Talk:Race and intelligence
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Is there really a scientific consensus that there is no evidence for a genetic link between race and intelligence?
Yes, and for a number of reasons. Primarily:
Isn't it true that different races have different average IQ test scores?
On average and in certain contexts, yes, though these differences have fluctuated and in many cases steadily decreased over time. Crucially, the existence of such average differences today does not mean what racialists have asserted that it means (i.e. that races can be ranked according to their genetic predisposition for intelligence). Most IQ test data comes from North America and Europe, where non-White individuals represent ethnic minorities and often carry systemic burdens which are known to affect test performance. Studies which purport to compare the IQ averages of various nations are considered methodologically dubious and extremely unreliable. Further, important discoveries in the past several decades, such as the Flynn effect and the steady narrowing of the gap between low-scoring and high-scoring groups, as well as the ways in which disparities such as access to prenatal care and early childhood education affect IQ, have led to an understanding that environmental factors are sufficient to account for observed between-group differences. And isn't IQ a measure of intelligence?
Not exactly. IQ tests are designed to measure intelligence, but it is widely acknowledged that they measure only a very limited range of an individual's cognitive capacity. They do not measure mental adaptability or creativity, for example. You can read more about the limitations of IQ measurements here. These caveats need to be kept in mind when extrapolating from IQ measurements to statements about intelligence. But even if we were to take IQ to be a measure of intelligence, there would still be no good reason to assert a genetic link between race and intelligence (for all the reasons stated elsewhere in this FAQ). Isn't there research showing that there are genetic differences between races?
Yes and no. A geneticist could analyze a DNA sample and then in many cases make an accurate statement about that person's race, but no single gene or group of genes has ever been found that defines a person's race. Such variations make up a minute fraction of the total genome, less even than the amount of genetic material that varies from one individual to the next. It's also important to keep in mind that racial classifications are socially constructed, in the sense that how a person is classified racially depends on perceptions, racial definitions, and customs in their society and can often change when they travel to a different country or when social conventions change over time (see here for more details). So how can different races look different, without having different genes?
They do have some different genes, but the genes that vary between any two given races will not necessarily vary between two other races. Race is defined phenotypically, not genotypically, which means it's defined by observable traits. When a geneticist looks at the genetic differences between two races, there are differences in the genes that regulate those traits, and that's it. So comparing Africans to Europeans will show differences in genes that regulate skin color, hair texture, nose and lip shape, and other observable traits. But the rest of the genetic code will be essentially the same. In fact, there is much less genetic material that regulates the traits used to define the races than there is that regulates traits that vary from person to person. In other words, if you compare the genomes of two individuals within the same race, the results will likely differ more from each other than a comparison of the average genomes of two races. If you've ever heard people saying that the races "are more alike than two random people" or words to that effect, this is what they were referring to. Why do people insist that race is "biologically meaningless"?
Mostly because it is. As explained in the answer to the previous question, race isn't defined by genetics. Race is nothing but an arbitrary list of traits, because race is defined by observable features. The list isn't even consistent from one comparison to another. We distinguish between African and European people on the basis of skin color, but what about Middle Eastern, Asian, and Native American people? They all have more or less the same skin color. We distinguish African and Asian people from European people by the shape of some of their facial features, but what about Native American and Middle Eastern people? They have the same features as the European people, or close enough to engender confusion when skin color is not discernible. Australian Aborigines share numerous traits with African people and are frequently considered "Black" along with them, yet they are descended from an ancestral Asian population and have been a distinct cultural and ethnic group for fifty thousand years. These standards of division are arbitrary and capricious; the one drop rule shows that visible differences were not even respected at the time they were still in use. But IQ is at least somewhat heritable. Doesn't that mean that observed differences in IQ test performance between ancestral population groups must have a genetic component?
This is a common misconception, sometimes termed the "hereditarian fallacy". [1] In fact, the heritability of differences between individuals and families within a given population group tells us nothing about the heritability of differences between population groups. [2] [3] As geneticist and neuroscientist Kevin Mitchell explains:
What about all the psychometricians who claim there's a genetic link?
The short answer is: they're not geneticists. The longer answer is that there remains a well-documented problem of scientific racism, which has infiltrated psychometry (see e.g. [5] and [6]). Psychometry is a field where people who advocate scientific racism can push racist ideas without being constantly contradicted by the very work they're doing. And when their data did contradict their racist views, many prominent advocates of scientific racism simply falsified their work or came up with creative ways to explain away the problems. See such figures as Cyril Burt, J. Phillipe Rushton, Richard Lynn, and Hans Eysenck, who are best known in the scientific community today for the poor methodological quality of their work, their strong advocacy for a genetic link between race and intelligence, and in some cases getting away with blatant fraud for many years. Isn't it a conspiracy theory to claim that psychometricians do this?
No. It is a well-documented fact that there is an organized group of psychometricians pushing for mainstream acceptance of racist, unscientific claims. See this, this and this, as well as our article on scientific racism for more information. Isn't this just political correctness?
No, it's science. As a group of scholars including biological anthropologists Agustín Fuentes of Princeton and Jonathan M. Marks of the University of North Carolina explain: "while it is true that most researchers in the area of human genetics and human biological diversity no longer allocate significant resources and time to the race/IQ discussion, and that moral concerns may play an important role in these decisions, an equally fundamental reason why researchers do not engage with the thesis is that empirical evidence shows that the whole idea itself is unintelligible and wrong-headed". These authors compare proponents of a genetic link between race and IQ to creationists, vaccine skeptics, and climate change deniers. [7] At the same time, researchers who choose to pursue this line of inquiry have in no way been hindered from doing so, as is made clear by this article: [8]. It's just that all the evidence they find points to environmental rather than genetic causes for observed differences in average IQ-test performance between racial groups. What about the surveys which say that most "intelligence experts" believe in some degree of genetic linkage between race and IQ?
Is there really no evidence at all for a genetic link between race and intelligence?
No evidence for such a link has ever been presented in the scientific community. Much data has been claimed to be evidence by advocates of scientific racism, but each of these claims has been universally rejected by geneticists. Statistical arguments claiming to detect the signal of such a difference in polygenic scores have been refuted as fundamentally methodologically flawed (see e.g. [9]), and neither genetics nor neuroscience are anywhere near the point where a mechanistic explanation could even be meaningfully proposed (see e.g. [10]). This is why the question of a genetic link between race and intelligence is largely considered pseudoscience; it is assumed to exist primarily by advocates of scientific racism, and in these cases the belief is based on nothing but preconceived notions about race. What is the current state of the science on a link between intelligence and race?
Please see the article itself for an outline of the scientific consensus. What is the basis for Wikipedia's consensus on how to treat the material?
Wikipedia editors have considered this topic in detail and over an extended period. In short, mainstream science treats the claim that genetics explains the observable differences in IQ between races as a fringe theory, so we use our own guidelines on how to treat such material when editing our articles on the subject. Please refer to the following past discussions:
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Scientific Consensus
At this point WP:DENY is probably the best approach here. Wikipedia talk pages are not a WP:FORUM. Generalrelative (talk) 23:10, 4 April 2023 (UTC) |
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The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it. |
I see in the FAQ section of this page that folks are trying to claim no evidence for a genetic link between race and intelligence as a "scientific consensus" viewpoint despite the fact that actual scientific consensus is so rare that the phrase could be considered an oxymoron. Let's take a look at the claims related to that FAQ and maybe delete that section? No evidence for such a connection has ever been published. The bell curve research, SAT scores, army entrance scores - most race/IQ data has shown a gap that is challenging to explain exclusively through environmental factors. A statement signed by 143 senior human population geneticists states categorically that genetics research in no way supports the view that "recent natural selection has led to worldwide differences in I.Q. test results". 143 academics choosing to virtue-signal on a topic likely to help their career doesn't speak to a broad scientific consensus. Top academics signed a letter condemning the COVID lab leak theory too. As understanding of the human genome and the science of population genetics advances, it has become increasingly clear that race is not a biologically meaningful way to categorize human population groups. See for example this statement by the American Association of Physical Anthropologists. That's just saying the terms of the discussion are ill-defined. So you're welcome to say there's a "scientific consensus" that race is a poorly-defined concept - that's a fact. Even if we take ancestral population groups to be proxies for race, most subject-matter experts agree that cognitive differences between such such groups are unlikely to exist. "most" doesn't amount to a scientific consensus - you'd be fair to say that "most" university professors vote for the political left but that doesn't mean there is a "scientific consensus" that the left is better Extensive evidence has been published which indicates that observed differences in IQ test performance between racial groups are environmental in origin. 100% environmental in origin? I don't think so. That's like claiming that Shaq is good at basketball because he trained a lot. The guy is also tall. Most researchers view the idea of a genetic connection between race and intelligence as scientifically obsolete. Sure, they view race and intelligence as fuzzy, unscientific topics that they don't want to get into. That's not the same as saying that there is a scientific consensus. There is a scientific consensus that the earth orbits around the sun. There is little scientific consensus on the topic of race and intelligence. Also this phrase is not the kind of wording that should appear on a supposedly neutral wiki page. Brandon (talk) 21:37, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
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Scientific consensus in the lead
Recently @AndyTheGrump reverted my edit that corrected an inaccuracy in the lead about scientific consensus
I replaced the scientific consensus is that genetics does not explain differences in IQ test performance between groups, and that observed differences are environmental in origin.
with the scientific consensus is that intelligence is a complex trait that is influenced by both genetic and environmental factors.
exactly as stated in the cited source of medline plus
he argued that MedlinePlus which is produced by United States National Library of Medicine is not WP:RS, calling it “misuse of source” even though these are the exact words of the source, and claimed it irrelevant even though the title of the article itself is “Race and intelligence” Chafique (talk) 11:52, 24 May 2023 (UTC)
- Even setting aside the reliability issue, you cited a source that is about genetic variation between individuals - this article is about variation between groups. That is an extremely important distinction. See the many, many discussions about this on this talk page and its archives. MrOllie (talk) 12:01, 24 May 2023 (UTC)
- Yes, the individual vs group distinction is important. And this sentence of the lead has been repeatedly discussed in the archives, including in several RfCs about the scientific consensus. DFlhb (talk) 08:42, 25 May 2023 (UTC)
- Please look at the context of your edit. The lede, like the rest of the article, is discussing supposed differences in IQ between groups ('races'). Your source isn't. Furthermore, the lede is supposed to summarise material discussed in depth in the article body. The article body cites multiple in-depth analyses of the actual topic in question. It is entirely inappropriate to try to counter them in the lede by citing a MedLine webpage aimed at a lay audience. There is a multitude of peer-reviewed and subject-expert written content available on the subject, and those are the sources we should be citing. MedLine is fine for it's intended purpose (providing background information on medical topics to the general public) but it isn't a peer-reviewed journal, and it isn't a reliable source for topics it doesn't even discuss. AndyTheGrump (talk) 12:11, 24 May 2023 (UTC)
Chafique Medline plus is just a digital library run by the National Institutes of Health. They index papers from academic journals, including good and bad. You can find papers purporting to prove demonic possession in MedLine. Inclusion in Medline does not make something good by default. The papers are published in journals (the actual source), not Medline, which simply indexes them. Zenomonoz (talk) 12:12, 25 May 2023 (UTC)
Should this article discuss the hereditarianism movement itself?
I'd support adding a sentence to the last lead paragraph about the clear political goals (segregation/eugenics/"racial awareness") of the hereditarian position (based on this paper, page 6), and adding a corresponding paragraph to the body, maybe in the "Policy relevance and ethics" section. Some of this stuff is mentioned in the History section but only in passing; most of this article focuses on the science, but not on the movement linked to that science, and that movement's false claims (that their research is suppressed, "taboo", or that opponents are engaged in "blank-slate" science denial). The paper I linked addresses this at length and is a good source if we decide to cover this. DFlhb (talk) 08:46, 25 May 2023 (UTC)
Frederick Douglass
Please be careful when discussing Frederick Douglass. He was the half black, half white offspring of a plantation owner. He is also very important to the issue of Blackface. When new slave families arrived on plantations, plantation owners often allowed their children to interact with the slave kids. Whenever this happened, the black kids would laugh at anything the white kids did, funny or not. This condition was picked up by the whites, it was imitated in traveling circuses, on stage, in vaudeville, and in silent film. It was so bad that when Douglass gained fame, he was told to never smile in pictures taken of him, or it would remind people of the condition. So, of the hundreds of pictures taken of Frederick Douglass, none show him with a smile. This, despite being instructed to ally himself with the Suffragette Movement, having two wives (one white), and five children. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lord Milner (talk • contribs) 23:35, 12 August 2023 (UTC)
- What edit are you suggesting? --Hob Gadling (talk) 17:28, 17 September 2023 (UTC)
No evidence for Jewish IQ advantage
Why was this content deleted? — Preceding unsigned comment added by CuriousCrafter123 (talk • contribs) 17:55, 15 September 2023 (UTC)
- My mistake. Sorry. I've self-reverted. NightHeron (talk) 18:05, 15 September 2023 (UTC)
- @NightHeron I'm not going to complain if you think this content is really necessary (though I don't see the point myself), but can you fix the sfn multiple-target error that you've re-introduced please? Thanks, Wham2001 (talk) 10:47, 17 September 2023 (UTC)
- What error are you referring to? I'm not familiar with the term "multiple-target error". Thanks. NightHeron (talk) 11:16, 17 September 2023 (UTC)
- See Category:Harv and Sfn multiple-target errors – it's where a shortened footnote (reference using {{harv}}, {{sfn}} or one of their relatives) points to more than one long-form citation. The solution in this case is to convert the inline reference to Nisbet et al. (2021a) to a shortened footnote (sfn) citation. If you edit articles using shortened footnotes more than very occasionally, I would recomned installing this script, which highlights various kinds of problems with shortened references in a clear and helpful manner. Best, Wham2001 (talk) 17:11, 17 September 2023 (UTC)
- The edit in question was put in not by me, but by CuriousCrafter123 two days ago. I've never used the "shortened footnote form", don't know how to use it or how to correct it when misused, and have already spent almost an hour trying unsuccessfully to understand it. If you want to revert CC123's edit, I won't object. I thought the content was relevant and well-sourced, but it's not crucial for this article. NightHeron (talk) 18:04, 17 September 2023 (UTC)
- Yeah, harv and sfn are not obvious the first few times. I've converted the reference. Best wishes, Wham2001 (talk) 19:51, 17 September 2023 (UTC)
- The edit in question was put in not by me, but by CuriousCrafter123 two days ago. I've never used the "shortened footnote form", don't know how to use it or how to correct it when misused, and have already spent almost an hour trying unsuccessfully to understand it. If you want to revert CC123's edit, I won't object. I thought the content was relevant and well-sourced, but it's not crucial for this article. NightHeron (talk) 18:04, 17 September 2023 (UTC)
- See Category:Harv and Sfn multiple-target errors – it's where a shortened footnote (reference using {{harv}}, {{sfn}} or one of their relatives) points to more than one long-form citation. The solution in this case is to convert the inline reference to Nisbet et al. (2021a) to a shortened footnote (sfn) citation. If you edit articles using shortened footnotes more than very occasionally, I would recomned installing this script, which highlights various kinds of problems with shortened references in a clear and helpful manner. Best, Wham2001 (talk) 17:11, 17 September 2023 (UTC)
- What error are you referring to? I'm not familiar with the term "multiple-target error". Thanks. NightHeron (talk) 11:16, 17 September 2023 (UTC)
- @NightHeron I'm not going to complain if you think this content is really necessary (though I don't see the point myself), but can you fix the sfn multiple-target error that you've re-introduced please? Thanks, Wham2001 (talk) 10:47, 17 September 2023 (UTC)
There has been some edit warring over this, and the claim has been made in an edit summary that the sentence misrepresents the source. I took the time to reread the relevant section just now, and I see the authors are quite clear that there isn't any real evidence that Jews (or Ashkenazi Jews in particular) in fact have higher IQs on average than other populations. As the authors emphasize, All available studies, however, are based on samples of convenience.
They then go on to discuss the question of to what we should attribute the greater overall intellectual ability popularly attributed to Jews
. But "popularly attributed" does not imply that there is in fact scientific evidence. The closest thing to evidence that they cite are two estimates comparing Jews in Britain and America to White non-Jews in the same countries, and one of these estimates is by notorious quack Richard Lynn. All that said, I'm not especially committed to retaining the edit, which was added by a brand new account (it's been discussed before, e.g., whether Jewish intelligence is relevant to this article at all, given that there is some question as to whether "Jewish" is a racial category) but I don't think that the rationale that was given for removing it in this instance makes sense. Generalrelative (talk) 01:42, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
- You are confusing evidence with conclusive evidence. The authors explicitly state that there does exist weak evidence in favor of the proposition, and discuss it as if it were true. Note, for example, that rather than discussing why the belief may have come about that Ashki Jews have higher IQs, they instead discuss a theory that would explain a higher AJ average IQ. They describe the theory as "an intriguing suggestion", a descriptor very unlikely to be used about a theory of a mechanism explaining something you believe to be untrue.
- For a couple other examples: other than this joke study, there have not been any studies done to the highest level of rigor to show that parachutes prevent death. Relative to the standard in the field (randomized controlled trials), the evidence we have that parachutes prevent death is weak. On the other hand, there is lots of strong evidence (RCTs, meta-analyses, the whole lot being peer-reviewed) of certain psychic abilities in humans (ESP). There's also equally strong evidence against. But while most people and scientists would likely say there is no chance ESP is real, the statement that there is no evidence of it is false, and the statement that there is only weak evidence that parachutes save lives is (technically) true.
- You're right that "popularly attributed" doesn't imply that there is evidence, nor do I mean to suggest it does. However, you ignore the rest of the sentence: "supported by (weak) data". This is explicitly saying that there exists evidence, but that the evidence should not be taken as conclusive. I genuinely do not understand how this could be read any other way. Peaux (talk) 05:35, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
- I could scrawl any false statistics I wanted on on a cocktail napkin. Perhaps I could even find someone willing to described it as "intriguing". That napkin would, technically, be a kind of 'evidence', but to present it as "some evidence" would be either disingenuous or completely and dramatically missing the point. Richard Lynn's fringe pseudoscientific nonsense is just about as legitimate as that hypothetical napkin-scrawling would be. It's perfectly possible for a theory to be intriguing without being supported by a shred of real evidence. Grayfell (talk) 05:53, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
- That napkin would not be evidence. Samples of convenience, however, are. If your claim is that they all falsified data, as you hypothetically did on your hypothetical napkin, then you'd be right to say there is no evidence. But you have provided nothing to back up that claim, and the source cited certainly doesn't either.
- You can say that you consider the data that exist to be nonsense, but the source cited in the article, supposedly by seven top scholars in the field, does not.
- And you misunderstand the "intriguing" comment/argument. They are referring to the proposed mechanism, not the proposed effect, as intriguing; and my argument is that people generally do not consider proposed mechanisms for effects they believe not to exist, to be intriguing.
- Again, they explicitly state that there does exist weak evidence of the proposition. Whether you believe that evidence or not, the statement that no evidence exists is false. Peaux (talk) 06:35, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
- You are right that I haven't provided evidence that Lynn falsified his data, because this is a Wikipedia talk page and that would be WP:OR. Fortunately, dozens of published scientists have already done that work for us. We have already had many, many, many discussions of Lynn, as well as Cochran, Hardy, and Harpending, on these and related talk pages. This is junk science and per WP:FRINGE, should not be legitimized on Wikipedia. If you want real evidence that Lynn falsified, William H. Tucker (psychologist)'s work comes highly recommended, or if you want a more approachable work, Superior: The Return of Race Science is pretty good despite (and because) of the complaints of the scientific racists it documents. For Harpending etc., off the top of my head, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ashkenazi Jewish intelligence (2nd nomination) is one previous discussion about this. As I mentioned on that discussion, they are not serious scholars and do not deserve the benefit of the doubt. If they are right about any aspect of their 'intriguing' theories, it's almost certainly a coincidence or "stopped-clock" kind of thing, and not because of the merits of their supposed research. Grayfell (talk) 06:49, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
- All that is well and good, but if true, then that would cast significant doubt on the legitimacy of the source cited in this article, which treats them as legitimate work. Peaux (talk) 06:56, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
- You are right that I haven't provided evidence that Lynn falsified his data, because this is a Wikipedia talk page and that would be WP:OR. Fortunately, dozens of published scientists have already done that work for us. We have already had many, many, many discussions of Lynn, as well as Cochran, Hardy, and Harpending, on these and related talk pages. This is junk science and per WP:FRINGE, should not be legitimized on Wikipedia. If you want real evidence that Lynn falsified, William H. Tucker (psychologist)'s work comes highly recommended, or if you want a more approachable work, Superior: The Return of Race Science is pretty good despite (and because) of the complaints of the scientific racists it documents. For Harpending etc., off the top of my head, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ashkenazi Jewish intelligence (2nd nomination) is one previous discussion about this. As I mentioned on that discussion, they are not serious scholars and do not deserve the benefit of the doubt. If they are right about any aspect of their 'intriguing' theories, it's almost certainly a coincidence or "stopped-clock" kind of thing, and not because of the merits of their supposed research. Grayfell (talk) 06:49, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
- I could scrawl any false statistics I wanted on on a cocktail napkin. Perhaps I could even find someone willing to described it as "intriguing". That napkin would, technically, be a kind of 'evidence', but to present it as "some evidence" would be either disingenuous or completely and dramatically missing the point. Richard Lynn's fringe pseudoscientific nonsense is just about as legitimate as that hypothetical napkin-scrawling would be. It's perfectly possible for a theory to be intriguing without being supported by a shred of real evidence. Grayfell (talk) 05:53, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
For those without access, here is an extended quotation from the article in question. Generalrelative (talk) 05:59, 22 September 2023 (UTC) |
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The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it. |
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- I'm going to leave aside the bulk of what you're arguing because it seems to me to be a barrel of red herrings (if you'll forgive the phrase). The fact of the matter is that Cochran et al.'s hypothesis is in no way evidence that Jews have higher IQs than others. I will say, by the way, that I find the use of the term "IQ advantage" to be misleading (the sources sometimes use it, unfortunately, but not in this instance). We're really just talking about average performance on a specific set of tests, and in order to make claims about that we'd need systematic studies, i.e. most certainly not "samples of convenience". And the authors are clear that such systematic studies did not exist at the time of writing. Generalrelative (talk) 06:14, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
- You misunderstand my argument. Of course, a hypothesis is not evidence. However, the fact that the authors of the source discussed a hypothesized mechanism for the proposed effect is evidence that they, who (I believe) you described as seven top scholars in the field, find the proposed effect credible enough to care about how it might be explained. The hypothesis isn't evidence, but the fact that they discuss it is evidence they believe to some extent in the effect you claim there is no evidence for. As for whether samples of convenience should be considered evidence, you're right that they are not sufficiently conclusive evidence. But you are substituting your personal judgement for that of the authors of the source. They explicitly describe the effect in question as "supported by (weak) data". You have consistently ignored that the text of the source directly contradicts the claim made in the article. I'll also note, the standards you propose are an isolated demand for rigor. There are lots of effects in psychology for which the only evidence is samples of convenience (college students in psych classes or in general). We do not describe those effects as being supported by "no evidence". Peaux (talk) 06:52, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
- I'm going to leave aside the bulk of what you're arguing because it seems to me to be a barrel of red herrings (if you'll forgive the phrase). The fact of the matter is that Cochran et al.'s hypothesis is in no way evidence that Jews have higher IQs than others. I will say, by the way, that I find the use of the term "IQ advantage" to be misleading (the sources sometimes use it, unfortunately, but not in this instance). We're really just talking about average performance on a specific set of tests, and in order to make claims about that we'd need systematic studies, i.e. most certainly not "samples of convenience". And the authors are clear that such systematic studies did not exist at the time of writing. Generalrelative (talk) 06:14, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
Evidence of Ashkenazi Jewish IQ advantage
The article currently reads "There is no evidence for a Jewish IQ advantage." This statement is not supported by the article cited. I'll outline here the relevant section of the article, "Jewish—Non-Jewish Differences in IQ". The first paragraph says there is "little good evidence" about the IQ of Ashkenazi Jews, then citing three studies which provide some evidence of higher Ashkenazi Jewish IQ; they say these studies are samples of convenience. They seem to be convinced that such a difference exists. Rather than arguing there is no difference, they instead go on to discuss in the second paragraph the source of the difference, focusing on Cochran et al.'s sphingolipid explanation. They do not believe there is strong enough evidence in favor of this theory, but still do not believe to be affirmatively untrue, as they still regard it to be "an intriguing suggestion". In their third paragraph, they note that even the highest estimates of Ashkenazi Jewish IQ wouldn't account for the observed differences in Ashkenazi Jewish accomplishment. This is the entirety of their treatment of Ashkenazi Jewish IQ.
There is no bad-faith interpretation here, this is the straightforward, plain reading of the source material. Even if you think one source is sufficient to establish the existence of academic consensus, this source does not suffice, as it directly contradicts the claim currently made in the article. The authors explicitly say that there exists evidence/data in favor of the proposition. Where am I wrong here?
If you wanted to say "According to such-and-such authors, there is 'little good evidence' for an Ashkenazi Jewish IQ advantage", that would be supported by the source, though it would be somewhat biased towards what you want to be true. But the claim that there is no evidence is straightforwardly false. Peaux (talk) 01:47, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
- See my post just above where I address this. Let's limit the conversation to a single thread. Thanks, Generalrelative (talk) 01:52, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
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