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:::::::::: The topic is indeed highly complex and this complexity is not reflected in article. To represent large parts of serous science as pseudoscience is very questionable. The moralistic and philosophical objections to such research should be mentioned in article. But it is irresponsible to interpret this legitimate criticism as proof of unscientific behavior. [[User:Bafabengabantu|Bafabengabantu]] ([[User talk:Bafabengabantu|talk]]) 16:18, 4 March 2019 (UTC)
:::::::::: The topic is indeed highly complex and this complexity is not reflected in article. To represent large parts of serous science as pseudoscience is very questionable. The moralistic and philosophical objections to such research should be mentioned in article. But it is irresponsible to interpret this legitimate criticism as proof of unscientific behavior. [[User:Bafabengabantu|Bafabengabantu]] ([[User talk:Bafabengabantu|talk]]) 16:18, 4 March 2019 (UTC)


Article is clearly POV and a lot of scholars don't think racial genetic intelligence differences is pseudoscience, including many of the relevant experts. Cherry picked sources only presenting one opinion. [[User:Samantha Priss|Samantha Priss]] ([[User talk:Samantha Priss|talk]]) 11:53, 10 March 2019 (UTC)
Article is clearly POV and a lot of scholars don't think racial genetic intelligence differences is pseudoscience, including many of the relevant experts. Cherry picked sources only presenting one opinion. I don't see anywhere in the article where it is explained why this is pseudoscience. [[User:Samantha Priss|Samantha Priss]] ([[User talk:Samantha Priss|talk]]) 11:53, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

Revision as of 11:57, 10 March 2019

Articles for deletion

This article was nominated for deletion on January 21 2006. The result of the discussion was speedy keep. An archived record of this discussion can be found here.

Yerkes, eugenics, and other activities

The statement, "Following the United States Civil Rights Movement, many scientists who previously studied racial differences moved to other fields. For example, Robert Yerkes, who previously worked on the World War I Army intelligence testing, moved to the field of primatology" is incorrect. For one thing, Yerkes Robert Yerkes had been a primatologist before World War I, and died in the mid-1950s. He never abandoned eugenics or scientific racism (though he significantly de-emphasized these in his writings after around 1930), nor did he address the Civil Rights Movement Civil Rights Movement (which wasn't really in progress until after his death). In fact, many well-known eugenicists were always involved in other activities, or became so involved by the 1930s, and after World War II at the latest, generally abandoned any published work or public references to eugenics or scientific racism, in favor of their more "legitimate" pursuits. -ibycusreggio 10:50, 6 February 2011

is race realism true?

due to politically correctness in control in anthropology field they dont agree with coon rushton or others racist i wonder why today anthropologist are egalitarianist or leftist? — Preceding unsigned comment added by TetrahedronX7 (talk • contribs) 20:54, 9 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

If you want to change the article, you'll need a reliable published source supporting the change, and you'll need to give due weight to majority expert opinion. Your own opinions are irrelevant. . . dave souza, talk 22:03, 9 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

there are four races and you could tell them from the skulls. — Preceding unsigned comment added by TetrahedronX7 (talk • contribs) 03:11, 27 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@TetrahedronX7: I don't mean to be rude, but this isn't a forum page where you can argue about the subject. If you have no sources meet WP:RS you need to stop. Doug Weller talk 12:57, 27 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

References 1-5 are about genocide, and about some general race issues and ethics, they aren't academic publications. The question whether all human races have equal intelligence is a scientific question, and it can have answers yes, no, rather yes, rather no, don't know. If the answer is don't know, this should be an area of active research. Pseudoscience implies that the scientific answer is known and is yes while some claim otherwise. AFAIK, very few scientists dispute the notion that genes are a factor in intelligence. Based on this alone this can't be labeled pseudoscience. 24.4.39.254 (talk) 19:06, 12 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

yes, no, rather yes, rather no, don't know is not how science works. The possible answers are don't know because the question has not been looked at enough, no, there are replicably measureable differences and either yes or the differences are so tiny that we cannot measure them. It's the third option. --Hob Gadling (talk) 10:56, 15 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

"fringe interpretations"? Not according to Nobel prize winner Watson

Please debate Watson and other scholars elsewhere. This is not a forum and this discussion has not been about improving the article. EvergreenFir (talk) 15:39, 20 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

You should mention that a Nobel prize laureate and one of the most famous and prestigious scientists has come out publicly in support of the "fringe interpretations". Is wikipedia really objective and neutral, and allows debate on taboo questions? This is one of those issues where neutrality and scientific fairness are measured. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 5.87.244.164 (talk) 23:06, 14 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

You mean this Watson? EvergreenFir (talk) 23:08, 14 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Google 'Nobel disease'. He's lost his marbles. His award does not mean he should be believed. Sumanuil (talk) 23:10, 14 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

No, he didn't. He is old, doesn't care about career any more, and can afford to tell the truth honestly without any regard to the politics of the day, while others have to abide by the rules of political correctness, or else they wouldn't have a job tomorrow. All evidence and a lot of research points to significant differences of population intelligence depending on genes, but this is obviously a very inconvenient conclusion so this area of research has been aggressively shut down. 24.4.39.254 (talk) 10:29, 15 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
His view in this regards are widely considered outside of the mainstream by his colleagues in human genetics. David Reich is more mainstream in his views, but even his views in favor of the existence of race as a biological category were widely repudiated by his colleagues when he published them not long ago.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 10:43, 15 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The views of his colleagues are based on ideology, and not science. In this political climate science unfortunately yields to politics. There is no freedom of opinion, no academic freedom in this field. Anybody who would express opposing views would be immediately expelled and fired. Only those who don't need to be employed, like James Watson, can honestly express their views. 24.4.39.254 (talk) 11:41, 15 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
His own views are equally based on ideology. Being unemployed is not usually a sign that one is a higher authority of truth.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 12:33, 15 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
By referring to Reich's "colleagues" you presumably don't mean geneticists but anthropologists and sociologists who made up most of the academics who signed the letter agains Reich, publicized by the Buzzfeed (The New York Times refused to publish the letter). --Pudeo (talk) 16:35, 15 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Writing public letters isn't a way to settle scientific matters. Letters only show that academics are triggered. Scientists can criticize each other in papers or books, with proper proofs and argumentation. Shouting "I disagree! and He is a racist! never settled any scientific dispute. 68.65.169.20 (talk) 00:01, 16 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Nobel winners are people who had one idea which nobody had before and which turned out to be true. Many of them know practically nothing outside their area of expertise. Regarding a Nobelist as an authority on everything is a really, really, really bad idea. --Hob Gadling (talk) 11:00, 15 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

James Watson has been making nonsensical claims for years. "At a conference in 2000, Watson suggested a link between skin color and sex drive, hypothesizing that dark-skinned people have stronger libidos. His lecture argued that extracts of melanin – which gives skin its color – had been found to boost subjects' sex drive. "That's why you have Latin lovers," he said, according to people who attended the lecture. "You've never heard of an English lover. Only an English Patient." He has also said that stereotypes associated with racial and ethnic groups have a genetic basis: Jews being intelligent, Chinese being intelligent but not creative because of selection for conformity, and Indians being servile."

Because conformism is somehow unique to the Chinese? Dimadick (talk) 13:10, 16 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Neutrality, topicality and correctness

The article seems to present scientific facts about demographic differences as pseudo-scientific. The sources mentioned are outdated and of low quality. Empirical facts are not explained, only moralistic and philosophical considerations are given the word. To call something a pseudoscience, however, is possible only on the basis of unscientific methods used by the science in question. Two sources have been cited for the pseudo-scientific status of racial sciences:

1. Paul Kurtz - Philosophical considerations, which make no statements of scientific value.

2. S. J. Gould an activist against sociobiological theories. The source is outdated (1981), sociobiological theories have now become established sciences (evolutionary psychology, heredity studies e.c.t.).

Numerous racial differences are now known, so "scientific racism" has undergone vindication through modern research. I would also like to point out that the burden of proof is on the part of the author, if something is called a pseudoscience it must be done with satisfactory sources, this is not the case in this article. Bafabengabantu (talk) 14:46, 2 March 2019 (UTC)— Bafabengabantu (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. [reply]

I know from first-hand experience that it's pointless to even try to discuss anything "politically incorrect" on Wikipedia, since there is practically zero neutrality when it comes to such topics and valid criticism is either ignored or blocked with a neverending waterfall of WP:*randomabbreviation* nonsense, which is of course always interpreted in a way that supports the politically correct version, so the articles in question always stay the way they are. Still I just wanted to say I agree with your comment and think it's stupid to try to deceive people with biased Wikipedia articles; as you can see on the talk pages of numerous "controversial" articles, a LOT of people are noticing, and objecting to, the unneutral presentation of such topics. The only thing this achieves is that it makes Wikipedia untrustworthy. Billy7 (talk) 00:02, 3 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Dismissing sources you don't agree with as pseudo-science is not persuasive, but there are many, many more than just those two. The lede is designed to be a summary of the body of the article. Sources in the lede are provided only for convenience, and even in the lede, there are more than just those two.:
  • "Ostensibly scientific": cf. Theodore M. Porter, Dorothy Ross (eds.) 2003.The Cambridge History of Science: Volume 7, The Modern Social Sciences Cambridge University Press, p. 293 "Race has long played a powerful popular role in explaining social and cultural traits, often in ostensibly scientific terms"
  • Adam Kuper, Jessica Kuper (eds.), The Social Science Encyclopedia (1996), "Racism", p. 716: "This [sc. scientific] racism entailed the use of 'scientific techniques', to sanction the belief in European and American racial Superiority";
  • Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Questions to Sociobiology (1998), "Race, theories of", p. 18: "Its exponents [sc. of scientific racism] tended to equate race with species and claimed that it constituted a scientific explanation of human history";
  • Terry Jay Ellingson, The myth of the noble savage (2001), 147ff. "In scientific racism, the racism was never very scientific; nor, it could at least be argued, was whatever met the qualifications of actual science ever very racist" (p. 151);
  • Paul A. Erickson, Liam D. Murphy, A History of Anthropological Theory (2008), p. 152: "Scientific racism: Improper or incorrect science that actively or passively supports racism".
Highlighting only two sources, just because you believe you can refute them through personal opinion, is not scientific. I'm sure you could pick holes in the remainder, as well, but this wouldn't be evaluating sources in good faith. You do not have to agree with them, but there are many, many scientists from a broad range of relevant fields who dispute the legitimacy of these ideas. The article already documents a sample of them.
As for the idea that this is obsolete, this is precisely backwards. There are certainly differing opinions about race in academia, but misrepresenting this as accepted is not helpful. "Demographic differences" is a euphemism in this specific context, and ironically, it is a "politically correct" euphemism, because you are attempt to preset a controversial idea using intentionally inoffensive language. There is no modern consensus, even among biologists, even among evolutionary biologists, about the proper way to define these demographics, so any application of "race" needs to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. There is not now, and never has been, a constant definition of race that applies within a field of study, and even less so across disciplines. Scientific racism attempts to present race as a simple quality which can been fairly applied across different, quantifiable attributes, but this position is so fraught with intractable problems, that it isn't particularly useful in most cases.
There. All that without even pointing to WP:OR, WP:FRINGE, or WP:NOTFORUM. Grayfell (talk) 01:09, 3 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The introduction states that racial science is pseudoscience, this is done with two sources. These sources are inadequate, whether there are other sources in the rest of the article is irrerlevant. Statements must be directly proven by the corresponding sources.
That the race sciences have many critics is out of the question. But just because a field is criticized a lot (for example, on a moralistic basis) does not mean that one can equate it with pseudo-science.
WP:FRINGE/PS says the criticism is not sufficient for pseudo-scientific status. Racial differences are now being studied on a large scale and I have never heard anyone call Edward Dutton or Richard Lynn a pseudo-scientist.
I want to remind you that Wikipedia is not a forum, your idea of how to define races is of no importance. For example, in evolutionary psychology, laws (AA), and large sections of the social sciences, race is defined as a one-dimensional construct, which may be right or wrong, but it represents the standard approach.
Billy7 I would like to encourage you to participate in the discussion. If one does not resist the ideologists, the quality of Wikipedia will never improve. Bafabengabantu (talk) 12:38, 3 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Bafabengabantu: sources are not actually required in the lead if they are in the body of the article. Your handful of edits to talk pages on this subject don't place you in the position of being able to lecture experienced editors on how to use this talk page (or have you a prior account or accounts?) and your comment on "ideologists" hardly assumes good faith. Although since an ideology can simply be a person's set of beliefs, then we are probably all ideologists. Lynn gets called a lot of things, eg white supremacist, and his work or at least this[1] has been called pseudoscience. And why doesn't Edward Dutton (anthropologist) include something about this lovely piece of what certainly looks like pseudoscience.""The Fool Says in His Heart That Atheists Are Mutants"? Doug Weller talk 13:56, 3 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
"All content must be verifiable. The burden to demonstrate verifiability lies with the editor who adds or restores material, and is satisfied by providing an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports the contribution."
The seniority of an editor makes false statements not correct. The rest of the sources don't not even speak of "Pseudoscience".
The situation is very simple, as we have to ask only one question:
Are racial differences on a genetic basis existent or not? The answer is a loud yes, racial differences are real. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] Something that measures a real phenomena can not be a pseudo-science. All of these sources are from mainstream journals. While certain elements of the social sciences are not comfortable with these findings, they do not invalidate them. Bafabengabantu (talk) 15:59, 3 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Bafabengabantu: you seem to be avoiding my question about earlier accounts, and my point about experience had absolutely nothing to do with a statement being true or false but the fact that you are trying to, as they say, teach your grandmother to suck eggs. Most editors here do not need to be told about WP:VERIFY or how to use talk pages. Doug Weller talk 15:59, 4 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Did you even read the sources? "Genetic_and_Environmental_Influences_of_General_Cognitive_Ability" is not even addressing race or racial differences. It covers potential cognitive differences between pairs of twins. The sample used for this study derives from twins covered in the "Vietnam Era Twin (VET)Registry, a nationally distributed sample of male–male twin pairs who served in the United States military at some point between 1965 and 1975."Dimadick (talk) 12:13, 4 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I read the sources very carefully. This source says that IQ is highly hereditary, this obviously has great relevance to the subject at hand.
The sources I have provided represent only a small excerpt of the available literature. The facts are clear. I am aware that this is a controversial topic. But nevertheless, I ask all discussion participants to not let their emotions overpower them. As it stands now, the entire article is dubious and should be marked as such. Bafabengabantu (talk) 15:35, 4 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
You have cherry-picked your way through the literature on a highly complex and highly controversial subject the depths and nuances of which you don't seem to appreciate at all, the sources you have picked represent nothing. ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 15:56, 4 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The sources I picked represent nothing? What is that supposed to mean? I ask again for a factual discussion style, wild allegations are nothing but unproductive.
The topic is indeed highly complex and this complexity is not reflected in article. To represent large parts of serous science as pseudoscience is very questionable. The moralistic and philosophical objections to such research should be mentioned in article. But it is irresponsible to interpret this legitimate criticism as proof of unscientific behavior. Bafabengabantu (talk) 16:18, 4 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Article is clearly POV and a lot of scholars don't think racial genetic intelligence differences is pseudoscience, including many of the relevant experts. Cherry picked sources only presenting one opinion. I don't see anywhere in the article where it is explained why this is pseudoscience. Samantha Priss (talk) 11:53, 10 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  1. ^ https://www.academia.edu/13177841/Genetic_and_Environmental_Influences_of_General_Cognitive_Ability_Is_g_a_valid_latent_construct
  2. ^ http://cebp.aacrjournals.org/content/17/10/2825.short https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4899-0697-7_7
  3. ^ https://www.researchgate.net/publication/47676771_Variability_in_Frontotemporal_Brain_Structure_The_Importance_of_Recruitment_of_African_Americans_in_Neuroscience_Research
  4. ^ https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289609001275
  5. ^ https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289614000130
  6. ^ http://unamusementpark.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/race-iq-gap-still-remains.pdf
  7. ^ https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1445-5994.1984.tb03614.x
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