Talk:Satoshi Kanazawa

Notability

With Wikipedia's credibility always at stake, I wonder does this page meet the WP:PROF (notability of academics as measured by their academic achievements), or is it merely a vanity project?

You have a point - I don't think this particular academic meets the notability requirements.Stimpster 17:47, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Both of the studies listed in the article (most scientific discoveries made before mid-30s, and beautiful people have girl children) received a bit of significant press coverage. I personally think that this qualifies him under the proposed notability guidelines for academics, parts 1 and 3. -- Plutor ^talk 15:47, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

I was about to open up this topic for discussion myself. He is a rather obscure figure, not in the least bit prestigious, and known solely for screwing up. If anything the press coverage is just a case of "recent event relevance". --189.139.20.193 (talk) 19:21, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

I agree with the IP user above. This guy is not prestigious or famous enough to deserve his own article. Because he's mostly known only for one thing ("screwing up" as the IP user above says), his article is a candidate for speedy deletion under Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons#Subjects_notable_only_for_one_event. And Plutor above is wrong. He has not "an elected member of a highly selective and prestigious scholarly society or association," so he does not meet part 1 of the criteria. I think the article should be removed. JStephanieApril (talk) 15:12, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

I highly disagree with above users. While maybe not being "prestigious or famous enough", his papers are still being cited. Searching for his name should result in finding this article, since it provides an overview of criticisms and controversies. For the sake of making people aware of issues surrounding his articles, I sincerely request not to remove this article. 145.108.210.175 (talk) 14:40, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

Removal of info

IP address 90.206.101.27 removed my edit (I wasn't logged in) yesterday claiming it was inaccuarate:

However, flaws were later identified in the statistical analysis, meaning that many of the results were not statistically significant.Andrew Gelman (April 7, 2007). "Letter to the editors regarding some papers of Dr. Satoshi Kanazawa". Journal of Theoretical Biology. 345 (3): 597–599. doi:10.1016/j.jtbi.2006.11.005. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

It was published in a peer-reviewed journal (the same one the original article was in)? Why is it inaccurate? -3mta3 (talk) 12:00, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

I've added it back in, and changed the wording slightly so as to actually reflect the journal articles. -3mta3 (talk) 12:16, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

I do not understand why certain mention of articles that refute Kanazawa's claim in his recent article. The point of the section "Academic Criticism" (which was changed to Psychology Today Controversy) is to insert facts about the controversy and what he wrote. Kanazawa based his article much in part that Black women have higher testosterone levels than other women since "Africans on average have higher levels of testosterone than other races." Kanazawa never gave a scientific study for this statement. In fact, an article by the University of Southern California based on a study by the Journal 'Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention' discovered that African-American women have naturally higher levels of estrogen than Caucasian women. http://www.usc.edu/uscnews/stories/12897.html Furthermore, a USA Today article based on a Swiss study showed that both Hispanic and Caucasian males have more naturally occurring testosterone levels than African males. http://www.usatoday.com/sports/olympics/2009-03-11-testosterone-tests_N.htm - Why is this being removed? There is a statement in this Wiki Article that refutes the results of the study Kanazawa came to so why can't all his results be refuted? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Airvenus (talk • contribs) 19:04, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

The point would be to draw on sources that actually refute Kanazawa directly, referring to him by name. If Wikipedia editors draw on other (prior or more general) sources for the purpose of drawing their own conclusions (or suggesting implicit conclusions they would like readers to draw), it adds up to "original research". Avoiding this -- and sticking to sources that deal with Kanazawa directly -- is particularly important in a WP:BLP. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 20:39, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

Funny that no one (including this article's author/s) deemed it controversial that Kanazawa also stated that black men were more attractive than white (or asian) men. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.112.68.51 (talk) 05:39, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Dead link in first paragraph

In the first paragraph, an open letter concerning Kanazawa is mentioned but its referenced PDF is dead. Anyone find a new source for it? Henry Stanley (talk) 15:51, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

Seems to work now. Henry Stanley (talk) 19:43, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Clean-up

Made some edits and have left comments on BLP Noticeboard. --BweeB (talk) 20:20, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

In response to this revert

That version is extremely contrived. The attacks on Kanazawa began with Feministing ([1]) and racialicious.com ([2]) less than a day after the blog post. The review in Psychology Today was a week after, the letter to epjournal was two weeks after. Pretending that the scientists were the driving force is disingeous to the extreme. JORGENEV 22:28, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Suggesting that Evolutionary Psychologists are influenced by the feminist blogosphere is beyond disingenious. Kanazawa's "research" received negative attention from pretty much anyone with half a brain and access to the internet. The important critique is the professional one, and it is misleading to suggest that they distanced themselves from it on political rather than scientific grounds.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 22:31, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

That is not what the sources say. CNN ([3]), The Guardian ([4]), Ms Magazine ([5]), and Salon ([6]) all focus exclusively on covering the social justice type's objections to the blog post. And, you have got to be kidding if you think any other evolutionary psychologists would have bothered to criticize Kanazawa's blog post without the prior furor. Again, presenting the issues as if it was the scientific community that was behind the outcry is disingenuous to the extreme. My version which notes that that the outcry received scientific endorsement only later on is much more accurate. JORGENEV 22:37, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

The sources do not say that the psychologists are reacting to feminist bloggers, and they present quite serious scientific critiques. Suggesting that they are reacting based on bad feminist blogosphere is original research and unlikely (people like David Buss and Steven Pinker are not usually afraid of annoying feminist bloggers). We need more eyes on this clearly.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 22:49, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Every source I cited mention specific actions taken by various women's or social justice groups yet fail to mention anything about any sort of response from the scientific community. This suggests that that our coverage of the reaction to Kanazawa's article should mostly focus on the popular reaction. Right now your preferred version fails to mention the popular reaction to the article when it is probably responsible for 85% of the notability.

Yes, there is a place for scientific critique of his work, and you will notice that that comes first; but the part about how outrageous everyone thought it was should not be manipulated to portray the scientists as the source of the outrage. JORGENEV 23:04, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

None of the sources suggest that one have to be a feminist to find his musings outrageous. The "Salon Home" source mentions the scientific critique (shoddy science) and the retraction of the paper, and doesn't mention the blogosphere. I don't think the attempt at compromise that I have inserted to the article suggests that the scientific critique came first.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 23:16, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Muslim holocaust

This guy has some hateful views on Muslims; advocated a Muslim holocaust (really he does). This stuff deserves a note somewhere.

From these two articles of his: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific-fundamentalist/200803/why-we-are-losing-war http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific-fundamentalist/201001/what-s-wrong-muslims

Article criticizing him: http://www.loonwatch.com/2011/05/evolutionary-psychologist-says-black-women-are-scientifically-ugly-advocates-muslim-holocaust/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.100.67.59 (talk) 03:07, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

---I created the section with a brief summary of the first article. The second article takes some more time to make note of. I did read the second though. It is clear he does not like Muslims and flaunts weak data and juvenile logic to support it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.100.67.59 (talk) 03:38, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

UPDATE ---Seems like one user is accusing me of taking a quote out of context. The quote was, unfortunately, accurate in representing his opinion.

For now another user has sided with him and any mention of his views on Muslims has been taken out.

Maybe my addition was bloated. I still feel some note, in a new section, should be made of his comments on Muslims. ---

Race and attractiveness

The current article reads "In May 2011, he [...] hypothesized that the rater's preference for physical markers of estrogen levels, which he asserted were lower in blacks, was the culprit", and cites the article in Psychology Today (though there is no link). As can be seen here and in PDF here, the article does not mention estrogen.

Later in the paragraph it says "His explanation has generally been considered incorrect as there is no evidence that black women have lower levels of estrogen than other groups" with a link to this article at the Scientific American. The article does present evidence that black women do not have lower levels of estrogen, though as I've noted Kanazawa does not mention estrogen. He does say "The only thing I can think of that might potentially explain the lower average level of physical attractiveness among black women is testosterone". And the article does say "Yet high estrogen levels and low testosterone is a leading cause of fibroids, which significantly impact Black women, especially Black women who are overweight", though this is less compelling.

I'm going to remove these statements and maybe the paragraph can be filled out later. Genialimbecile (talk) 06:58, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

Add Health views

Re this: the source uses "mischaracterised", and there really ought to be no difficulty in our using a close synonym for that word: "misrepresented". Okay? Nomoskedasticity (talk) 09:07, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

The source is a phone interview with the director of the Add Health project. That's one person, not "the authors of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health." (It's also misleading to refer to Add Health "authors" because Add Health is a dataset that hundreds of researchers have used.) She criticizes one aspect of Kanazawa's analysis (in fact, one word in it), and if there's a need to discuss her views in the article, it should be done in the section Race and attractiveness where the specifics of the criticism can be clarified, not in the lead section.--Victor Chmara (talk) 09:38, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Okay, so go ahead. It's clear you agree that the material should not be deleted on grounds that the source does not support it -- it should simply be tweaked a bit (and moved if you prefer). Nomoskedasticity (talk) 10:41, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

The source does not support the material as it was presented. There's enough on the race and attractiveness brouhaha in the article already, so I don't think this stuff is needed. But if you think it should be added, go ahead and add it to the Race attractiveness section, but make sure that the source directly supports what you write.--Victor Chmara (talk) 12:04, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

I don't understand. You had a concern and deleted the material. It's now clear that part of your concern was unfounded (while a smaller part was on target). It's obvious that the material should be tweaked, not deleted. Why are you unwilling to do this, rectifying the improper course of deleting it? Nomoskedasticity (talk) 12:29, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

I don't think that material is very relevant, but since you insist on this, I added a remark about objectiveness of attractiveness ratings (which is what Kanazawa was criticized for mischaracterizing).--Victor Chmara (talk) 14:00, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

"Sinned Against, not Sinning" article

The reference to "Sinned against, not sinning" by 23 "scientists" defending Kanazawa was thankfully removed from the intro by User:Volunteer Marek with the edit summary:

"most if not all of these were associated with the racist Pioneer Fund. Without that context this is a mischaracterization based on a primary source".

This information should be present (and sourced) next to the remaining reference made to the piece.--Jules.LT (talk) 14:16, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

External links modified

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POV

As written, this is a smear piece.--Kintetsubuffalo (talk) 17:21, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

Please specify which facts you contest. In the meantime, I'm removing the pov tag. --Jules.LT (talk) 10:07, 23 August 2017 (UTC)

Article on black women

https://tishushu.tumblr.com/post/5548905092/here-is-the-psychology-today-article-by Family Guy Guy (talk) 20:37, 15 December 2023 (UTC)