Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Race and intelligence (4th nomination)

Race and intelligence

AfDs for this article:

• Articles for deletion/Race and intelligence
• Articles for deletion/Race and intelligence (3rd nomination)
• Articles for deletion/Race and intelligence (4th nomination)
• Articles for deletion/Race and intelligence (Comparison of explanations)
• Articles for deletion/Race and intelligence (history)
• Articles for deletion/Race and intelligence 2
• Articles for deletion/Race and intelligence in the United States

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Race and intelligence (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

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This is a serious and considered question as to whether this article should exist at all on Wikipedia.

The article Race and intelligence appears to be a notable subject because it is contentious and many people do talk about it. Indeed many people talk about this article. Nevertheless the notable aspects of the debate are twofold and are synthesised in this article to produce a debate on a contentious subject where all the information can be found elsewhere.

The two notable subjects are Race and genetics and the Heritability of IQ. Both those are notable subjects, but "race and intelligence" is a synthesis of the two. Because it is controversial it has WP:UNDUE visibility. It seems unlikely that anyone would argue that an article about "Race and prostate cancer" nor even "race and sickle cell disease" are notable articles, because although it is known that certain human populations have higher instances of these diseases, that fact is adequately covered in articles on the diseases themselves or asides elsewhere. Moreover in those two cases, the link between genetics and the disease is known and understood. In the case of intelligence, there is simply no evidence of a genetic link between race and intelligence. The very existence of this article appears to take sides on the issue - making a question out of an issue that is a non question. See for instance, Stop talking about race and IQ.

The article itself is written as bi-pole argument between two extremes, and all editors of the page appear to be broadly in agreement that this is not correct (even though they are not in agreement as to what to do about it). There have been recent edit wars as some want to remove clearly WP:UNDUE material at once, and other editors believe that would leave the page unbalanced and WP:POV and argue a complete rewrite is necessary instead. Editors from both sides of the debate have mooted deletion of the page as a possible solution as per this talk section. In view of the highly problematic article structure, which contains a lot of WP:UNDUE weight on just two extremes of the debate, there is no salvageable or mergeable content and WP:TNT is called for.

An objection to the above argument may be that the above is true, and yet there is a notable disagreement as demonstrated by the Rushton and Jensen material in the article, and that this gives the article notability. However there is heavy WP:UNDUE here, and we already have an article that discusses the debate, which is "Scientific Racism". See particularly section Scientific racism#Interbellum to World War II and on to the end of the article. This fully covers, and in a much more balanced manner, the notability aspect of the debate. That is, it discusses that there is a debate, and describes what it is.

Redirects are WP:CHEAP so I believe deletion and a redirect to Heritability of IQ would be the best solution here, or else a redirect to either Scientific racism or Race and genetics. A disambiguation page would also be a suitable solution. Sirfurboy (talk) 06:44, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. Sirfurboy (talk) 06:44, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Social science-related deletion discussions. Sirfurboy (talk) 06:44, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

• Comment - Although automatically listed as a 4th nomination, there is no record of a 2nd nomination (unless the multiple page nomination that included this page and many others is counted). The proposer of what is listed as 3rd nomination was in error, so this is, in fact, the third nomination I believe. -- Sirfurboy (talk) 07:02, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

• Delete The title suggests that there's a causal connection between someone's race and intelligence, a claim that contradicts scientific consensus. Perhaps because of the title, the article is a magnet for people who wish to use Wikipedia to give credence to sources that push scientific racism. The article was mentioned by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an example of bias on Wikipedia, caused by the dominance of white male Americans among active editors and by the growth of the alt-right in America. Note that the article Scientific racism, which covers the topic, is compliant with WP:NPOV and WP:FRINGE and has none of these problems. NightHeron (talk) 12:08, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

@NightHeron: What if we just changed the title to remove any indication that race and intelligence are related? Mgasparin (talk) 22:01, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

@Mgasparin: Although the title is bad, it's only a symptom of a deeper problem, which is non-compliance with WP:NPOV and WP:FRINGE. Rather than thinking up a new title and then putting a lot of effort, with long contentious debates, into a total rewrite, it would be better to redirect Race and intelligence to one of the other articles covering the same subject, as suggested below by David Gerard. NightHeron (talk) 23:50, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, I get that. My suggestion was based on a desire to save the article given the amount of work that has been put into it over many years. Mgasparin (talk) 01:01, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

• Delete per NightHeron - the title presumes a link, it's a magnet for cranks and POV-pushing white supremacists, and scientific racism is the version that is reality-based. Redirect to scientific racism, probably, but any of the nom's suggestions are good - David Gerard (talk) 13:22, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
• Delete per nom and NightHeron. Whatever NPOV may be put into the article text, the page title itself is not neutral (by analogy: "XXX suprematism" is a NPOV-topic, "Inferiority of ZZZ" is not). Redirect to the NPOV-page scientific racism is a good solution. –Austronesier (talk) 14:03, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
• Delete per nom and all above. Unencyclopedic and harmful to the project. The WP:UNDUE and WP:NPOV violations are baked in by the title. Unclear that there ever could be an appropriate article at this title even in theory, and after all these years it's pretty clear that there never would be one. Support either salting or redirecting to scientific racism. -- Visviva (talk) 14:38, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
• Comment - Is anyone reading the earlier deletion discussions? I hadn't previously been aware that three past deletion attempts were all closed as keep, but that shows something about whether the article's topic is notable as a topic that's distinct from scientific racism. I find the comments in the third deletion discussion, in which almost everyone voted keep, especially informative. If the topic was notable in 2011, then it's notable now.

The reason I'm not voting either way yet is that I think the WP:TNT argument might be compelling. (I'm not sure yet.) Virtually everyone agrees that the article has major problems, but we haven't been able to agree on a course of action to address them. Instead of trying to get a consensus to update the article one section at a time, a simpler solution might be to just delete it and start over from scratch. I need to think about this for a while. 2600:1004:B168:C80E:5DF3:894E:7AC0:5C79 (talk) 15:01, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the comment and for considering carefully. I reviewed the previous discussions but the thing we must always remember in deletion discussions is that deletion is not a vote. It is the arguments that are made that are important. You can have 10 "delete per noms" and one good "keep" based on policy and the result is keep (or vice versa of course). Thus those previous deletion discussions are relevant only inasmuch as the points made then are pertinent and point to policy based reasons to keep. I reviewed all the keep comments in that AfD and they all boil down to "subject is notable" or "nomination does not make sense". It is for you to judge whether my nomination makes more sense, but you will see I have addressed notability in the nomination. The subject is notable for mention in an article, but I don't think it is notable for this article. Scientific Racism covers this, and as long as it does so adequately, this article is not required. It does not add anything because we already have a place for all the notable information. Once again, thanks for taking time to comment. -- Sirfurboy (talk) 15:45, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

• Keep. After reading the discussion below, I've concluded that the article should be kept. None of the deletion reasons seem to be well-supported by policy. Peregrine Fisher has already discussed problems with several of these reasons, but I'll address two others:

One of the deletion arguments being presented is that this article is a POV fork of either History of the race and intelligence controversy or Scientific racism. The explanation of POV forks at Wikipedia:Content_forking#Point_of_view_(POV)_forks says that if an alternate version of an article is created with a different viewpoint, "This second article is known as a 'POV fork' of the first". However, the Race and intelligence article predates both the "Scientific racism" article and the "History of the race and intelligence" controversy article. The Race and intelligence article was created in 2002, the Scientific racism article was created in 2004, and the History of the race and intelligence controversy was created in 2010. Therefore, if anything is a POV fork, those articles are POV forks of this one, not the reverse.

The strongest argument anyone has presented for deletion is based on WP:TNT, but this article does not seem like a case where that guideline was meant to apply. The examples that page gives of when deletion is appropriate are copyright violations and examples of paid advocacy, but this article is neither of those. The central problem with this article is that it reads as though the whole thing was written in 2013 (which it may have been; I haven't looked closely enough at its history to determine that). Normally, a problem like that could be fixed by updating the article.

The main reason it's nearly impossible to update this article is that even when there's a consensus on the talk page for a change, there is a small group of users who think it's acceptable to edit war to undo the change if they disapprove of it. But that's a user conduct problem, not a problem with the article itself. Some of those same users are now voting for deletion, which seems very disingenuous. If you're going to prevent the article from being improved, you shouldn't subsequently argue that the inability to improve it is a reason to delete it. 2600:1004:B11C:DD81:9097:4C1A:1A0B:AEA5 (talk) 04:58, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

Seems like a good solution, seeing as most of the arguments coming from the "the article is written from a WP:FRINGE" are in fact based around the topic of the article itself and the readers' possible interpretations of said topic. These arguments, in turn, lead to opinions such as that there is no need to mention the fact that IQ differences between ethnic groups exist (which both sides of the debate seem to agree is the scientific consensus) in the lede, which is now problematic for the other side.

Deleting the article and summarising its contents elsewhere will resolve this problem, which seems to be what's causing most of the disagreement on the Race and Intelligence article. However, the contents also need to be summarised adequately; for example, in the article "scientific racism", it is claimed that "a connection between race and intelligence" is "unsupported by available evidence", according to "critics", even though the scientific consensus is that there is good evidence for differences in IQ scores (a valid and reliable measure of intelligence) between self-identified races and ethnicities. As long all the relevant information pertinent to the topic of race and intelligence and notable enough to be mentioned is summarised adequately (which may entail creating a section on race and intelligence on the "scientific racism" article), I see no good reason why the article should be kept, given that it clearly causes more problems than it resolves. ^{O̲L̲D̲S̲T̲O̲N̲E̲}_{J̅A̅M̅E̅S̅} 16:20, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

Keep Upon further inspection, it would be pretty absurd for the article history of the race and intelligence controversy to exist without the article race and intelligence existing as well. It also seems like most editors' problems here stem from the article's title and not anything to do with the article's body instead. If that is the case, renaming the page would surely be a more efficient solution, especially given that the content of the article is obviously notable enough to be kept. ^{O̲L̲D̲S̲T̲O̲N̲E̲}_{J̅A̅M̅E̅S̅} 23:10, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

Thank you, Oldstone James, but I would note that history of the race and intelligence controversy is talking about all the issues that we are agree are notable regarding the controversy. There is then no reason to rehash the controversy itself on Wikipedia, as that article fully describes it. That is what this article is trying to do too. Wikipedia does not need this article. --Sirfurboy (talk) 23:34, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

In this case, merging the two articles would be the appropriate solution; the reason that I'm confused about why the article "race and intelligence" specifically needs to be deleted is that it is difficult to envision that a concept on its own might not be notable enough but its history would be. ^{O̲L̲D̲S̲T̲O̲N̲E̲}_{J̅A̅M̅E̅S̅} 23:51, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

I don't think there is any mergeable content in this article that is not already found in history of the race and intelligence controversy or scientific racism, or indeed The Bell Curve, Heritability of IQ or Race and genetics. That is why deletion makes sense. Thank you again for considering this carefully though. -- Sirfurboy (talk) 11:48, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

If I found one sentence that was worth merging somewhere, would you change your vote? Peregrine Fisher (talk) 16:55, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

• Delete - POV fork, already covered neutrally at History of the race and intelligence controversy. –dlthewave ☎ 17:31, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
• Delete per nom, this is at once a fork and a POV synthesis of topics covered by existing articles. Chiswick Chap (talk) 19:04, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
• Delete. This is superb analysis and it is exactly this sort of thing we should be encouraging to break the juggernaut of this problematic topic on Wikipedia. I tip my hat to Sirfurboy and Night Heron. jps (talk) 19:39, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
• Keep It's notable. It's referenced. Still working on NPOV. If we want to split or redirect or whatever we can do that later. Peregrine Fisher (talk) 20:39, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
  • Taking a look a the nom. First they say it is notable. Not a reason to delete (NARD). Then they say in their opinion this is not good science. NARD. Then they say there is edit warring, and UNDUE problems. NARD Then they say this is covered as a subsection in another article and in their opinion done correctly there. NARD (US mentions California as an extreme example) Finally they say they want to redirect it, which is basically saying this AfD should not have been started. They could have redirected with one edit. Probably start an RfC about that first, I guess. Anyways, seems to just be IDONTLIKEIT and I don't want to seek consensus for a redirect so AfD it is. Peregrine Fisher (talk) 20:28, 4 February 2020 (UTC)
    • Looks like an IGNOREALLRULES delete. But let's look at more of the arguments, cause it's fun.
    • NightHeron thinks the article is racist. So that's IDON'TLIKEIT. Correct me if I'm wrong.
    • DavidGerard same IDON'TLIKEIT
    • Austronesier same IDON'TLIKEIT
    • Visviva same IDON'TLIKEIT
    • dlthewave POV fork, still not a reason to delete, but it's better
    • Chiswick POV fork, again not a reason to delete, or salt or whatever
    • JPS seems to think it's racist also, again, corret me If I'm wrong.
    • Keep per me. Obviously the correct policy based decision, pretty much by definition. Peregrine Fisher (talk) 03:58, 5 February 2020 (UTC)
      • dlthewave said POV fork could be a valid delete reason.User_talk:Peregrine_Fisher#POV_forks He's making me question myself. My understanding is/was that a POV fork should just be redirected. Could be wrong about that one. Peregrine Fisher (talk) 05:46, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

They are correct per WP:DEL-REASON. Content forks should be deleted unless a suitable merge can be agreed. Rather than attempting to characterise other people's views, you might want to consider what mergeable content exists on this page that is not already found in any of the possible merge targets. I don't think there is any, and editor discussion on the page seemed to agree that the current content is problematic.

In that same discussion, I noticed that you had agreed, when AfD was mooted, that: "If one of you guys would jump through the arbcom hoops, I think that would be great. They might say that your side is correct, and I can remove this page from my watchlist! Peregrine Fisher (talk) 20:15, 1 February 2020 (UTC)". I think you meant AfD rather than arbcom, but I understood that you, along with several other editors, were in agreement that there was a case for deletion, so I am naturally disappointed that this turns out not to be the case. I would just like to re-assure you that I consulted with no one before making this AfD, and I took no sides in the debate, nor did I ever edit the page. I did that in the hope editors on both sides would understand that this was not a partisan nomination, but a serious hard look at whether this article was really serving the purpose of furthering the scope and benefit of the Wikipedia project as a whole and providing material of educational value to the readers. I thought you would be on board with that.-- Sirfurboy (talk) 12:14, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

• Delete Many of the sources flatly fail WP:RS per the authors, which creates a completely WP:UNDUE and WP:POV article. We have other articles that are better at dealing with this topic, like Pioneer Fund and History of the race and intelligence controversy among others mentioned here. Onetwothreeip (talk) 21:26, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
• Keep While this article is very controversial, it is notable and thus should be discussed. As some editors have noted, the title suggests that there is a connection between race and intelligence (simply not true). I then propose that instead of deletion, the title be changed to reflect this connection (or lack thereof). Thus, we keep a notable article and remove from the title indications that intelligence and race are related. Mgasparin (talk) 22:00, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
  • As noted, though, we already have multiple articles covering this question - the nomination includes a suggestion of redirect targets for the title - David Gerard (talk) 22:05, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
• Delete with a redirect to a disambiguation page that begins with something like, "The former Wikipedia article 'Race and intelligence' was deleted in part because it duplicated relevant content from the Wikipedia articles listed below. You can read the discussion among Wikipedia editors about deleting the 'Race and intelligence' article here {hyperlinked to this discussion}. ¶ Heritability of IQ | History of the race and intelligence controversy | Race and genetics | Scientific racism". I'm not personally persuaded, but there are scholarly articles in peer-reviewed journals that argue for genetic differences between races with regard to IQ. As long as that literature is covered in the other articles, then keeping Race and intelligence is superfluous.   - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) (I'm a man—traditional male pronouns are fine.) 19:04, 4 February 2020 (UTC)
• Strong keep All the delete !votes above seem utterly absurd and when I first saw that this article had been AFD'd, I was shocked--even more so when I saw it was a serious nomination not made by a bad-faith troll (no offense to Sirfurboy). This is a (very) notable topic, and the mere existence of this page does not constitute endorsing any specific perspective on said topic. If the title was "Black people are genetically stupid" or "Race causes IQ" then that would be another matter. We need to ensure that this article keeps existing and is written in accordance with WP:FRINGE and WP:UNDUE, but it would be a very bad idea to delete the central article on this widely-discussed topic, which discusses the topic in great detail in a single place, and split off material into separate articles only tangentially related to it. I would, however, be potentially OK with renaming this article if other editors object to the title (which seems completely fine to me; a title "X and Y" is not tantamount to an endorsement of any sort of causal connection between X and Y). IntoThinAir (talk) 19:37, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

@IntoThinAir: We have other articles that describe the topic in a neutral way. This article is unnecessary and is just a remnant of earlier Wikipedia edit wars. Onetwothreeip (talk) 19:53, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

• Delete I think the nomination and the above !votes for deletion make a good WP:TNT argument. Sometimes, there's just no practical way to write a good article in a given spot, and the best thing to do for the community is to drop the dead weight. "Lots of people have discussed the topic" is adequately answered by "redirects are cheap". XOR'easter (talk) 21:16, 4 February 2020 (UTC)
• Delete. I find the nominator's rationale compelling. Any article that spends so much of its time alternately explaining how the subject is somehow simultaneously a thing and not a thing, clearly has serious problems. The fact that we haven't been able to fix this after so many years suggests that the problem is irresolvable. Guy (help!) 00:20, 5 February 2020 (UTC)
  • Sounds like you're saying "this article should have been written better, but we haven't done so, so delete". You got a policy for that? Peregrine Fisher (talk) 05:50, 5 February 2020 (UTC)
    • Exactly, and even a topic having been controversial for many years off Wikipedia, and this controversy reflected in the opposing views both being discussed in the article in accordance with WP:UNDUE, and even if this controversy has persisted for many years, certainly in no way constitutes a compelling reason to delete the article. Similarly, even if the idea that X "causes" Y in some sense is not scientifically valid, as is the case with the idea that race "causes" an individual to have a given level of intelligence, this does not mean that there should not be an article on the prominent, widely-discussed idea that there is some sort of connection between X and Y should not be given its own article. If editors do not want both this page and history of the race and intelligence controversy to exist, that's fine, but clearly the right thing to do then is to redirect the latter to the former, not the other way around. IntoThinAir (talk) 14:07, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

Peregrine Fisher, no, I am saying that it's a POV fork and a coatrack and the superficial referenciness obscures the fact that its primary function appears to be to erect a false balance between racism and science. Guy (help!) 14:17, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

• Delete: pov-forking concerns are valid, while the subject is already sufficiently covered in Wikipedia. Alternatively, delete & redirect name only to Scientific racism, then salt the redirect to avoid recreation. --K.e.coffman (talk) 01:44, 5 February 2020 (UTC)
• Warning to closing admin: I have no comment on the article topic's notability, but given the snowy consensus to delete, it should be extremely important to note that this page has been edited more than 5000 times, so you need to get the stewards here at meta:Steward requests/Miscellaneous. ミラP 03:00, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

Miraclepine: What does "snowy consensus" mean? I am unfamiliar with that term. Thanks. NightHeron (talk) 03:50, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

@NightHeron: WP:SNOW says to use common sense and don't follow a process for the sake of it. But do allow discussions to take place if in doubt. AFD is currently 12 delete, 4 keep. ミラP 04:01, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

• Delete - Per all the above. Merging is not appropriate. Wikipedia's standards for sources have thankfully gotten higher, and whatever is worth preserving elsewhere will need to be reevaluated on its own merits. Grayfell (talk) 04:09, 5 February 2020 (UTC)
• Keep. Race and genetics, Heritability of IQ and Race and intelligence are related different subjects. If there is an actual correlation between the intelligence and race (whatever the "intelligence" and "race" could mean) is irrelevant. It is only relevant that the subject (the controversy, whatever) is highly notable and was covered in a huge number of sources. Is it a content fork of History of the race and intelligence controversy? No, to the contrary, History of the race and intelligence controversy is a legitimate sub-page of this page. My very best wishes (talk) 05:03, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

Then we could just rename the History of the race and intelligence controversy article to Race and intelligence, making it the main article. Onetwothreeip (talk) 05:55, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

Sounds like we could merge, or rediect, or whatever the heck we want. None of which is deletion. Peregrine Fisher (talk) 06:01, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

No, both History of the race and intelligence controversy and Scientific racism sub-pages are already correctly linked on History_of_the_debate subsection of this page. This is the best way to handle it. My very best wishes (talk) 16:03, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

• obvious Keep; rename to "Race differences in psychometry" and redirect current page to the renamed one. The proposal makes misleading and severely POV arguments to the point that it just looks like an attempt to censor a subject that the proposer finds uncomfortable. If a large fraction of the discussion of both A and of B is actually of A-and-B then it makes good sense to have a WP page on the intersection, A-and-B. There are, accordingly, WP pages on similar A-and-B combinations in intelligence-related subjects Jewish intelligence (redirects to Ashkenazi Jewish intelligence) and Sex differences in intelligence (as well as Sex differences in psychology). The IQ/Heredity page is about inheritance in individuals, not the race/intelligence question of the possible differential distribution of the IQ genes in populations. Nor is it currently possible to answer questions on "race and intelligence" by going to the page on the race/IQ controversy because the latter article is a very long and disorganized list that does not even discuss many of the relevant topics. That said, the word "intelligence" is vague and the population differences are on psychometric tests, so the page might be better renamed as "Race differences in psychometry" ("... in psychology" is too broad, unless a page on this parallel to the one for sex differences were created). The question that has generated so much discussion is about intelligence in the large and not the narrower matter of IQ-type tests, so either alternative is defensible. Renaming to "psychometry" would also focus the article more and perhaps prevent the recurring AfD requests. 73.149.246.232 (talk) 07:24, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for your input, but I note that reference to the fact other pages exist is not a policy reason to retain a page, per WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS. The conjunction in the title "a AND b" is a clear indication of a synthesis between two different things, and inasmuch as the synthesis is itself notable, it is already covered in our article covering, in depth, the history of the controversy. Finally, I would say that I fully understand why editors wish to strengthen their votes with qualifiers like strong etc., but if the case for keeping the article really were obvious, it would not need stating. -- Sirfurboy (talk) 08:13, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

The word "and" in the title does not indicate a synthesis, let alone a redundant one. Your proposal to delete did not identify "Race" and "Intelligence" as the root topics A and B. Rather, you cite Race and genetics and the Heritability of IQ as the subjects supposedly synthesized, each of which is itself a compound. The subject of "race and intelligence" has to do with race, genetics, inheritance and IQ (among other things) in its own way that is not a simple-minded combination from two or more source articles, or anything that could easily be inferred by someone reading the articles separately. Like it or not, racial intelligence-ology is its own thing, some of which has been pseudoscience and some of which has not. Part of the point of an article on a subject like this is to distingush science from fiction and that is not accomplished by summarily declaring the whole thing an artificial "non-question" as done in this AfD proposal. 73.149.246.232 (talk) 09:45, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

"And" is a conjunction, "of" is a preposition denoting possession. Note also that "Race and genetics" can be recast as "the genetics of race", which you cannot do with "race and intelligence", but let's not get sidetracked on grammar. I said it was indicative, but not a necessary conclusion. The point is, and remains, that other articles on Wikipedia cover everything this article is trying to be. The science, the controversy, even the books (see for instance The Bell Curve). This is just not an article we need. -- Sirfurboy (talk) 11:39, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

Half the articles on Wikipedia have all their information covered in some list of other articles. In this specific case, if you were to make an honest list of the other articles needed to cover the material for this one, it would be quite a lot longer than the two you mention, and in one of those two any relevant material is buried under a heap of irrelevant material. This is pure IDONTLIKEIT, not something that makes Wikipedia more useful as a reference.73.149.246.232 (talk) 11:57, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

"Half the articles on Wikipedia..." is WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS, not a policy reason to retain. -- Sirfurboy (talk) 12:14, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

That it's a large fraction of WP content is a reason to consider the AfD proposal as special pleading, the special exception being that you don't like this article and are throwing the proverbial everything-at-the-wall polemically in the hope something will stick. The "policy reason to retain" is the same as for any other encyclopedia topic: if something is notable enough to have had lots of academic and popular material written about it, there is a presumption in favor of having an article on that topic (if there are editors are willing to write and update it). 73.149.246.232 (talk) 12:46, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

The precise meaning of "race and genetics" is "the co-variation of race and genetics", exactly as the precise meaning of "race and intelligence" is "the co-variation of race and (measures of) intelligence". This seems to make any grammatical argument irrelevant. 73.149.246.232 (talk) 13:55, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

OTHERSTUFF is probably a bit stronger that IDONTLIKEIT. Whoever questioned why an article on "A" is shite, but an article on "History of A" is OK, has an argument I'd like to hear refuted. Peregrine Fisher (talk) 09:03, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

Seems fairly straightforward. The existing "History ..." article has (IMO) reasonable subject matter but an infelicitous name, because it was conceived as part of a hierarchy descending from the unworkable and unencyclopedic article at issue here. The "History ..." article seems to be basically a (confusingly titled) history of scientific racism with respect to intelligence. In a hypothetical complete Wikipedia, I imagine the ideal hierarchy would be something like Scientific racism -> History of scientific racism -> History of scientific racism with respect to intelligence [coordinate with histories of scientific racism with respect to sexuality, physical ability, etc., about which there is certainly plenty to be said]. Of course in our actually-existing Wikipedia, such gaps and inconsistencies in the topic hierarchy are par for the course. Whether and how to rename that article is probably a worthy question but I don't think it needs to be addressed here. -- Visviva (talk) 09:23, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

"infelicitous" is one of my favorite words! Felicitous is number uno! What you said seems to support keeping this article, and redirecting it, or splitting it, or combining it. Why exactly are those options wrong? Peregrine Fisher (talk) 09:48, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

The problem with filing everything under Scientific Racism is that it is even more POV-loaded and question-begging than what this AfD proposal accuses the current article of doing. For instance, there is no indication that Jensen (or Flynn or any number of others who have published things on this subject) is a racist or ever argued what he did in order to support racism. 73.149.246.232 (talk) 10:08, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Racism Does it exist? Sort of. Leads to a wiki project. We should create a good essay or policy about it. Peregrine Fisher (talk) 10:30, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

• Comment on the comparison to "race and sickle cell anemia" (or prostate cancer, hair and skin color, etc). The only reason there is no such page is that there has never been much controversy about the subject nor any connection to social policy at the largest scale. The way the science developed is actually very similar for intelligence and prostate cancer, in that correlation to race was noted, speculation about genetic causes ensued, a few relevant genes were found, that appear at different frequency in the respective populations (e.g. microcephalin, or the collection of genes used by Piffer in his recent statistical analyses). Of course this is not a complete explanation yet for prostate cancer, and very very far from a full analysis for intelligence, but conceptually it is pretty similar. In the case of prostate cancer there is a better understanding of what causal role the specific genes play, which is mostly missing for the brain. But the logic is fairly similar. This also illustrates why facile claims of "no evidence it's from genetics" are ridiculous. 73.149.246.232 (talk) 10:40, 5 February 2020 (UTC)
• Comment. By similar logic we can also get rid of all articles on sports rivalries between teams or athletes A and B, since with enough effort the information can all be gleaned from the articles on A and B.73.149.246.232 (talk) 12:20, 5 February 2020 (UTC)
• Keep This is a long standing article based on numerous empirical studies with academic interest going back to the start of social science, and historical interest going back hundreds of years. It fulfills virtually every inclusion criteria one can think of. Not only that, according to a post on Nature news in 2011, it was the 4th most important topic in social science. AndewNguyen (talk) 21:38, 5 February 2020 (UTC) — AndewNguyen (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
  • That is a wild mischaracterization of that Nature post, which does not refer to either race or intelligence. Item 4 in that list is "4. How do we reduce the ‘skill gap’ between black and white people in America?" The impulse to connect that valid policy question with the dubious subject matter of this article is ... interesting. -- Visviva (talk) 22:50, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

NightHeron makes the argument that the mere title of style "A and B" "suggests that there's a causal connection" A and B. I don't know why this makes sense, Wikipedia has many other similarly titled pages: vaccines and autism, religion and sexuality, sexuality and disability, just to pick some random pairs. AndewNguyen (talk) 22:16, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

Your mention of Vaccines and autism is quite interesting. The first sentence of the lede of that article reads: Extensive investigation into vaccines and autism has shown that there is no relationship, causal or otherwise, and vaccine ingredients do not cause autism. Although a reader might initially think that the title suggests a causal connection, as soon as they read the first sentence they will be disabused of that notion and be correctly informed. If the article Vaccines and autism were written in a very different way -- suggesting that there's a legitimate debate, and that maybe vaccines do cause autism, that Andrew Wakefield's paper published in Lancet says that they do, etc., etc. -- then that would be analogous to the way Race and intelligence is written. Just substitute Jensen for Wakefield and Harvard Educational Review for Lancet. The problem is not just that the title "Race and intelligence" is likely to be read by readers as suggesting a causal connection. The problem is that once they start reading the article the strong POV legitimizing fringe theories will reinforce the racial supremacist interpretation of the title. NightHeron (talk) 00:18, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

• Keep There are group differences in psychometric instruments that are colloquially called "Intelligence". This is uncontroversial and accepted across the political aisle. Mainstream news sources on the Left and Right both acknowledge this, many think tanks cite group differences in scores as motivation for further advocacy, anti-racism efforts, more funding for education, etc. Deleting this part of the article would be going against scientific consensus and mainstream media consensus. The study of the causes of this difference is the controversial part. I think this page as it currently stands does a reasonably good job of showing the controversy among scientists on the root causes of this average difference in scores. Deleting this page would be a politically motivated and intellectually dishonest action. Gardenofaleph (talk) 22:13, 5 February 2020 (UTC)
• Keep Race and intelligence is an important topic on which much research has been conducted, and on which many books have been written. There has not been nearly as much scholarly debate on topics such as race and sickle cell disease. As it stands, the page is both detailed and balanced. None of the arguments for deleting it is convincing. Mr Butterbur (talk) 23:00, 5 February 2020 (UTC)
• Comment The last three responses have all made the point that this issue is clearly notable. It is, beyond dispute. Yet that is not the reason for deletion. The question is whether the Wikipedia project is enhanced by this particular article, given that all notable issues are covered in the suite of articles discussed above. There is no doubt that we need an article about the race and intelligence debate, but do we need this article when we have Scientific racism and history of the race and intelligence controversy and the other articles covering all the issues that could be in this article. What encyclopaedic value does this article add to Wikipedia? -- Sirfurboy (talk) 23:26, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

The other related articles do not cover the same material, and to the extent there is an overlap, the material corresponding to the contents of this article is strewn haphazardly inside a much longer text. There is a pretty good division between this article and history of the race and intelligence controversy, with none of the history appearing here and a lot less detail on the psychometry appearing there. Relying on Scientific racism would be even more POV than what you accuse this article of being, since there is for example no reason given for the presumption that Jensen was a "scientific racist" (e.g., did fake science to support racist beliefs, had anything against black people, or considered white people superior to them).73.149.246.232 (talk) 00:43, 6 February 2020 (UTC) — 73.149.246.232 (talk) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.

• Keep per arguments by IntoThinAir, Gardenofaleph, and AndewNguyen. Jweiss11 (talk) 23:47, 5 February 2020 (UTC)
• Comment - I encourage those !voting to keep to review this article's sources, specifically their age. The article cites many studies which are out-of-date, and fail WP:RS AGE. We are using old sources to misrepresent the modern academic consensus, which is not appropriate for many reasons. This article fails to summarize modern secondary source, instead citing obscure primary sources without appropriate distance. This information is historically important, and with context might be useful at History of the race and intelligence controversy. This article, however, purports to explain the topic at large, including the modern consensus. Hopefully everyone here is aware that genetics has advanced considerably in recent decades, regardless of how these older works were seen at the time. If your argument is that the article should be kept because the topic is covered by sources, then the article is not representing these sources in an encyclopedic fashion. Other articles already do a better job of summarizing sources, so this one has been made superfluous, at best. Grayfell (talk) 00:23, 6 February 2020 (UTC)
  • Per WP:DINC, to the extent that the article in its current form has flaws, this is not a legitimate reason that it should be deleted. Given that there are stand-alone articles about "A and B" and "B and C", it only makes sense to also have an article about "A and C" (here A = race, B = genetics, C = intelligence) insofar as each article covers the independently notable intersection of two topics. IntoThinAir (talk) 01:17, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

No, that's not my point. Your presumption that this is independently notable is directly contradicted by the article's current sources. Many of the article's current sources are only relevant in a historical context. We cannot ignore this context, and these sources wouldn't belong in a "clean" article at all. These sources are already much, much better supported at other articles, with proper context. Therefore, their inclusion here is another demonstration that this is a POV fork. Articles must be based on actual sources, not hypothetical ones. Grayfell (talk) 02:50, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

Which sources of what age in the article do you have in mind? There should certainly be newer sources added to include more recent work on genetics, as you pointed out. But adding some of the ones most directly relevant to the "race and intelligence" controversy would tend to be exactly the sort of material some people here are suddenly looking for ways to suppress. For example, Plomin and collaborators' construction of polygenic scores that are "the most powerful predictors in the behavioral sciences", https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/418210v1, or Piffer's open-source statistical evidence for recent selection pressure on polygenic scores that predict cognitive ability, https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/008011v1).73.149.246.232 (talk) 03:31, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

• • WP:MEDREV applies here as well. Instead of presenting the arguments of both sides, we should be using reviews to present the current medical consensus. –dlthewave ☎ 04:41, 6 February 2020 (UTC)
• Keep. It is a topic (with 362 million Ghits) that has generated a lot of controversy, so readers may come to Wikipedia to find out why. The article should list the pros and cons of the issues but not draw conclusions as these are disputed. Xxanthippe (talk) 01:50, 6 February 2020 (UTC).

The number of search results does not establish notability. Per WP:MEDREV, it is inappropriate to present the pros and cons of both sides without drawing conclusions; the guideline requires us to either present the conclusions of a secondary-source review or remove the content altogether if no such review is available. –dlthewave ☎ 05:05, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

WP:MEDREV does not apply here because Race (human categorization) does not belong to Medicine (may be to social sciences?). I do not think anyone above reasonably argued the subject is not notable. My very best wishes (talk) 19:13, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

• Keep. This topic is really controversial, but that would not seem to be a reason to delete an entire article. Is this an ongoing scientific debate among experts in many disciplines? Yes. Do "racial groups" in scientific literature differ on average in scores on supposed tests of "general intelligence", like IQ? Yes. When you search "Race and IQ", you are redirected here. On the contrary to what one or two people have said here, there is no scientific consensus on the causes for these disparities. There is only a consensus that a correlation exists between average scores on intelligence tests and certain self-described racial groups. Maybe the article should be renamed to "Race and IQ", or "Race and intelligence testing", because that is what is really involved here, and is a topic in its own right. 2605:8D80:648:1B4D:5360:2F1D:EF2F:174C (talk) 03:38, 6 February 2020 (UTC) — 2605:8D80:648:1B4D:5360:2F1D:EF2F:174C (talk) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. The preceding unsigned comment was added at 2605:8D80:648:1B4D:5360:2F1D:EF2F:174C (UTC).

Comment - Admin required Can we get an SPI or an admin to look at this comment please. This looks like a sock of "Human Taxonomist" AKA perma-blocked user User:Sprayitchyo. this user is clearly this one, and maps to this one, same style, same interests, same IP range, known to be one of Sprayitchio's many IP socks. All IP addresses geolocate to the same city and this subject falls into Sprayitchio's area of interest.

Comment - I seem to be accused of being associated with a group of other users. I'm not them. I began a few edits with the mobile app last year, and do so here and there, like those few at human clustering the other day. There are tens of thousands of IP sequences from this range. It covers all of Ontario, Quebec and other regions. It is not only for people from the greater Toronto area (7 million people), and I'm not from there. This is my mobile carrier. 2605:8D80:648:1B4D:5360:2F1D:EF2F:174C (talk) 21:14, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

 Looks like a duck to me -- Sirfurboy (talk) 14:03, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

• Keep. > there is simply no evidence of a genetic link between race and intelligence

This simply doesn't stand, goes for the contention, too, that race isn't a meaningful category. As IQ is a relevant predictor for a host of outcomes that are decisive for humans, both as individuals and as groups, it stands to reason that the any relation between race and IQ is equally decisive, much unlike the cited prostate cancer or sickle cell disease.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/23/opinion/sunday/genetics-race.html

How Genetics Is Changing Our Understanding of ‘Race’, David Reich, March 23, 2018

»So how should we prepare for the likelihood that in the coming years, genetic studies will show that many traits are influenced by genetic variations, and that these traits will differ on average across human populations? It will be impossible — indeed, anti-scientific, foolish and absurd — to deny those differences.«

Who We are and how We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past, David Reich, 2018, p xiv

»When they told their computer—which had no knowledge of population labels—to cluster the individuals into five groups, the results corresponded uncannily well to commonly held intuitions about deep ancestral divisions among humans (West Eurasians, East Asians, Native Americans, New Guineans, and Africans).« tickle me 16:15, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

:::This unsigned comment appears to have been added by User:Tickle me at 04:26, 6 February 2002. -- Sirfurboy (talk) 08:11, 6 February 2020 (UTC) now signed.

As you quote David Reich, it is worth noting that he is not saying anything about the link between race and intelligence there, nor does he at any point in his book. He does mention sickle cell - see page 222 and following, showing why it has higher prevalence in West African populations. He has an argument about sprinters on page 264 onwards. Understanding that should help clarify the difficulty of simply asserting "because race, therefore race and intelligence" (which is fallacious). -- Sirfurboy (talk) 12:49, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

> This unsigned comment appears

Yes, I signed it now, you may want to delete this for better readability.

He speaks of traits, not diseases. All traits are heritable to a relevant degree depending on the amount of shared genotypes. The discussion here boils down to a rehash of The Blank Slate, according to which environment is decisive, heritability negligeable, and evolution stopped for humans with the advent of culture, at least for any trait that could be of any importance.

> Understanding that should help clarify...

You interpret his words and assume bad faith. tickle me 16:15, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

• If you're wondering who said you're a single purpose account, I asked at User_talk:David_Gerard#Is_what_you_did_kosher? Peregrine Fisher (talk) 07:48, 6 February 2020 (UTC)
• Keep. The article passes WP:N (it is very notable with a very large body of research attention given to it and many books written, many of which are well referenced in the article), it also passes WP:V. The delete votes seem weak to me, but understandable as this article is controversial, offensive to some, and attracts drama, and these seem to be the reasons behind the delete votes — but Wikipedia is WP:NOTCENSORED. I am not convinced the article’s existence is undue given it passes WP:N. Further, if this article is deleted then people interested, even with good intentions, will search out other sources of information on this topic which will likely lead to exposure to heavily biased extremist white supremacy websites: why not let those interested have access to a much more balanced summary of academic debate and evidence on Wikipedia? Finally, many Wikipedia sub articles depend, to varying degrees, on the existence of this article.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 08:24, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

User:Literaturegeek Thank you for your input, and I agree about your concern that Wikipedia really should cover this subject, but I wonder if you actually read all the arguments (understandably they are getting quite long, so you may have skimmed them). The question is not whether Wikipedia should cover the topic - it should. The question is whether it should cover the topic in this article, given that we already cover the whole controversy with extensive background in History of the race and intelligence controversy, and within the wider context in Scientific racism, and with the science in Heritability of IQ and a full article on Race and genetics, and with articles on the book that this article covers in depth, The Bell Curve. This is just an article that has no niche, but is the magnet for edit wars and controversy, which is not what the Wikipedia project is about. There is no risk that this notable issue will not be fully covered by Wikipedia. I do think you are quite right to raise the concern, but wonder if, in the light of this explanation, you might reconsider your position. Thanks again. — Sirfurboy (talk) 08:53, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply, by way of clarification, my keep vote includes and means do not merge as well as do not delete. Those articles you mentioned are all better described as sub articles of the main topic proposed for deletion/merge — I already stated or alluded to this in my above vote and comment. So it makes no sense to delete or merge the main article, which covers all aspects in summary style, of the topic, including social aspects of possible intellectual differences, such as poorer education, research bias, social racial discrimination, and of course the hugely controversial genetic one etc. There is no Wikipedia policy that suggests that controversial articles should be deleted or merged to avoid edit wars; should we delete Donald Trump or merge it into a sub-article, to avoid the drain on the community from the constant content disputes and controversy and drama there? My position remains the same but thank you for bringing your thoughts to me for consideration.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 09:05, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

I don't think Scientific racism can be seen as a sub topic of this one. Clearly the other way round. As for History of the race and intelligence controversy, there is a clear strong overlap between these to the point it is clear that we do not need both. So which should go? This article may well be older, but when there is a content fork, it is also relevant which article is in the better state. The content on the history article is fuller, more up to date, broader and more settled. That is simply the more mature article. The only other question is the name. Your analogy to Donald Trump is not entirely comparable because that is a BLP. Take another article about a controversy in another area instead as illustration. 2019 British prorogation controversy describes a political controversy. Suppose we had a second article called History of the 2019 British prorogation controversy, it would appear clear that the two articles are substantially covering the same issues and one should go. Which title is best is moot at this point. Names can be discussed and changed. The question is only, given two articles covering the same material and with almost the same name, which should you keep? Both? The more mature one? So here: what information would you like to see in this article that is not covered by the other? -- Sirfurboy (talk) 17:29, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

• Comment The last attempt at AfD for this article was in 2011, and a lot has happened since then. There is much more awareness now of the use of the Internet to spread fake news, conspiracy theories, fringe views, pseudoscience, and racism. There is also much more awareness of the problem of systemic bias on Wikipedia, where the dominance of white male American editors affects coverage and content. In 2018 the Southern Poverty Law Center mentioned Race and intelligence as an example of racial bias on Wikipedia.

The article's lede states that "The debate reemerged again in 1969, when Arthur Jensen championed the view that for genetic reasons, African people were less intelligent than white people" but nowhere says that the consensus of academics is, and for a long time has been, that Jensen's white supremacist views are racist nonsense. Wikivoice is used to suggest that there's a real legitimate debate going on about whether Africans are stupid people. Would this statement be in the lede if Wikipedia were being edited primarily by Africans, rather than by citizens of a country whose head of state "referred to Haiti and African nations as 'shithole countries'" (NBC news, 1/12/2018)?

There is a long history of questionable editing of this article. For example, between 2003 and 2006 a single-purpose account User:Quizkajer (which was abandoned in 2007) made 1152 edits to the page. That user was responsible for a large proportion of all edits made during that period and a large proportion of added content.

As a practical matter, it's a Sisyphean task to improve this article, in part because its inflammatory title attracts editors who want to lend credence to fringe theories about genetic superiority of white people. Efforts to remove bias are met with edit-warring and interminable discussions on the talk page, which soon become a time sink. So most editors give up on this article. The presence of this article on Wikipedia contributes nothing positive, and much that is negative. NightHeron (talk) 12:07, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

References

Your concerns are important @NightHeron:, but one or more problematic sentences in an article has never been a reason to delete an article. Instead the solution is seeking consensus on the talk page or, if necessary, starting an RfC. As far as white supremacy, I actually thought the controversial IQ research that suggested a difference between racial groups had suggested people of Asian and Jewish descent had the highest IQ and white people were of average intellect (so is the article/topic area not more of an Asian and Jewish superior IQ dispute rather than a white supremacy issue?); but I have only, years ago, skim read that article and read a couple of content disputes on the talk page, and I chose not to get involved as it is outside my knowledge area and I am not overly interested in the subject matter.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 12:59, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

Literaturegeek, the issue is not problematic sentences so much as a problematic title, problematic organisation, a problematic premise, problematic history, problematic conflicts with coverage of the same topic from a non-racist perspective in other articles, problematic false balance, and problematic editing literally all the time. Guy (help!) 14:19, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

• Delete. This topic is notable, it is true. But this topic is being covered in more that one article, and we don't need redundant article forks. I don't see anything worth merging, so we should delete this one and redirect to the superior treatment at Scientific racism. Directing our readers to this article when we have a better one elsewhere is doing them a disservice. - MrOllie (talk) 17:42, 6 February 2020 (UTC)
• Delete. After reading all of the comments and comparing this article to History of the race and intelligence controversy, there is clearly excessive overlap between the two articles (WP:CFORK) and I agree that the "history" article provides better coverage of the subject. Schazjmd (talk) 17:47, 6 February 2020 (UTC)