded that the genetic and environmental sources of individual differences and of differences between racial means appear to be identical. [39]

Emphasis added. --Legalleft (talk) 07:59, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Legalleft, I don't really see how your response to my post is relevant to what I wrote. I generally gave my opinion regarding the presentation of the various points of view in the article. This is my opinion about how we change the article to make it more neutral. You have just given a quote from Jensen that doesn't address what I was writing about at all. Frankly I don't understand what point you are trying to make. I make two observations, firstly that we should present biological/genetic theories to explain the so called IQ gap, give the reasoning for these theories and give the reasoning of critics of these points of view. I don't see how this way of doing things can be "inaccurate", though anyone has the right to disagree with me. My second point is that it is difficult to determine what is "fringe" and what is not, therefore we should probably give all relevant theories/points of view, for the sake of completeness. These are the two points I was making, I don't see any reference to these points in the quote you have given, I didn't even mention how "race" is supposed to be defined. However it's good that you have given Jensen's definition of a "race" as a "breeding population", this is not generally considered a definition of a "race" because it is almost impossible to define a "breeding population", and even if one could do such a thing it would represent a very geographically restricted group because it would have to include only individuals with a very high probability of meeting and reproducing together, say people who are likely to meet on a very frequent basis. But it is easy to find sources that show that this definition cannot be a "race". This refers to Theodosius Dobzhansky's 1970 "population" definition of "geographical race"

Races are genetically distinct Mendelian populations. They are neither individuals nor particular genotypes, they consist of individuals who differ genetically among themselves.[40]

But of course as Richard Lewontin points out, this allows any group that differs from any other group to be defined as a "race"

In an attempt to hold on to the concept [of Race] while make it objective and generalizable, Th. Dobzhansky, the leading biologist in the study of the genetics of natural populations, introduced the "geographical race", which he defined as any population that differed genetically in any way from any other population of the species. But as genetics developed and it became possible to characterize the genetic differences between individuals and populations it became apparent, that every population of every species in fact differs genetically to some degree from every other population. Thus, every population is a separate "geographic race" and it was realized that nothing was added by the racial category. The consequence of this realization was the abandonment of "race" as a biological category during the last quarter of the twentieth century, an abandonment that spread into anthropology and human biology.[41]

Clearly the African-American population of the USA would not constitute a "race" under Jensen's definition because they are distributed over very large geographic areas, just as the European population of the USA is, neither are "breeding populations", it is easy to show that "races" cannot be "breeding populations" and I don't think any serious population geneticist would hold such a view in the modern world, this definition would just make any localised population definable as a "race". Alun (talk) 13:28, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

• You both make good points. I think both can be accomadated. There are enough article surveying the subject for us to present an overview of the hypothesis Jensen introduced, but which exists independently of him, and of which he made different standards of claims (from 'is' to 'maybe'). I think we need to do that early, that is explain the key concepts that underlie the genetic explanation of IQ differences between races. This way the neophyte ready gets a summary of what the issues are. This will also gives some structure to the criticisms. The anthropological argument is of a different kind than the heritability argument; Gould's critique of g is different than Boorsbom's criticism of the classical test theory basis, and so on. This is one of the flaws in the current article - the Jensen position is wrong (IMHO) but it is at least superficially coherent. The counter-position is a mass of very different argument, not all of which are held by all critics. I don't know of somebody who thinks races are primarily biological but disagrees that IQ differences are down to genetics - but such a view isn't neccesarily inconsistent. Lastly we have to be careful attributing to Jensen claims he didn't make or only made overtly speculatively. Nick Connolly (talk) 08:25, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

It is evident that there is some kind of fundamental conflict between Alun and Legalleft, although it seems to me that both want to make a good-faith effort to work through it. At the mediation request page they ask for a sumary of the conflicts to be resolved. Can Alun and Legalleft at least agree to a brief (few sentence) summary of the conflict, to post there? I also wonder if there is a similar good-faith conflict between myself and Nick, as Nick agrees to my proposal but as I understand my proposal this article (and any that mentions Lynch and Rushton) would be about the popular controversy and representation of the debate in the mass media, and not at all about any scientific debate. Is this too something that needs to be sumarized for the mediation committee? Slrubenstein | Talk 13:33, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Doesn't look that fundamental to me. The "popular controversy" is about academic claims (I'm weasling out oif the word "scientific") made by academics in journals (or critiqued in journals). The article has to explain what the basic position under dispute is to understand what people objected to and how that position varies. That approach works equally well for a scientific hypothesis and for pseudoscience. Have a look at the Rational geometry page for a non-politically loaded approach to a minority academic viewpoint in mathematics.Nick Connolly (talk) 18:31, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

So you agree with me that this is not about the media reporting on a debate among scientists, it is rather about the media creating a debate that gives undue prominence to views rejected by mainstream scientists (Murray and Hernstein, Lynch, and Rushton)? Slrubenstein | Talk 19:45, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

I think both of those are too simplistic. There is a debate between academics that does occur at an academic level - that is via journal articles and research papers and replies to those journal articles etc etc. That debate is fueled in part by the prominence that research into race can have in the popular media - particularly in the USA. Personally I think Rushton (or lesser figures like Watson, as far as IQ goes) are acting like trolls but like it or not they provoke debate at a scholarly level. Consequently there is a scholarly dispute to document. The attempts to debunk their view has also had an effect of provoking research - which in turn makes the dispute of more note. Nick Connolly (talk) 09:13, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't think there is any "fundamental conflict" between me and Legalleft, I just think that we are just not communicating very well. While I think I am making a specific point, when I read Legalleft's response it doesn't seem to be at all related to the point I was originally trying to make. This has been a pattern in several of our interactions. Maybe I'm being less explicit in what I am saying than I think I am, maybe Legalleft is reading more into my post than I think I am saying. But it's more like we just don't understand the point the other is making. Possibly this is normal for people from different disciplines. I'm a biologist and I am guessing Legalleft is a psychologist. This is what I think, we can separate the "popular controversy" from the "academic claims" and indeed we have to do this. Journalists nearly always get things wrong and misrepresent what academics are saying, even people like Lynn, Rushton etc. So my thinking is that we include the main "theories" and the rationals for those theories, we include criticisms of these "theories". There's probably a great deal more we can write about criticism of these theories than there is support for them, because these criticisms include a diverse set of arguments that do not conform to coherent "theory" (see the book "Race and IQ", it's a collection of more or less unrelated papers and essays). Then we have a separate section about how the media has covered this work and has made this work well known. But it is important to distinguish between what the theories actually say and what the media report that these theories say, because I'm sure these will be different things. I'm proposing a relatively simple structure of point and counterpoint. We give a broadly chronological outline to the debate. The theories of the various protagonists and the rebutals of those theories by other scientists. This way we get neutrality. Let's face it we are going to make this article neutral - and we already have an overwhelming consensus that this article is not neutral so the status quo is not acceptable - we need to discuss ways that we can re-model the article to include the specific criticisms of claims made by specific researchers. I personally can't see any other way of getting this thing to be neutral. Alun (talk) 05:44, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Recent edits

Full disclosure: I recently made some minor edits to this page without noticing its was fully-protected. After having had this brought to my attention, I've now undone them. -- The Anome (talk) 10:38, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for reverting, even though the edits were minor.--Ramdrake (talk) 11:07, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Presentation of views

Should the environmental/cultural view be presented as a fact, theory, hypothesis, conjecture, opinion, etc.? I can't see where it has been definitively proven to be responsible for more than a minor portion of the group IQ gaps in adults. --Jagz (talk) 12:09, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

See the overviews by Dickens and Nisbett. Without doubt, and with no one disagreeing, very important at least in developing nations.Ultramarine (talk) 12:53, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Where are they? --Jagz (talk) 13:01, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

In the article in the Environment section.Ultramarine (talk) 13:17, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

That falls well short of the criteria needed to present group IQ gaps being the result of only environmental factors as a fact. --Jagz (talk) 15:45, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

WP:V. WP:NPOV We will never present any view as "fact," we will say that there are people who consider this to be a fact." What matters is not wheher yo or I think it is a fact but whether a notable view in a reliable source does. Slrubenstein | Talk 18:28, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Since this is a science article, it should be stated clearly that scientific method and science does not deal with opinion, facts, truth, etc.  ? OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 02:56, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

there is science there

I suspect that a fundamental miscommunication between parties is that some believe there is no science here or if there is science kind of science it is a mess of obviously flawed inferences. If that were true, then it would justify being very critical of the content of this article. It is not true. There are problems with the science, but they aren't trivial. As an example that demonstrates both the existence of real science on this topic and the complex nature of the problems faced, here's is an example from a recent paper by Nathan Brody:

There is an extensive behavioral-genetic literature on intelligence. Few of these studies deal with Black individuals. This gap in knowledge leads to difficulties in the interpretation of two of the more informative studies dealing with racial differences in intelligence. Fagan and Holland (in press) completed a longitudinal study that indicates that infant measures of information-processing abilities obtained in the 1st year of life are predictive of early childhood intelligence and of young adult intelligence. Fagan (2000) also obtained data indicating that the performance of Black and White infants on infant measures of intellectual competence is equivalent. There is at least a prima facie argument and some data supporting the inference that the covariance between infant information-processing ability and later intelligence-test performance is determined by shared genetic influences on both types of measures (see Thompson, 1989). If this is correct, it would imply that Black and White individuals have equivalent intellectual abilities in infancy. The lower performance on tests of intelligence exhibited by Black individuals later in life would, by this interpretation, be determined by environmental events that are operative after age 1. This interpretation would be strengthened if studies relating to inferences about genetic covariances between infant and adult markers for intelligence had been conducted for Black children. As they have not, the evidence in favor of this interpretation rests solely on the outcome of studies of potential genetic covariances for White individuals that may or may not apply to Black individuals. [paragraph mark] Jensen (1993) found that Black–White differences in intellectual performance are present on chronometric measures of simple and choice reaction times. Behavioral-genetic studies indicate that the phenotypic covariance between reaction-time measures and scores on tests of intelligence is attributable to genetic covariances (see Brody, 2007; Posthuma, deGues, & Boomsma, 2003). This result would imply that the poorer performance of Black individuals on chronometric tests is determined by genetic differences between Black and White individuals that are related to genetic differences in intellectual abilities. Studies that support genetic covariances between chronometric indices and intelligence-test performance have been conducted on White samples. We do not know if comparable results would be obtained for Black samples, thus rendering a genetic interpretation of racial differences in intellectual abilities based on these data problematic.[42]

If it's not clear how it is a problem that there are not comparable studies with black individuals consider these related question -- what if the infant information-processing tests are biased against white infants? what if the reaction time measures biased against black individuals? Those are the types of issues that are reocgnized and grappled with by researchers working on this subject.

That is not to say that in the entirety of the scholarly literature there aren't broader questions asked about the research. Hunt and Carlson lay out the range of opinions:

The investigation of racial differences in intelligence is probably the most controversial topic in the study of individual differences. Contemporary proponents can be found for each of the following positions:

a. There are differences in intelligence between races that are due in substantial part to genetically determined differences in brain structure and/or function (Rushton, 1995; Rushton & Jensen, 2005a). b. Differences in cognitive competencies between races exist and are of social origin (Ogbu, 2002; Sowell, 2005). c. Differences in test scores that are used to argue for differences in intelligence between races represent the inappropriate use of tests in different groups (Ogbu, 2002; Sternberg, Grigorenko, & Kidd, 2005).

d. There is no such thing as race; it is a term motivated by social concerns and not a scientific concept (Fish, 2004; Smedley & Smedley, 2005). [43]

The Hunt and Carlson review is excellent in that it pulls together and synthesizes diverse reports, mostly with the aim of criticizing mistakes. Gottfredson then takes her turn criticizing mistakes made by Hunt and Carlson.[44] The entire exchange is very informative. --Legalleft (talk) 17:53, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

In the same vein, you might also like this reference: [45]. It's a review of some major points of the racialist hypothesis, nicely refuted from an anthropological perspective by Lieberman. Also followed by nearly a dozen commentaries on the review itself.--Ramdrake (talk) 20:45, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Link to previous poll to delete article

I still support the deletion of the article. [46] --Jagz (talk) 20:46, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

What would you have instead?--Ramdrake (talk) 22:47, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Though despicable as it is, it is notable. All we have to do is make it absolutely neutral, meaning every comment utilizes reliable and verifiable sources. The KKK or Nazi-party rantings, even on paper, aren't either. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 01:07, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

"I still suport the deletion of the article?" Funny, none of your comments in the past weeks have suggested this at all. Obviously this is just another one of Jagz's trollish bait-and-switch tactics where he refuses to engage any other editorand if anypne responds to one of his comments, he changes the subject. That is what trolls do, they only wish to disrupt discussion. Above I made a concrete proposal for working our way out of this POV mess and Jagz could say only that he rejected my solution, but couldn't explain why. Then he wrote, " There are too many discoveries being made in genetics now to discard it. It's not like it was in the 1930s" and, assuming good faith i.e that he knows something I do not, I asked him to tell us even one discovery in genetics since the 1930s that bears on a relationship between race and intelligence. No reply. I asked three times, no reply ... maybe he really is just a BS artist. In any event, after my asking him three times for the evidence to support his claim, for him to explain what he means, he ... just changes the subject, creates yet another section of talk, wasting more space on the page. Just typical disruptive editing that is clearly all this troll has to offer. Slrubenstein | Talk 02:19, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Since Jagz doesnt believe that the article should exist, then I believe that he will have no opposition to those who have ideas of how to make an encylopedic article. Please procede with your ideas. TheRedPenOfDoom (talk) 02:30, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

This isn't worth the trouble. You don't need me to have a consensus. --Jagz (talk) 04:06, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

In the end, sadly, no. I'm glad you realize that. However, if you have legitimate concerns, backed with reliable sources, we'll listen.--Ramdrake (talk) 11:22, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

I only support deleting the article. --Jagz (talk) 11:58, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Then put in your AfD and let the other editors work on the article. TheRedPenOfDoom (talk) 13:27, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Amen.--Ramdrake (talk) 13:31, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

If you can build a consensus to AfD, I will support. --Jagz (talk) 15:32, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

No, he is just being a lying troll, again. He doesn't favor deleting the article - above he wrote,

• The article has a template disputing the factual accuracy of the article. It says, "Please see the relevant discussion on the talk page." I can't locate the discussion regarding the article's factual accuracy. What exactly is being disputed? --Jagz (talk) 14:21, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
• the article states, "The contemporary debate on race and intelligence is about what causes racial and ethnic differences in IQ test scores." If you wish to present another POV, you can add it provided you cite your sources. --Jagz (talk) 19:40, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
• I'm planning to take the POV tag off the article in a few days because there has been no discussion. --Jagz (talk) 20:06, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

... and numerous times has expressed his commitment to this article. The truth is, he does not believe in anything, he simply says whatever will be most disruptive at the time, even if it leads him to claim he said things he never said or doesn't believe things he has said he believes. Slrubenstein | Talk 13:32, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

The POV tag stays. I even believe the "limited" tags should stay, since the POV in those sections are limited to racists and unscientific theories. So, I guess I'm in agreement with Jagz on that small point. But I agree with Slr, Jagz is a moving target. He just pops off with stuff that makes no sense, including AfDing this article. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 21:56, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Evolutionary history of IQ

Here is a link to this section in the October 2007 version of the article.[47] --Jagz (talk) 23:17, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Is it more spam, or do you actually have a point?--Ramdrake (talk) 23:57, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

WP:TPG

I have not been here in a while, but when I was here I tried to enforce WP:TPG to the extreme. I have edited other articles were the topic at hand is frequented by "dogma", and much time was wasted in the talk until we started heavily enforcing WP:TPG, anything that is not remotely related to improvements gets reverted. Do you guys want to do that here, or do you think we are too divided to not be able to enforce it peacefully (that is, not being able to avoid an edit war on the talk page...?) Brusegadi (talk) 02:39, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Someone really should do a study of this page. It grows at a remarkable rate, with minimal impact on the article itself. Obviously some of the discussion is just disruptive tangential wastes of time, but one very very regretable effect is that the material written just weeks ago has to be archived because the page has grown too long. This is a shame because very relevant, valuable, construtcive content gets archived too quickly. So, a vicious sycle - constructive talk gets archived before it has paid off, while unconstructive talk floods the page, and the article remains stalled in its awful state. This is perhaps the most simple, objective, and practical reason why we need mediation. Brusegadi, are you volunteering to mediate? Would others accept you? If not, can we find another mediator? My point is that we may need a mediator not to resolve any specific conflict between two users but to inforce a discipline on this page whereine we systematically identify definable problems and discuss them in a disciplined way, so that we solve each problem before moving on to the next. And no tangents. Slrubenstein | Talk 09:46, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

SLR, if you tell me of anything worth saving that rolls off the page (or has rolled off the page already), I'll volunteer to retrieve it from the archives so we don't lose it until we're done with it. Conversely, if there are sections that the consensus agrees we can archive ahead of time to make the page less confusing (and less huge), I can take care of those.--Ramdrake (talk) 12:08, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Nothing off-hand. Of what is currently on the page, I think my proposal and at least one of my extended explanations for why I think it needes to be parsed. Some stuff by Nick especially where he explains why he thinks things are more nuanced or complicated than what I suggest, and stuff relating to his plan. Discussion betwen Alun and Legalleft whee they both claim to be working towards a resolution or realization that they are not that far apart. But my point is you can go through all the archives from the past year and you will find many important, substantive arguments that have been archived, including many points that keep getting repeated. The repition is both a cause and effect - the repetition leads to lots of archiving, but because an important point is archived it ends up getting repeated. My point: people are making poinst now that were made a year ago, yet in the past year the article has not changed in any fundamental way. Why not? Why is there so much talk and so little action? Slrubenstein | Talk 13:19, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

I am not the appropriate person to mediate because I have been involved in this page in the past, and I prefer the mediator to be unrelated. Yet, if we can all agree to have a higher WP:TPG standard I think thats a step. Anyone makes a remotely trollish remark and it gets moved to their talk page... We can also agree to a 1RR instead of 3RR on the talk page and the article page... If we are disciplined we can make it. Brusegadi (talk) 22:19, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

I hate long-winded talk-pages. I have only so much time in a day, and it gets tiresome. I wish there was a rule--list three bullet points in a sentence of say 25 words. Reply to those bullet points. Then shut up. I can't stand to come to this page, which is made up of one editor ranting about this or another thing, Slr trying to be patient, the one editor then throwing in rude and uncivil comments, Slr reply as best he can, then we end up with--Slr's point being the consensus one. I save time by reading Slr's comments, Ramdrakes amusing frustrations with the POV-editors, and maybe stuff here and there. OK, I'm off my soapbox. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 00:21, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

There is another discussion of this same topic occurring here in section "My view": [48] --Jagz (talk) 16:58, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Forming consensus

I've used the processes at this article among several to form a modified version of the Consensus Flow Chart. The example below is under discussion at the Consensus talk page. I bring the example here to find out if I am correct in assessing the evolution of how consensus is acheived at WP. Comments? Is this prescriptive or is this documenting practice? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kevin Murray (talk • contribs)

I have started a thread at WP:Concensus talk if others want to give their feedback there. Is there anything in this flowchart that might help this group better gain concensus on this article? TheRedPenOfDoom (talk) 17:40, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

So we have to put out a flowchart? Because one editor has a POV, and all of the others don't? Wow. I luv being edumicated on dis stuf. We're wasting energy on a racist POV!!!!! OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 00:25, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

See my reply in the Racialist POV section. --Jagz (talk) 00:55, 4 April 2008 (UTC) _{I moved that section to Jagz talk page because it was too offtopic, for all those interested, we have to tighten up TPG. Brusegadi (talk) 06:56, 4 April 2008 (UTC)}

My reply was moved to my Talk page by Brusegadi and and then Ramdrake and can be found here:[49] --Jagz (talk) 12:35, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Notwithstanding some aggressive boldness, Jagz has broken through a long period of denial and over correctness in this topic. This topic is generally unpleasant and has potetial to do more harm than good. It is hard to see the upside, but on the other hand if we whitewash the issues then we are editorializing rather than informing. I'm really sorry to see the word racist being slung about here as it only tends to inflame. Labeling someone a racist is counterproductive; please attack the logic or the facts, but not the person or the motivation. This applies to editors as well as sources. Reporting the truth about racial variances is not racist; however, manipulating that data to a false conclusion is racist. Just some rambling thoughts to someone who has become more of an observer here than a participant. --Kevin Murray (talk) 15:43, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Race and IQ (article name)

Suggestion: change article name to "Race and IQ" since that is mostly what the article is about. Maybe "Race, ethnicity, and IQ". --Jagz (talk) 18:16, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

HEY! That would be a great way to get rid of the 'caste-like minorities' section as being off-topic!!! But seriously, that suggestion was part of the overall overhaul that was suggested above about a week or two ago. I seem to recall opposition from you about that, or is my memory going bad? TheRedPenOfDoom (talk) 18:20, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

If the article is about race and IQ it would be rather short, with the possible inclusion of examinators looking threateningly at black pupils whilst taking their test, other anecdotal evidence of that order, and of course the so called authorities pushing back and forth arguments about why their selection of studies is the least biased. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Zero g (talk • contribs)

It's a shame we can't discuss this change -- it's a good idea. No, it would not mean that there would be lots of material to remove from the article. Anything associated with IQ, such as metrics of achievement, discussed in terms of group differences, would also be appropriate. --Legalleft (talk) 22:20, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

The National IQ map

What happened to the IQ map anyways? I liked how clearly it shows what the fuzz is about. --Zero g (talk) 19:03, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

There are so many problems with the methodology use to arrive at the map that it is thoroughly discredited as far as mainstream science is concerned: non-comparable tests, non-comparable samples, interpolation made when data is not available, etc. Furthermore, this representation is according to one researcher, so there is the problem of undue weight attached to it.--Ramdrake (talk) 19:21, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

The actual differences in IQ scores isn't what's controversial, that's a fact given the scores are quite consistent. The map quite clearly shows what it's all about and in my opinion essential for that purpose. --Zero g (talk) 19:51, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

The controversy about this map is precisely the way the "national scores" were arrived at, and sampling ans scoring consistencies are the foremost reasons why this particular map is thoroughly debunked.--Ramdrake (talk) 19:54, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

(1) I'm not sure you two are even talking about the same map. There were two maps -- 1 from RDiI and the other from IQGI. (2) There's lots of controversial stuff. If it's notable and encyclopedia, etc., it should be included. Those are the criteria, not being good science (yes, clearly it's sloppy work, but even critics mostly agree that it's in the right ballpark +/- something). --Legalleft (talk) 22:20, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Actually, the problems I mentioned were raised as criticisms for both maps. BTW, we also need ensure that we don't give undue weight to minority arguments, so despite a certain amount of notability, I'm not sure it deserves inclusion in this article.--Ramdrake (talk) 23:51, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

[outdent] The data point that sells me on the importance of the maps to the topic is this: (2007 ISRI conference [50]): Symposium (8:00-11:40): International Differences in Intelligence Chairs: Rindermann and Lynn (52) 8:00-8:20 Kanazawa (32) Correlates of national IQ. 8:20-8:40 Lynn, Harvey, and Nyborg (36) Intelligence and religion. 8:40-9:00 Meisenberg (40) From the cradle to the grave: Effects of intelligence on fertility and mortality. 9:00-9:20 te Nijenhuis, van Rijk, and Kämper (58) Blindness, deprivation, and IQ: A meta-analysis. 9:20-9:40 Nyborg (45) Religion, IQ, sex hormones, and delinquency: Application of the general trait covariance model. 9:40-10:00 Break 10:00-10:20 Rindermann (51) Philosophies of life as religious, cultural, and political beliefs and their relationship to intelligence. 10:20-10:40 Rushton, Bons, Vernon, and Čvorović (53) Genetic and environmental contributions to group differences on the Raven’s Progressive Matrices estimated from twins reared together and apart. 10:40-11:00 Steppan (56) The influence of Protestant achievement ethic on test results in a g-based medical school aptitude test (EMS) in Switzerland, Germany, and Austria. 11:00-11:20 Vinogradov and Kolvereid (67) Cultural background, home country national intelligence and self-emplyment rates among immigrants in Norway. 11:20-11:40 Flynn Discussant That's a lot of discussion. Moreover, it extends beyond Lynn. Sternberg, for example, has done a lot of work in Africa to find evidence for practical intelligence. Also, the "international test scores" (e.g. PISA) that usually rank the US below other western countries are themselves examples of this kind of analysis. --Legalleft (talk) 00:58, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Fellow editors, this discussion [51] on the talk page for the 'Democracy' article resulted in this set of maps [52] being part of that article. A similar approach might work for this article. Of course the maps must be reliable and the methodology used to arrive at them should be discussed. I am invariant under co-ordinate transformations (talk) 04:11, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Now this seems like an excellent solution. We should print the IQ world map according to Mr Ghould (corrected for environment), and the IQ world map according to Mr Lynn. --Zero g (talk) 18:42, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm not aware that Stephen Jay Gould ever published "IQ maps". The very idea that IQ varies nationally by country is fringe.--Ramdrake (talk) 19:14, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Simply showing a single color world map would get the point across that some mainstream researchers argue that all human races and populations have the same exact intelligence. Possibly whites could be given a lower score, since frankly, waging war, imperialism, scientific racism, and slavery are quite stupid as Gould has pointed out.

The believe that administrating the same IQ test to different areas yields different results isn't fringe. National IQ tests are quite popular and are frequently published in the mainstream media, in Europe at least. There are also incidences of IQ results by state being published in the USA.

The map is mainly useful however to put the article in a more worldly context, rather than European Americans vs African Americans. --Zero g (talk) 19:28, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

• Nominate The Windmills of Your Mind as this talk page's theme song. Nick Connolly (talk) 19:33, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Not sure if I should cry or laugh. I think I'll laugh, though: better for one's morale.--Ramdrake (talk) 19:42, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

I have a low IQ, because I come from Eastern Jewish stock (whatever the hell that is), so I don't get it. I guess I'm a dunce. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 00:26, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

That does not contradict the table in the Caste-like minorities section. --Jagz (talk) 00:53, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Come now. An individual's IQ is a product of their genes, environment, and chance. Being a member of a group does little to "explain" an individual's IQ. --Legalleft (talk) 01:01, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

I've tried removing the "caste" table from the article several times and it keeps getting put back in. I've also discussed removing it from the article several times and have gotten nowhere. I recently tried taking the Belgium listing out a few times but it keeps getting put back in. One problem with the table is that it doesn't make it clear that being a member of a group is not an indication of the IQ of an individual in that group. --Jagz (talk) 01:32, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

<RI>Legalleft, I just guess sarcasm is not one of the characteristics you developed from either genes, environment or chance. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 08:14, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

IQ - irony quotient is genetic as proven by the world irony map. The known disparity between the irony scores of the US and UK is due to selective pressure during the 18th century when groups of puritans didn't get a whole series of jokes and ended up setting up colony dedicated to taking things literally :) . See World Irony Map Nick Connolly (talk) 08:29, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Caste table section name

I changed the name of the section that the "caste" table is in from "Caste" to "Caste-like minorities" several weeks ago. I think a better name for the section is "Social status". Using the word "minorities" seems like POV. --Jagz (talk) 02:07, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

I've tried changing the section name to "Social status" but it keeps getting changed back to "Caste-like minorities". When looking at the book recently, I don't recall anything that said all those groups in the table are minorities. --Jagz (talk) 16:35, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

They are "caste-like" and they are indeed all minorities, but for the possible exception of Flemish people in Belgium. In any case, the title as it stands isn't wrong and is far more descriptive than "social status". Also, please explain why the word "minorities" is POV. Sounds like a factual description to me.--Ramdrake (talk) 17:08, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Belgium[53]
Ethnic groups: Fleming 58%, Walloon 31%, mixed or other 11%
Languages: Dutch (official) 60%, French (official) 40%, German (official) less than 1%, legally bilingual (Dutch and French) --Jagz (talk) 19:29, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

I believe I said "the possible exception of Flemish people in Belgium". However, in the context of this part of Europe, the Flemish-speaking people are still a minority compared to the French-speaking people, as they are litterally next door to about 60 million French-speakers.--Ramdrake (talk) 19:44, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

But the table says Belgium, not Belgium and France. --Jagz (talk) 20:06, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

You are being specious. Please stop it.--Ramdrake (talk) 21:18, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Then the people in the province of Quebec in Canada whose first language is French are a minority within that province because Quebec borders the rest of Canada, which uses English primarily as a first language. --Jagz (talk) 14:40, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Funny you should say that, because the double status of majority/minority is exactly how most observers qualify the situation in Quebec: French speakers are a majority (80%) within the province, but a minority both within the country (23%) and within North America (2%). Nobody sees a contradiction in this.--Ramdrake (talk) 19:59, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

They are now a minority/minority. ;) --Jagz (talk) 01:46, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

What is Intelligence

I've just started this article on Flynn's most recent book What is Intelligence, for anybody whose interested.Nick Connolly (talk) 06:38, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

What is the dispute?

I know this sounds mildly troll-like, but I promise it's a genuine qeustion. I'm having a really hard time following the discussion page. A topic like this is bound to be controversial, but I can't tell what the dispute(s?) are that warrant the tag. Is it

• a) The topic as a whole is too fringe-y to be included? (i.e. no redirects or including mention in some other article, just deletion and maybe page-creation blocks)
• b) The topic is valid, but the studies and sources cited are too unreliable to be included?
• c) The studies and sources are reliable, but even if they fit WP:Verify they're racist and don't belong?
• d) The topic as a whole is wiki-worthy but parts of the article are not and need to be trimmed?
• e) This page is some kind of fork, and needs a redirect (to the Bell Curve book or Scientific Racism or something)
• f) Nearly all of the current content is good, but it's unbalanced and needs some more from the other side of the debate?
• g) Some or all of the above?

While I'm sure various people have various answers, I know I couldn't even begin to contribute to the discussion at this point because I'm not entirely sure what you're actually discussing. If someone could sum it up, it might be helpful. Thanks! CredoFromStart ^talk 18:19, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

I may have answered part of my own question. Thisis a very good start to figuring out what's going on around here! (Thanks Nick) Although I got lucky when I found that one and it might not be done yet. CredoFromStart ^talk 18:29, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

My own opinion is that this is three different debates that keep getting muddled together. The first is the question, what is the heritability of IQ (which has its own article). The second is, why are there racial disparities in IQ scores. The problem is that some editors keep pushing fringe answers; the mainstrram and notable answers have to do with socio-economic status and social environment, and changes in testing practices. The third is a controversy in the popular media centering on a few books written by fringe social-scientists who claim that with regard to intelligence, some races are genetically superior and others genetically inferior. It is easy to understand why some would confuse and mix up these different topics, but the fact is each of the three involves a different body or scholarship/sources. Slrubenstein | Talk 18:47, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Slrubenstein that there is a muddle here which is why we have both suggested content-forking. I think he and I still disagree on the extent to which the core article is an article about a controversy in the popular media around some fringe views (I think Slrubenstein's position) or whether it is on a hypothesis (most closely associated with Arthur Jensen) which wasn't fringe but which has largely been debunked and which was associated with a popular controversy. We can thing of three reactions to Jensen's work which lead to three good-faith POV approaches to the article. I'll charaterise them with the name of a notable academic rather than wiki-editors:

• Gould: Jensen's race-IQ genetic hypothesis is demonstrably wrong, poor science and part of a racist tradition.
• Flynn: Jensen's race-IQ genetic hypothesis is wrong in subtle ways and was useful and provocative research.
• Rushton: Jensen's race-IQ genetic hypothesis is basically correct but further research is needed to demonstrate that it is right. It wasn't racist because policy is a seperate issue. Nick Connolly (talk) 19:18, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Excellent summary. As far as article writing is concerned, I agree completely with Nick's assessment -- allowing that (of course) there are continuum of views, with those representing three prominent clusters. The debates about heritability of IQ, meaning of race, etc. are suitably independent questions that deserve their own discussions separate from IQ/race. --Legalleft (talk) 19:53, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Could we build consensus around this outline and use it to refocus the intro section? Perhaps that exercise would help focus editing the rest of the article. --Legalleft (talk) 19:57, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

This seems like a good approach; presenting the genetic hypothesis not as fact, but as a view different people have different opinions on. --Jagz (talk) 22:23, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

I copied this thread on Nick's assessment to the next section to focus the discussion. --Jagz (talk) 14:37, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

The dispute seems to be that people are going to say that this article is not neutral until it states that all groups of people have the same average IQ or if they don't it is because of environmental factors, discrimination, or racism. Presenting the genetic view as a possibility pokes holes in the veracity of that assumption. Some people do not want the genetic view presented or if so, as a pseudoscience. --Jagz (talk) 19:24, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

So it's not disputed that there are definite differences between IQ and races, but rather the cause of those differences - a Correlation does not imply causation vs. Duck test type of debate. Is that accurate? CredoFromStart ^talk 19:34, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

As the article states, "The contemporary debate on race and intelligence is about what causes racial and ethnic differences in IQ test scores." --Jagz (talk) 19:47, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

To a first approximation that's correct. Existence of US Black-White test score differences is noncontroversial. Their meaning and causal hypotheses to explain them are controversial. --Legalleft (talk) 19:53, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

From what I gathered it's not controversial, but the fact that the gap exists should not be put in the open in the form of maps or curves in the article. Instead the gap should be quietly assumed, preferably surrounded by weasel wording, and here and there a reference or hint of criticism - by researchers who themselves are (seemingly) above criticism. --Zero g (talk) 20:07, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

That's helpful, thanks everyone. Whenever I read an article that's thought-provoking or challenges my assumptions about something and there's an NPOV tag I like to try and figure out where the controversy is. It sounds like there's definitely no reason to merge or delete/redirect this article, and the editor disputes are mostly on the validity of some of the evidence on the genetics section.

I can see how this is a messy topic; it could be good science that can be used for negative things, it could be pure racism, it could be junk science with no ill-will intended, or it could be good science that challenges us to reexamine social justice issues. Whichever of the options it is, it's bound to piss off someone. I don't have a well-formed opinion on this yet, but I do appreciate the information. It looks like there's been a lot of hard work put in here! CredoFromStart ^talk 20:10, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Jagz continues to push his racist views. Here he continues to insist that what he calls the "genetic view" is valid science. Above, he made a flat out claim: that there have been many discoveries in genetics since the 1930s supporting the claim that different IQ scores for different races is due to genetics. I asked him thre times to provide just one example of such a discovey and he refused. Now he continus to make the same claim, and I want to know if this is just more bullshit, a disruptive edit. Jagz, you have made a claim. Now provide the evidence. Just one example of what you mean when you say there have been many discoveries in genetics since the thirties that explains IQ gaps between races. Just one example. Just one. Slrubenstein | Talk 20:58, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

I certainly never intended my comments to be interpreted in that manner. What I meant is that there has been an explosion of genetic discoveries recently[54], there is much more to come, and it is too early to accept or reject the genetic hypothesis. --Jagz (talk) 21:15, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

So, you're saying that because in the future some discovery in genetics might support the genetic hypothesis, we should treat as plausible science fringe theories based on bad scientific protocols? Is that what you're saying?--Ramdrake (talk) 21:23, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Are you saying that the genetic view is fringe or certain genetic theories are fringe? --Jagz (talk) 21:46, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Please answer my question.--Ramdrake (talk) 22:05, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Anyone with a little bit of intellectual honesty knows the partial genetic hypothesis is the only plausible one. Anyone who looks at the research critically knows that the egalitarian mafia hand picks studies that show the results they like, and makes up silly theories about supposed environmental influences that cause the gap like stereo type threat. Next it's well known they have an almost pedophilic preference for testing children, because they know that racial differences are more pronounced in adults. They constantly claim adoption studies proof them right, without showing any of these studies, and we know they do this because the studies that do matter proof them wrong. They use studies of Indian children, and hope nobody catches them with their hand in the cookie jar when they state how these 'black' children score very well on IQ tests and have no white ancestry. They mix whites with Hispanics to muddy the results, classify half white children as black, and leave out the poorest elements of the black community knowing that nobody will dare point that out.

Obviously part of the dispute is who of the two groups of researchers are the crack pots. Maybe we should dedicate a detailed article to the various claims of fraud made by the two parties? --Zero g (talk) 14:10, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

If you have reliable, verifiable sources to support your position, please produce them. If you're merely trolling this page, please go away.--Ramdrake (talk) 17:11, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Maybe the traditional funding sources for social science research would react negatively to a finding that there is a genetic component to racial/ethnic differences in IQ. That is a potential form of research bias. Also, a researcher may be biased to prevent the notoriety they could incur as a result of controversial findings. Why just bash the Pioneer Fund? --Jagz (talk) 14:34, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Here is Egalitarian fiction and collective fraud by Gottfredson. --Jagz (talk) 15:15, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

That's a possibility, but I haven't heard so far of any evidence to that effect, so this remains a totally naive (unfounded) hypothesis. As far as bashing the Pioneer Fund is concerned, that's because reliable and notable sources have done it already, and we are merely quoting the criticism.--Ramdrake (talk) 19:12, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

That's a nice source and there are others where the work of researchers supporting the environmental hypothesis is critically examined and accusations of intellectual dishonesty are made.

For example: The Totality of Available Evidence Shows the Race IQ Gap Still Remains

I don't have the time nor energy to engage in edit wars however. --Zero g (talk) 16:10, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

These are editorials by second-rate scholars that use straw-men arguments and are certainly not even close to notable research. I do not see any meaningful critique of a so-called "environmental hypothesis" although yes I do see intellectual dishonesty! Slrubenstein | Talk 17:04, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Amen to that.--Ramdrake (talk) 19:12, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

I assume you didn't read the links? Criticism by individuals who have their own page on Wikipedia and are experts in the field is certainly notable, especially compared to the half assed comments by some nobody from the NAACP throwing around "nazi" that made it into the article. --Zero g (talk) 15:36, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Here we are once again mired in bullshit and hot-air. We would save a lot of time if we stuck to Wikipedia policies like WP:V and WP:NOR. The fact remains that Jagz has claimed that there is research in genetics since the 1930s that supports the claim that genetics is (let's say, to some degree) the cause for IQ differences betwen races. I now ask for the fifth time: Jagz, to what are you referring? Provide a verifiable source from genetics research. Or shut up, and go away. Either you know something - not your typical racist bullshit, but something real, a verifiable source concerning notable research within the field of genetics (which you keep claiming you know) and you should provide us with that source and the details of the discovery in genetics research, or you do not. Every time you refuse to answer this simple question - a direct response to a claim you make on this talk page - I am more and more convinced that you have no knowledge or understanding of genetics at all and are just using disruptive edits to prevent any progress in addressing the real problems in this article. What a troll. Slrubenstein | Talk 14:39, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

I've already explained my comments. You can continue to ignore my explanations if you wish. --Jagz (talk) 14:54, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

And having refused to join in a mediation process, we are no longer under any illusion that you are here to edit in good faith and no longer obligated to act under that assumption. TheRedPenOfDoom (talk) 15:17, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Presentation of genetic view in article

• This discussion was started in the preceding section. --Jagz (talk) 14:42, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Slrubenstein that there is a muddle here which is why we have both suggested content-forking. I think he and I still disagree on the extent to which the core article is an article about a controversy in the popular media around some fringe views (I think Slrubenstein's position) or whether it is on a hypothesis (most closely associated with Arthur Jensen) which wasn't fringe but which has largely been debunked and which was associated with a popular controversy. We can thing of three reactions to Jensen's work which lead to three good-faith POV approaches to the article. I'll charaterise them with the name of a notable academic rather than wiki-editors:

• Gould: Jensen's race-IQ genetic hypothesis is demonstrably wrong, poor science and part of a racist tradition.
• Flynn: Jensen's race-IQ genetic hypothesis is wrong in subtle ways and was useful and provocative research.
• Rushton: Jensen's race-IQ genetic hypothesis is basically correct but further research is needed to demonstrate that it is right. It wasn't racist because policy is a seperate issue. Nick Connolly (talk) 19:18, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Excellent summary. As far as article writing is concerned, I agree completely with Nick's assessment -- allowing that (of course) there are continuum of views, with those representing three prominent clusters. The debates about heritability of IQ, meaning of race, etc. are suitably independent questions that deserve their own discussions separate from IQ/race. --Legalleft (talk) 19:53, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Could we build consensus around this outline and use it to refocus the intro section? Perhaps that exercise would help focus editing the rest of the article. --Legalleft (talk) 19:57, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

This seems like a good approach; presenting the genetic hypothesis not as fact, but as a view different people have different opinions on. --Jagz (talk) 22:23, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

On with the article

Folks, can we keep on discussing what to do with the article, lest we allow ourselves to get bogged down once more? I believe we all agree this article needs a major overhaul, and there are several very interesteing proposals on what to do with the article. So, I would suggest we continue working on the matter to achieve our common goal. What say you?--Ramdrake (talk) 12:54, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't think forking the content is a good idea because the motivation seems to be that the debate has no scientific merit, which is essentially a POV. --Jagz (talk) 13:30, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Objection duly noted. However, I believe there is already consensus about this.--Ramdrake (talk) 13:53, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

I believe Proposal 2 and 3 above may have consensus but not 1 and 4. The article suggested by Proposal 2 already exists. --Jagz (talk) 14:03, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Folks, can I get a new "show of hands" on Slrubenstein's proposals 1 and 4?--Ramdrake (talk) 12:46, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Skin color

I tried removing this reference about skin color but Ramdrake put it back in [55]. I don't think it is necessary to discuss using biotechnology to change one's skin color in this article. --Jagz (talk) 13:41, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

As this article is on "Race and Intelligence" and races are often defined according primarily to skin color, on the contrary I think such an example (which takes up half a sentence) is remarkably to the point.--Ramdrake (talk) 13:50, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

People should be satisfied with their skin color so it is not something we need to address. --Jagz (talk) 13:59, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

WP:DNFTT Slrubenstein | Talk 14:05, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Slrubenstein, I take this as meaning that you think this should be kept in the article? --Jagz (talk) 14:12, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Jagz, you may want to read this.--Ramdrake (talk) 14:30, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm discussing your edit to the article, not you. --Jagz (talk) 14:55, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Agree that this should be kept.Ultramarine (talk) 21:41, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Skin color genetics is certainly interesting, and it goes without saying that the alleles which strongly affect skin color are all but certainly not going to strongly affect IQ, but I wonder if it's supported by references that this is relevant. --Legalleft (talk) 23:27, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

I think what this is getting at is that supposedly, parents will be able to change the race of their children by altering traits such as skin color. I don't feel it is important to have this in the article but others disagree. --Jagz (talk) 13:43, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Importance tag on biotechnology section

I'd like Jagz to discuss the addition of this tag to the article, as I personnally think it is specious. Failure to discuss will result in its removal.--Ramdrake (talk) 20:16, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

You should allow more time for the discussion to wind down before removing the tag. The removal was premature. --Jagz (talk) 22:39, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

It can always go back up if the consensus changes, but so far, it seemed fairly certain from the partial result that this was a case of WP:SNOW.--Ramdrake (talk) 23:21, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

I think the paragraph as written may be appropriate for those who believe that biotechnology will be able to change someone's race. --Jagz (talk) 23:31, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Legalleft's comments above on the Biotechnology section: "Is this important overall? Perhaps a better focus to this section is attempts at remediation. That sort of fits with the under-developed 5.Interpretations section below."

I agree with having the paragraph as shown below; this removes the off-topic information. However, maybe the whole thing should be deleted as unimportant since alleles influencing intelligence have not been found yet. --Jagz (talk) 20:44, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

"Gregory Stock argues that modern biotechnology will in the future allow parents to select desired genes in their children. He states 'current debates about whether some of the differences among ethnic and racial groups are cultural or biological will soon become irrelevant, given the coming [malleability of biological traits]'.[37] He writes that germinal choice technology may one day be able to select or change directly alleles found to influence intelligence or racially identifying traits (such as skin color; see gene SLC24A5), making them susceptible to biotechnological intervention."

As the text states, such options would have a profound impact on the whole concept of race and inheritance of intelligence and other traits. Obviously very important.Ultramarine (talk) 21:46, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Do you believe that someone will be able to change their race through biotechnology? Is this something significant to the "race as a social construct" advocates? --Jagz (talk) 22:33, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

"alleles influencing intelligence have not been found yet." -- actually, FWIW, a few associations have been reported, such as CHRM2 http://www.snpedia.com/index.php?title=Rs324650 --Legalleft (talk) 21:42, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

I think the whole controversy boils down to whether alleles that are found to affect intelligence are more prevalent on different continents. That's why I can't understand those who have rejected the genetic view. We don't know yet. --Jagz (talk) 22:33, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Jagz, you never cease to amaze me:

• alleles influencing intelligence have not been found yet
• I think the whole controversy boils down to whether alleles that are found to affect intelligence are more prevalent on different continents. That's why I can't understand those who have rejected the genetic view. We don't know yet.

You do realize, I hope, that you just supported one argument and its exact opposite in two (nearly) subsequent posts? Obviously, you're just arguing for the sake of arguing. Please stop that, as it is disruptiuve.--Ramdrake (talk) 23:31, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't refuse to admit when I'm wrong. I try not to tenaciously cling to unfounded beliefs. --Jagz (talk) 23:37, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Here what Wikipedia says: [56], also in the Intelligence article "Despite the high heritability of IQ, few genes have been found to have a substantial effect on IQ, suggesting that IQ is the product of interaction between multiple genes." --Jagz (talk) 00:05, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

For real? TheRedPenOfDoom (talk) 23:45, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

And Jagz, thank you for proving once more that you truly do not understand what you read.--Ramdrake (talk) 00:14, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

You're just trying to draw attention away from the fact that you are ultimately in error. --Jagz (talk) 00:20, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

WP:DNFTT Slrubenstein | Talk 10:50, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Slrubenstein, I haven't seen you contribute anything to the article in six months. If you can't garner support for your content forking ideas, then maybe it is either time to start contributing or find something else to do. I noticed even back in 2002 you were trying to inspire others with your utopian philosophy but it has not worked in six years. --Jagz (talk) 12:23, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Jagz, if your only contributions are attacks like this, may I respectfully suggest you take a break from this page?--Ramdrake (talk) 12:45, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

I haven't seen you make any contributions to the article either. Only reversions and criticism. --Jagz (talk) 13:26, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

More specifically, population-wide individual differences in IQ are doubtless the product of a variation in many genes. More trivially, there are also many genes who's normal function is required to normal levels of intelligence (i.e. the causes of organic mental retardation). Jensen pretty clearly lays out the syllogism for inferring these and other facts to the plausibility of a genetic contribution to race differences in IQ in his 1998 book. Describing that published argument, rather than talk page debate about the truth of the argument, should be the focus. --Legalleft (talk) 00:15, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

There's a couple of problems with this reasoning:

• population-wide individual differences in IQ are doubtless the product of a variation in many genes that is, if they are found to exist. So far, there seems good evidence for individual genetically-driven differences in intelligence. There is currently no direct evidence for such genetically-driven differences at the population level. That is in fact one of the main criticisms leveled at Jensen.--Ramdrake (talk) 00:40, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

By population-wide, I do not mean between population but rather "if you count everyone of all races in the national or world population". The point of saying population-wide is to emphasize that while mutants of large deleterious effect are known, they don't account for much of the overall population-wide variation, and so there must be lots of other unknown variants that cause IQ differences in the normal range. --Legalleft (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 00:54, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

It might have been equally suitable to say that the variation in IQ between family members is usually due to differences in many unknown genes, not just a few. It makes the same point, which was rather pedantic anyway. --Legalleft (talk) 00:57, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

My only point is, there is no evidence for a differential distribution of intelligence-modulating genes (whatever these may be) between the different populations of the world, and actually there is good reason to believe (based on the adaptive and survival values of high intelligence in humans) that positive selective pressure for those genes may have existed pretty much everywhere on the planet, judging by how successfully humans have adapted to every environment on Earth. And this isn't an argument of my making: if I remember correctly, it was advanced by at least both Gould and Cernovsky, and possibly other critics of the hereditarian position.--Ramdrake (talk) 12:45, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Having no evidence is not cause for rejecting a hypothesis. You are assuming that those leaving Africa thousands of years ago had an average IQ like the rest of the continent and that the harsh winters and ice ages did not have an effect on the average IQ. --Jagz (talk) 13:59, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

WHich is why early civilisations all started in cold climes like erm, Mesopotamia (oops), erm, Egypt (oops), erm, why Eskimos built pyramids and Mayans didn't (oops). Which is why European civilisation started first in erm Finland (!?) rather than Greece (oops) or Rome (double-oops). Sorry but actual evidence all points to the more g-loaded stuff that humans have done in the past (as opposed to basic adaptation) starting in warm places eg reading, and literacy, mathematics, philosophy, cities, civil society, AGRICULTURE! and dispersing north and south. Kanazawa has nice tale to tell but it really doesn't match what we actually know about humans cognitive history. Nick Connolly (talk) 20:00, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Right. I'm aware of lots of offline discussion about there being lots of counter examples which suggest that ancient human populations were not differentiated by cognitive ability to the extent they are today. Do you know of any publications that spell this out? OTOH, Jared Diamond makes a good case for a Eurasian technological superiority starting with agriculture. --Legalleft (talk) 20:56, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Nick, thank you for listing some of the evidence against Rushton's hypothesis (that I was cryptically referring to).--Ramdrake (talk) 20:03, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Nick, you mentioned things that have happened since the most recent glacial period ended about ten thousand years ago. You left out tens of thousands of years. --Jagz (talk) 20:48, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Because the majority of the notable g-stuff (as opposed to simply surviving) happend then. Prior to that tool use, rock art and other evidence of human intelligence is pretty much the same. Homo-sapiens in France painted funky pictures on the wall and Homo-sapiens in Northern Australia painted funky pictures on the wall. Humans used fire and tools and passed on information about their natural enviroment. There is no evidence that any groups of homo-sapiens did that any better than any other regardless of climate pre-agriculture. The difference comes when people started settling down, farming, building cities - all relatively recent events and all that occurred first in sunny climes. Evidence matters. It doesn't matter how cute the theory is, if doesn't match the facts then it doesn't cut the mustard. Nick Connolly (talk) 21:01, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

You have made a case in favor of the genetic hypothesis. --Jagz (talk) 21:25, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Hardly, for the bulk of homo-sapiens existance we have no evidence of any kind of cognitive differentiation AT ALL between geographic groups. Our ancestors all toddled along, gathering, hunting and probably singing and telling tales all much of a muchness. Different groups doing cognitively different things occurs relatively recentally. The idea that somehow Northern European advances in technology etc that occurred in the past few hundred years are actually due to major cogniticve differences that occurred thousands upon thousands of years ago and yet went unexpressed in any observable way is by any measure an extraordinary claim. Claims like that need huge, massive, enormous chunks of evidence. What Lynn and Kanazawa have is vague handwaving.Nick Connolly (talk) 01:41, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

No, you have made a case in favor of the genetic hypothesis for events in the past 10 thousand years. --Jagz (talk) 11:53, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Please familiarize yourself with Occam's Razor. There is no reason to assume any of these suppositions (as there is zero supporting evidence for them, and some evidence against them), except to bolster an explanation for a phenomenon (the B-W achievement gap) that can easily be explained using other hypotheses, the latter being supported by actual evidence.--Ramdrake (talk) 15:08, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

??? --Jagz (talk) 16:14, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

I think he indeed assumes that, as well as that the living conditions in Africa caused Africans to develop a more powerful physique making them the superior race on this planet, a theory often advanced by black supremacists who never read the bell curve.

It should go without saying that biotechnology would change little about the historical noteworthiness of racial (socio-environmental/genetic) differences, their evolutionary/historic cause, and social impact. --Zero g (talk) 14:48, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Please don't assume anything about my motives, lest I start assuming about yours.--Ramdrake (talk) 15:08, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

All -- Rushton's hypothesis that group differences emerged more than 10k years ago is pretty clearly wrong in the details, but that doesn't mean it's not notable. (I side with the Harpending et al. hypothesis that acceleration of human evolution within the last 10k years is the most likely culprit, but that too lacks almost any direct supporting evidence and faces problems such as Mesopotamia.) It should be described and published criticisms should be reported. Because it's notable, that's all that we care about. As to biotechnology, I still don't see that it's notable. There are no existing genetic interventions to affect IQ or skin color or almost anything else. I also don't see evidence in the literature that speculation about this is an important part of the debate. --Legalleft (talk) 20:56, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

All - Rushton's views on human evolution are not notable. he has no graduate or post-graduate training in human evolution; he has never done any original research on human evolution, he has never published in any notable journal in the field of human evolution, hes work is not cited in studies of human evolution. Slrubenstein | Talk 21:24, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

SLR -- I think that's the wrong level of analysis. Is his theory notable to *this* topic? Would a discussion of this topic without mentioning it be considered incomplete? I think if published criticisms exist, then it's especially useful to have it all included. --Legalleft (talk) 21:31, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

With all due respect, by that reasoning, we'd have to let Intelligent Design theories into the article on Evolution, as they too are notable to the topic, and have a number of followers. I'd agree with SLR that we need to separate mainstream science from fringe (not to say pseudo-) science. The theory should be included in an article about the popular debate regarding the subject, but it has no place in a scientific article on this subject. It's just bad, ebunked and disproved science.--Ramdrake (talk) 21:37, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

I disagree. One is a falsifiable hypothesis, and Nick has shown how various pieces of evidence might falsify it. The other isn't even science. Not to say this analogy is perfect.... discussion of Laramarkian evolution could be useful for understanding evolution, if only because the data brought to bear against it serves a didactic end. --Legalleft (talk) 21:42, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

To rephrase my original point -- how many sentences does Rushton's ice age hypothesis warrant in a discussion of this topic? I'd say more than zero, but it shouldn't take more than a small paragraph to cover it. --Legalleft (talk) 21:51, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

The ID example is appropriate. Notability has to be in relation to people with some expertise in the field. otherwise the concepts of undue weight and fringe theories would have no meaning at Wikipedia. The point is not that Nick or I might personally have evidence that falisfies a hypothesis, or that you or I agree or disagree that something is science. The whole edifice of NPOV is to move away from what I or Leglaleft think. Rushton makes claims about human evolution. The question is not what Nick or Legalleft or I think about these claims, the question is what do experts on human evolution think. And they think ... nothing. In fact, when Rushton's book was mass-mailed to members of the American Anthropological Association free of charge by the publisher, the members of the association (and in the US, anthropology, specifically physical anthropology, is the academic discipline with expertise in human evolution) actually sanctioned the board for mis-use of the mailing-list. Experts on human evolution take Rushton as seriously as they do Gabineau or Chamberlin. I think there is another issue here: what constitutes science. Just because I have a PhD. in geology does not mean that my claims about psychology are "scientific." Just because someone has a PhD. in astronomy does not mean that thei claims about biology are "scientific." And just because someone has a PhD. in psychology does not mean that one's claims about human evolution are "scientific." "Science" is not some monolithic institution filled with white-lab-coat-wearing, thick-lensed-glasses-wearing "scientists" who make pronouncements which are magically thus "science." Science if divided into different fields which use different methods to examine different data. It was specialized in the 19th century and became only more specialized over the 20th century. Believe it or not, not everything a scientist says is "scientific." Scientists have opinions based on personal feelings, rather than rigorous research that meets professional standards, just like everyone else does. Rushton has his pet opnions about human evolution. They are as scientific as my own interpretation of quantum mechanics (confession: I do not have a degree in physics and have never done research in quantum mechanics. get the point?) Slrubenstein | Talk 08:49, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately, if we ever hope to make progress on the article, you're going to have to start to be more compromising. --Jagz (talk) 11:48, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

SLR, if there had been no published reactions to Rushton, then I would agree he can be said to not be notable. However, Nick and I both seem to have read or heard the same objection to Rushton at some point. This is not in itself evidence of anything other than that we've probably read the same source(s). Above I ask Nick if he can remember where that was published. Off the top of my head, I can recall the following sources which cite and discussion Rushton: Jensen (1998), Templer & Arikawa (2006), Smedley and Smedley (2005), Roth et al (2001), Lieberman (2001), Rowe (2002), and Hunt and Carlson (2007).

Likewise, if this were the articles on human evolution, evolution, anthropology, genetics, etc., then your analysis would be correct. However, with respect to the topic of race/IQ/intelligence, Rushton clearly has a footprint on the debate. Excluding mention of him is a disservice to the reader and cannot be justified by his lack of penetration in fields outside of psychology. --Legalleft (talk) 18:09, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Alun's attempt to introduce some neutrality

Alun made some edits to the article recently. Three editors including me subsequently made some refinements to his edits that I believe were fair and then Wobble reverted all those edits without explanation[57], seemingly against consensus and with no clear rationale except that he liked it the way he wrote it. However, that is however a possible violation of WP:OWN. --Jagz (talk) 23:38, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Not directly, but you're entitled to ask why he reverted. For myself, I can see heavy modifications especially to the first sentences of his edits, which significantly changed the meaning of his edits. I believe that's why he reverted. A single revert isn't an indication of WP:OWN, possibly just an indication someone may have been too WP:BOLD in editing. Again, please assume good faith.--Ramdrake (talk) 23:41, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

It is hard to see how a 100% revert could possibly be justified. --Jagz (talk) 23:51, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

I've asked Alun to explain his revert on this Talk page:[58] --Jagz (talk) 23:55, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Make up your mind. You have recently accused SLR and Ramdrake of not contributing to the R&I article enough, saying that they should make more direct edits rather than spend all their time on the talk page. You asked me to make constructive edits to the article rather than leave pov-tags.[59] Once I did this you proceeded to leave OR tags and extensively change my edit so that it more closely conformed to the point of view you are pushing. Clearly you only really want editors to contribute when they make edits you agree with. My edits were in line with WP:NPOV because they added balance, i.e. they gave a different point of view (something you actually asked me to do), indicating that there are other pints of view than those expressed in the article. You can't have it both ways, you can't on the one hand complain that editors are not contributing to the article enough, then on the other complain when they do. You make multiple significant edits to the article every day, whereas I have made a modest number of edits to this article, which represent only a tiny fraction of my total edit count. I see no evidence that you justify every edit you make on the talk page, whereas you seem to expect other editors to do just that. If anyone is displaying symptoms of WP:OWN it is you and not me. Many of the changes you made appear to be little more than disrupting wikipedia to make a point, especially the "Gaming the system" section. For example why would you dispute that Watson's statement in the Sunday Times is similar to the quotation from his book?[60]. Then you change them to synthesis tags for some bizarre reason.[61] Both statements are about "intelligence" and both discuss the possibility of differential intelligence due to biological differences in different populations. Besides both quotes were given in the article, so it is obvious to anyone that these are similar claims. Likewise you added an OR tag [62] after a section that is a mere two sentences long and in which the sum of changes that I made can best be described as a minor edit in that they do not actually change the meaning of the two sentences at all, let's take a look at the two versions.[63]

In recent years, the belief that there are no race differences in intelligence or potential has been challenged by scholars such as Charles Murray, Michael Levin, and J. Philippe Rushton and defended by other scholars such as Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Levin, and Richard Lewontin. They claim that, in light of the slight but definite effect that racial origins have on physical traits like medical risk factors and athletic abilities, there is no reason to suppose that such effects do not extend to mental traits.

It is apparent that the use of they claim is ambiguous to say the least. The preceding sentence gives a list of individuals that support the notion of biological reason for "race" differences and it gives a list of scientists that oppose this proposition, so the use of they claim is ambiguous. My edit merely clarified that it is the former set that supports the the biological deterministic hypothesis that the effect of "racial origins" cause the difference. Though I'm not sure what it means by "racial origins". My edit changed the wording to say

In recent years, the belief that there are no biological causes for "race" differences in intelligence or potential has been challenged by scholars such as Charles Murray, Michael Levin, and J. Philippe Rushton and defended by other scholars such as Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Levin, Richard Lewontin and Joseph L. Graves. Those claiming biological differences are the cause of "race" differences in "intelligence" also claim that, in light of the slight but definite effect that racial origins have on physical traits like medical risk factors and athletic abilities, there is no reason to suppose that such effects do not extend to mental traits.

This is essentially the same statement, but it is less ambiguous in several senses. How does this small change make the sentence OR? Originally the article claimed that "the notion that there are no race differences in intelligence has been challenged", but there is no dispute that the test score gap is real, only whether it is caused by biological differences or environmental differences. Or to put it in simpler terms one group of "researchers" thinks that education can only improve the average intelligence of a set of people (in this case a so called "race") to a certain extent and that this set's biology puts an upper limit on the set's average intelligence, the other group of scientists does not support the hypothesis that the biology of the set causes the test score gap, they think the differences between sets is due to exclusively environmental factors. So the new wording makes it clearer that the dispute is about the causes of the test score differences and not the observed differences themselves. So why did you remove the text that clarified this point?[64] as far as I can see at least four of the changes you made after my edit were little more than "Gaming the system", they added no value to the article and seem to have no purpose above and beyond gamesmanship.[65] [66] [67] [68]
I have no problem wit Zero g's edit [69] but I don't think it amounts to any improvement in the article per se, that's just a question of personal preference.
Legalleft now claims that the section on "Nature Nurture" is "too long" [70] but seemed to think it was just fine when it only expressed a single point of view. This is just a tactic and is similar to the ones he was employing before when I included criticism of heritability estimates.[71] [72] [73] So Legalleft has previously displayed a distinct antagonism to edits that include criticism of heritability, even though there are a plethora of reliable sources that critisise these estimates, if we are going to be neutral then we do need to include all significant points of view, and these are significant points of views from well established scientists and represent clearly reliable sources. He just wants to confuse the issue by implying that heritability is the same as heredity and by implying that it somehow measures the affect of environment on a trait, rather than measuring the effect of environment on within group Variance. Besides the section is not particularly long, it is possibly 50% longer than before, but it's still not a long section. [74]
There was little or no merrit to most of the edits I reverted through, the vast majority were little more than attempts to Game the system, and rather crude ones at that. Alun (talk) 07:10, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm not a big fan of "scare" quotes. If you question the validity of the concepts of race and intelligence you ought to do so in the article, or make a small subsection with a header link to an article that goes into detail about it.

I'm also not fond of blurring the distinction between biological and genetic. I think it's better to avoid the term biological entirely in the article and use environmental instead to avoid confusion. --Zero g (talk) 16:04, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

I use quotes around the term "race" because it is not genetically defined, not in this article or anywhere for humans. It's part of the problem really, if one is going to claim that the test score gap is due to genetic differences then one should be able to show that these groups are genetically distinct in a meaningful way. On the whole the tern "race" is being used in this article and by the proponents of a partially genetic explanation in it's socially constructed form and the sets they use for their analyses ("Black", "White", "Asian"?) are not distinguished by any genetic analysis. Nisbet (2005) is cited in the article as suggesting that skin reflectance can be used to estimate European vs African ancestry and whereas this is better than relying on the artificial concept of a "colour line" (which assumes that European and African Americans represent endogamous groups, clearly an absurd notion), it is still a very crude way to estimat ancestry, and of course it doesn't measure the amount of Native American or east Asian ancestry of either "White" or "Black" people. Edwards (2003) shows a better way to partition people with regards to their genetic makeup might be to use a clustering analysis such as those used by Rosenberg et al. (2002), Rosenberg et al. (2005), Rosenberg et al. (2006), Tang et al. (2005) and Li et al. (2008), but besides having some major disadvantages (it is dependent upon the number and location of sampling sites, the number and type of genetic elements investigated and the clustering algorithm used) but as Bamshad er al. (2004) shows, this approach ignores genetic similarities between individuals in different populations, so it is possible for two individuals to be partitioned into different clusters while at the same time being more genetically similar to each other than to other members of the clusters they have been assigned to. Witherspoon et al. (2007) [75] expanded upon this observation and suggested an alternative way to classify people into different groups based on genetic analyses. In Witherspoon et al.'s elegant analysis, individuals are classified into different groups based on a dissimilarity fraction ${\hat {w}}$ which is defined as "the probability that a pair of individuals randomly chosen from different populations is genetically more similar than an independent pair chosen from any single population." This has the distinct advantage that for every individual so classified we know that they are not genetically more similar to someone from a different population than to someone from their own population. In their analysis Witherspoon et al. find that it is possible to unambiguously partition individuals into discrete populations under some circumstances, but the criteria for such partitioning are very stringent, using distinct populations (they investigate European, East Asians and Africans) they can unambiguously partition these individuals into the correct populations using 1,000 loci from data in a microarray analysis (though using resequenced data from the hapmap project, three populations form these continents (Yoruba, Utah (ancestry from north and western Europe) and Japanese (from Tokyo) + Han Chinese (from Beijing)) reach an asymptotic value of about 0.08, meaning that even using >>10,000 loci about 8% of people from these populations will be more genetically similar to someone from a different population than to someone from their own.) But when they come to perform the same analysis on intermediate and admixed populations (in this case the previous sets plus Indian, Native American, New Guinean, African American, and Hispano–Latino) it becomes impossible to differentiate unambiguously between these populations, even using the microarray data ${\hat {w}}$ reaches an asymptotic value of 3.1% meaning that however many loci are investigated 3% of people will always be more similar to someone from a different group than to someone from the same group. This has very important implications for medicine and indeed for the genetics of "intelligence". Witherspoon et al. are interested in medical issues and "race", but their observations apply equally to how alleles for "intelligence" may be distributed between populations. This is what they say

many common disease-associated alleles are not unusually differentiated across populations (Lohmueller et al. 2006). Thus it may be possible to infer something about an individual's phenotype from knowledge of his or her ancestry....However, consider a hypothetical phenotype of biomedical interest that is determined primarily by a dozen additive loci of equal effect whose worldwide distributions resemble those in the insertion data set Figure 2A shows that a trait determined by 12 such loci will typically yield ${\hat {w}}$ = 0.31 (0.20–0.41)....About one-third of the time (${\hat {w}}$ = 0.31) an individual will be phenotypically more similar to someone from another population than to another member of the same population.

Obviously no one knows which loci are associated with "intelligence" or how the alleles for these loci are distributed between populations, but it is clear that people who claim a partially genetic cause for the test score gap need to do a lot more work to explain why they think their "populations" are unambiguously genetically distinct for these alleles. Not only can we not very easily classify people into genetically distinct groups, as Witherspoon shows, but also with a trait that is under the influence of many thousands of loci, a great deal of which will be polymorphic, the distribution of alleles cannot be assumed to be distributed between populations. Witherspoon go on to say

The population groups in this example are quite distinct from one another: Europeans, sub-Saharan Africans, and East Asians. Many factors will further weaken the correlation between an individual's phenotype and their geographic ancestry. These include considering more closely related or admixed populations, studying phenotypes influenced by fewer loci, unevenly distributed effects across loci, nonadditive effects, developmental and environmental effects, and uncertainties about individuals' ancestry and actual populations of origin. The typical frequencies of alleles that influence a phenotype are also relevant, as our results show that rare polymorphisms yield high values of ${\hat {w}}$ C_C, and C_T, even when many such polymorphisms are studied. This implies that complex phenotypes influenced primarily by rare alleles may correspond poorly with population labels and other population-typical traits (in contrast to some Mendelian diseases). However, the typical frequencies of alleles responsible for common complex diseases remain unknown. A final complication arises when racial classifications are used as proxies for geographic ancestry. Although many concepts of race are correlated with geographic ancestry, the two are not interchangeable, and relying on racial classifications will reduce predictive power still further.

So I do think it is appropriate to put the word "race" in quotes, it is not a term used by geneticists, the people who identify their populations in this way have not defined them in genetic terms, and Witherspoon et al.'s paper shows that this is because it is probably impossible to define "race" in genetic terms. I don't see these as "scare quotes", in fact I can't see anything scary about quotes at all, I use quotes around the word "race" because I are quoting use of the word "race" by the researchers. They define their groups as "races", so when I want to use their description of the different populations they use I put quotes around it because I'm quoting their use of the word, I'm not using it myself.

I think you are probably right to say we should avoid the term "biological", but I'm also concerned with use of the term "genetic" as well, maybe we should just stick "partly genetic"? Alun (talk) 11:52, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

"partly genetic" is a term Jensen uses to describe his view about the cause of group differences. He uses "biological" to refer to biomedical phenotypes (e.g., low birth weight) and to classify environmental effects such as lead; but I agree that the term is almost uninformative as everything about the human brain is biological. there are probably more precise alternatives. --Legalleft (talk) 20:30, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

these groups are genetically distinct in a meaningful way -- s/distinct/distinguishable/g ;) -- You mean genetically distinguishable. Races don't have singular distinct characters, but they are distinguishable by looking at a range of phenotypes or genotypes. If the populations were genetically indistinguishable, then there could be no genetic differences between the groups. If there are genetic differences between groups, then the groups are be genetically distinguishable. The deconstruction of race and biogeographic ancestry is correct, but it isn't a criticism that sticks[76]. Experiments done in before ca. 2000 had little hope of using molecular genetic techniques to properly estimate admixture in African Americans or other groups. There is movement to get that work done.[77] Unfortunately, I'm told (off the record) that IRB approval for the experiments has been impossible to get. Charles Murray has publicly stated that he wants to assemble a collaborative/confrontational research team with various backgrounds to investigate the question, but has also stated that no researchers who believe that there is zero genetic contribution has been willing to commit.[78] --Legalleft (talk) 20:16, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

I happen to agree with Zero G's edit, changing "race" in scare-quotes to "genetic." The crucial thing is this: in all cases I know of, the word race is used to describe a social group or category (the criteria is usually self-identification). That there may be racial differences in IQ is to say that there are differences between two social groups. Some psychologists (but to my knowledge no geneticists) suggest that this is for genetic reasons; most scholars say it is for sociological reasons. But we need not use "race" in scare-quotes. To do so leads to an unecessary, unproductive and confusing situation where we sometimes say race is not a biological concept and other times say there is no evidence that racial differences explain differences in IQ. But for social scientists who believe that race is a marker of social difference, to say that racial differences explain IQ is to say that non-biological factors explain IQ which is perfectly consistent with the view that race is not a biological concept. That is, Alun should not use quotes around race because it is not genetically defined; he shoud use the word race without quotes and make it clear that it is socially defined. In short, if the word race is to appear at all in this article, let us be clear that race refers to self-identified membership in a social group, and that the debate, such as it is, is between those who ascribe differences between races to genetic or sociological and environmental factors. Slrubenstein | Talk 00:48, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Apparent within-article/ between-sections "discrepancy"

First of all: I am just now tuning-in to this debate, so please excuse any contextual ignorance (to the whatever extent seems appropriate given the, er, context ;) that I am most likely about to exhibit.

I've now read through perhaps about half of the article itself, and while I see a number of relatively minor points that seem edit-worthy, there has so far been one particular issue that seems worth bringing up for discussion here. As far as I can tell at this point, there seems to be a rather glaring contradiction between what the following two sub-scetions of the article seem to be saying:

First, in the "Test results" section there is

Claim #1: Across a battery of tests, the size of the Black-White gap is correlated with the extent to which the tests measure the psychometric factor g, which also accounts for most of the variation in interindividual differences in IQ test performance. Using a variety of statistical techniques, Dolan and colleagues have found that the Black-White IQ gap can be accounted for by differences in g and the other interindividual ability factors measured by IQ tests, and also that IQ tests measure roughly the same mix of abilities in both Black and white populations.

Then, a bit further along in the "Nature and nurture" section there is

Claim #2: However, all commentators agree that these methods cannot and are not intended to distinguish genetic and environmental contributions to the development of individual people, and do not measure the direct effect of genes and environment on a trait or phenotype (for example the direct effect of environment or genes on intelligence cannot be measured). Instead, they determine the extent to which difference between individuals, for example individual difference in IQ scores, can be used to estimate the relative genetic and environmental factors to the total phenotypic variance in a population. Thus, a heritability of 100% does not mean that environmental factors are unimportant for development, but rather that any physical or behavioral difference between individuals are not caused by difference in environment; [ie.,] the within group environment is [assumed to be] totally uniform. [emphasis mine]

Claim #1 appears to be trivially restating the result that scores on IQ tests "differ" between "White" and "Black" populations. But the problem I'm having with it is that it also seems to be claiming that that between-group difference can be "accounted for" in "the same way" that within-group differences are accounted for, ie. as primarily due to "heritable factors" -- which then appears to be entirely contradicted by the conclusions stated under "Claim #2."

Am I interpeting the difference between these two passages correctly? If so: any thoughts about how best to resolve the contradiction...?

Thanks!—Wikiscient— 21:39, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Very good comment. That's tricky and obviously the article doesn't do a good job of making the distinction clear. The distinction between claim 1 and claim 2 is that claim 1 is entirely about phenotype and not about causes of those difference (claim 2). Claim 1 says the phenotypic qualities of the black-white IQ gap are (according to the MGCFA study) qualitatively but maybe not quantitatively identical to the IQ differences that occur between people of the same race. Claim 2 is about causal factors underlying these phenotypic differences. This text is currently too long and circuitous, but cleaned up, claim 2 means: that high within-group heritability (WGH) alone does not entail non-zero between-group heritability (BGH), nor does high WGH on its own inductively prove non-zero BGH. Instead, only when high WGH is combined with empirical data about the relationship of the environment and IQ and race can it entail non-zero BGH. Thus debate about that empirical data becomes the focus of the causal debate. --Legalleft (talk) 22:09, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Also.... claim 2 contains a disambiguation about the definition of heritability -- heritability tells us about the effects of *differences* in genes and environment on *differences* in a trait. Thus heritability doesn't tell us about the genetic and environmental factors that are otherwise causally important but don't differentiate individuals (e.g. if everyone in your study population is healthy and well fed then the causal importance of health and nutrition is not being assessed by your measurement of heritability). To clean up claim 2, perhaps the first step is to separate the definition of heritability from the other discussion. --Legalleft (talk) 22:15, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Reverted edits on quotes on Mainstream statement section

Quotes are most appropriate as the term mainstream is being quoted from a title, it is a common shorthand for the full title, and it is a matter of dispute as to whether the statement is mainstream or not.Nick Connolly (talk) 07:50, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

WTF!!!?!!

Erm when I reverted that edit a huge chunk of the article disappeared! Sorry. I appear to have broken Wikipedia, or my browser has decided to be bold in its own way. Nick Connolly (talk) 07:59, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

• Theory I think the article is now to long to fit in the edit box on my browser and hence the extra text got truncated.It's a sign...Nick Connolly (talk) 08:12, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Try "my preferences"/"gadgets"/"Add an [edit] link for the lead section of a page". It avoids the need to edit entire large articles.LeadSongDog (talk) 09:38, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

That is helpful! Why isnt that the default setting? TheRedPenOfDoom (talk) 20:05, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Contemporary issues section

I suggest tightening up and integrating the "Contemporary issues" section.

1. The first untitled subsection doesn't seem to have a single coherent topic.
2. The stuff on Watson seems unimportant, over emphasizing an issue because it is recent. The James D. Watson article already seems to have deep coverage.
3. I see the connection with eugenics and this topic, but the section in this article mostly summarizes eugenics generally. How does it relate to this article?
4. Biotechnology -- while certainly very interesting, I don't see how it ties into this article. A more general summary of social and educational interventions might also mention speculation about biotechnological interventions. Alternatively, a discussion of known B-W differences in heritable traits might describe the genetics of skin color, disease susceptibility, etc.
5. To be more general, some mention of the Ashkenazi IQ issue would seem appropriate. This topic has seen considerable public debate recently.

--Legalleft (talk) 22:28, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Why Does "BITCH" transer here?

not bitch or Bitch, but BITCH

It should refer to this:

The Black Intelligence Test of Cultural Homogeneity, or BITCH-100, was created by Robert Williams in 1972, and is oriented toward the language, attitudes, and life-styles of African-Americans. Unsurprisingly, white students perform more poorly on this test than blacks, indicating that there are important dissimilarities in the cultural backgrounds of blacks and whites. Some argue that these findings indicate that test bias plays a role in producing the gaps in IQ test scores. Similarly to the Williams test, the Chitling Intelligence Test is another example of a culturally biased test that tends to favor African Americans. Both of these tests demonstrate how cultural content on intelligence tests may lead to culturally biased score results. Still these criticisms of cultural content may not apply to "culture free" tests of intelligence. The BITCH-100 and the Chitling test both have explicit cultural assumptions, while normal standardized tests are only theorized to have implicit bias. The fact that a test can have bias does not necessarily prove that a specific test does have bias. However, even on cultural free tests, test bias may play a role since, due to their cultural backgrounds, some test takers do not have the familiarity with the language and culture of the psychological and educational tests that is implicitly assumed in the assessment procedure. Beverly Daniel Tatum writes that dominant cultures often set the parameters by which minority cultures will be judged. Minority groups are labeled as substandard in significant ways, for example blacks have historically been characterized as less intelligent than whites. Tatum suggests that the ability to set these parameters is a form of white privilege.

from an older article that was merged into this one. Slrubenstein | Talk 11:10, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Seems notable enough and yet now the test doesn't appear on Wikipedia. Did some extensive merging happen in the past to this article - it would explain a lot, particulalrly why people now want to content fork it.Nick Connolly (talk) 19:51, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Jagz had mentioned that a number of articles were merged here ~ November timeframe I think. TheRedPenOfDoom (talk) 20:00, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Comments on sentences in "Contemporary issues" section

Here are some comments I have:
In recent years, the belief that there are no biological causes for "race" differences in intelligence or potential has been challenged by scholars such as Charles Murray, Michael Levin, and J. Philippe Rushton and defended by other scholars such as Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Levin, Richard Lewontin and Joseph L. Graves.

• Having "race" in quotes in unncessary as the word is already in the name of the article. The article name is not "Race" and intelligence.
  
• "Biological causes" is improper because intelligence is a biological phenomenon. The human brain is not a rock or pile of sawdust for example.

Those claiming biological differences are the cause of "race" differences in "intelligence" also claim that, in light of the slight but definite effect that racial origins have on physical traits like medical risk factors and athletic abilities, there is no reason to suppose that such effects do not extend to mental traits.

• "Those claiming" is improper because it can refer to more people than those mentioned in the previous sentence and is therefore an over-generalization not supported by the citations and is also probably incorrect.

Whereas Joseph L. Graves argues that differences in athletic performance and medical outcomes between so called "races" are likely to have an environmental origin.

• Is Joseph Graves a significant player in the race and intelligence debate?
  --Jagz (talk) 15:43, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

biological is tricky. As brains process information they neccesarily have several levels of analysis. Mind versus brain is an issue even if we fully accept that the mind is a product of the brain. In this discussion the difference is whether a cognitive difference is matched by a long-term structural difference in the brain (eg London cabbies having an enlarged hippocampus {I think}) or not (eg I know who Barry Hall is and you don't but that doesn't mean I've now got a swollen BarryHallKnowing bit in my brain that you don't have). Environmental differences between individuals may or may not be difference that can be identified biologically (eg by autopsy or fmri) but genetic differences must entail actual differences in either how the brain is structured or in how it develops. Computer analogies can be misleading - but consider the software hardware distinction. Nick Connolly (talk) 20:03, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Comments on edited sentence

The sentences discussed above were edited and the remaining sentence is shown below. I have further comments:
In recent years, the claim that there are genetic causes for differences in averages of I.Q. scores between different races has been forwarded by scholars such as Charles Murray, Michael Levin, and J. Philippe Rushton, whose research has been criticized by other scholars such as Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Levin, Richard Lewontin and Joseph L. Graves.

• The statement regarding Charles Murray may be wrong for the following reason:
  

In the The Bell Curve, the authors Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray, were reported throughout the popular press as arguing that "IQ differences are genetic, although they state no position on the issue in the book, and write in the introduction to Chapter 13 that 'The debate about whether and how much genes and environment have to do with ethnic differences remains unresolved'."

• The phrase, "whose research has been criticized by other scholars such as", is not wholly supported by the linked Wikipedia articles and there are no citations provided. It needs to be rewritten to avoid over-generalization.
• Maybe the whole sentence should be deleted as it has been edited to the point where it is no longer particularly useful. --Jagz (talk) 19:53, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

The sentence makes its point rather clearly and does not seem worth arguing about. Mathsci (talk) 02:38, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

I see you have restored the sentence. What exactly do you mean by discussion? Mathsci (talk) 02:42, 18 April 2008 (UTC) Sorry, I should refactor this: you placed a "dubious" tag on the sentence. Mathsci (talk) 05:13, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

You are also by now aware that at least three editors favour this sentence, so please stop reverting. I do not quite understand your objection to the sentence, despite your text above. Mathsci (talk) 02:46, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

I'll discuss this with an administrator prior to proceeding. --Jagz (talk) 02:51, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Wasn't there an attempt to have a mediator for this page fairly recently? Mathsci (talk) 02:57, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for now putting your comments in bold. However, I would also be most grateful if you could please answer my question about mediation. I have added three references to Gould, Lewontin and Graves. Cheers, Mathsci (talk) 03:47, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

I have also discussed it with MRG. I do not at all understand why you were so concerned by this neutral sentence. Is there some problem with the way in which WP describes fringe science? Mathsci (talk) 04:52, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Now that User:Mathsci has provided references for all three critics of the hereditarian position, do you still object to the sentence? While Murray and Hernstein may have said in Chapter 13 of their book that they left the debate open, at least for Murray (the surviving co-author) subsequent interviews have rather clearly put him in the hereditarian camp. If you still object, please state your remaining objections.--Ramdrake (talk) 12:50, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Dudes - WP:DNFTT Slrubenstein | Talk 16:19, 18 April 2008 (UTC)