Talk:Race and intelligence

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)

I'd like to insist; I think it would benefit this article if we covered the false "meta-claims" associated with race and intelligence, like claims of suppression of 'legitimate' research, depictions of respected mainstream academics as blank-slatist ideologues, etc. I may do bold edits in this direction later. DFlhb (talk) 08:35, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

The answer to this question depends entirely on how many reliable, secondary sources you can find. Sources like these [11][12][13] might be argued to add up to some sort of brief statement, but be aware that any substantive addition to this article is likely to attract a new wave of meatpuppetry, so make sure you step correct. It's also worth noting that there are hereditarians and then there are race-and-intelligence hereditarians who fail to grasp the basic population-genetics-101 fact that individual-level heritability does not imply heritable difference at the level of population groups. Though the latter group like to call themselves simply "hereditarians" –– presumably in an effort to falsely cast those who criticize them as critics of hereditarianism writ large –– it's actually their scientific illiteracy that's the problem. Generalrelative (talk) 15:52, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

I'll also add: the subsidiary article History of the race and intelligence controversy has a somewhat lower bar to entry. Perhaps it would be best to begin there and then evaluate whether some of that content can be incorporated into the main article? Generalrelative (talk) 15:56, 16 October 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)

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)

For those without access, here is an extended quotation from the article in question. Generalrelative (talk) 05:59, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
There is little good evidence about just what IQ levels are typical for Ashkenazi Jews. (There is even less evidence available for Sephardic Jews, and in the rest of this section “Jews” should be taken to mean “Ashkenazi Jews of Eu- ropean descent.”) Jewish IQs have been variously esti- mated to be 7–15 points higher than those of White non- Jews in Britain and America (Flynn, 1991; Lynn, 2004, 2006). All available studies, however, are based on samples of convenience. It is not clear to what we should attribute the greater overall intellectual ability popularly attributed to Jews and supported by (weak) data. It is certainly possible to invoke cultural explanations, and there are numerous armchair genetic theories as well. One genetic theory may have more substance to it than the others. This is the “sphingolipid” theory of Cochran, Hardy, and Harpending (2005). Coch- ran et al. noted that Jews are subject to several distinctive genetic conditions that involve an excess of sphingolip- ids—the substance that forms part of the insulating outer sheaths that allow nerve cells to transmit electrical signals and encourage growth of dendrites. These illnesses include Tay-Sachs disease, Niemann-Pick disease, and Gaucher’s disease. Having too many of these sphingolipids is fatal or at least likely to result in serious illness that can prevent reproduction. Why does natural selection not eliminate these diseases? Cochran et al. enlisted the sickle-cell ane- mia analogy. The sickle-cell gene produces illness for individuals who have two copies of it (one from each parent). But those with only one copy of the gene are provided with protection against malaria. Cochran et al. argued that because Jews were segregated into trade and finance since their arrival in Europe in the 8th century AD, intelligence conferred a larger reproductive advantage for them than for others. The main evidence in favor of the sphingolipid theory is that Jews with Gaucher’s disease are more likely to be working in occupations demanding ex- tremely high IQ than are other Jews. No direct test of the association of the genes for these diseases with intelligence has been made, so the theory remains merely an intriguing suggestion. It is important to note that even at the highest esti- mates we have of Jewish IQ, Jewish accomplishment ex- ceeds what would be predicted on the basis of IQ alone. Nisbett (2009) has argued that the numbers of Jewish Ivy Leaguers, professors at elite colleges, Supreme Court clerks, and Nobel Prize winners are greater than one would expect even if average Jewish IQ were 115. He has also noted that remarkable as the superior achievement of Jews is, the achievement difference between Jews and non-Jews is far less extreme than differences between groups in many other comparisons that cannot be explained on purely ge- netic grounds, such as the achievements of the Italians versus the English in the 15th century, of the English versus the Italians after the 18th century, of Arabs versus Europeans in the 8th century, of Europeans versus Arabs after the 14th century, and of New Englanders versus Southerners throughout American history.

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 have misunderstood nothing. "Weak data" is scientist-talk for "no evidence". We've had similar discussions many times before on this talk page and the consensus is always the same. The authors of the review are certainly entertaining Cochran et al.'s argument, but they also present a pretty compelling case to reject the whole premise of a genetic Jewish IQ advantage in the final sentence of the section. In any case, see below. Generalrelative (talk) 06:59, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

They present no case at all that the existing evidence should be ignored. As for the final sentence, it's a non sequitur. They say that a higher mean IQ, even if true, would be insufficient to explain the differences in achievement observed. This has no bearing on whether the claim is true or not.

I'm glad to see you're making the right decision, albeit disappointed, of course, in your reason for it. Peaux (talk) 07:30, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

Respectfully, please give the ill-placed moralizing a rest. I've quoted the entire relevant section above so that others can make up their own minds. It's time to give them a chance to weigh in if they'd like. Generalrelative (talk) 14:17, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

After giving this some thought, I'm going to come down on the side of removing this content –– though not, I should emphasize, for any of the reasons raised by Miladragon3/Peaux. The fact remains that the sentence refers to "Jewish IQ advantage" which is a fundamentally misleading phrase. The previous sentences are about IQ test scores, so to fit in thematically we'd need to revise it to say that there's no good evidence for what the average IQ of Jews is. If folks think that's important to say here, that's fine, but I find it awkward. If you have nothing substantive to say about it, why bring it up? And this is leaving aside the concern that I raised above about Jews not necessarily being a racial grouping. On the whole, I just don't think the sentence as-is fits and I don't think a "fixed" version really adds much to the article. Generalrelative (talk) 06:59, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

It seems to me that a context-free statement that "There is no evidence for a Jewish IQ advantage" is entirely inappropriate. It seems to have been added because it expects readers to already be familiar with a rather esoteric debate concerning Ashkenazi Jews (not Jews in general). If this particular debate was of real significance to the 'race and intelligence' topic, and could be demonstrated to be so by citing sources which argued this, there might be a case for discussing it, while providing a proper context, but slapping in a 'no evidence' claim about something not previously discussed it just bad writing, even ignoring the vary many obvious problems involved in implying in Wikipedia's voice that Jews are a 'race' - an implication which absolutely does not belong in any serious discussion of a scientific topic. AndyTheGrump (talk) 14:41, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, I dug into this a bit more and I have reason to suspect that the burner account used to add this sentence was R&I LTA Fq90, possibly just trying to stir the pot. If anyone's curious I'll be happy to discuss via email. I'm going to go ahead and remove the disputed content for now. But if other experienced editors would like to take ownership of the content and re-add, I won't stand in the way. Generalrelative (talk) 00:24, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

That makes sense. If restored, it should be rephrased to more accurately reflect the cited source. Grayfell (talk) 00:23, 24 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)

Lede problem

The phrase in the lede “Further complicating the issue, modern science has shown race to be a social construct rather than a biological reality” masks controversy and is not appropriate verbiage for an encyclopedic explanation of science. Science has not “shown” race to “be” a social construct. Some scientific perspectives have characterized race as a social construct, and more commonly as being more socially constructed than biologically real. But some scientists maintain that race is strongly biological. We should reveal controversy. Zanahary (talk) 16:01, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

There is already a strong consensus about this over at Race (human categorization), so it won't be relitigated here. But I'll be happy to explain the basics of why we phrase this the way we do.

Per WP:MEDRS, consensus statements by major scientific bodies are among the highest quality sources on scientific topics.

Here's what the American Association of Biological Anthropologists (i.e. biologists who specialize in the species homo sapiens) says:

Race does not provide an accurate representation of human biological variation. It was never accurate in the past, and it remains inaccurate when referencing contemporary human populations. Humans are not divided biologically into distinct continental types or racial genetic clusters. Instead, the Western concept of race must be understood as a classification system that emerged from, and in support of, European colonialism, oppression, and discrimination. It thus does not have its roots in biological reality, but in policies of discrimination. Because of that, over the last five centuries, race has become a social reality that structures societies and how we experience the world. In this regard, race is real, as is racism, and both have real biological consequences.

They go on in slightly more granular detail to explain:

Racial categories do not provide an accurate picture of human biological variation. Variation exists within and among populations across the planet, and groups of individuals can be differentiated by patterns of similarity and difference, but these patterns do not align with socially-defined racial groups (such as whites and blacks) or continentally-defined geographic clusters (such as Africans, Asians, and Europeans). What has been characterized as “race” does not constitute discrete biological groups or evolutionarily independent lineages. Furthermore, while physical traits like skin color and hair texture are often emphasized in racial classification, and assumptions are often made about the pattern of genetic diversity relative to continental geography, neither follows racial lines. The distribution of biological variation in our species demonstrates that our socially-recognized races are not biological categories. While human racial groups are not biological categories, “race” as a social reality — as a way of structuring societies and experiencing the world — is very real. The racial groups we recognize in the West have been socially, politically, and legally constructed over the last five centuries.

So far, in the very extensive debates that have been had on this topic over the years, no one has come close to providing anything like this kind of source arguing that race has a biological meaning. That's why we state it as a fact rather than an opinion that race is socially constructed, per WP:YESPOV. Generalrelative (talk) 17:07, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

But controversy exists, doesn’t it? And it’s a controversy central to the article topic? Zanahary (talk) 20:04, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

Not really, no. If you want to get into the weeds a bit more, here's a much more technical consensus statement on the issue, published earlier this year by the National Academies of Science: Using Population Descriptors in Genetics and Genomics Research: A New Framework for an Evolving Field. In most other cases I'd encourage you to go to the main article on the topic –– i.e. Talk:Race (human categorization) –– and start a discussion there, but in this instance the issue has already been discussed to death, so I'll suggest rather that you drop it. Generalrelative (talk) 20:40, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

You can find a minority view on almost any topic, but Wikipedia does not treat the minority views as equal to the mainstream ones. See WP:YESPOV (as Generalrelative correctly just cited), WP:FALSEBALANCE, etc. MrOllie (talk) 20:48, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

Systemic encyclopaedic editorial bias

The introduction requires removal of editorial bias for "blank slatism", which is a peculiar view of human nature in which all observed human group differences have a complete environmental origin. At a minimum, it needs to be made clear that many claims in the first paragraph of the introduction are disputed:

Discussions of race and intelligence – specifically, claims of differences in intelligence along racial lines – have appeared in both popular science and academic research since the modern concept of race was first introduced. With the inception of IQ testing in the early 20th century, differences in average test performance between racial groups were observed, though these differences have fluctuated and in many cases steadily decreased over time. Complicating the issue, modern science has shown race to be a socially constructed phenomenon rather than a biological reality, and there are various conflicting definitions of intelligence. In particular, the validity of IQ testing as a metric for human intelligence is disputed. Today, the scientific consensus is that genetics does not explain differences in IQ test performance between groups, and that observed differences are environmental in origin.

Here is a neutral version of the introduction first paragraph which takes into account current research;

Discussions of race and intelligence – specifically, claims of differences in intelligence along racial lines – have appeared in both popular science and academic research. With the inception of IQ testing in the early 20th century, differences in average test performance between racial groups have been observed, though these differences have fluctuated and in many cases steadily decreased over time. Likewise, although empirical racial classification attempts to identify biological (super)populations or subspecies, with modern approaches automatically clusterizing species biodiversity, historic categorization has involved arbitrarily discretized social constructs (e.g. in demographic surveys). Furthermore, there have been alternate definitions of intelligence proposed, in which the validity of IQ testing as a metric for human intelligence is disputed. There is currently no scientific consensus on the relative contribution of genetics/environment to IQ test performance between populations. Existing empirical methods exhibit limitations; for example twin studies (differences in phenotypic treatment prevent controlled experimentation), GWAS (divergent evolution of sample populations prevent comparison), etc.

I understand that the systemic encyclopaedic editorial bias for "blank slatism" likely relates to an RfC on racial hereditarianism. [14] [15] Richardbrucebaxter (talk) 04:06, 26 November 2023 (UTC)