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Archive 1Archive 2Archive 3

Questioning on the Israeli result

Please consider it[1] in the table.--Gilisa (talk) 16:38, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Hong Kong

Although Hong Kong is not an nation, but it appears on 'IQ and the Wealth of Nations' , please stop edit warring. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.59.48.208 (talk) 07:41, 8 December 2009 (UTC)


It should be removed since it is a) no country and b) due to it special status (including a strict selection of new habitants) highly biased.

Norway

Why is Norway omitted from this list? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.11.157.247 (talk) 21:16, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

There's actually several countries missing from the list including Norway. Will add as soon as I can. Elockid (Talk·Contribs) 23:53, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Complete Nonsense. That article has nothing to do with reality!

Dude: Jews are not European origin. Which bible or book are you reading. Jews are more close ralatives of arabs, north africans, and all afro-assiatic peple. To think that so many scientific contrbution came from European origin is absurd. Look mathematics, algebra, carthography, alphabetes, numbers, ancient civilization. Recent technological discoverioes are vagoue discription for the contribution of basic sciences. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.206.234.19 (talk) 03:56, 25 June 2010 (UTC)


Shouldn't a subject concerning the intelligence of people by nationality be written and edited by intelligent people? Because whoever wrote that article and those supposed studies must have been high or something. Another explaination could be that it's all just some kind of propaganda.

In any case the article and those studies have nothing to do with reality and should therefore not be alowed on Wikipedia. Unless Wikipedia doesn't care as much about truth as one hopes.

For example, why is the nation, of which everyone knows or should know that it has the highest average IQ, not included? It doesn't take a genius to know which people is refered to here. Another hint, Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Ludwig Wittgenstein and many other geniuses belong to that people. Jews have an average IQ of about 120.

Also, the people of Flanders (the Dutch speaking part of Belgium) have an average IQ of over 110.

According to that article the everage Chinese Japanese or Korean would be smarter than the average European or American of European ancestry. If that was true, then why is it that almost no important inventions or discoveries, no contributions to modern science were made by any Asian country. Almost no Nobel price winners and almost no known geniuses come from Asia in spite of the fact China, Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and Korea alone have a combined population of over 1,500,000,000 which by itself is more than twice the number of all the people of a European ancestry in the World!

On the other hand almost all inventions and discoveries in the past 5,000 years or so where made by Europeans and Jews. Jews are of course basically Europeans as well. The distinction between Jews and other Europeans is made here only to point out the extraodinary intelligence of people who refer to themselfs as Jews.

Virtually all of mathematics, biology and medicine, chemistry, physics, archeology, almost all of science comes from Europe inspite of the fact that there are and always have been far fewer Europeans than Asians. About 99% of all Nobel price leaurets in history had/have a European ancestry.

There is no evidence whatsoever that Asians are even as smart as Europeans, let alone smarter. On the contrary, if Asians really were as smart as Europeans, then they should be able to achive more than just copying European ideas and passing some tests. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sandiagolo (talk • contribs)

Complete bias and utterly wrong. I can't even begin where to start. Mathematics is from India, yes an Asian country which was later improved by the Arabs which was later used by Europeans. You know where algebra is from? Have you checked articles like List of Chinese inventions and List of Indian inventions and discoveries? Some places such as Europe don't refer the general people in the U.S. as very smart rather unintelligent and ignorant. Who won the Nobel has nothing to do with how intelligent a group of people or country are. Basing your thoughts on a selected group of people isn't even correct as minority does not represent majority. An example, celebrities do not represent what or how the people are. Flanders isn't a nation. Europe started copying Asia first (Ex: use of gunpowder). What a small group of individuals do does not show anything on how smart a nation is. Elockid (Talk·Contribs) 02:08, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

In my opinion this article is old world crap, generally imo IQ doesn't mean you're generally smarter. Actually "high IQ" just tells you learn faster or even become self-taught in area of X than others, perhaps master it in best case. Otherwise, like inventions you mentioned are like a passion, things interest you and you just like to do it, learn it and sooner or later you get the idea of it and complete it and you're considered as genius in that matter. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.115.133.216 (talk) 19:48, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

How can you lot live in denial? The way data was gathered may not have been very accurate, but just looking at that list will tell you that in general, countries with lower IQs are the ones that are violent, impoverished dungheaps.


New projects

see: http://iq-test.co.uk/stats/

This online project has already teste more than one million people. One interesting result: women consistently score higher than men. It seems that these tests have more to do with being good students than anything else. Women are now better students. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.39.41.147 (talk) 18:04, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

There is no validation of that testing program. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 18:17, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

Well, keep an eye on it, 1.000.000 people tested and counting. Jan. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.39.41.147 (talk) 10:03, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

Statistics teachers take care to point out that a large sample can still be junk data if the sample is biased. Rather than count how many people have self-selected to be tested by an unvalidated test, I would prefer to read the professional literature on carefully gathered samples used to norm recently developed IQ tests for professional psychologists to use. Thanks for bringing up that example of mass media comment on IQ testing, which I'm sure must influence the opinions of some readers of Wikipedia articles. -- 14:13, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

You may find it helpful while reading or editing articles to look at a bibliography of Intelligence Citations, posted for the use of all Wikipedians who have occasion to edit articles on human intelligence and related issues. I happen to have circulating access to a huge academic research library at a university with an active research program in these issues (and to another library that is one of the ten largest public library systems in the United States) and have been researching these issues since 1989. You are welcome to use these citations for your own research. You can help other Wikipedians by suggesting new sources through comments on that page. It will be extremely helpful for articles on human intelligence to edit them according to the Wikipedia standards for reliable sources for medicine-related articles, as it is important to get these issues as well verified as possible. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 19:48, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

I look forward to thoughtful edits of this article based on reliable sources. Your suggestions about sources are very welcome. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 22:14, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

New source for this article

The source The dangers of unsystematic selection methods and the representativeness of 46 samples of African test-takers reviews the methodology involved in the sample surveys that lead to some conclusions about national IQ differences. I think this source cites some other literature that hasn't made it into this article yet. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 20:05, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

I added NPOV tag to article 23 August 2010

Till now I've only had this article on my watchlist because I posted a link to the Intelligence citations bibliography on this talk page. I've been busy reading all of the tens of thousands of keystrokes submitted to the Arbitration case on race and intelligence, and as that case winds down, I've begun actually reading articles and am dismayed to see how much more most articles on related subjects need to be sourced. I've put a NPOV tag on this article, to draw other editors' attention to the article, and I welcome discussion about how sourcing for the article can be improved, the better to ensure neutral point of view, a core Wikipedia principle. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 22:18, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm a bit confused about "how the sourcing for the article can be improved". This article is basically the summary of a book with the title IQ and the Wealth of Nations. Any other sourcing I'm thinking would be just criticism on the book or possibly anymore related studies. What kinds of other sources are you suggesting? Elockid (Talk) 01:58, 25 August 2010 (UTC)
Thank you for your question. I've seen (just last week) a newly published criticism of one part of the data-gathering for this book, and there appear to be other specialized studies of errors in the book's analysis that it would be good to look for to see what's currently cited in the article, and what is not. I won't make that edit for a while, as I am busy with some other projects, but calming down of the recent ArbCom case should allow a chance to check this article for its current POV and what the broader literature says about the book. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 02:49, 25 August 2010 (UTC)
This is bullshit. Just because you have a problem with the concept of racial/national variation in g/IQ which these and other scholars have painstakingly documented isn't a basis for the NPOV tagging. BTW are you aware that they rank Asians and Chinese at the top of the order? 72.228.177.92 (talk) 23:00, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
Please don't make this needlessly personal, 72.228.177.92. futurebird (talk) 02:46, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

And I removed it

Further, many editors have painstakingly maintained a NPOV in reporting the material and distancing the wikipedia report from the Lynn et. al's claimed matter of fact. The article actually is mostly dedicated to criticism so the tagging is especially egregious and spurious. Lycurgus (talk) 23:04, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

There was no consensus on removing it. WeijiBaikeBianji reasons are well supported. I would replace the NPOV tag. Can we at least talk about this? futurebird (talk) 02:46, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Requesting feedback for draft for new article "Nations and intelligence"

See User:Miradre/Nations and intelligence. Things to improve before moving to Main namespace? Relationship to this article? Miradre (talk) 11:10, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Without commenting on the details of the article, it is probably a much better place for all the related studies you've been following. I would certainly support including a brief summary of the article here as well as a pointer to it. aprock (talk) 16:57, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Dubious material

  • "For People's Republic of China, the authors used a figure of 109.4 for Shanghai and adjusted it down by an arbitrary 6 points because they believed the average across China's rural areas was probably less than that in Shanghai. Another figure from a study done in Beijing was not adjusted downwards. Those two studies formed the resultant score for China (PRC). For the figure of Macau, the average IQ is 104 which is obtained from the score of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and in such a way transformed into an IQ score.[1]"
This is not what the book states at all. The numbers for Shanghai are incorrect. Four studies were used for China. Macau is not even on the list of nations.Miradre (talk) 07:28, 11 October 2010 (UTC)
Where exactly did you get the document? I'm looking at [2] and can't find Shanghai or Macau at all. You were right in blanking that section/inserting {{dubious}}. Goodvac (talk) 07:45, 11 October 2010 (UTC)
Here is some more information on the individual studies used in the book: http://www.isteve.com/IQ_Table.htm This is of course a personal webpage but on the other hand the criticism sections cites personal blogs in some cases.
I have removed the this paragraph as per the discussion above.Miradre (talk) 06:14, 13 October 2010 (UTC)
  • " The number of participants in each study was usually limited, often numbering under a few hundred. The exceptions to this were the United States and Japan, for which studies using more than several thousand participants are available."
That is incorrect. For many other nations there were studies with thousands or tens of thousands of participants.Miradre (talk) 07:39, 11 October 2010 (UTC)
I have removed the statements claiming that the number of participants were usually or often limited.Miradre (talk) 06:14, 13 October 2010 (UTC)
  • "It is generally agreed many factors, including environment, culture, demographics, wealth, pollution, and educational opportunities, affect measured IQ.[36]"
The given source, which discusses IQ group differences in the US and is now getting rather old, does not support this statement which is also unclear. For example the word "wealth" is not mentioned in the source. What is meant by "demographics" or "culture"? The importance of these factors is certainly not established with certainty as compared to genetic factors which are not included. That for example programs such as Head Start affect IQ short-term is clear but the long-term effect is dubious. The relevance to this article is also unclear since the book in no way denies that environmental factors are important.Miradre (talk) 06:59, 13 October 2010 (UTC)
  • "There are also errors in the raw data presented by authors. The results from Vinko Buj's 1981 study of 21 European cities and the Ghanaian capital Accra used different scaling from Lynn and Vanhanen's. A comparison of the reported to actual data from only a single study found 5 errors in 19 reported IQ scores."
The only working link goes to a blog by someone who does not seem to have published any academic papers. As such this should be removed as self-published material not coming from an established scholar.Miradre (talk) 08:11, 13 October 2010 (UTC)
By neutral application of that principle, I have just removed another statement cited only to a blog. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 15:40, 15 October 2010 (UTC)
  • "Thomas Volken wrote that the study is "neither methodologically nor theoretically convincing." Although critical of the IQ data, for the sake of argument Volken assumes that the data is correct but then criticizes the statistical methods used, finding no effect on growth or income."

As far I can see this is a self-published source that has not appeared in any journal and has not been cited by any article. It could possible be allowed if this Thomas Volken is an established scholar in this field. Does anyone have any evidence for this?Miradre (talk) 17:09, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

"T Volken - European Sociological Review, 2003 - Oxford Univ Press" - here's a number of different publications by T Volken in google scholar - should be enough to establish him within the field. ·Maunus·ƛ· 17:39, 24 October 2010 (UTC)
Thanks. I will add this to the study.Miradre (talk) 17:49, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Article needs pecific page-numbered citations from the book which is its topic

This reversion caught my eye. Its edit summary said, "not backed by sources". The reverted assertion didn't cite sources, but referred readers to the Race and intelligence article. Race and Intelligence#Test scores supports the 85 figure which was reverted to 87 (citing this, which supports the 85 figure on page 236—page 2 of the PDF, citing an earlier study), but doesn't mention the other reverted figures.

Having said that about one particular revert, I'll also say that as this article is specifically about one particular book, it seems to me that assertions which are challenged or are likely to be challenged should be supported by page-numbered citations from that book. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 01:48, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Geneal Suggestion

To write this as a full length wikipedia article is very very shameful. This is not even science, it is pedestrian level excersice which was traped by people who have evil attitude to wards other races than their own. Wouldn't it be better just to write about IQ test and give some examples of contoversial studies.

I believe the table is missleading, hs no scientific value and should be deleted.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.206.234.19 (talk • contribs) 11:50, June 25, 2010

Well obviously, when you do not like an article in an encyclopedia even mentioning an existing piece of work without even taking sides on it, it has to be deleted. The only thing you actually seem to believe here is that we should pretend like books one may not like, doesn't exist. Here is a link (and a practice) you may like however: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_burning 90.227.176.140 (talk) 14:41, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Should be merged with IQ and Global Inequality.

I have a reliable source that goes farther than what this article says, that the second book was a follow-up to the first, and says that the two books, and also Race Differences in Intelligence (book) all rely on the same review of the literature, and can often be cited as just one source. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 03:47, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

This has merit. If there were a merge, it should be from the conceptual article here, since there's little in the other and the material from these authors ATM is the central material on the subject. Lycurgus (talk) 23:07, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
I agree that they should be merged. The criticism section for one would also apply to the other-- it would consolidate things greatly as I think that most serious scholars started ignoring this after the first book (hence so few reviews.) futurebird (talk) 02:44, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
No. The later book uses much more data than the first book. Which is why the IQ values differ to some degree. Also contains much more calculations on associations to other factors. Also the later book in response to the critique made corrections and provided additional evidence so the earlier critique does not necessarily apply.
Furthermore, scientific books in Wikipedia are usually not merged this way.Miradre (talk) 07:57, 10 October 2010 (UTC)
In addition studies using the IQ scores cannot be easily compared since the scores are different. Thus the literature reviews, data, correlations, conclusions, criticisms, and further research differ more or less between the books. I have also expanded the material related to the later book considerably and plan to do more on the subject. So none of the reasons given above apply. See no reason to merge and very difficult to do practically. Miradre (talk) 04:45, 11 October 2010 (UTC)
I think merging would be a bad ideaThreadnecromancer (talk) 05:16, 21 November 2010 (UTC)Threadnecromancer
I agree that these two separate articles about two separate books released four years apart should remain separate. Each of these articles clearly and succinctly explains its relation to the other in the lead section. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 05:28, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Removal of "related studies"

Aprock recently removed this article's "related studies" section which discussed later studies that build upon this book. I disagree with this removal. With this removed, the description of the book's reception is now nothing but criticism, and the book's reception is definitely more nuanced than just 100% negative. Additionally, some of the criticism already in the article is synth because it's cited to sources that don't even mention the book like "Guns, Germs and Steel" and Neisser's article on rising IQ scores. I'd like to combine the now-removed section and the "criticism" section into a single section called "reception" while removing the synth sources. Any objections?Boothello (talk) 01:18, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Including summaries of articles which just cite the book is not appropriate for this article. If sources which cite the book also discusses the book, then including something about what they say about the book might be worthwhile, although a passing mention in an otherwise primary source probably isn't due. aprock (talk) 04:34, 25 August 2011 (UTC)
One thing notable about this book is that a lot of other authors have built upon it by doing new analyses of its global IQ data, even though most authors generally disagree with the book's conclusions on national IQ causing national income. In this respect it's had a big impact on this area of psychology, and the article here should indicate that. The section you removed went into too much detail about these follow-up studies, but it's important that they exist and this shouldn't be left out completely. I assume you're fine with me at least removing the stuff that's obvious original synth, right?Boothello (talk) 06:41, 25 August 2011 (UTC)
If you have a secondary source which says as much, then by all means introduce the source. aprock (talk) 02:35, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
This is talked about in chapter 11 of Hunt's Human Intelligence, though it'd be nice if the part on this was more detailed. Victor Chmara also mentioned a few times that Lynn and Vanhanen are considered pioneers in the area of international IQ comparisons, so he may know some additional sources for that, I'll ask him if he has suggestions.Boothello (talk) 01:29, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
I see no problem with correctly summarizing Hunt's discussion of their work from the 2010 edition of Human Intelligence. aprock (talk) 04:55, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
The problem is that Lynn's research on national IQs is spread over numerous publications, whereas this article is about just one book. Hunt says in his book (p. 436) that the two books and several articles by Lynn and Vanhanen "reinvigorated the field" and that while he is critical of this work "they deserve credit for raising important questions in a way that has resulted in interesting and important findings". Similarly, in an article[3] to be published in an upcoming special issue of Personality and Individual Differences devoted to Lynn's work, James Thompson writes:
Lynn’s major contribution to the issue of race differences in intelligence is the assembly of world wide data for the intelligence of 10 races (Lynn, 2006). Hitherto, the work of (Jensen, 1998) and (Eysenck, 1971) and others had been largely confined to the black-white difference in the United States.
[...]
In IQ and the Wealth of Nations (Lynn & Vanhanen, 2002) collected measured IQs for 81 nations and estimated IQs for 104 nations using the IQs of similar neighbouring countries. They reported that for the 81 nations the correlation between national IQs and per capita income (real GDP) in 1998 was 0.73, and for 185 nations 0.63. They concluded that national IQs explain 53 per cent of the variance in per capita income (.73 squared = 0.53). Thus, they argued that national IQs are the single most important variable in the determination of national per capita income, and that the remaining 47 per cent can be largely explained by the degree to which nations have free market economies and natural resources.
[...]
Taking Lynn’s work on national differences in IQ as a whole, two features stand out. First, the work attracted hostility from main stream establishment media. Major publishing houses would not be associated with it, and even when the books were eventually published many major journals would not review them. Second, notwithstanding this attempt to sideline Lynn’s findings, the work had considerable impact, and that impact continues to grow. The harsh treatment of Nobel Laureate James Watson in 2007, forced to retire from the Chancellorship of Cold Spring Harbour Laboratory after he quoted Lynn’s work, showed the extent to which ideological ostracism can distort the progress of science. If even the founding father of DNA research could not make a comment about genetic differences in intelligence, the threat to all other researchers was made very clear. In subsequent years, citations to Lynn’s work increased, such that his findings served as the basis for further modelling of national differences in wealth, sometimes in more popular texts that brought Lynn’s finding and theories to a much wider audience. Despite all attempts to ignore his findings, Lynn’s dogged accumulation of data made a considerable contribution to understanding human differences.--Victor Chmara (talk) 16:13, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

I suspect Nations and intelligence may be a better place for discussion of the broader body of work. aprock (talk) 19:24, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

Just to be precise, the p436 quote is:
Richard Lynn [bio] and Tutu Vanhanen [bio], invigorated the field with the publication of two challenging books and some related papers. I shall be highly critical of their empirical work, and even more so of their interpretations. They do deserve credit for raising important questions in a way that has resulted in interesting and important findings.'
Hunt gives them credit for opening up the field of study, but that the specific research in their two books is of questionable quality. aprock (talk) 19:29, 28 August 2011 (UTC)
Victor: Thank you for pointing out this helpful source. Aprock: You did say earlier that you think it's fine to mention the impact this book has had on psychology as long as it's cited to a secondary source, and indicated that you think it's okay to use Hunt's book. Most secondary sources that explore this about IQ and Wealth of Nations do so in the context of Lynn's work in general, but I'll try to focus on the reception of this book in particular. And I'd obviously include any criticisms made by these sources. Is it fine with you if I try adding some stuff about this? My internet access is a bit sporadic at the moment but I intend to do it whenever I have the time.Boothello (talk) 02:28, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
To be clear, you are generally invited to add content from any secondary source as long as it remains WP:DUE and WP:NPOV. aprock (talk) 02:32, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

I'll go ahead with the changes now, sorry for taking so long. As discussed above, I'm going to add some material about this book's impact on psychology cited to Hunt, and to the source Victor Chmara suggested. I'll also remove the criticism that's synthesis from sources that don't mention IQ and the Wealth of Nations. I looked through the sources that Aprock removed a while ago, and some of them are actually book reviews, or studies whose purpose was to specifically evaluate the book's conclusions. As such, I think it's good for sources like that to be included in the article, so I'm adding some of them back. However I'll be careful to not give these sources excessive weight as they had before.Boothello (talk) 06:11, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

While some of the stuff you removed/added/changed may have been legitimate you put it all into one big sweeping edit which very obviously included a bunch of IDON'TLIKEIT edits as well. How about bringing up each specific issue on talk first? Volunteer Marek  03:58, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

I don't think this is helpful. There is a discussion above this that reached a consensus on what to do in this article, and you didn't participate in that discussion. But now that I'm implementing the changes we discussed, you aren't accepting that outcome. You also aren't raising any objections to specific changes, or to any of the points I made above where I explained the justification for them. I'll try to explain the justification for them here in more detail.
  • As stated above, the sources from Diamond, Neisser, Gay, Sarason, Leah, Verney, Shuttleworth-Edwards, and Kaniel are not discussing this book, and bringing them up as criticisms of the book is synthesis. Some of these sources predate the book by more than 20 years. Most of the material that I removed is either cited to sources that don't discuss the book or is completely uncited.
  • Each review of the book should be given close to the same amount of weight. In the version that you restored, some of the negative reviews have an entire paragraph devoted to them, while some of the positive or neutral reviews are left out entirely. The handling of the Richardson review is particularly unbalanced, because the article cites it in four separate places in addition to the lead, and readers who don't look at the references will get the impression that each of these places is an entirely separate criticism. This is an especially bad example of undue weight, because it's actually misleading if you don't look closely. Everything I removed that wasn't either synthesis or unsourced was an example of giving an excessive amount of space to some reviews.
  • The Paliaret, Miller, Hunt, Weede, Dickerson, Whetzel, and Jones sources are all specifically evaluating the book's conclusions, and they should not be excluded. But you removed all of those. Do you have any explanation for why these sources should be removed?
I recall the debate we had here on the main R&I article. I hope you do too. You stated there that it was important for the article to send the right message that the hereditarian hypothesis was a fringe theory. Wanting to make an article send a particular message is essentially the same as trying to push a POV. In an article like this one, the appropriate course of action is to look up the sources that are specifically discussing the book, and give each review an approximately equal amount of weight. That means we shouldn't provide a huge amount of space to any one of the critical sources, and also that we don't provide a lot of space to the more positive sources, such as the Miller and Thompson articles. There are more negative reviews than positive reviews, so if we do this the article will still have an overall negative slant, but only as negative as the source material is - no more and no less.
So far, the only specific criticisms you offered about my changes are that I should include more of the criticisms from Paliaret and that I should include Richardson’s general opinion of the book as well as his specific criticisms. I can fix both of those things, and I can also fix any other specific problems that you point out. But reverting to the version from before my edit is restoring synthesis and unsourced material, and removing at least seven sources that there is no reason to exclude. The article can't be left this way. I will restore the changes that I made, while also following your suggestions about the Richardson and Paliaret sources. You're welcome to suggest any other specific changes, but please do not keep removing sources that specifically discuss the book while restoring those that don't.Boothello (talk) 05:40, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

There is a discussion above this that reached a consensus on what to do in this article - which discussion are you referring to? I see a discussion about adding Hunt and that's fine. However I see no discussion or consensus over whether

  • As stated above, the sources from Diamond, Neisser, Gay, Sarason, Leah, Verney, Shuttleworth-Edwards, and Kaniel are not discussing this book, and bringing them up as criticisms of the book is synthesis. - all I see is you making that claim but no discussion regarding the fact.
  • Each review of the book should be given close to the same amount of weight. - again no discussion about this, and this isn't even something you brought up before. You just pulled it out now. And I very much disagree with this. Not all reviews are equal. Reviews from notable people should obviously be given greater weight. The fact that virtually all economists - the people who usually study "Wealth of Nations" - regardless of their political affiliation think the book is junk is quite important and should be given a major prominence.
  • The Paliaret, Miller, Hunt, Weede, Dickerson, Whetzel, and Jones sources are all specifically evaluating the book's conclusions, and they should not be excluded. But you removed all of those. - I removed Paliaret specifically because the text was misrepresenting the review (this article cherry picked one semi-positive sentence at the end after many many many paragraphs of criticism). I dunno about others, I might have removed them when I reverted your edit simply because you were making a whole bunch of changes under the pretense that these were discussed and approved here while they clearly weren't.

So I think my es that this claim of "per talk discussion" was just used as an excuse to remove a whole bunch of sourced and useful material. All that was discussed was adding Hunt. The other stuff was not discussed nor agreed to. Indeed, some of constitutes quite sketchy propositions. You are basically trying to use the fact that aprock above agreed to one thing (add in Hunt) to carry out a whole slew of potentially POV edits under the guise of "consensus". This is why I reverted you.

Do one thing at a time. Put in Hunt, sure. But leave the other stuff alone, and bring it up here first.

 Volunteer Marek  14:13, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

The standard for discussions at Wikipedia is that when an editor proposes a change, either other editors object to it or they don't. If they don't, the change gets made. You're making a lot of the fact that when I brought up the synthesis issue and the sources that Aprock removed, Aprock and Victor Chmara didn't specifically say "I approve of your proposal." It's enough for a discussion to be resolved if after a change has been proposed, in the discussion that follows nobody objects to it.
Anyway, the issue isn't even whether you think there was a consensus. It's that both times you reverted me, the only justification you gave is that you think these changes haven't been discussed enough. Even if these changes didn't have consensus, "no consensus" is never a valid reason to revert if you aren't raising specific objections. Wikipedia has an essay about this: Wikipedia:Don't_revert_due_solely_to_"no_consensus"
If you're going to reject every change that I've made, you need to tell me why you think it's a problem to remove criticism of the book cited to sources that aren't discussing the book. You need to tell me what you think was wrong with my modified summary of Paliaret, which included what he had to say that's negative in addition to his slightly positive conclusion at the end of the review. You need to tell me what specific reviews should be given more weight than I gave them. I actually did give a little more weight to the more notable reviews, but they should be given closer to equal weight than they are in the current article. Currently, the positive reviews are excluded entirely and a handful of negative ones are dominating. For example, as it is right now the Richardson review is given around three times as much space as most other reviews, not including those that the article doesn't mention at all. You say "I dunno" about most of the sources you removed - I hope I am not supposed to consider that an adequate justification for both times you removed them.
When an editor is reverting, he is supposed to explain specifically what things he's objecting to. You haven't done that, and for most of the sources you removed, you don't even seem sure whether removing them was justified. Let me ask you again: what specific things about my edits do you think are a problem, and why? If there are specific things that you need to be different about it, then I can change them. But if "not enough discussion" is an adequate reason for a revert, then we should also undo Aprock's initial removal of these sources (which was not discussed at all) and restore the article to the way it was in July.Boothello (talk) 16:56, 16 October 2011 (UTC)
The standard for discussions at Wikipedia is that when an editor proposes a change, either other editors object to it or they don't. If they don't, the change gets made. You're making a lot of the fact that when I brought up the synthesis issue and the sources that Aprock removed, Aprock and Victor Chmara didn't specifically say "I approve of your proposal." It's enough for a discussion to be resolved if after a change has been proposed, in the discussion that follows nobody objects to it.
That's not really the standard for discussions at Wikipedia but let's go with it. The problem is that you made several proposals and people began discussing one of them - the inclusion of Hunt. You took that as tacit approval of your other proposals, which were not only not discussed, agreed upon, but not even well articulated. Anyway, here I am objecting to it, especially after I've seen what it entails.
It is up to you to articulate the changes you want to make. You are making one huge wholesale edit that mixes a whole bunch of things up. Take it one thing at a time. For example, I disagree with the way you're trying to downplay the criticisms of the book made by economists. Let's discuss that, here's your chance. Volunteer Marek  02:45, 17 October 2011 (UTC)
I think I have articulated my changes well enough now. I listed several sources that shouldn't be cited as criticism of the book because they are not discussing the book. That's why I removed them. I also explained why I added several sources that are specifically evaluating the book's conclusions that were being excluded. If you disagree with either change, it's your responsibility to explain why. When I'm explaining the justification for my edits, objecting due to "no consensus" is not really different from WP:JUSTDONTLIKEIT (as the essay I linked to points out).
If your priority is to not change anything without consensus, then the best thing to do is restore the content that Aprock removed in August. There was never a consensus for that change either. I stated above that I objected to this removal, but instead of reverting it I made a novel edit to reincorporate some of this material. You undid the edit I made in response to Aprock's edit, but it would make more sense to undo them both. As long as there's no consensus for either Aprock's change or mine, do you mind if I restore the article to the way before either of them? The article should stay how it was in July if we can't reach a consensus for either of these changes. But I would still prefer to move forward rather than back, so I'll try to reach a consensus with you on this:
If you compare the section about the book's reception among economists in your version of the article to the same section in mine, I actually changed this section very little. Your version of this section has two reviews, one by Nechyba and one by Ervik. I did not change the summary of Nechyba at all. I made the summary of Ervik's review slightly shorter, from 130 words to 80 words, and I added a brief mention of one economist who reviewed the book positively (Miller). 130 words is more space than is given to almost any other review, and Ervik is no more notable than many other authors cited in the article. I think this is an excessive amount of space for one review.
In your version of the article, the Ervik and Nechyba reviews are both also discussed a second time in the first paragraph of the "criticism" section. In Ervik's case, there is a quote from him that actually appears in two different places in the article: "the authors fail to present convincing evidence and appear to jump to conclusions." I removed one appearance of this quote because it does not need to be included twice. I didn't change the fact that the Nechyba review is discussed in two different places, but I probably should. If you think it's necessary to split the summary of a review between two different parts of the article, and have the exact same quote appear in two different places, could you please explain why?
I don't think I've downplayed the book's criticism from economists. I've only given the Ervik review an amount of space that's more consistent with some of the other reviews. I also added back the one positive review from an economist that Aprock removed, and took out some material that was duplicated. If you think there's a better way I should have done so, I'm open to suggestions.Boothello (talk) 19:03, 17 October 2011 (UTC)
I think I have articulated the logic behind my changes as clearly as can be expected. I explained the reasons for the sources I added and the ones I removed. I also explained why I made the changes I did to the section about reviews from economists. You've still yet to offer any content criticisms about specific changes I made. To be honest, some of the things you're trying to defend are a bit absurd, like having the exact same quote appear in the article in two different places. You're still welcomed to explain why you think your version is better, but in the absence of such an explanation, the proposed changes should be implemented. As I said, "no consensus" is never enough of an objection on its own when someone is offering content-based justifications their changes.
If you're intending to revert again, please be specific about what changes you're objecting to, and why. And I mean more specific than saying I "downplayed" the criticism from economists without explaining what you mean by that. If you revert it also needs to be to the July version: my edit was a direct response to Aprock's removal of content, and there was certainly never a consensus to keep the article that way. However, it would be better if rather than a blanket revert, you could try building upon my changes and improving the things you think need to be improved. I think my version is at least an improvement over the current version, in terms of removing synthesis and unsourced material as well as adding relevant sources that were being left out. If you keep just reverting these changes (especially without explaining specifically what I'd need to do differently to make you happy), it'll be impossible to ever make progress towards improving the article.Boothello (talk) 10:47, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Miller

I've readded the quote from the Economic Journal as it is pretty succinct and illustrative. I've also removed the Edward Miller review. I can see that being put back in BUT ONLY IF his connections to Pioneer Fund, Mankind Quarterly, as well as all the controversy he's caused over the years are made explicit so that readers know the background of a person who's giving this positive review to this book. Volunteer Marek  20:50, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Adding that he's controversial is fine, but when introducing a living person in a single sentence, it is not the place to list every criticism that's been made against them. This point has been addressed before, when you were trying to introduce researchers as "Pioneer Fund grantees" without including that they're professors, members of the editorial boards for peer-reviewed journals, etc. Consensus decided that it's not NPOV to list all of an author's negative connections without any of the positive ones, and Miller's case is no different. It's enough to say that he's controversial.
In general, there's absolutely no policy-based justification for completely excluding a source just because the author is controversial. Neither WP:NPOV nor WP:RS say that an author being controversial is a reason to exclude them. NPOV policy demands that we include all significant viewpoints that have been published in reliable sources in proportion to their prominence. So Miller shouldn't be given as much space as most of the other reviewers, but he should still be mentioned.Boothello (talk) 21:59, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Sigh. We are running into the same problem over and over again. And that is the fact that these Pioneer Fund guys all "peer review" (sic) each other's publications, give good reviews to each other's books etc. And this is a pretty a very limited group, all of whom are controversial, to put it mildly, and where pretty much everyone else is very critical of this line of research or just ignores it as racist nonsense. Before this issue came up with various fring-y psychologists now it seems you've found an economist that fits into the framework as well.

What some editors have been doing is trying to downplay the fact that all these guys are connected to the - racist organization - Pioneer Fund, and the - racist journal - Mankind Quarterly. And then they try to invoke BLP to hide from Wikipedia readers any criticisms or explanation of what exactly it is that makes these people "controversial". It's dishonest, really.

I think BLP is a very important policy but this is another instance where it is being simply abused. You can't have it both ways. You want to keep out all the specific reasons for why a particular person is controversial, fine. It makes sense for their biographies and closely related articles (though even there it's a judgment call). But you can't turn around and try to pretend that all these people are just ye' ol' regular' folks doing some kind of scientific research at universities when they're up to their ears in controversy. Either don't use them as sources as all, per FRINGE, or do the decent thing and explain to the reader what their background is.

If you think that describing their actual background is a "BLP violation" (given how controversial these folks are, it's not, but let's suppose for the moment that it is) I'm fine with keeping it out. In that case, just remove it. But if you are going to present their "research" or "reviews" or other statements then we have an obligation, per NPOV to explain who these people are. And that involves putting text which describes their "controversial" background. What you can't do is have your cake and eat it too. You can't put their statements in and at the same time pretend that they're not who they are.

So no. It's not enough to call him "controversial". The only realistic choices are to either exclude Miller, per FRINGE. Or to put it in but be honest about the nature of this person and his connections, and not try to WP:GAME BLP to whitewash the nature of his statements. BLP does not prohibit us from including text critical of say, David Duke, in the relevant articles (particularly if someone tries to use David Duke as a source).

And btw, simply ... it's just not true when you say that "This point has been addressed before, when you were trying to introduce researchers as "Pioneer Fund grantees" without including that they're professors, members of the editorial boards for peer-reviewed journals, etc. Consensus decided that it's not NPOV to list all of an author's negative connections without any of the positive ones". In fact the consensus was actually that it is necessary to give the appropriate background - their PF status - in these kinds of cases. Same thing here. Don't make stuff up.  Volunteer Marek  22:34, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

I am referring to the discussion we had on the R&I talk page in May, when you tried to add the "Pioneer Fund grantee" qualifier to researchers mentioned in the lead of that article. I will quote what several other editors from that discussion said. Maunus: "I don't think that it is a good idea or NPOV to mention the pioneer fund every time we mention someone who is a pioneer fund grantee, it is not very NPOV since for each of them they also have other credentials that might be relevant and picking this particular one every time is slanted. I suggest only mentioning the pioneer fund when the article is discussing issues about history of research and about funding, not when we mention individual grantees."
Maunus again, on your claim that everything connected to the Pioneer Fund is fringe: "Unfortunately I don't think it is possible to use the term fringe for the hereditarian viewpoint, also I think the Pioneer issue shouldn't be pushed too much since there is also a dynamic that drives hereditarians to the pioneer fund for funding because mainstream funding sources are reluctant to fund that kind of studies - its not just that the pioneer fund pays people to produce hereditarian research - rather people who would be hereditarians anyway look there for funding. The reason this isn't fringe is the sheer amount of controversy and debate generated by the studies , fringe studies usually don't attract volumes of rebuttal but are met with silence. Secondly there are also notable scholars who occupy intermediary positions of different kinds such as Neisser, Flynn, etc. who are neither completely in either camp, this would be difficult with real fringe studies that are simply considered to be impossible to reconcile with the mainstream, secondly we have the issue that there are so many of the hereditarians (something like 50 people signed the mainstream science statement) and the fact that the APA report is clear in considering the position a reasonable one in principle (though not supported by evidence)."
Victor Chmara: "There is certainly no consensus to mention Pioneer in the lead section. If anything, there's a consensus against that. If we start inserting all sorts of qualifiers and insinuations so as to cast doubt on the motives of the hereditarian researchers, we will have to do that with the anti-hereditarians, too. For example, should Stephen Rose be described in the article as a "polemicist on the left" or "the last of the Marxist radical scientists", as he has been described in the Guardian (see his article for references)? I hope we will not go down that road. The problem with mentioning affilitations that some scientist may have is that everybody has multiple affiliations, and choosing which one to mention and how to mention it is a completely arbitrary process driven by personal biases. It's best to just neutrally describe these people as psychologists, anthropologists or whatever, and if some affiliations are relevant, discuss them more in more detail in one place in the article and/or in a dedicated article as is currently done with Pioneer."
VsevolodKrolikov, too. By the end of the discussion, four people (including myself) disagreed with you and 0 agreed, and you made no further attempt to defend your position.
This whole discussion is a time-waster. We spent a long time discussing this in May, you ultimately failed to get support for your perspective, and eventually you dropped out of the discussion. But now you're repeating the exact same points that you made then, without acknowledging any of the opposition you got about it last time. This is a textbook WP:IDHT attitude. Do we have to rehash the entire discussion here again?
If we do, I guess we should notify the editors who were involved in the previous discussion. I have one question you need to answer first: do you even have a source saying that Edward Miller is a Pioneer Fund grantee? He's certainly a controversial person, but I cannot find any evidence that he's received money from the PF at all. If he's not, then your claim about PF grantees supporting one another is meaningless here.Boothello (talk) 00:04, 21 October 2011 (UTC)
You are cherry picking quotes and misrepresenting the discussion (though yes, you're right in that I gave up after putting up with your tendentious and stubborn editing). Miller got a grant from the PF but the UNO turned it down after protests.[4] Miller has been accused of racism by the NAACP, local newspapers and other organizations. Most of his "research" is NOT published in economic journals but in places like the racist, white supremacist journal Mankind Quarterly. To call him "controversial" is disingenuous, as you well know. Either don't try to use people like that as sources, or explain to the reader who they really are. That's what NPOV is. Volunteer Marek  10:55, 21 October 2011 (UTC)
"You are cherry picking quotes and misrepresenting the discussion " - specifically:
  • Your link to Vsevolod's statement is him replying to you and Ramdrake, not me. Furthermore even in your own statement you acknowledge that Ramdrake and AndyTheGrump agreed with me, so much for your claim By the end of the discussion, four people (including myself) disagreed with you and 0 agreed.
  • You are also ignoring a subsequent comment by another editor, ItsmeJudith, which agreed with mentioning the PF affiliation [5].
  • Additionally, even here Vsevolod's saying that it's not necessary to add Pioneer Fund status, but that we shouldn't described/use Murray as an "intelligence researcher" either - which is pretty much what I'm saying here.
  • Furthermore, Maunus clarified his statement here [6], where he did say it was important to mention PF when it was relevant.
If you're going to misrepresent past discussions and statements, at least don't be so obvious and blatant about it.
Anyway, here it's not strictly speaking the Pioneer Fund funding issue. That's a small portion of it. The bigger portion is the controversy, the publications in racist journals like Mankind Quarterly, etc. etc. etc. Don't just sit there and pretend that Miller is just a ye' ol' regular source, when you know very well that it isn't. Volunteer Marek  11:16, 21 October 2011 (UTC)
I was referring to the end of the discussion, because what matters most in determining consensus is who can defend their position using policy-based reasoning. AndyTheGrump took your perspective early on in the discussion, but when Maunus and Victor Chmara addressed his points he made no attempt to respond to what either of them said. After they addressed his points he just dropped out of the discussion, a long time before you did. Everyone else you mentioned agreed with you about another issue, but not this one. To recap, there were two issues related to the Pioneer Fund being discussed:
1: Whether the Pioneer Fund is relevant enough to race and intelligence to be mentioned in the article's lead section at all.
2: Whether when an individual researcher is being introduced, it's appropriate to introduce them with the fact that they're a Pioneer Fund grantee.
Ramdrake, Itsmejudith and Maunus took your perspective on the first point, but Ramdrake and Itsmejudith didn't express an opinion either way on the second one. And Maunus specifically said that he agreed with you about the first point but not the second. The second point is the relevant one here since this isn't the R&I article. That's why I didn't list Ramdrake and Itsmejudith, as well as why I didn't mention Sightwatcher, who disagreed with you on the first point but didn't comment either way about the second one. And whether Charles Murray is an intelligence researcher has nothing to do with this article either, so let's stay focused on point #2.
I'm confused about why your perspective on this is still the same as before, since you never made an attempt to respond to Victor Chmara or Maunus's points that I quoted from the previous discussion. If you’re going to continue editing on the assumption that it’s okay to introduce an author by mentioning only their negative connections and none of the positive ones, this discussion is going to keep cropping up again and again.
Hopefully I've now clarified what I meant about the discussion in May: not that consensus opposed you about everything in that discussion, just that it did about this one issue. So now let me ask you this one more time. Apart from whatever other issues we discussed there, do you accept that consensus opposed you about point #2 above? In the comment from him that I quoted, Victor Chmara specifically pointed out that consensus opposed you about this, so I can't be the only one to conclude this. If you can't accept that outcome, I guess I'll have to contact the people involved in the earlier discussion so we can try to resolve this a way that we won't keep having to periodically re-discuss it.Boothello (talk) 16:54, 21 October 2011 (UTC)
This is your own idiosyncratic (and not very accurate) interpretation of the previous discussion. Bottom line is that if you're going to try and use extremely controversial sources in an article, like Miller, then NPOV requires that the nature of what makes them controversial is explained to the reader.
This is especially true for sensitive topics such as this one, where the person in question has published multiple articles in a journal which has been described by reliable sources as "white supremacist" and "racist" (as well as other controversy). The fact that one of the authors of this book also happens to be one of the editors-in-chief of this journal (where Miller got published a good bit) makes this doubly relevant. Volunteer Marek  19:24, 21 October 2011 (UTC)
(And I'm still wondering why anyone would be so insistent and adamant on using such a source - with such connections - in the first place). Volunteer Marek  19:26, 21 October 2011 (UTC)
Oh, and actually this whole discussion is moot since the particular journal we're talking about, Journal of Social, Political, and Economic Studies, is not a reliable source anyway. Volunteer Marek  19:37, 21 October 2011 (UTC)
It's not Miller and his review that I'm adamant about, I have no personal feelings about him in particular. It's the big picture I'm concerned with here. You have a pretty long history of looking for excuses to remove reliably sourced material that you don't like, as well as adding disparaging qualifiers about the sources when you can't get rid of them. An example of removing RS material: [7] Here you removed a paper published in the journal Intelligence claiming it wasn't a reliable source because the author is Satoshi Kanazawa. Obviously he's been criticized plenty, but the purpose of peer review is for someone's work to be vetted by other academics in that field, and Intelligence is the most respected journal in psychometrics. WP:RS does not support removing material published in a respected journal just because the author is controversial. An example of adding disparaging qualifiers: [8] In this edit you introduced Hans Eysenck as Hans Eysenck, known for his support of the idea that some races are inherently inferior It still bewilders me that you apparently believe that's the most notable and neutral thing you can think to say about the second-most cited psychologist in the 20th century.
Myself and other editors have repeatedly and patiently explained to you why this kind of editing is a problem. I've never been sure whether you got the point or not. For a while I was optimistic, but now you're repeating the same claims about what you think is or isn't neutral or reliable that you used to justify edits like those linked above. Your position seems to be no different now than it was months ago. The Miller review itself isn't a big deal. It's just frustrating that you still think edits like these are justified, so we can expect you to continue making them in the future, which will lead to endless arguments.
I don't know much about the journal that published the Miller review. I'm open to possibly being convinced that this journal is somehow not a reliable source. But I am going to be naturally skeptical about this after hearing you claim that Intelligence isn't reliable when the authors of papers in it are controversial. The only relevant thing I can find about the Journal of Social, Political, and Economic Studies is that it’s connected to Roger Pearson, who’s another example of a researcher who’s been involved in lots of controversy but who’s also made some important contributions to the understanding of heredity. Wikipedia's article about this journal cites only a single source which says that the journal is connected to Pearson (without actually criticizing the journal). If you think this journal is unreliable, you need to demonstrate that. Its connection to someone controversial is not enough. You’ll need to find sources that say there’s something wrong with the journal itself, the same way sources have said about Mankind Quarterly for example. Unless a substantial body of sources are specifically saying that a journal is unreliable, the standard assumption for peer-reviewed material is that it’s reliable.
I said that it's fine to state that Miller is controversial in a concise and neutral manner. But you've indicated with your comments above (and with your revert) that you aren't satisfied with that, and that what you want is the same sort of disparaging aside that you added about Eysenck. This is not good editing policy.
Anyway, it looks like that we won't be able to resolve this without outside input. I'll contact some of the editors who were involved in the earlier discussion. For now I think we should limit it to people who are still involved in this topic area currently and so will not need to familiarize themselves with the issue. Maunus and Victor Chmara are the two who've been most active on these articles recently, so I'll start with them, and we can contact additional people if that's necessary.Boothello (talk) 00:18, 22 October 2011 (UTC)
  • I think that this case is slightly different from the other cases I've commented about, because here it seems to be a PF grantee (if that is the case? his article doesn't mention any PF grants) reviewing a book authored by someone who's on the board of directors. Even disregarding the fact that it suggests that Miller is predisposed favorably towards Lynn's view of the topic there is also a potential financial conflict of interest. I am not sure about what to do in this case I must admit - in one way adding the information is a kind of synthesis (unless some source mentions his possible conflict of interest - perhaps he mentions it in the review itself, that would certainly be the most honest of him) but it also seems to be significant information that a reader should know. I am in two minds. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 00:59, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

It's not Miller and his review that I'm adamant about, I have no personal feelings about him in particular. - yet your continued insistence on inserting authors like Miller, and others, associated with PF or Mankind Quarterly, or others associated with race related controversy. Actions speak louder than words.

I don't know much about the journal that published the Miller review. - I'm guessing that's why you didn't wiki-link to it, even though it has its own article, as in that case it would've been easier to find out what kind of journal it was. So sure, you keep putting in all these sources associated with that journal, and all these sources associated with its sister journal MQ, but you don't know much about it. Ok, assume good faith and all that, you didn't know.

Anyway, it looks like that we won't be able to resolve this without outside input. - yeah, why don't you explain to this outside input that you're going to ask for how you insist on inserting "researchers" associated with racist organizations and "white supremacist" journals into various articles, and how you try to pretend that this kind of background of these sources somehow doesn't matter. And then you can tell them how I'm mean and nasty because I insist that if these kinds of racist-associated sources are included in the article the least we can do is explain to the reader who they are. Seriously, I get really sick of playing these stupid games. You know who these people are. I know who these people are. There's no way in the world that you can pass them off as just regular non-controversial authors. And even if you somehow pulled that stunt off convincingly (and maybe you do, to these "outside inputs"), there's no way you can pull off the double summersault of at the same time pretending that you have no idea who they are or where they come from. Stop lying. Because that's what you're doing. Enough.

@Maunus - Miller got a grant from PF but the University of New Orleans made him turn it down after much controversy. He wrote a letter to local newspapers saying some messed up stuff and spoke up in praise of David Duke. The NAACP complained and the university tried to distance himself as much as possible from him (while respecting the fact he's tenured). Ever since ... for ever, but at least since he started writing wacky stuff about intelligence, and about how blacks have smaller brains than whites, and are henceforth dumber, no respectable economics journal has published anything by him. Hence, virtually all his publications are in trash like Mankind Quarterly and the Journal that Boothello has been trying to pass of as legitimate above.

 Volunteer Marek  02:26, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

And, oh my god! - Here you removed a paper published in the journal Intelligence claiming it wasn't a reliable source because the author is Satoshi Kanazawa. Obviously he's been criticized plenty - are you seriously faulting me for removing crap from Satoshi Kanazawa, the guy who claimed to have "scientifically" (sic) proven that black women are uglier than white women, from these articles of yours? If there's something wrong with this, it's that you tried to put this kind of stuff into Wikipedia articles in the first place.  Volunteer Marek  02:29, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

If he turned out not acceting the grant then we can't describe him as a PF grantee, and he hasn't got a COI. We probably should characterize him as a non-neutral observer, for example "a vocal proponent of the hereditarian explanation of the Racial IQ gap".·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 03:05, 22 October 2011 (UTC)
Ok. That's not the issue. I was not trying to describe him as a PF grantee. That's Boothello pretending that I was. What I was saying is that he a controversial author and the controversy should be explained. The COI has to do with the fact that most of his publications are in the Mankind Quarterly (or the associated journal), and Lynn, the author of this particular book is one of the editors in chief of that journal.
All that is neither here nor there however, as the journal which Boothello was trying to insert into the article is not a reliable source. So the issue is moot. Volunteer Marek  03:31, 22 October 2011 (UTC)
Mankind Quarterly and other similar publications are reliable sources, at least for the viewpoints of the authors of articles published there. We do not require an academic journal to have good credentials to be considered reliable. Even if these journals were published by an advocacy group or political think tank directly they would still be reliable sources for those viewpoints. I am afraid that you are misapplying policy here to keep out a view that you consider to be wrongheaded. Per NPOV rongheaded views also gets to be included according to their significance. In this case I would argue that a favorable review in a journal edited by its author and which is automatically favorable to any book presenting the general argument is not very significant. Probably should have no more than a line per WP:WEIGHT. Perhaps it should even be written into a line together with other favorable reviews in similarly insignificant sources. e.g. Several proponents of the hereditarian view published favorable reviews of the book (Rushton xxxx, Eysenck xxxx, Miller xxxx, Jensen xxxx) (this is an example I don't think rushton and eysenck reviewed this book). The significant reviews are of course the ones published in mainstream journals, by authors who are not known beforehand to be significantly biased for or against the hereditarian theory. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 03:43, 22 October 2011 (UTC)
Well, no, not exactly. MQ, and similar publications are reliable sources for their own viewpoints (and even there this gets close to violating WP:PRIMARY), but they are not reliable sources in regard to outside facts or commentary. Specifically, we can include what MQ or Miller say about a particular topic, but then we need to attribute - and attribution doesn't mean just say "MQ" or "Miller", say this and that, since most readers can't tell Miller from Milton - these views properly. And that means explaining who these people are, what they are known for and what side they are associated with. I've edited in a lot of areas on Wikipedia and I've NEVER seen the policy applied in a way which says that any ol' crazy source can be used as long as we just "name" it. Otherwise you got David Irving being put into the article on the Holocaust with only "Mr. Irving says this and this".
And this is what I've been saying all along. Either we use Miller but we explain who he is and what he is known for and the fact the publishes in MQ, or we just simply leave it out (per WP:WEIGHT).  Volunteer Marek  04:46, 22 October 2011 (UTC)
Maunus, I'm okay with your suggestion that the most significant reviews are the ones by authors who are not known beforehand to be significantly biased for or against the hereditarian theory. Do you think this applies to other books too? I'm thinking of Race, Evolution, and Behavior in particular. When that article mentions the reviews by Arthur Jensen, Hans Eysenck and Glayde Whitney, it includes that all three are Pioneer Fund grantees. But it doesn't include qualifiers about the reviews by Richard Lewontin and Joseph L. Graves, who are two of the most prominent anti-hereditarians alive today. The same probably also goes for Francisco Gil-White, who's well-known for his opposition to the biological concept of race (as mentioned in his article) and is the author of "Resurrecting Racism: The modern attack on black people using phony science."
Miller could be introduced by saying something like, "Edward Miller, a proponent of the hereditarian perspective about race and intelligence" but we should be consistent. If it applies to researchers who are known to be biased either for or against the hereditarian theory, then it should apply to people like Lewontin and Graves as well as to people like Jensen, Eysenck or Miller.Boothello (talk) 22:52, 22 October 2011 (UTC)
Hmmmm. I can see that that is the logical consequence of my argument - however as I think you probably intuit I am not actually in agreement with that consequence. I think that there is a difference between when a proponent of a minority view receiving good reviews by ones friends and economic supporters who share his viewpoint, and when he receives substantial criticisms of his methods and data by scholars who have published similar criticisms before, and are known to be critical of the general line of research. I think here it becomes relevant to recognize that the majority view is against Lynn and considers the line of research he represents to be unsound - the fact that it receives unsubstantiated praise from others belonging to that minority is less relevant than the substantiated criticisms from the majority. Perhaps if a particular review was a pure trashing obviously not based on a reading of the book but on preconceived opinions (I could see some anti-hereditarians write such a review but probably neither Graves nor Lewontin) it could be summarised as "anti-hereditarians x and y flatly rejected it". I think it probably has to be determined on a case by case basis and not as a blanket decision. Generally I think reasoned negative reviews are more relevant than purely positive ones. And then I think that when a book receives generally negative attention with a few good ones by persons who have clear connections to the author, then the those good ones weigh less. Conversely positive comments within a critical review weigh more (e.g. Hunt's) than a simple hatchet job . For Race, Evolution and Behavior the tendency of negative reviews from everyone but Rushton's close personal friends is so significant that it cannot be denied. And Graves review is based on the fact that he is a main authority on the problems with the method Rushton uses. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 23:40, 22 October 2011 (UTC)
In Race, Evolution, and Behavior, I'm more concerned with weight than I am with qualifiers or the lack thereof. In that article, Jensen's quote is 30 words, Eysenck's is 42 words, and Harpending (a well-known hereditarian but with no connection to the Pioneer Fund or Rushton) gets 63 words. The quote by Graves however is 270 words - more than all hereditarians combined. Even if Graves doesn't need a qualifier, I'm not sure the prevalence of his perspective justifies his quote being longer than all of the hereditarians put together. Wahlsten and Barash are also individually given more space than all of the hereditarians combined. I don't really think this makes sense, especially when you compare Graves and Harpending: both are experts in their relevant field and are well-known for their viewpoints, neither has a connection to Rushton or the PF. I don't think Graves should have four times the space that Harpending does. Your principles on this seem reasonable, but in this case I think it's being carried to the illogical extreme and could be improved.
Also, what do you think about my proposed wording for the Miller review in this article?Boothello (talk) 02:46, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

The discussion about Race, Evolution, and Behavior should take place on that article's talk page, not here. And again, with respect to Miller and sources such as the Mankind Quarterly or the Journal of Social, Political, and Economic Studies (which is the one where Miller's review was published), they are only reliable sources for statements about themselves. They are NOT reliable sources for anything else - including reviews such as this one. If we were to allow any kind of source to be a reliable source "for its own opinions" then we would be allowing for stuff published by, say, Stormfront (since organizations almost by definitions publish "their own opinions), on Mein Kampf, with only some minor qualification that such a source is "controversial". That's not Wikipedia's actual policy on reliable sources.

Again - and I feel like I need to clarify this once more since Boothello has been misrepresenting my position here and on various people's talk pages - my opinion is that we simply do not use sources such as MQ and JSPES (per not-RS, UNDUE, etc). BUT IF somebody, like Boothello, insists on putting such sources (you can keep calling them "hereditarian" if you want, other reliable sources call them "racist") into articles then YES, it IS necessary that the nature of such sources is made clear to the reader, in a manner that is not just some off-hand comment that they're "controversial". Galileo was "controversial". This is different. Volunteer Marek  03:20, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

I am sorry but there is no policy based reason for excluding these publications out of hand, or for requiring descriptions of them in all contexts. That is not how the RS policy works. All arguments about whether to include specific pieces published in those journals will have to rest on WP:WEIGHT and on a case by case evaluation of the material and its relation to the article and to the general weighting of viewpoints.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 22:09, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
Just very quickly off the top of my head (since I'm a bit busy at the moment), there's plenty of reasons why these publications would not be considered reliable. WP:UNDUE is just a tip of the iceberg. Specifically, the WP:RS policy states:
  • Articles should be based on reliable, third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. - Do journal such as Mankind Quarterly and JoSPES have a "reputation for fact-checking and accuracy"? I don't think so. They do have a reputation for pushing a particular fringe agenda, which is why they are described as "racist" and "white supremacist" in most other mainstream publications.
  • However, some scholarly material may be outdated, in competition with alternate theories, or controversial within the relevant field. Try to cite present scholarly consensus when available, recognizing that this is often absent. - this is describing potentially "scholarly" sources which may still fail to be reliable. The part about "controversial within the relevant field" certainly applies here. The injunction to present mainstream scholarly consensus does as well.
  • Let me quote this one in full: Material such as an article, book, monograph, or research paper that has been vetted by the scholarly community is regarded as reliable. If the material has been published in reputable peer-reviewed sources or by well-regarded academic presses, generally it has been at least preliminarily vetted by one or more other scholars.. Obviously the source under discussion has been ... published. But has it been "vetted" by the scholarly community? AND there is that word "reputable" in front of the "peer-reviewed sources" in that statement. Do you really think journals such as MQ are "reputable"? I would very much beg to disagree on that.
  • One can confirm that discussion of the source has entered mainstream academic discourse by checking the scholarly citations it has received in citation indexes. A corollary is that journals not included in a citation index, especially in fields well covered by such indexes, should be used with caution, though whether it is appropriate to use will depend on the context. - this is actually a good question; how much has Miller's review been cited by others? Or, more broadly, how often is JoSPES or MQ cited by "reputable" (I mean, really reputable) journals in this field? Here, this is my field - economics - rather than yours, and I can tell you the answer; pretty much never. Note that Miller started publishing in MQ and JoSPES AFTER he got tenure. If he had published in those journals before tenure, I honestly very much doubt he would have gotten it. Certain kinds of publications are seen as a "minus" on one's CV rather than a "plus" and these kinds of journals would be a very very very big minus.
This one goes right to the hear of the matter: Care should be taken with journals that exist mainly to promote a particular point of view. A claim of peer review is not an indication that the journal is respected, or that any meaningful peer review occurs. Journals that are not peer reviewed by the wider academic community should not be considered reliable, except to show the views of the groups represented by those journals.. Do journals like MQ and JoSPES exist to promote a particular point of view? Yes they clearly do (a view described as "racist" and "white supremacist" by truly reliable sources). Are they reviewed by the wider academic community? No they are not, most people outside the MQ/PF circles just ignore this kind of trash since even engaging these kinds of people in a discussion in a way legitimizes them (hence we see difference between Wikipedia and the actual scholarly community here). The closest example of where this did happen is when James Heckman (a bone fide conservative and an old school "Chicago School" economists who not just knows, but probably invented the secret conservative-Chicago-school-economist hand shake) actually bothered to review The Bell Curve (and slapped it around a good bit) - but that was an exceptional case.
This is important because this is exactly what we have here: journals like MQ and JoSPES are "peer reviewed" in the sense that other people associated with these journals read and praise the articles by others. This is no different than if I started a journal called "Journal of Volunteer Marek is a Superior Being Studies" and then had some of my college drinking buddies published in it, with praises for whatever I said. It would be "peer-reviewed" and it might even have "scholarly" pretensions (in fact, it would have very very very large scholarly pretensions, bigger pretensions than all the other weak sauce journals out there. The ladies would be impressed with the size of the scholarly pretensions). It would still not be reliable.
So. Just reading the first section of WP:RS makes it abundantly clear that publications like MQ and JoSPES are in no way reliable sources. I hope you don't take offense at me saying this, but it seems like it's been awhile since you've read WP:RS. Volunteer Marek  22:44, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
I think you're right - I certainly didn't remember the passage about "journals that exist mainly to promote a particular view" - I agree fully with that policy, but I actually remembered the RS policy being much more cottonmouthed about this and basically saying that a peer-reviewed journal is reliable. I am glad it doesn't, this provides a new basis for evaluating this kind of material. (While grantedly a special case, The Bell Curve was pretty much reviewed in every peer reviewed publication of a relevant field - Lynn's books aren't of course). Hmm this does suggest that reviews in these kinds of journals should have very light weighting and in this case it may not be necessary to include the review at all. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 22:52, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
Yes, I do think the Bell Curve is a different case. Volunteer Marek  23:47, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
I don't think there's a disagreement between RS policy and what you said earlier, Maunus. RS policy states how we should handle "journals that exist mainly to promote a particular point of view" which I think everyone agrees applies to Mankind Quarterly. This journal is still a reliable source "to show the views of the groups represented by those journals" but for nothing else. You pointed out that MQ (and similar journals) are reliable sources about the viewpoints of authors published there, which is the same thing that RS policy says. I would not cite MQ for information presented as fact. But I think that when a paper by someone like Lynn or Rushton is published in MQ, that paper is a reliable source about Lynn or Rushton's opinion. Which is basically consistent with RS policy and what you said.
I think that's all beside the point, though. I've been trying to research the Journal of Social, Political and Economic Studies, and I can't really find anything to suggest it's in the same category of journals as Mankind Quarterly. The wikipedia article about it describes it as "associated with the political far right" but the article's single source does not support that. The source only says that the journal is associated with Roger Pearson, who is known for having far-right viewpoints. But I think it's OR as well as "guilt by association" to assume that a journal must be far-right because it's associated with someone who is. I have found information alluding to the fact that far-right papers are sometimes published in the journal, but I've only found people claiming that the entire journal itself is far-right in blogs and self-published websites. What's more is that I found this journal being cited for a ton of mainstream academic publishers on Google Books and Google Scholar like the University of Illinois Press, the American Journal of Political Science, and the British Library of Political and Economic Science. I don't think that any of this supports the conclusion that the journal is unreliable.Boothello (talk) 02:12, 24 October 2011 (UTC)
Boothello, you are still misunderstanding/misrepresenting WP:RS. Journals like MQ or JoSPES are reliable sources for what they say about themselves. They are not reliable sources for ... pretty much anything else. In other words, if MQ publishes a statement which says "we are the shiznitz when it comes to race research" we COULD say in the relevant article that "the journal Mankind Quarterly describes itself as the shiznitz in regard to race research" (and then follow that up with what other sources say for sake of NPOV). But if Mankind Quarterly publishes a statement which says "blacks are intellectually inferior to whites" (as it more or less does) we CANNOT put into an article that "blacks are intellectually inferior to whites" and then slap a inline citation to MQ at the end of that claim and make it look legit. We CANNOT even put into an article that "according to the journal Mankind Quarterly blacks are intellectually inferior to whites" and then slap a inline citation to MQ. EVEN MORE, we CANNOT even put into an article "according to the controversial journal Mankind Quarterly blacks are intellectually inferior to whites" etc. The most we could do is put into an article that "according to the journal Mankind Quarterly, which has been described as "racist" and "white supremacist" [sources], blacks are intellectually inferior to whites" - even in that situation most of the time we probably shouldn't even do that and simply ignore what MQ has to say, per WP:UNDUE (and this is actually where WP:UNDUE comes into play, after the WP:RS test has been applied). As I pointed out and outlined above, this is basically what WP:RS instructs.
And in point of fact, this is basically common sense. Pretty much any source is a reliable source in how it views itself. But it doesn't follow that any source is a reliable source for its own opinions. Again, otherwise we could put in David Irving opinions on the Holocaust into the Holocaust article because "David Irving is a reliable source for views represented by David Irving" (which is essentially tautological). At that point any source what so ever becomes a reliable source. That IS NOT - by common sense or Wikipedia policy - what WP:RS says (and as a broader comment, I'm generally of the opinion that Wikipedia's fundamental policies are actually fairly smart and intuitive, it's just that they get misapplied, used and abused, and misrepresented so much that even good faithed editors get lost in what they are really about - which is what seems to be happening here).

 Volunteer Marek  03:59, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

Marek, I think you are confusing WP:RS and WP:UNDUE. We don't include Irving's views in the article about the Holocaust because the Holocaust is a very broad, high-level topic, which cannot go into major detail about any single aspect. It's not because there aren't reliable sources that discuss Irving's views - they've been discussed in some newspapers. His viewpoints aren't included in that article because they're not notable enough to be included. This article is different, because here there is an entire section devoted to reviews of the book, and there are only around ten reviews of it in existence. Since this is not a high-level topic like the Holocaust, it's possible for every review of the book to be mentioned, although some should obviously be given more space than others.
But this doesn't even matter, because sources do not support the idea that JoSPES is unreliable. Please look at the new source that Maunus added to the article about this journal and what it says. To quote:
"After a number of academic appointments he [Pearson] moved to Washington to found the Council on American Affairs and the Journal of Social and Political studies (later expanded to the Journal of Social, Political and Economic Studies), which eschewed the old rhetoric of Nordic solidarity in favor of a more mainstream conservative orientation and featured contributions by such public figures as Jack Kemp and Jesse Helms as well as analyses by academics."
According to Tucker's book, JoSPES is not a racist, white supremacist, or far-right journal. Tucker considers it a mainstream conservative source. Therefore it's inaccurate to use the term "far-right" for this journal, "conservative" would be a better word. If your perspective is that when a source has a mainstream conservative orientation that makes it unreliable, policy does not support you about that.Boothello (talk) 18:28, 24 October 2011 (UTC)
Sigh. According to Tucker's book, JoSPES is not a racist, white supremacist, or far-right journal. - where do you see that in Tucker's book? All he says is that he eschewed blatantly racist rhetoric. And if you keep reading (pg. 178) [9] that Tucker says that JoSPES under Pearson's stewardship cannot "be considered research" and that it was no "less tendentious" (compared to earlier, outright racist, stuff).
Here [10] another source compares MQ and JoSPES and states that that they only have the trappings (i.e. not the real thing) of scholarly works.
Here is more [11].
And of course there's way more of this out there, you just have to look. A true conservative would be deeply offended by this conflation of regular conservatism and racism as exemplified by publications like MQ and JoSPES.  Volunteer Marek  20:58, 24 October 2011 (UTC)
Marek, did you read the sources you just posted? The quotes you posted from the first are related to Pearson's personal activities and motives, not the quality of the journals themselves. More importantly, this paragraph is discussing Pearson's activities while he was a Pioneer Fund grantee, which according to the book lasted until 1999. It's a big leap to think this is saying anything about the quality of JoSPES, and an even larger one to think it's saying anything about the quality of that journal in 2002. The third source you posted is a self-published post from a mailing list. Only the second source is both reliable and discussing the journal itself. This is what is says in entirety:
"The anthropological journal Mankind Quarterly, edited by Pearson, has the trappings of a truly scholarly publication but devotes most of its space to articles about race differences and eugenics, as does the Journal of Social, Political and Economic Studies, also edited by Pearson."
You're making a big deal out of the word "trappings" but the only thing being criticized here is that these journals devote a lot of space to race differences. This does not come close to supporting your claim that the journal is "racist" or "far right" or "white supremacist". You're trying way too hard to find sources that support your claims. The standard practice for sourcing at Wikipedia is to look at what the most prominent sources say, and then base the article on that. It's not to start off with what you want the article to say, and then look for a source to support it. But in your case you're citing the archives of a mailing list, which you could not have any reason to do unless you were searching specifically for a source that supports the claim you want to make, and then having a lot of trouble finding one.
The most prominent source that talks about this journal (not about Pearson as a person) appears to be the one that Maunus cited in the article about the journal. That source just calls JoSPES a mainstream conservative journal. If you want to include what's said in the Stevenhagen book, then we can call it a mainstream conservative journal that often discusses race differences. But that's the most we can say that's supported in reliable sources and the articles should be edited to reflect that.Boothello (talk) 23:34, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

"unsourced editorializing"?????

I've redone the edit reverted here, with corrections. Apparently, I picked up numbers from the wrong columns of the row above for some of the sort parameters. It wasn't intended as "unsourced editorializing" — it was a simple error. Once the sortable table is sorted, the subheaders get moved out of place. The purpose of the edit is to allow those subheaders to be sorted back into place when the table is sorted by the Rank column. It's not really a big thing to me, though. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 23:58, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

The editorializing is sorting the entries into "very high", "high" etc. in essence you are introducing an (arbitrary?) classification of IQ levels that I don't think is supported by the book.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 00:08, 30 October 2011 (UTC)
Oh; I see now. Your disagreement is with the placement of the subheaders introduced in this edit rather than with my tweak relating to sorting the subheaders. I see that the subheaders have been removed in the current article version, and I don't have any disagreement with that. I don't have access to the book and don't know whether it does or does not support the subheader grouping classifications. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 01:39, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Asterisk'd table entries

I notice that a number of table entries are marked with asterisks, and that this is not explained. I don't have access to the book, but I imagine that it is explained there. If the asterisks are to be shown in the article, their import should be explained here. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 00:01, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Vandalism?

About a week ago, an IP address made this edit to change several of the IQ scores and the country associated with a few others. Victor Chmara reverted the edit, and then the IP address undid Victor's revert. The IP's changes to the scores and countries have been in the article since then.

I trust Victor Chmara more than I trust an anonymous IP, so based on that I would assume this change was vandalism. But I do not have the book on hand and I am confused by the fact that other editors have typically reverted vandalism on this article in the past week, but allowed these changes that the IP made a week ago to stay in the article. Can anyone familiar with the book determine whether this change was vandalism, and if it was, is there any reason it has been allowed to stay in the article?Boothello (talk) 05:11, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Libya's national IQ is estimated at 84 in the book, not 94. The problem with this article and IQ and Global Inequality is that they keep getting vandalised and it's difficult to keep track what the real numbers are. Both articles should be protected against IP users.--Victor Chmara (talk) 08:17, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
If vandalism like this often goes unnoticed, I think it would be useful if someone who owns both books could check the articles every few weeks to make sure the IQ scores listed still match those in the book. Otherwise when someone changes the IQ scores and nobody notices, the change could stay in the article for months.Boothello (talk) 03:10, 29 October 2011 (UTC)
  • I actually don't think there is any reason for including the full list of national scores. It seems to go against the advice in the MOS against large embedded lists that break reading flow. I think we should remove the table all together.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 03:15, 29 October 2011 (UTC)
The table of 190 countries should be edited, whether trimmed down or portrayed in another way. It is currently very bulky and tedious to read.Meatsgains (talk) 03:18, 29 October 2011 (UTC)
i agree. the article will also become more readable when this huge table is gone.-- mustihussain  09:27, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

I agree that that there isn't much of a reason to have the table/list in the article at all. There's several reasons for this. MOS, POV, PRIMARY (in a way), and the fact that it's a constant vandal-magnet. Remove it. Volunteer Marek  04:37, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

I think that if there are editors who think the figures are encyclopedic we should move them to a separate List of National IQ scores, where they wouldn't break this poor article in half.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 20:52, 24 November 2011 (UTC)
I second this suggestion, though I might make the title more descriptive as List of IQ estimates from ''IQ and the Wealth of Nations'' or something similar. aprock (talk) 23:19, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, I missed the discussion in this thread after my initial comment. I don't think the argument that the table "breaks the flow" of the article is tenable. No one reads the article and says, "I hate the fact that the article contains the data that the book is all about. It would be so much better if the real meat of the book and the reason it is (in)famous, i.e. the national IQ estimates, were removed."

However, I think the idea of placing the table in a separate article is a good one. There's a similar table in IQ and Global Inequality, and it could then be removed as well. The table could be placed in Nations and intelligence.--Victor Chmara (talk) 23:51, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

No it could be placed in an article with a name starting with "List of ..." Articles are supposed to be prose and illustrations - tables are illustrations when they are absolutely necessary, but this is overkill by far. This data has to be in a List, not an article.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 00:18, 25 November 2011 (UTC)
I created List of national IQ estimates from Lynn and Vanhanen (2002, 2006). It contains the estimates from both of Lynn and Vanhanen's books.--Victor Chmara (talk) 14:09, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Bosnia Erzegovina third for IQ?

LOL

what a crap is that list? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.12.221.200 (talk) 19:43, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Significance of the asterisk in the table.

If it's stated someplace, it's squirreled, should be prominent, does it mean the figure was derived rather than reported from an extant study? 72.228.177.92 (talk) 16:12, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

I asked about the asterisks here a few weeks ago but didn't get any response. Digging around a bit, I see this, which uses data from the book and says, "National IQs are from Lynn and Vanhanen (2002); table entries marked with an asterisk (*) are estimates, whereas the other IQ values are based on direct evidence." Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 03:14, 20 November 2011 (UTC)
Well if it's restored, that should be added in explanation. 72.228.177.92 (talk) 10:40, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

(UTC)

about IRAN, iran is a recently invented and adopted name for a country made of many ethnic and linguistic groups, so it is not correct to consider them all with same GDP, about a one third of iran's population are of Turkic descendts which have average IQ levels around 95 (like Turkey and Azerbaijan), and the average IQ score of iranians is mentioned about 85, with forming a simple equation we can conclude that average IQ score of persians should be about 70! for more information about iran's ethnic contexts, study the link below: http://www.iranian.com/main/blog/savalan/irans-multi-cultural-and-multi-ethnic-society — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.164.108.227 (talk) 00:46, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Serious Reliability Issues

There are several issues regarding reliability of the information provided in this book. Just as an example, I worked in different regions of Iran as a doctor. The pupil's IQ used to be screened there before entering the primary school to determine children with special educational requirements. Children with low IQ scores were referred to us for further evaluation. I can say with confidence even in remote and rural areas you could hardly find scores below 85. Can anybody tell me how the average score for the entire nation could be 84 then?!

The question is why Mr Lynn simply ignored almost all up-to-date readily accessible published data and preferred to try and find just lowest estimates even if they come only from limited sources, from just one city, and decades ago (e.g. in 1957).

Below you can see a few samples of various online published data regarding IQ screening results in different regions of Iran from remote and rural to metropolitan areas. Please just note that in the majority of these screening tests there are 2 groups; a case study group with a special health problem (e.g. hypothyroidism) and a normal control group. It can be seen easily even in case study groups the average IQ levels are significantly higher than 84! The scores are even higher in control group which can be used as an estimate for the general population. This clearly shows there is not a sound base for the author's claim and I do not think it is difficult for an unbiased observer to realize that.


1. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3093169/


2. http://thejns.org/doi/pdf/10.3171/ped.2007.106.2.106


3. http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=16302880


4. http://ukpmc.ac.uk/abstract/MED/12150331/reload=0;jsessionid=m5RoGL9txNWHRCPe2wLr.94


5. http://jcem.endojournals.org/content/85/9/3233.short


6. http://www.jofamericanscience.org/journals/am-sci/am0605/13_1230_Intelligence_am0605_86_90.pdf


7. http://www.liebertonline.com/doi/abs/10.1089/thy.2011.0053


8. http://www.amsciepub.com/doi/abs/10.2466/pr0.1990.66.3.865


9. http://www.sid.ir/en/ViewPaper.asp?ID=50076&varStr=3;BERJIS%20N.A.D.,BALUCHI%20M.,OMRANI%20M.R.;SHIRAZ%20E%20MEDICAL%20JOURNAL;October%202006;7;4;0;0


10. http://www.insipub.com/ajbas/2011/July-2011/996-1005.pdf


11. http://198.170.104.138/pjbs/0/422-PJBS-DOI.pdf


12. http://www.sid.ir/en/VEWSSID/J_pdf/101120040207.pdf


13. http://www.sid.ir/En/VEWSSID/J_pdf/101120071304.pdf


14. http://journals.tums.ac.ir/upload_files/pdf/17400.pdf


What prompted me to write this brief note was the fact that I found the information provided in this book totally contrary to current available evidence and also to my personal observations as a medical practitioner with several years experience of everyday contact with all people from different ethnic and socioeconomic groups in different regions of Iran. Considering the profound difference between the provided information in this book and the actual evidence, I also highly suspect the information regarding other countries and ethnic groups can be regarded as reliable or scientific.


29 Dec 2011 Shzyavar (talk) 06:02, 29 December 2011 (UTC) Shzyavar

Shzyavar, you have misunderstood the meaning of IQ scores. IQ is not a ratio scale, and you cannot compare the results obtained in those studies to Lynn and Vanhanen's national IQ estimates unless you convert the scores into the same scale. Lynn and Vanhanen set Britain's mean IQ to 100, and then calculated all the other countries' mean scores in relation to the British mean. I looked at some of your studies, and often it's not even clear what norms, if any, they use. Some clearly use Iranian standardization samples (i.e. the Iranian population mean is set to 100, regardless of what the raw scores are compared to, say, those obtained in Britain using the same test), in others the sample mean is apparently set to 100, and others may use still different approaches. Any comparisons between Lynn and Vanhanen's results and those obtained in the studies you listed are meaningless unless they are transformed into the same scale.--Victor Chmara (talk) 18:52, 5 January 2012 (UTC)



Dear Victor Chmara, Thanks for your comment. I suppose I can understand what IQ score means. What I cannot understand is how someone in this day and time is able to sell his personal understanding of differences between human races as a “scientific” book and not to receive an appropriate reaction from scientific community. Looking at your comment has persuaded me to take this opportunity to shed more light on this topic. Here, I’m just focusing on Iran; however, as I stated in my previous note, it doesn’t mean that I think the information provided in this book regarding other nations and ethnic groups or the authors’ conclusion based on that information is valid or reasonable. The issues with this book, in terms of both the reliability and consistency of the its data acquisition, and the methodology adopted in analysing the data, are so numerous that a more comprehensive discussion about these flaws actually necessitates writing another book, and I’m obviously not going to do it here!


In regards to your comment:


1. You wrote “you cannot compare the results obtained in those studies to Lynn and Vanhanen's national IQ estimates unless you convert the scores into the same scale”. I agree. My question is how did you find it’s not the case for studies I listed? Apart from two studies (including the first one in which one of the tests used was the “normalized” Wechsler Revised Scale) I could not find any evidence in other studies that they used the IQ tests which were normalized or standardized for Iran. How you simply say “Iranian population mean is set to 100”, while in some of these studies the average IQ of the control group (and even of the case study group with a health problem) was significantly higher than 100? Have you noticed one of the studies was actually conducted outside of Iran?


2. Even your “presumption” that the information I provided is based on Iran’s normalized IQ tests does not change anything. Actually, a large-scale “standardization study” which was conducted in Ahvaz (Khoozestan province of Iran) few years ago clearly showed that “general intelligence and intellectual abilities of Iranian children (in Khoozestan) is similar to children in the United Kingdom”. In other words the results obtained in studies conducted in Iran are valid for comparison at least with the results obtained in UK, in any case. This is the link:


http://www.sid.ir/en/ViewPaper.asp?ID=160546&varStr=3;RAJABI%20GH.R.;CONTEMPORARY%20PSYCHOLOGY%20;SPRING%202008;3;1;23;32


Taking the generally higher level of educational standards and socioeconomic status in cities like Tehran, Isfahan, Mashad, etc. into account it doesn’t surprise me if some other studies carried out in over-mentioned cities show even higher average scores.


Please correct me if I’m wrong, but it appears to me that to prove the Lynn’s claim you are trying to discredit all other available information. I don’t think it is the solution. Just a reminder that these are only a few samples of a large number of studies. Do you want to ignore all of them?


3. Let’s assume all data I provided are invalid and “meaningless”, as you claimed. What the external evidence says? Look at this, please:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_and_technology_in_Iran


I’d especially like to draw your attention to the following facts:


- According to the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), Iran increased its academic publishing output nearly tenfold from 1996 to 2004, and has been ranked first globally in terms of output growth rate (followed by China with a 3 fold increase).[117][118] .


- Iran's growth rate in science and technology was 11 times more than the average growth of the world's output in 2009 and in terms of total output per year, Iran has already surpassed the total scientific output of countries like Sweden, Switzerland, Israel, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Austria or that of Norway.[128][129][130] Iran with a science and technology yearly growth rate of 25% is doubling its total output every three years and at this rate will reach the level of Canadian annual output in 2017. This is in spite of international sanctions against Iran in almost all aspects of research during the past 30 years, and in spite of the fact that Iran’s national science budget is “by far behind industrialized societies" and considerably below the world average figures (at least by 2009, which is the year this study was published). How do you explain these facts with average IQ of 84 which Mr Lynn estimates for Iranian people? Doesn’t it make you feel something is not right here?


Now, another link:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_American


The largest number of Iranians outside of Iran reside in the United States. There are an estimated 1–1.5 million Iranian-Americans living in the U.S.[6] , and they are amongst the most highly educated groups in the United States.[4][5]. 50.9 percent of Iranian immigrants have attained a bachelor's degree or higher, compared to 28.0 percent national average.[4] According to the latest census data available, more than one in four Iranian-Americans hold a master's or doctoral degree, the highest rate among 67 ethnic groups studied.[5]


What do you think? Doesn’t it make you feel something is wrong with Lynn’s conclusions?


This data should be specially “meaningful“ for anyone who feels interested in Lynn’s work and considers his methodology as a legitimate one, because obtaining the data from immigrants is the method he employed in his book for several ethnic groups.


I do not believe the higher income level of some nations or ethnic groups is due to their higher level of intelligence, but if Lynn believes so and tries to come to this conclusion in his book, he would need to find a plausible explanation for the fact that “almost one in three Iranian American households have annual incomes of more than $100K, compared to one in five for the overall U.S. population”. The per capita GDP of the US is significantly higher than Iran and Lynn tries to explain this difference by the difference between the average IQ scores that he thinks exists between the two nations. Now we have a large number of Iranians within the US and their average income is significantly higher than Americans themselves. I’m really keen to know how he explains this.


--Shzyavar (talk) 11:02, 10 January 2012 (UTC) Shzyavar

Unless those studies explicitly use the same methods to convert scores as Lynn (including, for example, similar Flynn effect corrections), or otherwise discuss Lynn and Vanhanen's book, they are irrelevant as far as this article is concerned and should not be discussed here. Wikipedia is about verifiability, not truth. See also WP:SECONDARY and WP:NOTAFORUM.
I have no interest in defending Lynn's average IQ scores for any particular countries. The Iranian 84 seems to be the average from an old Raven's matrices standardization study, with a few points added due to the Flynn effect. If you feel very strongly about the score Lynn assigned to Iran, as it seems, I suggest you contact him to bring your sources to his attention.--Victor Chmara (talk) 15:22, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Remove the table/ranks

I don't really see the table of national IQ values/ranking to be useful to the article. It only repeats verbatim what is in the book and doesn't add to our article's analysis of it. Furthermore it is a magnet for vandalism likely prompted by the kind of dismay exemplified in the post immediately before this one. I say deleting it would do no harm and would save a lot of trouble. —Elipongo (Talk contribs) 16:40, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

I think the appropriate guidelines here are WP:EMBED and WP:NOT#STATS. Based on those, it would probably be best to use secondary sources as a basis for selecting some representative values to present in prose form. aprock (talk) 17:03, 9 May 2011 (UTC)
The national IQs are the gist of the book, and the main reason why anybody might want to read an article about the book. They should not be removed. The fact that they are a magnet for vandalism is certainly not a reason for removal. This and other similar articles should be made off limits to IP editors.--Victor Chmara (talk) 14:17, 10 May 2011 (UTC)
  • Support removal. I would also support removing the list of national IQ values. While it is "only" presenting the contents of the book, it very much looks like presenting factual data. But this book is NOT a reliable source by any means and even then it would be a primary source. Personal speculation as to why somebody might want to read this article is beside the point (and OR).Volunteer Marek (talk) 19:59, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose removal. If removed in this case, Wikipedia should be ruthlessly censored to remove content gleaned from other books with which individual Wikipedia editors disagree or from books by authors considered by individual Wikipedia editors as espousing questionable views or published by publishers (Greenwood Publishing Group in this case) which individual Wikipedia editors consider unreliable. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 00:22, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
I support keeping them. It is a useful piece of data, and i don't see much reason to remove them. It is the most important information in the book and can be conveniently and easily reproduced here for others to see/use. Deleet (talk) 18:09, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
If the data is to be removed based on censorship I agree wholeheartedly. aprock (talk) 02:04, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose removal. The data is extremely informative and for a while was one of the main reasons to come to this wiki page. This kind of knowledge is something wikipedia should spread, not remove. That there even needs to be a vote on this is absurd. It should stay, period. 68.89.136.128 (talk) 22:32, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose removal - Highly relevant to the article and likely to be of great interest to readers, no justification for censorship of this information.Rangoon11 (talk) 16:58, 4 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose removal - The table is the most interesting thing in this article. Although I do understand that people whose country rank lower in the table will be really bitter. Imagine your country being classified as very low IQ, it could be offensive. And I think that is the major reason why people want it remove, it is because they are bitter or jealous but they cannot say that, so that make up other excuses like it is inaccurate, or open to vandalism or whatever. Any page in wikipedia is open to vandalism, doesn't that mean we shut the website down? On top of that, now go to the corruption perceptions index page, there is a table listing each country by the Corruption Perceptions Index courtesy of a study by transparent international. I don't see how it is different than the iq table, why delete the iq table but not the corruption table? If you are saying the transparency international is more reputable and therefore its study is more accurate than IQ and the Wealth of Nations, well, shouldn't the accuracy of studies be left for users to judge? There are also lots of table listing countries by some other aspect (like per capita GDP, gini index etc), and I think, in my humble opinion, the only reason why people single out this particular table for removal is that, like I said before, people found it offensive when the countries they rooted for are not ranked as high as they thought, and saying a country has low iq is a lot more offensive than saying a country has high corruption or low GDP. But I am sorry, just because you are bitter doesn't deprive other users' right to use the table.

Removing list of IQs

With respect to removing the table content, see the following discussions: [12], [13], [14], [15]. aprock (talk) 18:06, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

The only one of those which is directly relevant is Talk:IQ and the Wealth of Nations#Remove the table/ranks, where the consensus is clearly to retain. This discussion should be moved to that section.Rangoon11 (talk) 18:22, 4 February 2012 (UTC)
Your claim that the discussions at the provided links are not relevant is both curious and incorrect. One of the discussions linked to is on this very page, where the consensus is clear that they do not belong on this page. I suggest you review that subsequent talk page discussion above under the heading Vandalism? to get up to speed on the conversation. Reverting, as it seems clear that you haven't reviewed that. If you truly feel that this issue needs to be revisited, I suggest you hold an RfC. aprock (talk) 19:33, 4 February 2012 (UTC)
The only discussion which is recent, relates to this article, and is directly on point is the one above headed 'Remove the table/ranks', in which there is a clear consensus against removal. The 'Vandalism' thread above is not directly on point, and comments there relate to issues such as the possibility of moving the list to a separate article. Such an article was created but then rapidly deleted in a rather curious AfD held over Christmas which had a grand total of two delete votes.
I came to this article specifically to refer to the list, which I had seen here previously, and was more than a little surprised to see it having been removed. The information in the list is vital to understanding the subject of this article. Although there may be more concise means of presenting the information, in the absense of implementation of such an approach the long standing table should be included. Rangoon11 (talk) 19:55, 4 February 2012 (UTC)
I am even more concerned now that I have discovered that you also removed a similar list from IQ and Global Inequality recently ([16]), this has got rather a smell about it. Rangoon11 (talk) 20:21, 4 February 2012 (UTC)
Quite. I suspect you might understand things better if you went ahead and read and took to heart the policy based reasoning in the linked to discussions. Again, you're free to invite an RfC on the topic. aprock (talk) 20:23, 4 February 2012 (UTC)
I disagree with removing the list. Acadēmica Orientālis (talk) 13:32, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
Aprock thus seems to be the minority view here. Acadēmica Orientālis (talk) 13:38, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
No, it's just the discussion 1) has already been had, so not everyone previously involved is bothering to comment again, 2) it's spread out across several articles. Keep in mind, that at the end of the day, the inclusion of the table violates WP:PRIMARY.VolunteerMarek 19:58, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
And I hate to assume bad faith but given the history of sockpuppetry/meatpuppetry in this area, I do think that the views of accounts which were registered just two days ... oh wait, this is Mirardre. Aren't you banned from Race and Intelligence topics? Should someone file an AE on this?VolunteerMarek 20:01, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
The source is a literature review and thus not secondary. Wikipedia has many similar tables regarding nations and rankings. Agree that the earlier consensus was to keep the table. Not, I am not banned.Acadēmica Orientālis (talk) 20:03, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
I see. Your topic ban more or less just expired so you're jumping back in with both feet. And sorry, earlier consensus was to remove the table for some very good reasons (vandal magnet, pov pushing, primary). The table is from the book no? Are you splitting hairs/wikilawyering here?VolunteerMarek 20:08, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
My topic ban expired a long time ago. Obviously the data is from the book. Please assume good faith. See the reasons given in my last post. Acadēmica Orientālis (talk) 20:14, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict) And I have no idea how you're getting that this isn't Primary. The title of the table states: "IQ estimates given in the book". The two sources in the table are to "Lynn, R. and Vanhanen, T. (2002). IQ and the wealth of nations. Westport, CT: Praeger. ISBN 0-275-97510-X" and "Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen (2006). IQ and Global Inequality. Washington Summit Publishers: Augusta, GA. ISBN 1593680252".VolunteerMarek 20:16, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

Yes, and both books are literature reviews and thus secondary sources. Wikipedia has many similar rankings of nations. As can be seen here the last consensus was to keep the table: Talk:IQ_and_the_Wealth_of_Nations#Remove_the_table.2Franks Acadēmica Orientālis (talk) 20:17, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
???? What is the title of this Wikipedia article? Ok, now, what's the title of the book the table's taken from? Stop playing games.VolunteerMarek 20:21, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
The book is a literature review and thus a secondary source. Literature reviews are not just a collection of quotes but draw conclusions from the primary studies. That is perfectly acceptable and does not invalidate them from being secondary sources. Acadēmica Orientālis (talk) 20:23, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
Look, I'm pretty familiar with the disruptive WP:CPUSH tactics you engage in. In fact, I believe I've had to cut off at least two conversations we've had before because you were clearly making ridiculous assertions, just like you are here, in an effort to wikilawyer some issue or to simply waste other people's time until they give up. I have no intention of being baited into that situation again. Conversation's over, your opinion on this matter speaks for itself.VolunteerMarek 20:29, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
You are not answering to several of my arguments. Again, Wikipedia has many similar tables. See here for some examples:
DFTT.VolunteerMarek 20:43, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
Incivility does not help your case. Acadēmica Orientālis (talk) 20:53, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

1. There was no prior consensus for removal of the table so an RfC is not needed. 2. There is nothing in the "No original research" policy which prevents the inclusion of the table. The information in the table is not analysis on the merits of the arguments in the book, but a fundamental part of its contents. Rangoon11 (talk) 23:09, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

Request for comment

Should this article as well as IQ and Global Inequality contain the national rankings from the books? Acadēmica Orientālis (talk) 20:54, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

Additional information:

  1. The list of rankings can be seen here: [17].
  2. In late 2011, the list was factored out into an standalone article[18]. That article was later deleted by uninvolved parties after sparse AfD participation: [19]

aprock (talk) 18:45, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

Misleading to state this as as "additional information" when you are an involved party. That a separate article containing the scores was deleted 5 years ago is irrelevant. Acadēmica Orientālis (talk) 18:48, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
The AfD was closed about a month ago, apparently, not 5 years ago. siafu (talk) 18:54, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
Yes, misleading title of the deletion discussion. Regardless, a separate "list" article containing only the scores from two books was clearly inappropriate but not what is discussed here. Acadēmica Orientālis (talk) 18:58, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Responding from RfC I have not read the article, but solely from this question which can be applied to all articles, it may be biased to include statistics from the subject (itself) if it can be found elsewhere. In otherwords, if you are sourcing the statistics from the subject (discussed) it may be biased to do so if the identical statistics can be sourced from somewhere else.Curb Chain (talk) 05:04, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
Perhaps you should have read the article and taken the time to understand the issue before making a comment. The statistics in question are not about the subject (such as book sales numbers) but from the subject, and are highly significant to its premise. Whether the statistics reflect reality is controversial, whether they are actually found in the book, and what they are stated to be in the book, is not.Rangoon11 (talk) 14:38, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
But that's exactly why they have no place (well, one of the reasons) in the article. They're a violation of WP:PRIMARY since they present controversial content of their source in a way which suggests factual accuracy. So perhaps, you're the one who should read up on Wikipedia's policies and guidelines.VolunteerMarek 18:28, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Comment What is contentious about this? Are these national rankings controversial? Excessively long? In violation of some other policy or guideline? I'm having a hard time seeing why these rankings would not be acceptable to be included in an article about the book in which they appear. siafu (talk) 18:26, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
They're a violation of WP:PRIMARY, they're a violation of WP:NPOV (in that they present sketchy "research" from the book as factual info), they're a vandal magnet and yes, they do violate WP:MOS.VolunteerMarek 18:28, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
Incorrect. WP:PRIMARY is about primary sources discussing another topic, e.g. personal diaries as sources on historical events. It does not apply to this, an article about a source itself. Part of the responsibility of this article is accurately represent the argument put forward in the source, and also to accurately represent its treatment in other sources. Doing the former does not just allow the inclusion of these statistics, it requires that they be at least paraphrased and sourced. As for NPOV, this is also a canard: if the book actually puts forward these tables, it is not a matter of perspective to say so. Interpretting them or presenting them as fact in the voice of wikipedia (as opposed to the voice of the source) would be an NPOV violation-- is someone proposing that? Lastly, you'll have to be more specific regarding the WP:MOS, since it's not obvious where the violation is. siafu (talk) 18:37, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
The source can be adequately presented and summarized without the table. The table is primary because in this case the underlying document is the book itself. What we would need here is a third party source - a secondary source which discusses the table in detail - and even then we would run into the NPOV problem which results from the form of presentation.
Hence, POV is NOT a canard. While we should describe the book and summarize its argument, we MAY NOT, in the interest of NPOV, legitimize or give support to the argument. And as is painfully obvious, putting the table up does exactly that - it gives support to this so-called "research". Obviously, all the dozens of IPs and non-IPs who come to this article and change the table to make their country "smarter" or countries they don't like "dumber" perceive the table as cold hard fact. Likewise the support from some editors for inclusion appears to be simply due to the fact that they see it as an efficient way of pushing their POV (that POV being "this book is teh awesome!"). And that is because the table format itself is constraining in a way which does not lend itself to a NPOV presentation.
The reason for that is simply that in a table format it is impossible to present the information in sufficient detail. In text, the methodology, the statistics, the outside reviews (secondary sources) can all be mentioned and enumerated. But the table constrains the information to be just the numbers itself.VolunteerMarek 04:00, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
Putting the table in is not an endorsement of its content, but an endorsement of the fact that the book contains this content, which it does. It's trivial to present it this way as well: "As presented by the authors, the rankings are..."; this is essentially how it is done in other contexts as well. The fact that it's subject to IP vandalism doesn't seem like it's helpful in making this decision, as framing content to avoid vandals seems like a rather dubious motivation. siafu (talk) 21:08, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
Again, the book is a literature review and thus not primary. While certainly controversial, lots of peer-reviewed scientific papers have used the scores and they correlate very well with student achievement tests. Wikipedia has many similar national rankings:
Acadēmica Orientālis (talk) 18:39, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
none of those charts are concocted by one person making guestimates based on data from surrounding countries. 75.73.44.170 (talk) 02:56, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
None of the data tables included those nations but only those nations for which there was data. Acadēmica Orientālis (talk) 03:13, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
thats even worse! the author created a bogus "data set" to work from and wikipedia tries to whitewash ? NO FRICKEN WAY75.73.44.170 (talk) 12:35, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
  • do not include the huge chart is an eye magnet that will draw unsuspecting readers eyes away from the text that shows the third party review that the "data points" themselves are complete garbage thus leaving the impression that these are some type of valid comparison. In addition, the numbers are a vandal magnet. And in addition there is copyright concerns from lifting the whole crux of the authors argument and dumping it wholesale into the article. This is not at all like having a chart of the wavelengths of various colored light or any other scientific data because the unique set of specifically chosen "data" (and in fact "data" personally created by the author when actual data didn't exist). 75.73.44.170 (talk) 02:56, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
Yes, this is exactly correct.VolunteerMarek 04:00, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
Regarding copyright, data cannot be copyrighted. The data list is no different from many other similar data lists Wikipedia has in other articles. Acadēmica Orientālis (talk) 03:13, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
if the chart consisted of "data" in the normal sense of the word, but it does not. It is in large part a group of arbitrarily selected numbers particularly placed by the authors = the definition of a creative work which is indeed covered by copyright. 75.73.44.170 (talk) 00:41, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
Note to others: there are obvious differences with "similar data lists" on Wikipedia - they are not similar. They are based on secondary sources and are not used to legitimize very controversial topics. There *may* be a few of these lists which are also problematic, but that's obviously the WP:OTHERSTUFF argument, a fallacy. Also, I seem to recall that a proposal to move the table to a separate article was on the table once, but then the article itself was deleted. Hence, in a way the inclusion of the table here is just POV-forking of a deleted article.VolunteerMarek 04:00, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
Again, the book is a literature review and thus a secondary source. Ranking nations regarding for example democracy is extremely controversial and regularly condemned by the regimes not given good results. See Freedom in the World (report). Having a separate list article only containing data is not allowed by Wikipedia policy but that is not the issue here. Again, Wikipedia has numerous similar data lists as noted above.Acadēmica Orientālis (talk) 04:41, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
the book cannot be a secondary source about itself. by definition, it is a primary source for this article.75.73.44.170 (talk) 13:38, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
The book is more than a literature review. The IQ scores for all the nations are novel research done book, and as such are a primary source for those scores. If it were not a primary source for the list of scores, they would exist in some other source. They do not. aprock (talk) 04:44, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
That is not how literature reviews works. All literature review analyze and draws some conclusions from the primary studies. They are not just a collection of quotes from the primary studies. Such conclusions cannot be found anywhere else. Literature reviews and their contents are still secondary sources. Acadēmica Orientālis (talk) 04:48, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
The whole line of argument is entirely fallacious - and whether the book is a literature review or a purely independent work is irrelevant - as the list in itself is not being presented as either accurate or not, but as highly significant content within the work which is helpful to understanding its core premise. In just the same way that the web sites or annual reports of companies are wholly acceptable sources of information for purely factual infomation about the subject (such as organisational structure, financials, purely factual historical narrative), the subject of this article is a wholly acceptable source for purely factual information about it.
Any analysis which is added to this article concerning whether or not the list is accurate should of course be cited from third-party sources, but that is an entirely separate issue. Rangoon11 (talk) 14:38, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
This is a good summation of the actual policy and guideline view on this issue. siafu (talk) 21:09, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
I am unwilling to get mixed up in a topic of marginal interest to me personally, when it can raise hackles as dramatically as this one does. So I am ignoring the factual details of the article subject matter. Instead, as far as I can tell, the essential point at issue is the quality of the of the sources cited in terms of the principles WP establishes, and nominally demands, especially when wikilawyers begin to peddle their preferred views.
1. The question of misleading presentation (of charts, graphis, etc) is nothing new in WP and elsewhere. If some editors reckon the contentious presentation can be toned down or even deleted without depletion of factual content, go ahead and start a fight if that is what it takes. If the dust settles, problem solved. If not, issue another, more tightly focussed, RFC dealing with the presentation only.
2. The question of valid citation is no novelty either. The arguments in favour of exclusion so far seem to me adequate for exclusion. This does not mean that the material is intrinsically unacceptable, let alone wrong, but it does put the ball in the court of the inclusionists, which is where the ball normally is to be found. It is up to such inclusionists to find more substantial, less assailable, citations, or await a new generation of publication of unimpeachable citations. It is not enough to say: "Don't say rude things about my existing sources." If it is possible to present a reasonable criticism of the sources, it is better to replace them instead of arguing the toss, or at least to support them with extended refs or citations until you have something incontrovertible. And if nothing incontrovertible is available, tough luck! What else is new? JonRichfield (talk) 08:29, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
Are you arguing that the data may not be correct and therefore should be excluded? Wikipedia does not aim to decide what is the truth. As noted above there are many controversial national rankings regarding things like democracy and corruption in Wikipedia. See for example Freedom in the World (report). Inclusion of these rankings does not mean that Wikipedia endorses the rankings as correct. Rather, other criteria like notability applies. The rankings in this article are notable and have been used in many scientific, peer-reviewed journals. Acadēmica Orientālis (talk) 11:15, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
I apologise for misleading wording; I am agnostic concerning the quality of the data. When I said: "... as far as I can tell, the essential point at issue is the quality of the of the sources cited in terms of the principles WP establishes..." it would have been better to say something like: "...as far as I can tell, the essential point at issue is the quality of the citation of the sources in terms of the principles WP establishes..." Those who are complaining about the citations seem to be dissatisfied with them and have been urging reasons for their dissatisfaction. Unless both sides are willing to bring it down to a persistent exchange of spittle and ink (which I hope they are not) or to an exchange of violent physical encounters (which I certainly hope they are not), the most obvious approach is to present alternative (or, if the existing material is as good as you say it is, supplementary) citations in a format or tone that will persuade the unpersuadable. WP may not decide what is the truth, but that is not the issue; we all (which arguably implies WP as well) want the arguments for and against any proposition presented in such a mode that the truth, if known, will be clear to reasonable parties reading the articles, or where it is unknown, in such a mode that interested parties at least can assess the arguments and uncertainties for themselves with as little prejudice as may be. One (of many) possible source of confusion could be inadequate, inappropriate, or badly presented citations. Another could be stubborn resistance to adequate citation, to which one possible response sometimes is crushing citation. Of course, sometimes opposing parties prefer conflict, but there is not much I can do about that. Does that help to clarify my previous comment? JonRichfield (talk) 16:57, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
The content was longstanding, highly relevant, entirely properly cited within the requirements of WP policy, and removed without consensus. Everything else is frankly bluster.Rangoon11 (talk) 18:00, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
Well, as I said, I am agnostic. Not my field anyway, though I am not necessarily unsympathetic. If you think it is as clear as that then it seems to me that your next step is to go to arbitration, where I for one will not be, for the reason I gave. If you fail to make your point, you will not be the first to fall foul of contentious or PC topics and the firefights they engender. Good luck, whoever most nearly has right on his side in this case. JonRichfield (talk) 18:27, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Comment After further reflection, I found this even more confusing. So, to those invoking WP:Primary: What is the violation of primary here? From a naive perspective, if a book cannot be used as a source on what is in the book itself, in principle, then it seems that this brings up a number of serious problems with sourcing anything at all. Basically, this would require, for each source, another source to indicate that the first source does actually contain what it is purported to contain. This just pushed it back one level, though, because these "secondary" sources couldn't be sources for what they contain either. siafu (talk) 18:28, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
This part may be: "Primary sources that have been reliably published may be used in Wikipedia, but only with care, because it is easy to misuse them." On my computer, when included the chart under question takes up 6 screens worth of space - simply the chart itself. All of the actual content of our article takes up only 3 1/2 screens - so the content lifted directly from the primary source is almost twice as big. The article is about the book IQ and the Wealth of Nations. For the reader, coming to the encyclopedia to find out about the book we provide a summary of the content and the thesis of the book IQ_and_the_Wealth_of_Nations#National_IQ_estimates and as required, a number of secondary sources analyzing the content an impact of the book (and the contents of the chart) IQ_and_the_Wealth_of_Nations#Reception_and_impact. Adding the content of the chart does not in anyway help the reader understand the subject of the article, the book, in any way that the text does not. In fact, because the chart has always been placed first, it drives the scientific third party analysis that the contents of the chart are pure garbage those additional 6 screens from view. Casual readers coming to this article will see a 6 screen chart and often be led to believe that the contents of the chart is somehow encyclopedic, when it is most assuredly NOT. 75.73.44.170 (talk) 02:01, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
If I'm reading your comment correctly, it seems that the objections are not based on WP:PRIMARY or even WP:NPOV, but rather just stylistic issues related to the size of the table relative to the text. AFAICT, the tables are basically the substantive conclusions of the book, and if there's an agreement in principle that including information from the book when discussing the book and its thesis neutrally, then I think this discussion could probably move forward in a more substantive way. For example, would it be acceptable to include a truncated version of the table, including, say, the top ten and bottom ten? This would surely take fewer than six screens (it's more like 4 screens as it was on my laptop, btw). It could also be moved down to the bottom of the article, or made into an expandable table made collapsed by default so as not to overwhelm the text. 16:28, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
Including representative values is more than reasonable, but should be done in the body of the text, not as a table. Including the entire table violates the WP:WEIGHT section of WP:NPOV. With respect to WP:PRIMARY, this book is the original source for the synthesized national IQ scores. As such, care must be taken to make sure the the content included is not misused. Including the entire table contrary to WP:NPOV and WP:TABLES, is misuse. aprock (talk) 19:38, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
It seems a bit difficult to bring WP:WEIGHT to bear, since the article is about the book itself, and not about the issues raised by the book per se. It's not a matter of POV whether or not the data is in the book, or whether or not the data is part of or a result of the thesis put forward by the authors. What would the balancing POV be? That these two facts are not true? Certainly, care should be taken to not misuse or interpret the data in any way using the voice of wikipedia, but that is a question of the accompanying text, not the table itself. The argument involving WP:TABLES is certainly valid, however, but this is not so much a point of principle as a point of style. siafu (talk) 21:40, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
Please explain how these policies are supposed to be violated. There are numerous similar data tables in Wikipedia:
Acadēmica Orientālis (talk) 19:43, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
That is a classic WP:OTHERSTUFF fallacy. As has already been said numerous times, yes, in some of these cases of "similar data tables", these should be removed as well. In some other cases, they shouldn't. Here it should. Please stop engaging in the tendentious WP:IDIDN'THEARTHAT practice, which is disruptive.VolunteerMarek 10:00, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
WP:WEIGHT is wholly irrelevant as the table is not a viewpoint but a reproduction of content from the book in a wholly factual manner. That might be a relevant policy if this was an article simply about IQ and race/nationality, but it isn't. It is an article about a single book. WP:TABLE is 1. not a policy but a manual of style and 2. contains nothing relevant to this discussion.
I would support the table being made collapsible purely to make the page more easily navigable. Rangoon11 (talk) 19:52, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
Your argument that WP:WEIGHT is wholly irrelevant makes no sense. The scores generated by the authors and presented in the book do in fact represent their viewpoint. If the scores were factual, there wouldn't be any controversy surrounding the article. Suffice it to say, the poor methodology used makes it clear that the scores are not factual, but are a mishmash of other data. As a simple example, see the text for discussion about the score fabricated for South Africa. aprock (talk) 19:58, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
The scores are based on a literature review of other studies. All literature reviews draws some independent conclusions and may perform various mathematical calculations on the composite results of the studies. The reviews are still reviews and secondary sources. Inclusion in Wikipedia does not mean that Wikipedia accept that the scores are factually correct anymore than that applies to other controversial rankings. See for example Freedom in the World and the Freedom_in_the_World#Evaluation. Great controversy but Wikipedia still has the scores and rankings. The same applies to for example Economic Freedom rankings. Really irrelevant for inclusion, since Wikipedia does not judge truth but rather use criteria like notability which certainly apply, but if you want to discuss how accurate they are, even some of their worst critics like Wicherts et al. acknowledge that except for sub-Saharan Africa the scores correlate very well with international student assessment tests. Acadēmica Orientālis (talk) 20:13, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
That is a classic WP:OTHERSTUFF fallacy. As has already been said numerous times, yes, in some of these cases of "similar data tables", these should be removed as well. In some other cases, they shouldn't. Here it should. Please stop engaging in the tendentious WP:IDIDN'THEARTHAT practice, which is disruptive.VolunteerMarek 10:00, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
Your response here indicates that you're not familiar with the methodology used in the book. I suggest you review both the book, and some of the peer reviewed papers critical of it and similar studies. As a launch point, allow me to suggest: http://wicherts.socsci.uva.nl/wicherts2010.pdf. aprock (talk) 20:19, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
Let me quote what these authors wrote : "these four studies appear to validate national IQs in other parts of the world, they do not appear to support the national IQs in sub-Saharan Africa".[20] So even if they disagree regarding sub-Saharan Africa, the results are supported elsewhere. But again, Wikipedia does not judge truth and inclusion of claims in Wikipedia is not an official stamp of approval by Wikipedia. Rather, criteria like notability apply. Again, Wikipedia has many other similarly controversial data rankings of nations. See my earlier comment above. Acadēmica Orientālis (talk) 20:29, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
That is a classic WP:OTHERSTUFF fallacy. As has already been said numerous times, yes, in some of these cases of "similar data tables", these should be removed as well. In some other cases, they shouldn't. Here it should. Please stop engaging in the tendentious WP:IDIDN'THEARTHAT practice, which is disruptive.VolunteerMarek 10:00, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
I'm not at all sure what point you're making here. The source makes it clear that the table represents the research of the authors and isn't factual data. Thusly we can dispose of your "it's just review data" canard. aprock (talk) 20:33, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
That is one view regarding the data. Many other researchers have accepted the data as valid and has used them in numerous peer-reviewed scientific studies. It is not the purpose of Wikipedia to decide who is right. WP use other criteria like notability. Again, Wikipedia has many similar national rankings and data tables which are often controversial and whose factual accuracy are disputed. Acadēmica Orientālis (talk) 20:41, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
That is a classic WP:OTHERSTUFF fallacy. As has already been said numerous times, yes, in some of these cases of "similar data tables", these should be removed as well. In some other cases, they shouldn't. Here it should. Please stop engaging in the tendentious WP:IDIDN'THEARTHAT practice, which is disruptive.VolunteerMarek 10:00, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
Your statement in no way contradicts the notion that the table represents the research, conclusions, and viewpoints of the authors. aprock (talk) 20:48, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
The same could be said regarding secondary review articles in general. They are not just a collection of quotes from the primary studies but draw conclusions. The same could also be said of all the other national rankings and data tables, often very controversial and disputed by some, which are presented in other Wikipedia articles. Acadēmica Orientālis (talk) 20:56, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
That is a classic WP:OTHERSTUFF fallacy. As has already been said numerous times, yes, in some of these cases of "similar data tables", these should be removed as well. In some other cases, they shouldn't. Here it should. Please stop engaging in the tendentious WP:IDIDN'THEARTHAT practice, which is disruptive.VolunteerMarek 10:00, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Do not include. I don't see this as the black and white issue that many of the commenters are presenting it as. The question, to my mind, is an editorial judgment: The article is about a book. Does the value of the list in helping the reader understand what the book is about (and the criticisms discussed) outweigh the distraction of having such a long table in the article. Although a judgment call, I don't think this is a call -- the descriptions already in the article do an excellent job of discussing the IQ "data" used in the book. The data itself adds almost nothing. Although I hesitate to call the numbers in the table "statistics", The following discussion from the WP:NOT is somewhat relevant: "Excessive listings of statistics. Long and sprawling lists of statistics may be confusing to readers and reduce the readability and neatness of our articles." This long table definitely detracts from the readability of the article. If the ultimate consensus is to include it, I'd put it at the very end. As an aside, although I agree with their conclusion that the table should be excluded, I disagree with the reasoning of those who are citing the policy against WP:OR, WP:WEIGHT, or WP:NPOV, none of which apply to this table in the context of this article. I also disagree with the commenters who are trying to apply the criteria of notability to the table to support its inclusion, or argue that the table is useful in and of itself. The only legitimate rationale for including this table in an article about the book is its usefulness in explaining the book. If the table has some independent usefulness to a different topic (an article on IQ, for example, or one on factors determining national weath), then notability, reliability etc. as to the issues in those articles would come into play, but not, IMO, here.--Sjsilverman (talk) 18:24, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
The same argument could be applied to numerous other Wikipedia articles containing national rankings and data tables. Are you arguing that these should also be removed? Acadēmica Orientālis (talk) 18:41, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
That is a classic WP:OTHERSTUFF fallacy. As has already been said numerous times, yes, in some of these cases of "similar data tables", these should be removed as well. In some other cases, they shouldn't. Here it should. Please stop engaging in the tendentious WP:IDIDN'THEARTHAT practice, which is disruptive.VolunteerMarek 10:00, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
To elaborate (and in response to those who say that the table has independent usefulness), a table of data may or may not have value in itself. Thus, an example of List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal) is a perfectly valid article. That same table wouldn't however, belong in a particular book about national GDP's, even if the book were the source for the table. I don't believe that the table in this article could stand on itself as list of countries by IQ, because it doesn't appear to be reliable. But the place for that discussion, would be in the context of that article. Here the question should just be whether the table contributes or detracts from discussion of the book. And the more I look at the article, the more convinced I am that it doesn't.--Sjsilverman (talk) 02:13, 26 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Include These data are widely used in cross-national econometric studies. It's relatively easy to scrape data from WP, and really inconvenient to check the book out of the library, and scan the tables. So I really appreciated that someone went to the trouble to create the list--just as I appreciate all of the many great data tables in WP.--Anthon.Eff (talk) 19:56, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
It's ... really inconvenient to check the book out of the library: Personal convenience/usefulness is not a policy rationale for inclusion. aprock (talk) 20:35, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
There's a fair amount of support here for the notion that WP should be useful to readers (e.g., Wikipedia:Make articles useful for readers). I am simply saying that I found the list useful--a lot of R users are scraping data off of WP, so all of these lists are useful.--Anthon.Eff (talk) 21:27, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia with one purpose being making information easily available. All sourced information in Wikipedia can be found somewhere else with varying degree of inconvenience.Acadēmica Orientālis (talk) 21:29, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not merely a collection of factiods. This particular article is about a book - the contents of the article need to explain to the reader about the book. The long list of of arbitrary numbers selected by Lynn does not help the reader understand the book unless they carefully dive into the inner workings of the authors mind. IQ_and_the_Wealth_of_Nations#Reception_and_impact gives the the average reader pretty much everything they need to know about the book in a much better and faster manner. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.73.44.170 (talk) 06:07, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
Again, Wikipedia has many other controversial national rankings and tables in other articles. Should they also be removed? Like those for Freedom in the World? Acadēmica Orientālis (talk) 08:23, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
That is a classic WP:OTHERSTUFF fallacy. As has already been said numerous times, yes, in some of these cases of "similar data tables", these should be removed as well. In some other cases, they shouldn't. Here it should. Please stop engaging in the tendentious WP:IDIDN'THEARTHAT practice, which is disruptive.VolunteerMarek 10:00, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
If they are out of scope of the article they appear in or do not provide encyclopedic of the subject YES THEY SHOULD BE. 75.73.44.170 (talk) 12:42, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
Why should the rankings be out of scope? They are an important part of the book. Regarding encyclopedic importance they have generated much debate and have been used in many peer-reviewed papers. 13:19, 17 February 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Acadēmica Orientālis (talk • contribs)
Asked and answered several times. Please stop. 75.73.44.170 (talk) 14:55, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Do not include per 75.73.44.170 above, particularly about copyright. We shouldn't be replicating so much content. If this were data it would be in other sources. Further, this article is about the book, not about the book's topic. For this article, the book is a primary source. Tom Harrison Talk 14:31, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
Data cannot be copyrighted and Wikipedia has numerous similar data tables and national rankings which are often controversial. See for example Freedom in the World (report). Acadēmica Orientālis (talk) 14:37, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
That is a classic WP:OTHERSTUFF fallacy. As has already been said numerous times, yes, in some of these cases of "similar data tables", these should be removed as well. In some other cases, they shouldn't. Here it should. Please stop engaging in the tendentious WP:IDIDN'THEARTHAT practice, which is disruptive.VolunteerMarek 10:00, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
data cannot be copyrighted, but this is NOT "data" - it is a collection of numbers arbitrarily selected and particularly placed by the authors -a purely creative work that IS copyrighted. 75.73.44.170 (talk) 14:52, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
The IQ scores were calculated from numerous IQ tests in different nations not done by the authors. Certainly not arbitrary. Certainly not more arbitrary than, say, the data in Freedom in the World (report) which are picked by Freedom House in an unclear process based on unclear judgements on the degree of democracy in a nation. Acadēmica Orientālis (talk) 15:09, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
That is a classic WP:OTHERSTUFF fallacy. As has already been said numerous times, yes, in some of these cases of "similar data tables", these should be removed as well. In some other cases, they shouldn't. Here it should. Please stop engaging in the tendentious WP:IDIDN'THEARTHAT practice, which is disruptive.VolunteerMarek 10:00, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
Does not seem to have been said numerous times until you added this message numerous times to the text. WP:OTHERSTUFF is primarily about article deletion which is not the case here. Just to clarify, I will not add the material to the article so long there is not a consenus for this. I hope for more input by uninvolved editors.Acadēmica Orientālis (talk) 12:40, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
LOL. "we see an edifice built on layer upon layer of arbitrary assumptions and selective data manipulation. The data on which the entire book is based are of questionable validity and are used in ways that cannot be justified." They also wrote that cross country comparisons are "virtually meaningless."[2]
That is one view. There are many others, such as many peer-reviewed papers that accepted have used the scores, or studies finding high correlations with international student assessment tests such as the Programme for International Student Assessment and Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study.[21] Acadēmica Orientālis (talk) 17:02, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
Its beyond my ability to continue to assume as having good faith intentions of improving the encyclopedia anyone who continuously makes arguments for treating that assemblage of numbers as anything other than the pile of crap that it is. 75.73.44.170 (talk) 02:46, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
  • do not include. All that detail about individual IQ scores defocuses from the article topic—the book itself; if included, it becomes a vandalism magnet; including the detailed list is arguably a copyright problem. OTOH, if reading the article online I would like to be able to peruse the detailed list online—and it is available in an online source cited in the article. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 04:01, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
Regarding copyright problem, this has been discussed here: Wikipedia_talk:Copyright_problems/Archive_14#Copyright_for_large_tables_of_data. Your point regarding the online availability of the data from IQ and the Wealth of Nations is interesting but I do not think there is an online source for the more recent and more important data from IQ and Global Inequality. Acadēmica Orientālis (talk) 13:09, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Comment: Okay, let's shed some light on the copyright issue here. In Feist v. Rural, the landmark case in this area of copyright law, the test for originality (and hence copyright protection) was decided as the presence of a "creative choice of what data to include or exclude, the order and style in which the information is presented, etc." This was then applied in CCC Information v. Maclean and CDN v. Kapes, which found respectively that projected used car values and project collectible coin values were copyrightable. For example, one summary of the decision in Kapes is given as "The court came to a similar conclusion [to that in Maclean] that a compilation of wholesale prices of collectible coins was copyrightable because the author analyzed the different sources of information, excluded information thought to be unreliable or inaccurate, and extrapolated predictive prices." It seems to me on this basis that the copyright issue here must be thought through very carefully. I am not an expert on the table being discussed here, but from reading the discussion, it seems to me that the key issue is whether the table was extrapolative (copyright) or basically mechanically produced with little thought to weeding out bad data (no copyright). I shall leave that more knowledgeable about this specific table to decide, but I would lean towards the latter interpretation. - Jarry1250 [Deliberation needed] 14:52, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
Oh there was lots of thought given to weeding IN bad data. 75.73.44.170 (talk) 23:20, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
Is that your personal editorial WP:POV, or do you have a WP:V source supporting that? The article is about the book, not the data, and WP:OR by the book's authors is allowable. Including the data in the article is an invitation to weeding-in of bad data by WP:VANDALs. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 00:29, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
have you read IQ_and_the_Wealth_of_Nations#Reception_and_impact? if you havent, it makes interesting reading, but I will highlight one of the reviews that we quote: "an edifice built on layer upon layer of arbitrary assumptions and selective data manipulation. The data on which the entire book is based are of questionable validity and are used in ways that cannot be justified." its not just me.75.73.44.170 (talk) 01:31, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
I'm not saying that it's just you. Inclusion of material such as what you quoted above, well supported in the article and having plenty of topical weight in an article about the book, is great (see WP:V and WP:DUE). Expressing an editorial judgement on behalf of Wikipedia in an article, regardless of how strongly held the opinion behind that judgement is or how well informed that opinion might be, is not great. Expression of such judgements in an article would conflict with WP's WP:NPOV policy, and this talk page exists to provide space for editors to discuss changes to its associated article, not to discuss personal opinions about the book which is the topic of the article (see WP:TPG). Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 02:01, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
my statement was in response to the question about whether the contents of the table are merely a restatement of some data fields or whether they fall under the "creative construction" covered by copyright. the quote does not specifically state "the table is copyright" but it does go to the point that others see the specifically constructed nature. 75.73.44.170 (talk) 03:30, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
If the data are wrong, then the best approach would be to make the data easily available for others to examine, rather than suppressing them. Lynn and Vanhanen may not be completely correct in their conclusions, as indicated by this study, which shows that controlling for health makes IQ an insignificant predictor of GDP. IQ data in that study could well have been scraped from WP. To me, that suggests that WP provides a service in achieving truth on this and other contentious topics, precisely because it makes data more easily available. Therefore, I would like the table to be present.--Anthon.Eff (talk) 03:45, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Include. The list was an extremely useful part of the article. I imagine it was what a lot of our readers came to this page looking for. The reasons given for removal are tenuous at best (in particular: 'it might be vandalized'....). TheTrunchbull. (talk) 14:40, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
articles about entertainers that include their upcoming concert schedules are useful and something that users may come to the wikipedia article to find, however, that is not what wikipedia's encyclopedia articles are for. 75.73.44.170 (talk) 01:01, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Do not include. I don't think the table is needed or even helpful in conveying what this book is about and the place of this book in contemporary scientific racism. futurebird (talk) 06:49, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Exclude per Aprock and others. This book is highly controversial - it is the controversy rather than the book's scholarly quality that justifies there even being an encyclopedia article on it. To present data from it out of context gives undue weight to the chart that serves only to advance a POV rather than to inform readers about the nature of the controversy. Slrubenstein | Talk 12:31, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Include I'm reversing my position! And these are my reasons:
1. Wikipedia does not shy away from controversy, does not take sides and is not afraid to offend! The material is, admittedly, controversial and stirs strong emotions. The (heated) arguments against the inclusion reflect the passionate disapproval of the book by some commentators. But this is not a valid criterion for exclusion.
2. Wikipedia is not a scientific journal, presenting only what's been "peer reviewed". Therefore, the arguments about the subject matter being "unscientific" have mo merit. Once again, notability decides.
3. Moreover, the opinions expressed by 75.73.44.170 and other editors ("garbage", etc) are clearly personal points of view that have no place in the current discussion. (FWIW, I happen to strongly dispute the book's findings and have written on the subject elsewhere.)
4. The book is notable, if not notorious, precisely for its claims that nations can be categorized hierarchically in terms of IQ. Irrespective of the scientific worthiness of those claims (something to which, as we established above, Wikipedia is indifferent), there has not been, before that book, such a categorisation of nations. At the center of the notability/notoriety of the book is this categorisation. That it would not be shown anywhere in Wikipedia is unthinkable, in encyclopaedic terms.
Prosposal: Create a separate article, wikilinked from the section National IQ estimates, in which the lists are to be extensively quoted.-The Gnome (talk) 23:14, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
Well, I was waiting for the onslaught of comments, which never came. I support your proposal, Gnome. I think there is a bigger issue here for WP: more and more people are empowered to do data analysis, with R or other tools, and WP provides such a wonderful resource in its data tables. For cross-national data (the present case) the data would be even easier to use were there some standards regarding country identifiers (best option: require all tables to have a field with ISO_3166-1_alpha-2)--I would hope that someone notify me if the discusion on this issue ever comes up. Anyway, two of us agree on this. Does anyone seriously oppose? --Anthon.Eff (talk) 04:38, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
I can support this as being a big step forward on the present situation of the data being entirely censored from WP. My firm view is that the table should never have been removed from this article however. Rangoon11 (talk) 19:44, 1 April 2012 (UTC)
  1. ^ See Prenzel, Manfred et al. (eds).: PISA 2003. Münster: Waxmann 2004, p. 70, Table 2.9; or: PISA 2003: A Profile of Student Performance in Mathematics
  2. ^ Barnett, Susan M. and Williams, Wendy (2004). "National Intelligence and the Emperor's New Clothes". Contemporary Psychology: APA Review of Books. 49 (4): 389–396. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
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