Talk:Race and intelligence

Removing false balance from lead

I removed false balance from the lead, in keeping with the recent decisions at WP:Fringe theories/Noticeboard (see [1]) and at WP:Administrators' noticeboard (see [2]) that the claim that some races are genetically inferior to other races in intelligence is fringe. NightHeron (talk) 21:37, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

Thank you. This is an appropriate edit which improves the article. Grayfell (talk) 22:10, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

• I disagree. The current wording is neutral and accurate. Please make one change at a time. Reverted. The current wording is in line with the outcome of the RfC; the lead clearly states "At present, there is no direct evidence that these differences in test scores have a genetic component". What WP:FALSEBALANCE are you removing in the lead? The lead doesn't have citations but from what I can see generally summarises the rest of the article well. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 22:45, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

We don't have to look far to see how easy it is to grind things to a halt by expecting that every minute change be discussed to death. The many RFCs show a clear appetite for change from the wider community. Your opinion on the lead is noted, but without the ability to make changes like this, the article will stagnate... or is that the point? Grayfell (talk) 23:03, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

The claim "no direct evidence" implies that there's some other type of evidence. In the numerous discussions of this, apologists for scientific racism claimed that there's circumstantial evidence of genetic racial inferiority. There were also other places in the lead that violated WP:FALSEBALANCE. We don't have to re-discuss every little point, now that a community consensus has been reached and overwhelmingly upheld at WP:Administrators' noticeboard that claims of racial genetic inferiority in intelligence are fringe.

I put a warning on User:Insertcleverphrasehere's talk-page about edit-warring, after the second revert in less than 2 hours, which violates the 1RR protection on this page. NightHeron (talk) 23:20, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

Other examples of false balance in the lead: is the subject of much dispute and remains controversial among researchers. My revision removes these violations of WP:FRINGE and avoids weasel wording. NightHeron (talk) 23:34, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

This was previously discussed here. See this comment by user:Sirfurboy in particular. "No direct evidence" is a very close paraphrase of the wording used by one of the article's sources (the Nisbett et al. paper). The outcome of the RFC can't supersede the requirement for this article to reflect what reliable sources say. 2600:1004:B11A:E74E:DD3F:340B:3C9B:851E (talk) 23:37, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

No, you're wrong. The fact that the phrase "no direct evidence" occurred in someone's paper is irrelevant. In the context of the lead of this article the phrase gives the misleading impression that some other (unspecified) type of evidence exists. Based on all the lengthy arguments you've made over the last few months, I assume that this is precisely why you're fighting to keep the wording "no direct evidence;" that is, you presumably want the lead to suggest that there's some unspecified indirect evidence.

We don't say "There's no direct evidence that the Universe was created in 7 days around 4000 years ago;" or "There's no direct evidence that homeopathy can work better than modern medicine." When talking about fringe theories, one says "no evidence," not "no direct evidence." NightHeron (talk) 00:05, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

Will this never end? This biased wording needs to be reversed. Can I do it or do we need to wait to avoid edit warring? Gandydancer (talk) 00:16, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

Gandydancer: You're a much more experienced wikipedian than I am, but my understanding of 1RR is that different users (but not I) can revert now or whenever, in order to carry out the judgment at WP:FTN and WP:AN concerning the fringe nature of scientific racism. As the Southern Poverty Law Center pointed out, there's been an unfortunate history of this article being "owned" by a small number of editors who seem determined to give credence to the fringe belief that certain races are genetically inferior to others in intelligence. I think we should first get a stable version of the lead that is compliant with WP:NPOV and WP:FRINGE, and then proceed to fix other sections of this article. For example, I noticed that the section Race and intelligence#Brain size starts out with a reasonable first paragraph, and then the second paragraph gives a false balance and again gives credence to the fringe view alleging racial inferiority of black people. I'm starting with the lead, since that's the most widely read part of the article, but there's other work to be done.

If the usual group of "owner"-editors of this page resort to edit-warring, bludgeoning, and other tactics to obstruct the consensus on scientific racism, then hopefully some of the more experienced editors will know what to do. NightHeron (talk) 01:10, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

NightHeron, Do you have a reliable source (cited in the article or that can be added) that simply and plainly says "there is no evidence"? That seems the simple solution here. I don't particulalry object to that particular chage if a source can be found. "is the subject of much dispute" and "remains controversial among researchers" seem plainly true facts to me. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 00:18, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

Insisting on a source for every change of wording (when the lead doesn't even require detailed sourcing) is just WP:WIKILAWYERING. A change of phrase so as to prevent a misleading weasel-wording is permitted without having to cite a source for the change in wording. NightHeron (talk) 00:51, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

And when you hold out for patent nonsense like "remains controversial among researchers", it is really difficult to WP:AGF. Can you name any serious researcher who entertains the unscientific concept of 'race'? This 'debate' has exceeded its use-by date and a decision made: it must be implemented without further delay. The changes made by NightHeron should stand. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 07:26, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

We all understand that WP:Verifiability doesn't apply to this article anymore, right? As SMcCandlish pointed out both during the RFC and afterwards, the RFC was very explicitly an attempt to use community consensus to bypass the requirement for the contents of the article to be based on what's stated in reliable sources, and now we're seeing the results of that. I suppose it's good that NightHeron is at least being honest about the lack of need for sources now, in his comment above. 2600:1004:B14F:A9BF:37:3B4A:BC6F:CB5D (talk) 08:12, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

2600:1004, this comment is not helpful. Further comments like this will result in sanctions. Barkeep49 (talk) 21:13, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

We really need an FAQ on the talk page to cover recurring bogus arguments like "race doesn't exist" that, even if correct in some respects, have no bearing on the narrow, reductive scientific question of genetic explanations for measured group differences. The idea that "race doesn't exist" is not taken seriously as an argument on that subject even by the most vocal scientific opponents of hereditarian arguments. As long as people self-report their "race" consistently, and both the genetic and IQ testing is statistically meaningful in that individual results don't change too much based on details like day and time of the test or weather conditions, then this is a meaningful scientific question whose answer can be obtained with today's technology at moderate but not prohibitive cost, if enough people and funding agencies were interested. In the meantime there are arguments about correlations and statistical patterns, very similar to the ones used to determine that smoking causes lung cancer or BRCA1 causes breast cancer. We don't have "direct evidence" on those either, but that seems to be OK for most purposes. 73.149.246.232 (talk) 08:23, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

• The problem with rephrasing as "no evidence" or "no scientific evidence" is that it is false, and constitutes science denialism. That a variety of evidence exists for genetic explanations is implicitly or explicitly conceded by almost everyone with relevant expertise (i.e., psychometrics of intelligence; behavioral genetics; statistical genetics) who has published on the topic, and the actual issue is about the strength of the evidence and arguments on the two sides of the issue. For instance, James Flynn, the leading anti-hereditarian opponent to Jensen, wrote a book on the subject in 1980 that said Jensen had until that point intellectually "massacre[d]" his critics, and Flynn's position has always been that the hereditarian arguments should be engaged seriously. He has made the same point every decade or so since then, and more recently people like Pinker (neutral) and Ceci (environmentalist) have argued the same. It would be pretty strange to write such things if the state of affairs were "No Evidence Exists".

Certainly there are many, many people from areas that are tangential or irrelevant to the narrow scientific question of race-and-IQ genetics -- areas such as history, law, philosophy, critical race theory, cultural anthropology, Afro-American studies, ethics, journalism, social psychology, education, and cultural studies -- who make these kinds of absolute denialist claims. The strength, confidence and vitriol of the claims generally increases in proportion to the authors' personal inability to parse the psychometric literature. Most of the sources posted at the RfC were of this type, the only exceptions being discredited works by Gould and Kamin (and his follower Joseph) written for popular audiences and generally ignored by both the hereditarians and their opponents. As Turkheimer called it in his review: "science denial".

For starters, there is a lot of statistical evidence for genetic explanations, and against environmental ones, beyond differences in average scores. A large number of patterns in the data that should appear if there were big environmental effects on group IQ differences, do not exist (and people have looked hard to find them). The variability of black IQ is the same or lower than for white IQ, when it should be higher if environment were king. Intelligence appears to be "made of the same stuff" (same factor structure beyond g) in different groups, and exerts its effects on education, income etc in the same ways (indistinguishable correlation matrices for IQ together with many other measures). If heavily environmental causes were at work, differences should be seen, and simple interventions would be relatively easy to find that can permanently raise IQ by large amounts, at least in black Americans. Nobody has found any interventions that work in any group, despite gargantuan monetary and status incentives for people to find them. There are many, many indirect arguments of this kind that can be given, that are rarely addressed, much less refuted, in the anti-hereditarian literature. Which is not to say that it's impossible, or that Turkheimer and Nisbett could not conclusively win their war tomorrow based on new discoveries or amazing new theoretical arguments. But it is a gigantic inversion of reality to claim that "no evidence" or "no scientific evidence" exists. 73.149.246.232 (talk) 07:57, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

The refusal to accept consensus and the WP:WALLOFTEXT by IP-editor 73.xxx strengthen the case that jps was correct to propose excluding IP-accounts, see above [3]. A typical example of the false accusations against other editors by IP-editor 73.xxx is: the RFC was very explicitly an attempt to use community consensus to bypass the requirement for the contents of the article to be based on what's stated in reliable sources, and now we're seeing the results of that. I suppose it's good that NightHeron is at least being honest about the lack of need for sources now, in his comment above. I merely pointed out that the lead of this article is not sourced (and is not required to be sourced), and in any case one doesn't need a source in order to make a word change from "no direct evidence" to "no evidence" or "no scientific evidence" since the former is just weasel-wording and the latter is correct. The RfC was based on reliable sources, but not the pseudoscientific sources of white supremacists. I won't try to match 73.xxx's bludgeoning, since these issues have already been debated ad nauseum, and a consensus has been reached at WP:FTN and overwhelmingly approved by admins at WP:AN. NightHeron (talk) 12:01, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

(1) I did not write the material you quoted as mine. (2) What you call "reliable sources" in your RfC were specifically called "science denial" (Joseph's book, which is an update of Kamin) and "fringe science", "confused and incoherent" and much else (Gould) by experts quoted in that discussion. Those sources, along with all the others from nonexperts in critical race theory and the like, are, as I said, ignored even in anti-hereditarian works by people like Turkheimer and Nisbett, because they are discredited as works of science and in Gould's case and that of the nonexperts raise issues that are irrelevant even-if-correct. (3) Repeatedly making (false) histrionic assertions about particular users that they are racists, alt-right, white supremacist, anti-Semitic, etc is obviously a gross violation of the groundrules for continued participation here. That doesn't change when done in passive aggressive double-negatives to maintain the fiction that you aren't actually crossing the bright lines that you like to sidle up to. (4) You posted 100 comments on this matter at the RfC and RSN, many of them extremely long BLUDGEON and WALLOFTEXT (in addition to the personal invective) that were called out as such. Treating these topics as your private property and a stage for histrionic drama, dismissing inconvenient replies as overly long or motivated by racism, is not a standard of reasonable conduct on Wikipedia. I haven't yet looked at the link to the Arbcom case, but I am on the record having accurate predicted the nature of the RfC and stating that you should have been topic banned long ago. 73.149.246.232 (talk) 18:20, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

(1) I apologize for confusing you with the other IP-editor. In the future, please indent your comments when they follow immediately after comments of someone else who's expressing similar sentiments. (2)-(4) I'll be happy to reply to these accusations if a responsible editor wants me to. The same goes for the ludicrous accusations of the other IP-editor (2600.xxx) that I just noticed were made at the ArbCom site. If the purpose of the two IP-editors is to get revenge on me for the RfC not going their way and for racist pseudoscience now being treated as fringe, I don't think that's how Wikipedia works. NightHeron (talk) 20:33, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

NightHeron, good edit, thanks. Guy (help!) 11:19, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

Hopefully NightHeron will continue to get good feedback and support as needed for future edits to keep the article in compliance with Wikipedia's policies and high standards. Gandydancer (talk) 11:48, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

Thank you, Gandydancer, for your support. I'm happy to continue working on this article to eliminate false balance, since pandemic lockdown means I have time on my hands. However, if it's just me, it'll go slowly, since 1RR (as I understand it) means I can't remove more than one piece of nonsense per day. My next step will be to remove the 2nd paragraph of Race and intelligence#Brain size and edit the 1st paragraph there so that it gives an NPOV-compliant summary with no details, and of course a link to the full article on the subject. NightHeron (talk) 12:25, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

I edited the lede a bit more. I think the claim that this subject is all about a nature versus nurture debate is so ludicrous as to be almost quaint. Generally, the social science literature has plenty of discussion as to how systemic racism can account for all kinds of "observations" that the racists clamoring here, there, and everywhere on the dark intellectual web seem to think they were the first to stumble upon. It's only the racists who seem to think that systemic racism is "environmental" or "nurture" or whatever. No, systemic racism means the question itself is fraught and so, like, read some critical theory and come to terms with the messiness of human society before deciding what your IQ test histograms means, if anything.

So... in a serious reference work, the first job is to define their terms before positing even the ability to draw conclusions. As it is not possible to define terms in a way that speaks to the psychometrics walled garden, there is no way to pretend that there is a meaningful scientific discussion of this topic in such locations as "Mankind Quarterly", "Intelligence" or "The Bell Curve". Certainly, such clarion calls exist, but treating them as subject material beyond object lessons does the reader no favors. The political controversy and the racist history of this subject is largely what this article, if it is to survive, needs to be about. Quite absent from the article right now is the way these tropes feed into and feed from well-documented racist stereotypes. Until we have discussion of these stereotypes as stereotypes in the article, this article will just be so much empty clanging. At least now we link to social construction. Have at it!

jps (talk) 19:08, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

ජපස, This line that you have added to the lead "There is no scientific evidence that differences between average IQ scores of different population groups can be attributed to more than the subjectivity of the concepts involved." seems mostly original research and is not a conclusion reached in the body of the article. Please rectify this or revert the edit. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 20:20, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

False balance has not yet been removed from the rest of the article, which is why there's a discrepancy right now between the lead and the main body. Once false balance is removed from the other sections, this problem will go away. It takes some time to improve a long article that has false balance woven through it. Please be patient. NightHeron (talk) 20:49, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

The quoted statement in the lede is incoherent and cannot be made coherent by any future edits to the article, or even future scientific developments. You can regard IQ as bogus, race as a fictitious pseudo-concept, systemic racism as everywhere, and take the entirety of critical race theory as gospel, but none of that would allow for attributing measured group differences to "subjectivity". If IQ is merely a measure of cromulence it's still a measurable thing when averaged in large samples, and the causes of group differences on that measure is a pursuable, answerable scientific question not burdened by vagueness or subjectivity. The degree to which that question is interesting, useful, loaded, pernicious or whatever are matters where the non-science subjects can and do come into play but that's a different story from what was pushed into the lede. 73.149.246.232 (talk) 22:21, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

You clearly don't understand the sentence. Fortunately, competence is required, IP. jps (talk) 22:23, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

Extended content

There isn't anything to understand. "Attributed to ... the subjectivity of the concepts involved" is a word salad, sound and fury signifying nothing. If you had some specific assignable idea in mind that can be explained to people unable to read your mind, please feel free to expand on what relevant concrete meaning an "attribution to subjectivity" could possibly point to. 73.149.246.232 (talk) 22:34, 27 April 2020 (UTC) I know it's hard. Try asking your local sociologist. jps (talk) 22:56, 27 April 2020 (UTC) ජපස, Please focus on content and not on getting petty insult jabs in. — Insertcleverphrasehere (or here)(click me!) 22:37, 27 April 2020 (UTC) Please focus on what content we need and not your fandom of the insipid journal Intelligence. KTHANXBY. jps (talk

It's certainly not original research, and it certainly summarizes all of the most reliable sources I've read on the topic. I tend to agree with NightHeron that the current version of the article is a problem because it focuses problematically on those sources that certain POVs think are relevant without centering on the WP:MAINSTREAM understanding of the subject. One option would be to stubbify. jps (talk) 22:23, 27 April 2020 (UTC) [moved per WP:INDENT, see page history for explanation -- IP 73.xxx]

Please stop being uncivil. On topic: The issue here is that you have come to a supposition, then are just writing it in the lead without regard for A: what the sources say, or B: what the rest of the article that the lead is supposed to summarise actually says. Where is your source for this? — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 09:59, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

I have tried to parse this comment multiple times but have come up short. The sources are pretty clear that race is not defined as Charles Murray believes it is, for example. This is a plain fact for which there are dozens if not hundreds of sources. It is certainly not a supposition. jps (talk) 15:57, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

Hereditarianism vs homeopathy, alien abductions, Bigfoot, creationism etc

The following type of argument appeared several times in the RfC and now on the talk page, mostly from NightHeron. I expect it to keep appearing and it deserves its own discussion. A typical example from above:

We don't say "There's no direct evidence that the Universe was created in 7 days around 4000 years ago;" or "There's no direct evidence that homeopathy can work better than modern medicine."

The RfC had similar statements about alien abductions, Holocaust denial, and yogic flying.

The problem with these comparisons is that "one of these theories is not like the others". The differences indicate why IQ hereditarianism is not scientifically fringe (which does not rule out its being institutionally fringe or politically fringe, both are true to some extent but are not what is meant by a "fringe theory"). All the other theories acquired their fringe status by criteria that would disqualify any theory from being considered scientific, regardless of its social popularity, political support, history, or moral character of its followers. Examples of criteria for fringeness:

• not even wrong, no empirical consequences, no predictions. Scientists can believe in it or not and it would not change anything in the work they do. (e.g. God or Creation)
• impossible to disprove
• proof could theoretically be done (just film the aliens landing and abducting people!), but requires several other amazing unknown phenomena to be proved in the process (aliens exist, can travel to earth, and do so with no other consequences beyond abduction)
• ad hoc hypothesis not specific to the data ("aliens" could be replaced by any other hypothetical creature such as unicorns, "abduction" by any other unobserved process)
• easy and cheap to prove if true, but proponents refuse to do a controlled demonstration (e.g. yogic flying, psychokinetic spoon-bending)
• contradicts well established physics or requires unknown new physics (homeopathy)
• contradicts gigantic interconnected body of evidence for accepted theory (e.g. standard account of the Holocaust) with a tiny body of evidence and no specific indication of how all the accepted evidence can be wrong without the alternative theory having been widely noticed and supported. Requires conspiracy theories to explain this, discredit existing data, and reconcile discrepancies.

For both the genetic and environmental explanations of IQ differences, there is mostly agreement between proponents and opponents as to what would constitute evidence for and against each side of the argument, what sort of experiments can be done to obtain such evidence, and that many of these experiments are feasible (or have already been done). Nothing in either explanation requires radical new principles of physics or biology. The most likely form of proof is the same for each side: polygenic scores and regression on environmental factors are conceptually the same, and for either one to be convincing, data of both types have to be included in the model so that genetic and nongenetic factors can compete statistically. This is all normal science and pretty symmetrical for the two sides. The asymmetry is in the levels of political and institutional support. 73.149.246.232 (talk) 11:08, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

And? Guy (help!) 11:15, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

The upshot is that since the hereditarian position is not actually scientifically fringe, and the state of the scientific evidence is not FALSEBALANCE but a "TRUEBALANCE" of the evidence and an unbroken impasse between opposing theories, our activist editor friends should not pretend that arcane Wikipedia voting decision processes create new facts about the science. The normal direction of logic is that a theory becomes fringe because it lacks evidence. Here, it is explicitly being used in the opposite direction: an administrative determination that a theory is fringe in the eyes of Wikipedia editors, constitutes a proof that there cannot have been evidence. Clearly that's ridiculous and is far outside the scope of anything the RfC could have decided. 73.149.246.232 (talk) 19:45, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

New ArbCom case

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.

---

An ArbCom case has been opened at [4] by User:AndewNguyen, who did not post a notice here and did not notify me that he was specifically accusing me of a BLP violation as part of his list of charges. I've never before been involved in an ArbCom case, so I hope that more experienced editors can lead the way in dealing with this new attack by apologists for scientific racism.NightHeron (talk) 13:49, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

NightHeron, This is not a neutral way to post a talk page notice of an arbcom case. Not even close. Could be interpreted as canvassing as well as a personal attack. You've literally just called User:AndewNguyen an "apologist for scientific racism". Be WP:CIVIL. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 20:22, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

According to what I've read of ArbCom rules, it was AndewNguyen who was supposed to notify affected users, including obviously the contributors to this talk page. He failed to do that, and didn't bother to notify me that he was making accusations against me at ArbCom. The way I found out was from your user talk-page, which I looked at to see whether you'd replied to my request for you to self-revert after violating 1RR. There I saw that LiteratureGeek had informed you of the ArbCom case, asked you to participate there, and provided the link. Aren't you a little bothered by AndewNguyen's flouting of the rules? NightHeron (talk) 20:44, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

NightHeron, Yes, but that doesn't make your message here any less bad either. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 20:45, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

Okay, I've struck through most of the text. NightHeron (talk) 20:56, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

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.

Rewrite

Does anyone besides me think this article needs to be WP:TNTed rewritten, and we should discuss what a new TOC would look like? Levivich ^{[dubious – discuss]} 21:52, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

To be perfectly honest, at this point I would seriously consider supporting the article's deletion. (I voted "keep" in the previous AFD.) Not because the topic isn't notable, but because lately I've been losing hope that the Wikipedia community is capable of upholding WP:Verifiability and WP:NOR on this article. If you think the article should be deleted, you're welcome to re-nominate it for deletion. 2600:1004:B156:2805:69A8:D59E:7D3B:254A (talk) 22:32, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

IIRC you mentioned some stable or superior earlier versions of the article before the recent wikilawyering. Can you post a link to the best version(s) you would recommend for linking or archiving? 73.149.246.232 (talk) 23:47, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

Let's not put the cart before the horse. No one has even nominated the article for deletion yet. If it eventually looks probable that the article will be deleted, then we can discuss which old versions are worth archiving. 2600:1004:B14B:6615:2C17:4D80:8F18:30F4 (talk) 23:55, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

The information would be useful independent of any deletions. It's possible to randomly browse past versions but there are thousands and you seem to actually have done the legwork of finding good ones, so I'd be interested to take a look. 73.149.246.232 (talk) 00:01, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

Sorry, linking to the WP:TNT essay was ambiguous; I meant a rewrite, not a deletion. Levivich ^{[dubious – discuss]} 00:21, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

I do not support an attempt to rewrite the whole article at once. Similar things have been tried before, and the only result was to create massive amounts of drama. However, if the article were deleted, I suppose it could eventually be rewritten at a later point. 2600:1004:B16D:68CB:B8D2:906A:61F4:A60E (talk) 00:45, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

You seem to be awfully keen on deleting it. Gandydancer (talk) 15:23, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

Two more edits

I've made a fairly minor edit to the lead that I hope clarifies jps's last sentence and combines his version with mine in a straightforward way. I also deleted the second paragraph of Race and intelligence#Brain size which gives credibility to fringe theories on race, brain size, and intelligence. The few readers who are especially interested in brain size will find a link provided to a full article on the subject.

The admins who closed the DRV that overturned the close of the 4th AfD for this article told us we should fix non-neutral or fringe content by editing. Shouldn't we first try to do that? And then, if that doesn't work, I suppose we could try for a 5th AfD. NightHeron (talk) 02:42, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

The phrase "Concepts such as "race" and "intelligence" are social constructs that defy objective definition" in the lead is really silly and inappropriate. It totally fails Wikipedia:NOTESSAY and NPOV. I mean if "race" and "intelligence" defy objective definition, so does "social construct". Jweiss11 (talk) 02:52, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

I agree that it could be worded better but what other way is there to describe the fiction that is race? Homo Sapiens is a single species, from the Inuit to the Maori via any route you care to take. People with mainly European ancestry have more than average Neanderthal DNA, those with north-east Asian ancestry have more than average Denisovan. Most people in most of the world have a little bit of everything. 'Race' is an artefact created by Europeans who, having failed to observe the smooth transition of climate-adapted surface anatomy seen in the rest of the world (due to the Sahara), leapt to a conclusion that has blighted understanding ever since. Race is not real. Racism is very real.

Intelligence is certainly real: the problem arises when it comes to measurement. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 10:37, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

"Race is not real" may be better proposed as "race is a social fact, not a biological one". I am not sure there is convincing evidence that intelligence is more than a social fact either. There is certainly no strong definition for intelligence that I have seen which I suppose is close to your point that measurement is a problem, but if things cannot be measured beyond the subjective claims of those who declare them to exist, it is difficult for anyone to say whether or not they are "real". jps (talk) 16:01, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

ජපස, So your stance is that human intelligence isn't real? That's an untenable position that simply doesn't stand against a century of intelligence research. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 20:49, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

My stance is that "intelligence" is ill-defined and that the century of intelligence research is unimpressive... much of it no better than phrenology (which ought to be linked at this page along with eugenics). jps (talk) 20:55, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

Brain size removals

@NightHeron Why did you remove that paragraph from the Brain Size section? Is there some specific reason? You didn't say why in your edit summary. The info there seemed quite well balanced, even by the relatively aggressive FALSEBALANCE stance you have taken. The sources also seem solid. This edit kinda baffles me. Please explain. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 11:10, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

Insertcleverphrasehere: I explained that removal in the talk page, and pointed to the talk page in the edit summary. Please see the previous section. NightHeron (talk) 12:22, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

I support the Brain size removal. The removed paragraph goes into detail about Hunt's views on head size measurements, while relegating the opposing view to a single sentence at the end. This gives undue weight to Hunt who we must "take care not to promote their views as widely accepted unless/until sources can be found which indicate their views are widely accepted" per community consensus. –dlthewave ☎ 12:33, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

Dlthewave, I don't see how this enters into the fringe argument. The data is presented (two sentences) and then thoroughly rebuffed (two sentences). This doesn't support a hereditary view in any case. The removal only does the reader a disservice by removing information. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 20:52, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

What information? The marginalized ravings of a has-been and now-deceased psychometric magician? We don't need this kind of nonsense here. jps (talk) 20:56, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

ජපස, RSN has stated that hunt's book is a reliable source. I've asked you to be civil several times now; please don't switch over to making BLP violations instead. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 20:59, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

Lol. It's pretty rich to accuse someone of making "BLP" violations when the subject is dead. Socrates is mortal. Carry on. jps (talk) 21:01, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

The comment above by User:Dlthewave quotes directly what the RSN decided about Hunt, and it wasn't what User:Insertcleverphrasehere claims. Hunt's book might be reliable for certain purposes or topics, but not when it pushes fringe views. Insertcleverphrase says the deleted paragraph was okay because it had two sentences supporting the fringe theory and then two sentences against it. That's what we call WP:FALSEBALANCE. NightHeron (talk) 21:16, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

NightHeron, It didn't have any sentences "supporting the fringe theory". The first two sentences presented data, then Hunt himself points out that the difference isn't sufficient to explain all but a small portion of the gap. How is this supporting a fringe theory? — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 21:46, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

Insertcleverphrasehere: Are you serious?? The second sentence of that paragraph said: According to Hunt, race differences in average brain size could potentially be an important argument for a possible genetic contribution to racial IQ gaps.

In addition, your earlier formulation (2 sentences one way, then 2 sentences the other way) is wrong. Sentence #3 also supports genetic differences along racial lines, but says that it's much less than Rushton claims. (Hunt's viewpoint has consistently been, to put it crudely, that probably blacks are dumber than whites, but not by nearly as much as Jensen and Rushton say - a viewpoint some might call moderate white-supremacism.) Even the 4th sentence doesn't refute the fringe view, since its meaning is unclear: ...argue that black-white differences in brain size are insufficient to explain 91% to 95% of the black-white IQ gap. Does that mean that brain size differences do explain 5% to 9% of it, which is a fringe view? Or does it mean something else? Beats me. I think the only reasonable solution was to remove the whole poorly-written fringe-supporting paragraph. NightHeron (talk) 22:04, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

And just as a shout from the bleachers, the average brain size of the human female is less than that of the average male. So are we to accept as reliable 19th and early 20th C texts that say that women are therefore intellectually inferior to men?

And while I've got your attention, there is a high correlation between childhood malnutrition v. size (including brain) and general fitness for life (including intelligence). --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 12:48, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

Edits to history section

In addition to editing for better grammar/style/clarity, I made the following changes: (1) I changed the section title to History of the controversy since controversy is the term used in the full article on the subject, while the word debate in the earlier title suggested a false balance. (2) I somewhat shortened the paragraph about The Bell Curve, removing false balance and unclarity. NightHeron (talk) 12:22, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

Maxarchive silently reduced to 200K

The recent edit by Steele1943 reduced Maxarchive for this talk page from 500K to 200K. The larger value seems better for a high-volume page where recent sections often refer to each other. Posting here for comment and will restore the old setting if there are no objections. 73.149.246.232 (talk) 20:27, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

I'm not specifically objecting to what you propose, but just commenting that perhaps Steele1943 reduced the max size because, with the fringe debate now concluded and with IP-2600 banned from this talk page (which also means removing the need for me and others to respond at length to IP-2600's lengthy posts), this talk page should not have to be such high volume. If that was Steele1943's rationale, I share that hope. In other words, no more need for walls of text. NightHeron (talk) 21:39, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

Per WP:TALKCOND, 75K is the default, and more than five times the default is excessive. Allowing the page to reach 500K increases unnecessary issues on older computers or cheaper mobile devices, as well. Even newer ones will have issues if multiple tabs are open. In many cases it is easier to load a separate archived page (that would be less than half the size) then to locate another comment on the same bloated page. Grayfell (talk) 23:15, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

I welcome the editors of this article to agree on an archive size and am neutral on that topic. However, I will note Grayfell that 75k at WP:TALKCOND refers to a rule of thumb for talk pages such as this. The archivesize under discussion refers to how large a talk page archive should be which is not covered by that rule of thumb. So community archive pages are even larger than 500k (e.g. ANI is currently 800k per archived talk page). Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 23:41, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

Good point, thank you. Per Help:Archiving a talk page, 75k is also the default maxarchivesize, but as you say this is not a requirement. Per that help page, "each individual archive should not be larger than 512kB" and I don't really see a benefit to getting as close to that as we can. I don't think that because the topic is contentious, the talk pages must receive special treatment, which is, I think, what's being implied. If we are comparing to other pages, if 200k is good enough for Talk:Donald Trump, I think it's probably sufficient for this one, as well. Grayfell (talk) 23:52, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

Revert of my attempt to improve problematic "Group differences" section

I started to work on the "Group differences" section by editing the intro paragraph to remove false balance and the undue attention given to Hunt. My edit was immediately reverted by User:Jweiss11. Hunt, who was a moderate advocate of fringe theories of racial inferiority/superiority in intelligence, is over-cited in this article and given undue attention. His presentation of the issue given in this paragraph is a clear example of false balance. My edits to the paragraph follow the consensus reached at WP:Fringe theories/Noticeboard [5] and at WP:Administrators' noticeboard [6]. Before we continue work on fixing this section, we should resolve the matter of its intro paragraph. Hopefully we can do that quickly, without repeating earlier discussions. NightHeron (talk) 17:29, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

Hunt is a mainstream, reliable source, and the passage in question gives a very neutral summary of all the possible causes and interpretations of intelligence variance between groups. Jweiss11 (talk) 17:36, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

No, he's not a reliable source for information on race and intelligence, although he is RS for what his own beliefs were. A former president of the International Society for Intelligence Research, an organization that promotes fringe views about race and intelligence, he supported the notion that there are genetic differences in intelligence along racial lines. The false balance in this passage is what you call "very neutral." Please respect consensus and self-revert. Thanks. NightHeron (talk) 17:47, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

NightHeron, your summary is inaccurate and suggests an effort advance blank slate denialism. Happy to entertain the opinion of others here. Jweiss11 (talk) 17:56, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

Not sure I love NightHeron’s edit but Hunt is not "a mainstream, reliable source” when it comes to the topics at hand. Horse Eye Jack (talk) 18:00, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

Jweiss11, on Conservapedia maybe. Not here. Guy (help!) 22:48, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

No, Guy, the liberal view of a Steven Pinker should probably prevail here on Wikipedia, and Hunt's work seems to align much with Pinker's in its rejection of blank slate dogma. Unfortunately, many efforts in certainly places seem aimed toward turning Wikipedia into "Rational"Wiki or worse. Jweiss11 (talk) 22:54, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

the liberal view of a Steven Pinker christ the quality of discourse here is really down the tubes, isn't it? --JBL (talk) 23:07, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

• Community consensus is ". . . we can give the views of Rindermann and Hunt, sourced to their books published by the Cambridge University Press, but take care not to promote their views as widely accepted unless/until sources can be found which indicate their views are widely accepted." A fringe source (yes, we do treat it as fringe, and do not give it undue weight) shouldn't be used to summarize the section, and Nightheron's removal/rewrite gives more appropriate weight to the mainstream view. It's an improvement to clearly state the currently-accepted viewpoint up front instead of presenting Hunt's four "positions" as if they are on equal footing. –dlthewave ☎ 20:58, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
  • It's an improvement to clearly state the currently-accepted viewpoint up front instead of presenting Hunt's four "positions" as if they are on equal footing. Yes, absolutely. --JBL (talk) 22:35, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
    • +1. This was settled already: we don't present Hunt's 4 positions as if they're four equally-accepted positions, nor is Hunt's 4-position-theory to be presented as mainstream or widely accepted. I agree NH's edits were an improvement and should be reinstated. Levivich ^{[dubious – discuss]} 23:05, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

Edits of the "Flynn effect" subsection

In addition to minor style/clarity/citation edits, I shortened the subsection by removing (1) a summary of claims by Jan Te Nijenhuis (who has published in the white-supremacist journal Mankind Quarterly, see [7],[8]) and a coauthor; (2) a summary of claims in a 2006 article by Charles Murray (political scientist) published in Intelligence; (3) two more citations to Hunt, and (4) the last paragraph, which is based on two articles by Heiner Rindermann et al. The last two sentences of the last paragraph included a long string of unclear and highly controversial notions (such as the degradation of African-American family structure, the rise of fraud in the educational system..."environmental conditions shaped by [African-Americans] themselves"), whose relevance was not explained. NightHeron (talk) 01:10, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

Conflict with Heritablity of IQ article in the Group Differences section

In the Group Differences section, it is claimed that "The scientific consensus is that group differences in IQ scores are caused not by genetic differences between races or ethnicities, but rather by 'other correlated demographic variables such as socioeconomic status, education level, and motivation.'". However, the article on Heritability of IQ states that "Twin studies of adult individuals have found a heritability of IQ between 57% and 73% with the most recent studies showing heritability for IQ as high as 80% and 86%." So, is there really a strong consensus of group differences in IQ being caused by non-genetic variables? How is that possible if twin studies show that IQ is 57%-73% heritable? I suggest we delete that sentence.Drbogatyr (talk) 17:37, 3 May 2020 (UTC)