Talk:The IQ Controversy, the Media and Public Policy/Archive 1

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Archive 1

Archive 2

criticism

none of the criticism appears to be about the study. --W.R.N. 00:33, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't see how you can say that about the first paragraph. futurebird 00:57, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, yes, the first paragraph is fine. I'm not sure it's criticism, but rather "responses", as the argument isn't with the study itself but rather reactions to the findings. The other paragraphs were what I was referring to. --W.R.N. 01:06, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Missing references

This article is missing several references, and has a number of format problems. Could someone take a look at this? ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 08:44, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Original Research

The following sentence:

Regardless of the spin placed on such stories, the choice by media professionals to legitimize racial research by publishing articles and presenting such questions as unresolved "debates[11]" seem to demonstrate a bias that, far from being "liberal", is more conservative in character.

would appear to advance a new synthesis of material. The citation [11] leads to the following:

Challenging the Racist Science of "The Bell Curve" by Randolph T. Holhut (Holhut has been a journalist in New England for more than 20 years. He edited "The George Seldes Reader"): "Murray and Herrnstein claimed that the IQs of blacks are 15 points lower than whites, a claim that most of the mainstream media has treated as fact."

which obviously does not support the claim that the media '[seemingly has] a bias that, far from being 'liberal', is more conservative in character'. I am sure a proper source can be found for the claim, of course, but as it stands it is OR if ever such a thing existed. --Plusdown (talk) 09:11, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Notability?

What's the notability of this study? I can see a section that details the findings of the study, and I can see a section that is supposed to contain criticism of the study, but for which few of the citations actually mention the study. So how is this study notable? Was it commented on a great deal in the media? Was there a significant level of academic debate about the study? The lead needs to establish the notability of the study and currently it doesn't, it simply states that this was a study published in 1988 and that it was a survey. That's not a demonstration of notability. No study is necessarily notable simply by existing. I'd like to see more evidence o notability. How often has it been mentioned, where and by who. Demonstrating that this study has been widely referred to in the mainstream media or by academic publications would go a long way to demonstrating it's notability. This Google search indicates some notability to the study, some of these comments should be included in the lead and the article to show notability. Alun (talk) 09:11, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

I am unfamiliar with the value of search hits in the world of WP, but for the original study ("Survey of Expert Opinion on Intelligence and Aptitude Testing") Google Books cites 200 references, Google Scholar cites 71 references, with 110 citations for the article. For the book that the authors brought out to popularize the findings of the study ("The IQ Controversy: The Media and Public Policy"), Google Books cites 250 references, Google Scholar cites 105 references, with 111 citations for the book.

You are right that the old "Criticism" section was a violation of WP:OR and WP:SYNTH, and it had been flagged as such for more than a year. I removed it, as it had nothing to do with this study at all. I've also tried to introduce some RS which discuss this study specifically while at the same time addresses the issue of notability. More can be done, and I already have my eye on more possible inclusions. Help is of course welcome. Thanks, --Aryaman (talk) 07:45, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Past work of authors?

The article lead currently states:

Mark Snyderman who has written one article for the conservative magazine National Review and Stanley Rothman who has written for National Review and Public Interest, a neoconservative magazine...

How is this not a classic example of original research? It appears that some editor thinks of him/herself as an investigative reporter instead of a contributor to an encyclopedia. --Aryaman (talk) 18:46, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

What's do discuss, Ramdrake? This is WP:OR and WP:NPOV. It needs to be removed. This is not the New York Times, and "investigative reporting" has no place in this encyclopedia.

Please cite specific examples from the article of what you call OR and NPOV violations. Then we can discuss. The one example you bring forward is just background info on the authors; hardly OR.--Ramdrake (talk) 01:55, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Oooooh. Then perhaps we should mention that Snyderman likes margaritas and has an overweight Cocker Spaniel named "Wiggles". Because, you know what they say about folks with Cocker Spaniels! (*wink wink*, *nudge nudge*) Give me a break, Ramdrake. It's obvious that this information has been added in the attempt to portray the authors in a slanted fashion, e.g. "Oh, they're "conservatives". Well, that explains everything." NPOV and NOR are sufficient to require removal. --Aryaman (talk) 03:58, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Actually, no. This was done to show that the authors' background was political rather than scientific. Very relevant point. And please tone down the sarcasm: it doesn't become you.--Ramdrake (talk) 21:30, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, then. Let's put "Smith College professor Stanley Rothman and Harvard researcher Mark Snyderman". That's what it says in Carol Swain's article. But, hey! Maybe she's a conservative, too. Hmm. Do you think we should delete her quote altogether?

I've tried "killing others with kindness". It doesn't pay off around Wikipedia, especially with POV-pushers. --Aryaman (talk) 21:42, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

This description fails to convey the fact that their background is with the political sciences rather than say psychometrics or statistics. I can't help it if you fail to see the relevance.--Ramdrake (talk) 21:46, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

I love how you can give etiquette lessons about sarcasm out of one side of your mouth and then try to insult my intelligence out of the other. Bravo. To the point: Which is more encyclopedic? To mention that Stanley Rothman is Professor Emeritus of Government and Director of the Center for the Study of Social and Political Change at Smith College, or that he wrote something for the National Review and Public Interest, "a neoconservative magazine"? I repeat: Give me a break, Ramdrake. Please stop trying to prevent someone from making a positive contribution to the encyclopedia. --Aryaman (talk) 21:58, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Sarcasm aside, both are relevant. I think the best way about it is to mention both. That way, we have their credentials and their background. How about it?--Ramdrake (talk) 22:36, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm glad to see you propose something at least reasonable. I would greatly prefer, however, if we could find a criticism of this report in which the critic mentions this "background" as part of his/her reasoning process. I.e., if a critic could be quoted as saying something like "since they are experts in psychology and law (Synderman) and government (Rothman) and not intelligence, then xyz, etc.." That, I think, is the only way we could really justify including this stuff, as it just doesn't hold up when compared with their actual credentials. Otherwise, the reader can surmise as much themselves. But, I'm willing to compromise for now, pending the finding of such critique. Do you think you could look for such criticism? --Aryaman (talk) 22:58, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

"Criticism" section

Apart from the Carol Swain passage - which actually isn't criticism at all, the material in the "Criticism" section is entirely unrelated to this study, and its presence constitutes a violation of WP:SYNTH. This is not "Accuracy of race and intelligence reporting", this is an article about a specific study. This section has been flagged as SYNTH for over a year, and I am going to remove it. If you want to have a criticism section, please limit sources to those which deal explicitly with this study. Otherwise, take it somewhere more appropriate. Thanks, --Aryaman (talk) 16:33, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

After more than a week with no response, I corrected this problem. Any criticism which is found related to this study can be added to the new section "Reception". --Aryaman (talk) 07:39, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Tagged

I have tagged the article as it presents in an overall very positive light a study which has been found to be very controversial when discussed. For example, it fails to mention that the 600+ responses were out of over 1000 "specialists" surveyed, that who was and who wasn't on the list was controlled by the study's authors (no random selection), and lacks proper criticism. All these need to be added in order to improve the article.--Ramdrake (talk) 20:14, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm a bit puzzled to learn that this article has a "positive" overtone, considering that others have accepted the results of the study and nonetheless interpreted its results to be very "negative", i.e. as strongly suggestive of continued bias/racism in the intelligence research community. But, to each his own, I suppose. Regarding the ca. 1000 surveyed, my reading gave me the impression that there were 661 experts, and the other 400 odd were composed of the journalists, reporters and science editors. Those from the expert community who did not respond were included in the results. A bit more research, however, should be sufficient to clear that up. Anyway, you're certainly invited to help in correcting these "deficits" where relevant RS can be found. --Aryaman (talk) 20:28, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Actually, a footnote does mention that 359 specialists did not answer the survey (that makes a total surveyed of 1020, or 1000+ as I said earlier). That is quite enough to introduce a very large selection bias in the survey sample, over and above that introduced by the authors by hand-selecting their respondents rather than picking them at random.--Ramdrake (talk) 00:45, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Did you gather that I was the one who added that footnote? (See my comment below from October 29.) If you can find a RS claiming selection bias (which would be directed at (a) below), then add it. --Aryaman (talk) 01:46, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

I've added some comments from Ronald F. Ferguson, Malick Kouyate and Jerome Taylor which, I hope, are the kind of thing you were referring to when you put up the NPOV and UNDUE templates. I've also incorporated this into the lead. Also, I've added a note explaining that there were 1020 questionnaires sent out and only 661 completed questionnaires received. I have not been able to find the number of editors and journalists, but I'll look the next time I go to the library.

As far as "proper criticism" goes: There are three main ways in which a study such as this can be criticized: (a) in terms of its data gathering methods; (b) in terms of its analysis of the data; and (c) in terms of the interpretation of the results of the analysis. Ferguson, Kouyate and Taylor accept (a) and (b), but find fault with (c). This has been indicated in the article. If you can find critics who find fault with (a) or (b), then they should certainly be mentioned. I've looked, and have not found any to date. --Aryaman (talk) 21:48, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

npov

While race is an important part of the study, it was not the only issue considered. Also discussed is are opinions about the nature of intelligence and intelligence testing. The current article has only focused on the race/iq debate but not on general issues regarding intelligence. Also missing is the fact that on average, the respondents felt that there were biases in testing and that SES does influence test scores . Wapondaponda (talk) 07:37, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Please fix these aspect if you have a copy of the study readily available. It will take me some time before I can get access to it again. Thanks, --Aryaman (talk) 07:54, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Isn't there a free copy available here. I believe that it is not very common for wikipedia articles to be about a single academic article. Rather the norm is to have subjects that are supported by academic publications, instead of the academic publications being the subject. Of course wikipedia does have articles about books, however this particular publication is eight pages long. The book The IQ Controversy, the Media and Public Policy covers a lot more than the publication. Like The Bell Curve, which devoted only two chapters to race, this publication, at least on wikipedia, has only been discussed with race in mind.

I find it interesting, that within group differences don't generate significant interest from the public. Also between group differences are also don't raise much concern, except when the issue is the the IQ scores from the black population. Just a thought because this publication is portrayed as only addressing the race issue. Wapondaponda (talk) 13:04, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

In the secondary sources I found, all of them refer to the study as being notable for its findings on the race issue. If you think there's a problem, you're free to try and fix it. --Aryaman (talk) 13:19, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't doubt that the study has notability, I just question whether it has notability for a stand-alone article, since it is a single survey that was conducted 25 years ago. There is a 300 page book by the same authors that has more detail and analysis media/IQ debate. The content was once part of the article Media portrayal of race and intelligence. Wapondaponda (talk) 14:59, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

I wanted to bring up the issue of whether or not this article should either include the book, shift its focus to the book, or some other option. But T34CH, Ramdrake and I got involved in an AfD which pretty much cut off any sober discussion regarding what to do in this case. That's not an excuse, it's simply an explanation of what happened. If you have ideas about possibly recreating "Media portrayal of race and intelligence (research)" and merging this content, I'd be interested to hear them. If they go off-topic somewhat, you are welcome to take the discussion to my talkpage. --Aryaman (talk) 16:31, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Secondary Sources

These are easy to find. So far no attempt has been made to do so. Adding material from these will give proper context to the article, which it lacks at present, which renders it fairly useless for wikipedia readers. I am restoring the tags until somebody bothers to do their homework properly here and converts this into a normal wikipedia article. I would advise Captain Occam to exercise a little more self control at the moment. His edit summaries do not take into account the problems with the article, which alas are genuine. I have no idea what he means by "tag bombing." Did he invent this neologism? Mathsci (talk) 19:44, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Tag bombing is a type of disruptive editing that's explained here: Wikipedia:TAGBOMB. If you have no idea what I meant when I referred to this, it sounds like you're not aware of the page instructing editors to avoid doing this, so I recommend that you read it and avoid engaging in this behavior in the future.

What specific secondary sources do you think need to be added to this article in order to make it more balanced? --Captain Occam (talk) 20:06, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Examples written by some of the top researchers in the subject have been given here [1]. Mathsci (talk) 20:23, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Can you be more specific about what you think is missing? All of the criticism that Varoon Arya removed in October was synth, because it was from sources that didn’t actually mention this study. So after he had removed this, he and Ramdrake made an effort to add all of the notable viewpoints about this study specifically that have appeared in reliable sources. If you think they’ve overlooked something important, you need to be clear about what.

If there’s additional information about this study in the source material that you think needs to be added here, you can also try adding it yourself, as long as you can do so in an NPOV manner. --Captain Occam (talk) 00:17, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

WP:Summary style

It's not clear that the summary is written in summary style or is non-neutral in its choice of topics. It is certainly not acceptable to use a source like Linda Gottfredson who used this study as a keystone in many of her papers related to Jensen. I have not been able to locate any unbiased academic source which discussed the report in any detail. Mathsci (talk) 11:03, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

We've been through this issue multiple times before in the History of the race and intelligence controversy article (which used Gottfredson as a source for several points). Gottfredson is a reliable secondary source about this topic, although also a somewhat opinionated one. This doesn't mean we can't include her viewpoint; what it means is that when including her viewpoint we need to balance it against the viewpoints of other people who disagree with her. And since NPOV policy demands that we present each viewpoint in proportion to its prominence on the source material, this means that if there aren't any reliable secondary sources which disagree with her, the viewpoint which appears in the secondary sources is the only one that we need to represent. (This should be obvious, but it's still worth pointing out--sometimes the secondary sources themselves favor a certain viewpoint, such as in evolution vs. creationism topics, and when that's the case articles about these topics need to reflect that fact.)

You've just blanked an entire section of the article, without providing any clear justification for it here, so per WP:BRD I'm going to revert your edits for now. I ask that you please also comply with WP:BRD yourself, and leave the article in its pre-existing state until we've had a chance to discuss these edits, and obtain a consensus for whichever of them are necessary. --Captain Occam (talk) 19:29, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

No we have not discussed this at any point. This article violated wikipedia policies and you seem now to be attempting to do the same.

Normally on wikipedia when writing about a book, which this became - even if regarded by mainstream science as of no consequence - we take book reviews to give criticism or reception. This did not happen happen in this case. Both Gottfredson and Rushton are biased commentators: both of them write polemically Obviously Robert Sternberg and Christopher Jencks are in quite different league. Sternberg, who was one of the members of the APA committee, gave the Snyderman and Rothman survey no credence at all. (Less that 2/3 of those surveyed replied.)

BTW if you revert my edits you are very likely to be blocked for a considerable period of time, possibly by ArbCom. Mathsci (talk) 19:42, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Incidentally Occam has no logical reason on his side. This article was severely biased and he hasn't bothered checking the new material added. An edit warrior and POV-pusher on the loose, with very litle knowledge of wikipedia editing policy. Mathsci (talk) 19:46, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Do you really think your personal attacks and threats make any difference to me? Every time you’ve brought this sort of thing up at AN/I, the only thing it’s resulted in has been a waste of everyone’s time, including yours.

It isn’t necessary for me to justify reverting your blanking of an entire section. That isn’t how Wikipedia works. If you think this type of change is necessary, you need to propose it here and obtain a consensus for it. If there’s no consensus, then there’s no change to the article. (And right now, there’s clearly no consensus—nobody other than you thinks these changes are necessary.) --Captain Occam (talk) 19:58, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

No the article was non neutral and I restored neutrality in the lede and in the summary. For the reception section, which was completely POV, see below. Thanks. Mathsci (talk) 20:40, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

<= Look this is quite simple. The report of Snyderman and Rothman reported that many scientists that they surveyed privately supported some of the conclusions of Jensen and his school. It is therefore highly inappropriate to have a huge section detailing how much Jensen and his school welcomed the report. This is fairly clear. That there are no book reviews of the resulting book - none that I've been able to locate so far - is also quite odd. I don't quite understand why the article is about the 1987 paper instead of the much longer 1988 book. From all I can tell, most academics seem to have ignored the study. Is there any evidence to the contrary? Mathsci (talk) 20:12, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

@Captain: yes, you do need a reason other that WP:INDONTIKEIT to revert sourced changes. Right now, this is exactly how your objection comes across. And no, claims of past consensus don't fly either. And for the record, I'd support Mathsci's edits.--Ramdrake (talk) 20:55, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

When we were discussing this study on the talk page for the R & I history article, we both found several secondary sources that discuss it, so I’m not sure why you’re saying “most academics seem to have ignored the study”. Jencks, Flynn, Carroll and Sternberg obviously haven’t ignored it.

Both of you need to understand that what I’m objecting to here isn’t so much the changes themselves, as the fact that Mathsci is edit warring to keep them in the article even though there obviously isn’t any consensus for them yet. That’s the exact opposite of how normal editing procedure is supposed to work. Do you not care about that at all? --Captain Occam (talk) 20:57, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

As a rule, editing a Wikipedia article does not require prior consensus. Period.--Ramdrake (talk) 21:04, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Yes, certainly Varoon Arya did not seek consensus when he made his radical and non neutral changes. Twice there there were POV tags (Feb, May), removed twice by Captain Occam.

The other article - irrelevant here - was only concerned with one specific question on the questionnaire as spelt out in great detail in its text. I don't recall any discussion there about the points arising here. The issues are quite different, since there were lots of other questions on the questionnaire covering quite different topics than race and intelligence. Mathsci (talk) 21:17, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Ramdrake: That’s right, but we now have at least one user (myself) who disagrees with the justification for Mathsci’s edits. (And I explained the reason for my disagreement in my first reply to him here.) I suspect that once there are more than three editors involved in the talk page for this article, I won’t be the only person with this opinion. When an editor makes a large-scale change to an article without any prior discussion, and at least one other editor disagrees with that change, what do we do while we discuss the change and wait to see which direction consensus goes?

Remember the way you applied this principle yourself to the changes that DJ made to the Race and intelligence article in January. Since there wasn’t a consensus for his changes at that point, you said that they needed to be reverted, regardless of whether they improved the article or not. You didn’t even consider it necessary to discuss what you disagreed with about his changes when you reverted them, other than just to say that they lacked consensus. How is the current situation any different? Unless you’re applying a double standard based on whether you personally agree with these changes, the same principle applies here also. --Captain Occam (talk) 21:19, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

<= Please don't bring in other articles or editors not uninvolved here. You have mentioned two differnt articles so far, and Distributivejustice (talk · contribs). That doesn't seem very helpful, constructive ot relevant. So far you haven't responded to the point I made about using so much space to say how pleased Jensen and his cronies were about the report. It was completely WP:UNDUE. No appeal to wikipedia procedures can change that. This article has the serious problem that so far there are no secondary sources (book reviews, etc) by unbiased parties discussing the book or the article at length. Since it's a a survey and science is rarely decided by surveys, it doesn't seem that surprising. Mathsci (talk) 21:29, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

(ec) This editing [2], [3] is also related to this article and is not very helpful. Mathsci (talk) 23:10, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

As far as I know, a large portion of the secondary sources that discuss this study in depth are from “Jensen and his cronies”. As in the example I mentioned of evolution and creationism, if this is the most common perspective about this study that exists in the secondary sources, then the article needs to reflect those proportions. That’s basic NPOV policy.

If you aren’t willing to accept that, then I guess we need to wait for more other users to become involved in this article. But in the meantime, major changes which don’t have consensus shouldn’t stay in the article. You’ve evaded my point about this several times, but there’s no way around it. I would appreciate you self-reverting these changes until we’ve had a chance to discuss them and reach consensus about them, but if you aren’t willing to do that, I suspect that someone else will revert them sometime soon. And then after we’ve had a chance to discuss these changes with a larger group of users than just you, me and Ramdrake, if consensus supports the changes, then they can be added back. --Captain Occam (talk) 22:49, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Might that "someone else" be one of the two people you contacted in the diffs above? Not the usual way to establish consensus on wikipedia :( Mathsci (talk) 23:10, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

David.Kane was involved in this article before either of us contacted him about it, and you contacted him about it before I did. In the case of Varoon Arya, since he's the person who made the majority of the changes to this article that you're objecting to, I think it's completely reasonable to suggest that he might want to defend them here.

As someone who's admitted to canvassing friendly admins off-wiki in order to help you in your content disputes, I don't think you have any right to complain about what I'm doing in this case. --Captain Occam (talk) 23:18, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Which administrator has helped me in a content dispute and where have I said that I asked an administrator to help me in a content dispute? I must be getting very forgetful in my old age. Mathsci (talk) 00:10, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

One comment in which you mentioned trying to get admins to help you was this: “Anyway I'm now seated at my local bistro awaiting Elonka and her father for our wiki meetup. If you'll excuse me, I'd far rather rely on her or other administartors for interpreting wikipedia editing policies.” The other comment I can’t find at the moment, but it was when you told me you were contacting a member of Arbcom in order to help you with one of your disputes with me, and at first I didn’t believe you that you were actually doing this because it wasn’t in your contributions; you responded by telling me you’d contacted them using Wikipeda’s e-mail feature rather than on their userpage. Perhaps you’ll remember what I’m talking about.

It’s also a little strange that RegentsPark would have showed up in this article right when other users were disputing the tags you’d added, since he’s never been involved in it before. I don’t actually care about you doing this, though; as far as I’m concerned it can’t really be avoided. But as long as you’re doing this, you shouldn’t have a problem with me doing it either.

For the record, mathsci did contact me by wiki-email asking me to see if the removal of his tags was correct. And you're right, I was not paying enough attention and that would have been better as an on-wiki communication. However, that is a different sort of communication from canvassing other editors for help in building a favorable consensus and, in my opinion, is not problematic. --RegentsPark (talk) 01:39, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Are you going to address what I said about how until there’s a consensus for the changes you’ve made, basic editing policy requires that they not be added to the article yet? --Captain Occam (talk) 00:50, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Very unconvincing. Did Elonka help me with a content dispute? Are you thinking of MastCell on ANI? Are there content disputes on ANI?

Basic editing policy does not say what you claim. One fundamental policy is to avoid POV in articles on wikipedia. Wikipedia is not edited by waiting for consensus when there is clear bias. It is possible that you might not think the article was biased, but that's not my concern. Mathsci (talk) 01:23, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Mathsci, I recommend that you read Wikipedia:Reverting. Quoted from that page:

“If you make a change which is good-faith reverted, do not simply reinstate your edit - leave the status quo up. If there is a dispute, the status quo reigns until a consensus is established to make a change.” (Emphasis in original.)

This is what you don’t seem willing to do. You think your changes are necessary because you think the article was biased in its earlier form, I disagree because I think your edits removed relevant and well-sourced content, and only one other editor (Ramdrake) has offered an opinion thus far. On the basis of Wikipedia’s reverting guidelines, you should not have reinstated your edits after I made it clear why I disagreed with them, when there was not yet a consensus to keep them. And I still would like you to comply with this guideline by self-reverting. --Captain Occam (talk) 01:38, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Captain, WP:Reverting is an essay, which isn't official policy. Thus, your claim that it is basic policy just doesn't fly. Also, since your objection seems to boild down to WP:IDONTLIKEIT (even though this isn't a deletion discussion), your position seems to be hard to sustain. You still haven't explained how Mathsci's edits would --for example-- fail to improve the article (I believe they do).--Ramdrake (talk) 15:00, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

In my comments below, I’ve provided at least as much explanation about this as you provided for why you disapproved of the edits that DJ made to the race and intelligence article in January when you reverted them. Are you going to make any effort to explain how you’re using something other than a double standard here, based on whether or not you personally approve of the material in question? I would hope that whether or not you approve of material being reverted is based on something other than your personal point of view about it, but at the moment it’s not looking good. --Captain Occam (talk) 07:58, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

<= As a confirmed edit warrior with three blocks for edit warring so far, I am surprised to hear you giving me this advice - you reverted twice, ignoring any changes to the refs or the lede, with unjustified claims of consensus. I have another point: you have written many times of your fears of being WP:OUTED. In that case it might be an idea for you to remove your real life name from the places on wikipedia/wikimedia where you have allowed it to appear (Alison or another oversighter can help you with this).

Returning to the article, if you keep evading the point that the article had a problematic POV before I made my changes, there's not much I can do. Please ask yourself how often wikipedians write articles on scientific papers 7 pages long, not groundbreaking scientific discoveries but just opinion polls, and yet requiring a long, and in this case completely unbalanced, section on "reception"? Sorry that's just undue. Sternberg comments dismissively that he gave "no credence" to the study (or certain questions) and Jencks only mentions it in a footnote, asking whether those replying to the questionnaire were familiar with the facts. Jencks and Sternberg are eminent figures in the subject. Jensen and his small group of supporters, particularly Gottfredson, have used the report to bolster their oft-repeated claims of a conspiracy to stifle their objective but unpalatable research, research which is directly related to only one short question on the survey. That is mentioned elsewhere on wikipedia, I don't quite see that it's relevant here. Mathsci (talk) 06:43, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

I’m going to ignore your personal attacks, since they have nothing to do with the topic being discussed here. They also has nothing to do with the fact that you’re ignoring the page that I linked to and quoted. Do you seriously think it’s acceptable to ignore editing guidelines because of anything about the editor who’s pointing out that you’re violating them?

What you’ve just said (slightly paraphrased) is that the majority of the secondary literature discussing this study is from people like Jensen, Eysenck and Gottfredson. You agree with that, and I think you also agree that NPOV policy demands that articles describe each viewpoint about their subject matter in proportion to its prominence in the source material. In this case, the opinion of these researchers is the most prominent one about this study, as you’ve admitted yourself. The section that you deleted described the views expressed about this study in secondary sources, in proportion to their prominence. If you have a problem with that, as far as I can tell it’s not a problem with the article.

If want to delete this section, you need to explain specifically what’s wrong with including a section describing the viewpoints about this study expressed in the secondary literature, in proportion to their prominence there. And if you can’t provvide a substantive explanation of that (substantive meaning more than personal attacks), then your changes to the article shouldn’t be kept. --Captain Occam (talk) 07:11, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

What you write in bold is clearly not correct. This is a small group of followers of Jensen. None of those that are still active are as highly regarded as either Sternberg, Jencks, Flynn, Mackintosh or Nisbett. Certainly Gottfredson is on a quite different level academically, certainly not prominent. There are no book reviews of the subsequent book in academic journals as far as I have been able to tell. That's what's normally used to judge reception.

There are no personal attacks to ignore. You might want to look at this. I don't understand why you spend so much time wikilawyering, filibustering and making invalid procedural objections. Why not go and edit another article - you like dinsouars don't you, why not work on one of those articles?

Even if I stop replying to you, that cannot be taken as a sign of assent to any future proposals you make. It just indicates that I have better things to do with my time. You are arguing in the same circular way with multiple users now and they are reacting similarly. Mathsci (talk) 07:36, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

If there are no book reviews discussing this study, then what we represent in the article are the secondary sources that exist about it. Really, this shouldn’t need to be explained to you; this works exactly the same way as it does in an article about any other topic. If you want to call this section something other than “reception”, then that’s fine, but you’ve provided no justification for excluding the most prominent viewpoints about this study that appear in secondary sources about it.

What matters here is not whether you keep replying, but whether you respond to the points I’m making—both about what NPOV policy demands that we include in the article from the secondary sources about this study, and about what state the article should remain in if there’s no consensus about it. If you want to keep replying to me while evading these points, then the discussion here will most certainly keep going in a circle, but that won’t change its outcome. You’re the only user who’s trying to argue with me here, and as long you’re making no attempt to address my points about this, any neutral user who comes across this discussion is not going to have any trouble determining which version of the article should stand.

I should ask you the same question about why you’re choosing to devote so much time to this topic. You’ve said that you’re interested in contributing to articles about math and classical music, but for the past month, around 90% of your edits have been race-related articles and their talk pages, as well as your AN/I threads about them. Take a look at your contributions if you don’t believe me. Is this topic really more important to you than anything else at Wikipedia? And is it important enough to prevent you from sleeping more than five hours in a night, which is the amount of time between your last edit last night and your first one this morning? --Captain Occam (talk) 08:23, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

This is just more circular nonsense, but this time with added violations of WP:DNTTR and WP:BAIT. As on other talk pages, your points are without any merit: more WP:CPUSH. Have you done anything about that image where you added your real life name? Mathsci (talk) 08:36, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Are you going to make any attempt to address policy-based points that I’ve made several times now? If all you have left to say about this is name-calling and irrelevant personal comments, then I think we’re finished here; I just want to make sure that you have nothing of substance to say about any of this. --Captain Occam (talk) 08:49, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

I confess to not reading the above back-and-forth closely. I have added back in the Reception section. As best I know, all the statement are well-sourced. (I have not checked them myself.) If anyone has reason to doubt them, then, obviously, we should investigate more closely. Complaints about WP:UNDUE make no sense unless you can specify what other material the article is excluding and/or not emphasizing enough. We can, then, fix that by adding more material. The article is, obviously, so short that WP:SIZE is not a problem. Abstract complaints that this article, itself, is too big make no sense. You don't judge an article by how its size compares to the size of other Wikipedia articles, and no Wikipedia policy/guideline suggests otherwise. David.Kane (talk) 15:48, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Comment: While I am reluctant to wade into this, an area I am unfamiliar with, based on my reading of the 'reception' section I think the concerns are the following (please treat these as naive comments since I am completely unfamiliar with the field). First, the very inclusion of a 'reception' section implies that the work is seminal enough and important enough to entail wide commentary from the academic community. The paucity of secondary sources and mathsci's comments above (which may or may not be correct) lead me to suspect that this is not the case. The second concern, and this is more important, is that if a work is marginal and of a subset of researchers in a marginalized academic group, the work is likely to be ignored by the larger community and the 'reception' is likely to be from other members of the same marginalized academic group. The 'reception' section will then be undue, and so perhaps will the entire article on the work. There is some circumstantial indication that this is the case. The quoted sources in the reception section appear to belong to the same group of academics promoting a certain viewpoint. The deletion discussion on the article closed as 'no consensus' with two keeps and two deletes and an interesting uncontested analysis by T34CH. All these lead me to believe that the article itself is undue and that the reception section is way undue. However, like I said, this opinion is based more on circumstantial evidence and less on actual substance since, beyond the general awareness that this area of research is considered marginal in academic communities, I know little about it. --RegentsPark (talk) 16:23, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Note: The section under discussion also includes quotes from Myron Lieberman, Ronald Ferguson, Malick Kouyate and Jerome Taylor, the last three of which are quite critical regarding the findings claimed by the study. --Aryaman (talk) 17:04, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

RegentsPark: 1) As VA points out, some of the material in this section is quite critical of Snyderman and Rothman. And that is fine. The reception section should include all views. 2) You seem to be confusing two separate issues. First, should this article exist at all? Reasonable editors may differ. But, since it already survived on deletion attempt, we need to, for now, assume that it exists. Second, given that it exists, how much material should be devoted to topics X, Y and Z. Reasonable editors may also differ on that, but I hope that we can all agree that this article is not too short. So, to the extent that you think discussion of Jensen's views are WP:UNDUE, the simple solution is to balance them by including more details on the views of Ferguson et al. David.Kane (talk) 18:07, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

I think you have completely missed my point. Which is that perhaps there is no material to provide balance. I'll try to make this easier to understand. Let's say that I, along with a few others, am a proponent of a fringe view that has no credibility in my academic community. I publish a book on my fringe view. The other proponents comment on it. The larger community completely ignores it. Does that make for a 'reception' section on an article on my book? So, perhaps one or two other researchers mention my work disparagingly. Does that make my work suddenly important enough for an article in its own right? That's what it appears from my reading of the article and much of this discussion. The brief critical para notwithstanding. (Parenthetical comment: I'm not arguing that the article should be deleted - that is the subject for an AfD. I'm just stating that, based on what I see, the existence of the article appears to be undue. But, like I said, perhaps the work it deals with is seminal in the area so let's not be distracted with deletion issues, for now.) Finally, I'm not sure who is concerned about the length of the article. I'm certainly not. By my reckoning, it is too long :) --RegentsPark (talk) 20:03, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

I think I've figured out what's bothering me about this article. Typically, mainstream research is analyzed for the quality of its research. Other scholars dissect the methodology, the statistical analysis used, the design of the survey, the population surveyed, the internal and external validity, stuff like that. If this research is even marginally important, one would expect to some, preferably a lot, of critical examination along those lines. The study itself seems to be quite old. One would expect to see attempts at replication. I don't see any of that in the article. Including interesting quotes without any critical analysis of the study itself makes it appear that the entire thing is a fringe view amongst a self-feeding bunch of scholars. Trust me, that's not a phenomenon limited to IQ studies but exists in all disciplines. The question for us is, as always, how much weight should we be giving to fringe views. The mavericks are not always wrong and sometimes new ideas come from these fringe mavericks. So clearly, we can't ignore their views. However, the harsh reality is that the mavericks are more often wrong than not and an encyclopedia should always be wary of overplaying their views. --RegentsPark (talk) 20:26, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

RegentsPark, if I’m understanding your argument correctly, it seems to be based on the assumption that the hereditarian hypothesis about the racial IQ gap is a “fringe view”. This claim has been made several times in the past, but is it correct? Whether or not the hereditarian hypothesis should be considered “fringe” was one of the topics we discussed during the mediation case for the race and intelligence article, and the consensus we eventually reached was that it isn’t. The discussion during which this was resolved can be found here, and it eventually resulted in a consensus between Varoon Arya, Aprock, Slrubenstein and Ludwigs2. (Varoon Arya was the main person arguing that it wasn’t fringe, while Aprock and Slrubenstein were arguing that it was; I’m not sure either way about Ludwig’s opinion.)

Assuming that the outcome of mediation was valid, what we have is a study that’s often cited in support of a viewpoint that’s highly controversial (although not actually fringe), yet very few scholars who don’t share this viewpoint have commented on it. Is it our job, as editors, to determine the reason why this study has been discussed in less depth than one might expect? In addition to the possible reason you mentioned, there are a lot of other possible reasons that this could be the case, and the most obvious possibility is that this entire field is so controversial that most scholars would rather avoid the controversy inherent to reviewing this study unless they’re already inextricably involved in controversy on this topic, and the scholars who are most inextricably involved in it are those who favor a hereditarian point of view.

I’m not saying that explanation is necessarily correct, but I think it’s at least as likely a reason for this situation as your own suggestion, particularly in light of what we resolved during mediation about the hereditarian hypothesis not being “fringe”. Because of this uncertainty, I think the coverage that this study has received in secondary sources ought to still be represented in the article, even if not in quite as much depth as it would be for a study that’s been discussed more heavily than this one has. In any case, the requirement made by NPOV policy that articles accurately represent the coverage their subjects have received in the source literature does not make any exceptions on the basis of the coverage being primarily from a small group of scholars. --Captain Occam (talk) 01:40, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

One procedural note before I address your point re the fringe view. It is important to note that mediation is not a definitive process. It is a way of trying to bridge the gap between editors and moving on but the outcome of mediation should not be seen as a definitive word on what is acceptable and what is not, though, of course, the outcome should not be treated lightly either. That said, the mediation outcome is murky at best. I see that AProck agreed that the study of "race and intelligence" is not fringe but I don't see a more general agreement and even AProck's agreement came with the caveat that the conclusions drawn by researchers in that area may be fringe.

That said, I don't really want to go into a more general discussion but would rather focus on this study itself. While I know practically nothing about the area, I do know something about academic research and find the lack of critical analysis of the study puzzling. I also see that the study itself is often quoted in the neoconservative media. The two together seem to imply that the study was not considered worth criticizing by mainstream researchers and that it merely provides talking points for the parts of the media that want to use its results to support their own views. That is also consistent with some of the discussion I see on this page. I do want to stress two things though. One is that if it is quoted often enough by the neoconservative media, then it is probably notable enough for an article of its own. The second is that I am working only with what I see written here and in the article page. For all I know, there may be a vast field that does nothing but analyze this particular study. I found a couple of reviews on jstor and will spend some time next week reading those. However, I do think that rather than having a section titled 'reception' we should be presenting critical studies of the study. Reception is a vague and meaningless term when talking about academic research, where critical analysis is an ongoing process of review, refinement and rethinking. The way 'reception' is currently written, it contains a bunch of people saying 'see, the study shows I was right all along' or something like that. Where is the value in that? --RegentsPark (talk) 02:29, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

I don’t think anyone is arguing that the section Mathsci deleted is incapable of being improved. Even though Varoon Arya was the one who added most of this material, he also agreed here that there was a lot more that it would be worthwhile for this section to include, although nobody at the time wanted to put forth the effort to improve it. I’m also not sure that “reception” is the best name for this section; something like “reactions from academics” might be better.

However, what I do strongly disagree with is the idea that this section should be deleted entirely, or that the views expressed by researchers such as Jensen, Gottfredson and Eysenck should not be included at all. I feel this way especially strongly in Eysenck’s case—according to Haggbloom et. al. 2002, Eysenck is the third most-cited in the professional literature of any psychologist of the 20th century; the only 20th century psychologists cited more frequently than Eysenck are Jean Piaget and Sigmund Freud—can anyone seriously claim that the views of the third most-cited psychologist of the 20th century about this study are not notable? Ideally, I think the views of academics such as Eysenck ought to be presented alongside the views of academics who are critical of the study. For this reason, I also object to the idea that this section ought to be left out of the article while we wait to come up with a way to make it more balanced. Even though I think we can improve this section, while we’re working on that I also think the status quo of the past six months is better than not having any material about this at all, particularly when there’s never been any consensus to remove it.

Please let me know whether you agree with what I’ve said here. --Captain Occam (talk) 07:49, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

I have again reverted the "reception" section on grounds of WP:UNDUE, as basically all of the comments in the section are based on the answers to just a small subset (one or maybe two) of the questions asked by the survey. There were many more, and there is no reason why the discussion should hinge on how happy a group of researchers were that an answer to just one question seemed to assert the validity of their position. As such, these were not comments on the survey, but on how well it served certain researchers' positions. That's the reasons why I deemed this WP:UNDUE.--Ramdrake (talk) 18:18, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Ramdrake: That makes no sense. I believe that no sources (either primary or secondary) have commented on most of the questions in the survey. If that is true (contrary opinions welcome), then there is nothing we can do about that in this article since we don't do original research. If WP:RS have discussed/used the results for a "small subset" of the questions, then that is what, by necessity, the article will focus on. For WP:UNDUE to be a valid complaint, you need to specify material that is getting unfairly left out (or complain that the article is too long). "An article should not give undue weight to any aspects of the subject but should strive to treat each aspect with a weight appropriate to its significance to the subject." This "small subset" of questions is the main reason why we have an article about this book/article in the first place, so, obviously, much of our article will focus on it. David.Kane (talk) 18:42, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Actually, the Snyderman and Rothman survey is cited 121 times in the literature, according to Google scholar. While the vast majority of the articles which cite the survey only do so in passing, they comment on the results to many more questions than just the very few on race and intelligence.--Ramdrake (talk) 18:53, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Good news! That suggests that the article/book is notable and, therefore, that having a Wikipedia article about it is a good thing. But then why delete the material that we have? Surely you can't object to the material from, say Ronald Ferguson? The best way forward is not delete a reference to Ferguson, it is to add references to others. David.Kane (talk) 19:04, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Yes, this fairly is well known. A book like Mackintosh's IQ and Human Inteligence refers to the report once for a specific point. As already mentioned, there has been no disagreement on the heritability of intelligence in individuals. It is uncontroversial and accepted: that is known independently of the survey and is a surprise to nobody.

The article, however, should not unduly represent the views of a minority who repeatedly quote the survey because of one question on the black-white IQ gap. In fact the main person who has been mentioning this in publications over a large number of years is Linda Gottfredson.

The standard way articles on books are written is to find the book reviews first. I've found only two book academic reviews - one is positive, one is negative. There could be more, but I haven't been able to find them so far. A passing mention in an article, or support from the Jensen camp, is not the same as a dedicated book review. The book reviews are the main commentaries unfortunately and therefore the main sources. That there are so few indicates that the article and the book were academically marginal, possibly even inconsequential, even if they have been used for political purposes by academics, the media and others. Mathsci (talk) 20:42, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Balance and neutrality

The group of Jensen followers, many of whom have been Pioneer Fund grantees, have vociferously mentioned this report in their writings. In particular this has been true of Linda Gottfredson. Others include Jensen himself, Hans Eysenck and Robert A. Gordon. To include copious material on their pronouncements, which usually are taken to bolster their assertions about black-white race differences where there was only question, is undue unless proper context is provided. For the most part there was no dissent at all that genetics plays some role in intelligence. Top experts have criticized the specific question (Jencks, Sternberg) and a number of sociologists (Conrad and Horowitz) have criticized Rothman and Snyderman for intentionally manipulating the media. I found one review in Gifted Child which of course favoured the heritability of intelligence amongst individuals (not surprisingly). Another academic review by J. J. Lennon described the book as dangerous. Before any section can be written, an exhaustive literature has to take place and care has to be taken not to over-represent the views of a small and vocal minority. So edit warring to put in the old reception section is out at the moment; but editors are free to suggest here content that is balanced. I am slightly worried that the WP article is taken to be about a seven page article and not the book. My rewriting of the lede actually makes it about both, which seems reasonable. Mathsci (talk) 16:25, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

MathSci: 1) The main person who seems to be edit warring is you. 2) I have no problem with your additions/changes to make this article about both the book and the article. 3) To delete this material, you need to make a positive case that there is something wrong with it. That, you have failed to do. Now that I know that VA was the original author of this material, I have a great deal of faith that the sourcing is accurate. (If you think a specific source is wrong, then mention it explicitly.) So, until you make your criticisms more specific, I am adding this material back. If you revert, you would be violating 3RR. David.Kane (talk) 18:02, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Moot now. Please don't misrepresent my edits in future, particularly inaccurate claims of 3RR (identical to Captain Occam's). That really does not place your edits in a good light at all. Please avoid the appearance of colluding with Captain Occam, if that is possible. Thanks, Mathsci (talk) 20:01, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Problems with the findings section

This section, written by Varoon Arya (talk · contribs), is extremely inaccurate, one-sided and evidently trying to prove a WP:POINT. There were 48 questions in the questionnaire (reprinted as Appendix F of the book). Only one question was about the black-white racial IQ-gap, yet the image and the quotebox concentrate on that. (That question is now discussed in context in the "Response and criticism" section.) This is terribly WP:POINTy and gives no information about the rest of the survey. The first book review in the next section does a much better job and describes quite carefully - as in the original paper - the sociologists, psychologists and educationalists surveyed. In the article there is no clear description of the type of question asked. The image is even more problematic, because it shows also results about journalists and editors - these do not appear in the original 1987 paper nor is it made clear where that information was drawn from (a supplementary survey reported in the book?). The whole article appears to have been written with a view to it being used used solely as material about a black-white racial IQ gap for use as a POV fork in race and intelligence and other related articles. The sources have been misrepresented and that is completely contrary to wikipedia policy. Mathsci (talk) 14:14, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Here are the diffs of Varoon Arya's additions [4]. Some of the worst edits I have seen on wikipedia. No attempt to find a neutral secondary source, Just cherry picking from the primary source to make a WP:POINT. Looks like a classic case of WP:CPUSH to me. Cleaning up the mess is certainly not a pleasure. Mathsci (talk) 21:01, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

For the benefit of other editors watching this page or editing the article, I reproduce what Captain Occam (talk · contribs) has written elsewhere about this article being returned to NPOV [5]:

I see you’ve modified one of Mathsci’s personal attacks against you on the talk page for this article, but he’s just reverted your edit and then added a little more to what he was saying about you:
“Here are the diffs of Varoon Arya's additions [23]. Some of the worst edits I have seen on wikipedia. No attempt to find a neutral secondary source, Just cherry picking from the primary source to make a WP:POINT. Looks like a classic case of WP:CPUSH to me.”
I’m sorry for having to bother you about this when you clearly don’t want to be involved in it, but I hope you can understand this from my and David.Kane’s perspective. As far as most people are concerned, having Mathsci’s allegations about your motives go unchallenged amounts to a tacit admission that what he’s saying about you is correct, and that he can edit the article accordingly. And I don’t think there’s anyone other than you who can adequately defend your edits and the motives for them.
If you think there’s any other possible solution here, please let me know, and I would be fine with that also. I’ve also talked to several administrators about this problem, both on IRC and via e-mail, and all of them agreed that Mathsci’s behavior over the past couple of months has been unacceptable, but they also said that they felt there was nothing that could be done about it. I discussed this at greatest length with User:Keegan; I hope doesn’t mind me quoting what he told me about this. (If he does, I’ll edit my post to remove this quote.)
Assuming good faith is a difficult thing to do in general, and when a line is crossed it it crossed. My personal feeling is that Mathsci crossed the line here, and has before. I personally have the ability to ignore this kind of, for want of a better word, shit. My temper flares occasionally, but that's human nature.
Now, that brings up the rest of the issue: the detriment to the community. It is true that we can only extend good faith so far, and a lack of action within the community in this case, and with cases before with this user, is that working in a collaborative environment - like any governmental system- has loopholes. This isn't excusable as a reality, but it is a reality. Toss in the fact we're talking about the internet, and we've reached critical mass.
Users that are into Wikipedia won't go away even if they are banned or sanctioned. It's too easy not to. I could block Mathsci for a month be see where that gets us...nowhere. So what we have to do is remember that each individual behind an account has their own place in the internet scheme of things and that this also exists offline in any workplace. You continue to do good work, and it is not fun that there is someone over your shoulder. There are occasions like this in any social environment and it's a reality of life. The truth does remain that it is terrible that there is no resolution for human behavior.
What Keegan told me about this was the result of a discussion between him and the rest of the Functionaries group, so at the very least we can take heart in the fact that the senior admin group knows that this problem exists, and agrees that it’s a problem, even if they don’t think there’s currently anything they can do about it. That leaves it up to people like us to deal with Mathsci as well as we’re able to. Having your assistance with this matters enough to me that if there’s anything I could be doing to make this less difficult for you, I might be willing to oblige. Please let me know if there is. --Captain Occam (talk) 23:23, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

What Captain Occam writes does not seem to be true at all, since Aprock (talk · contribs) reverted the modification Varoon Arya (talk · contribs) made to my edit, a modification unjustified by any wikipedia editing policy. (Policy incidentally would have allowed me to revert Varoon Arya's edit.) We are allowed to describe edits as we please: it they are poor and misrepresent a source, we say so. That is not a personal attack on an editor and Captain Occam should know that by now. Returning an article to NPOV is not easy, it is time consuming. I have no idea why Captain Occam is being so disruptive or why he has chosen to misrepresent me to administrators off-wiki (email or IRC). Certainly no administrators have to date expressed any support for a W:SPA WP:CPUSHing material onto WP about "racial differences". So it also seems that Captain Occam is now misrepresenting administrators. Mathsci (talk) 07:22, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

All I’ve done is quote the e-mail that Keegan sent me about this. You can read it for yourself, and if you think I’ve misquoted him or selectively quoted him, you can ask him about it and get him to verify it.

By what standard do you consider it appropriate to bring up (and quote) a post I left in someone’s user talk, on an article talk page? Article talk pages are for discussing improvements to articles, rather than anything to do with users. All of your replies to yourself in this thread appear to be about nothing but your personal grievances against the users that disagree with you. Do you not see how inappropriate it is to have a thread about this on an article talk page? --Captain Occam (talk) 08:54, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

I cannot read it unless you have Keegan's permission. If you have misrepresented me, as above, that is a cause for concern: Aprock reverted VA's edit, which was itself not allowed. Comments on edits are allowed. Your own edits are disruptive and seemingly designed to create a hostile editing environment on wikipedia. Your edits do not in any way help in adding content to this article, which I am busy editing at the moment from a neutral point of view using the only secondary source unearthed so far that describes the book in detail, the very positive review by Silverman. The section I started here was about the POV problems in the findings section picked selectively from the original 8 page paper. Anyway, back to work. Mathsci (talk) 09:07, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

"No agreement"

I suggest that the following sentence in the lede may be original research, because "articles may not contain any new analysis or synthesis of published material that serves to advance a position not clearly advanced by the sources".

"There has been no agreement amongst academics on the significance of the findings of the survey."

The sources given for this claim are these:

Jencks & Phillips 1998, p. 20
Gottfredson 1994
Sternberg, Grigorenko & Kidd 2006
Eysenck 1994
Eysenck 2000
Miele 2002, p. 79,163

What is actually claimed in those books (?) with regard to the Snyderman and Rothman study?--Victor Chmara (talk) 12:57, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

The lede is a summary of what is actually discussed in the article at length. This seems to be an accurate summary of the response and criticism section. The citation is not actually needed in the lede; so it could be removed. Mathsci (talk) 13:20, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

OK.--Victor Chmara (talk) 14:41, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

That's fine. Mathsci (talk) 14:46, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Jencks and Phillips summarise the books findings thus:

"Skeptics may wonder whether other experts read this literature the way we do. That question is not easy to answer. Snyderman and Rothman (1987) asked a sample of over 1,000 psychologists, sociologists, and educational researchers, “Which of the following best characterizes your opinion of the heritability of the black-white differences in IQ?” Of the 661 “experts” who returned a questionnaire, 14 percent declined to answer this particular question, 24 percent said the data were insufficient to support a reasonable opinion, 1 percent thought the gap was “due entirely to genetic variation,” 15 percent thought it was “due entirely to environmental variation,” and 45 percent thought it was “a product of both genetic and environmental variation.” It is not clear how many of those who gave the “both” response would accept our conclusion that genes do not play a large role in the black-white gap. Nor is it clear how many of Snyderman and Rothman’s respondents had read the research that Nisbett reviews."·Maunus·ƛ· 14:55, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Intelligence Citations Bibliography for Articles Related to IQ Testing

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) 03:55, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Victors edits

I think the worst part of Victors edit is the changes to the Conrad & Horowitz section which focus on the pro-hereditarian part of their argument and deletes their observations that could be seen as critical towards that view. I think Victors description of Sternberg, Grigorenko and Kidd is better than thye previous version. We need to decide about when it is relevant to mention the pioneer fund grantee status in releçation the the hereditarian researchers. I think "no agreement" is a less biased way of presenting the study's reception than "many researchers agree while others". ·Maunus·ƛ· 23:06, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

What do you mean when you say Victor’s version focuses on the pro-hereditarian part of Horowitz’s argument? As far as I’m aware, his version doesn’t mention Horowitz’s article at all, which is appropriate because Horowitz’s article doesn’t discuss this study, so mentioning the article would by synth. Can you quote what part of Victor’s version of the article you’re referring to?

The way that researchers who favor the hereditarian point of view have viewed this study as a vindication of their viewpoint is definitely one of the more notable things about it, as I think can be seen from the six references that discuss this. You’re welcome to suggest a more neutral way to mention this, though.

The Pioneer Fund issue is pretty open-and-shut, in my opinion. It’s important enough to be included in the articles devoted to each of these researchers (which it is), but mentioning it when we’re introducing these researchers in a single sentence smacks strongly of trying to cast them in a certain light. There are dozens of different things that could be said about these researchers in order to introduce them, some of which are more notable than others, such as the universities where they’re professors, the journals in which their research has been published, or the awards they’ve received. As I mentioned above, just as we shouldn’t introduce them by means of their awards in order to cast them in a positive light, we also shouldn’t introduce them by means of them having been funded by the Pioneer Fund in order to cast them in a negative light. Either option is an example of cherry-picking information in order to try and make a point about them. --Captain Occam (talk) 23:26, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

I agree with you about the pioneer fund issue. Victor removed Horowitz comments with is negative towards Rushton and Rothman because it paints them as seeking media attention and scandal. Its an important point imo. He also removed Conrads comment about the excessive media attention boosting popuylar belief in the hereditarian view regardless of its actual merits. Another important point - and removing it distorts Conrads point because it actually has him agreeing with Herrnstein and Rothman and Snyderman - when in fact he is sayiong the opposite.·Maunus·ƛ· 23:35, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

All right, since we seem to be agreed about the Pioneer Fund and Sternberg issues, I’ve changed those back.

I’m not able to find Conrad’s paper at the moment, so can’t easily evaluate Victor Chmara’s statement that the article was misrepresenting his opinion. I definitely have an issue with the description of Horowitz, though. Horowitz’s article is about Rushton, Rothman is only mentioned briefly in a single sentence, and this study is not mentioned at all. Perhaps this could go in the article about Stanley Rothman if one is eventually created, although I’m not even sure about that. But it really seems like a stretch to say that if an article briefly mentions a particular author, that makes the article relevant to Wikipedia’s article about a specific study that author has performed. In other words, this still looks like WP:SYNTH to me. Do you disagree? --Captain Occam (talk) 00:19, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

This is what Horowitz wrote about Snyderman and Rothman:

To be sure, in a thoughtful and sympathetic early review of the Rushton book in The National Review (September 12, 1994), Mark Snyderman wamed of the barrage to come. "Philippe Rushton has written his own epitaph. Any genetic predisposition toward the defense of one's race only adds to the near impossibility of rational response to the scientific study of race in a world that has seen the Holocaust and racial subjugation...Rushton's work may be ignored by the fearful, damned by the liberals, and misused by the racists. It is unlikely to be truly understood by anyone." Subsequent events have proved Snyderman prophetic; although Malcom Brown's review in The New York Times Sunday Book Review made a valiant effort at understanding and empathy.

...

In the 1960s there was the work of the late William Shockley, in the seventies that of Arthur Jensen, and in the 1980s that of a group of people much closer to media studies, such as Stanley Rothman. These individuals sought media attention as a mechanism for making their policy views known.

There is no mention of either Snyderman or Rothman beyond these two passages (they are not even mentioned together), and there is nothing about their study anywhere in the entire article.

As to Conrad, I uploaded the relevant passages (p. 148-149) here: [6]

This is how Mathsci decided to present these two sources:

Sociologists such as Irving Horowitz and Peter Conrad have commented on the motivation for writing the article and the book. Writing partly in his capacity as managing editor of the publishing company, Transaction Publishers, that had published the Snyderman-Rothman book and more recently a controversial book by hereditarian researcher J. Philippe Rushton, Horowitz (1995) pointed out that researchers into heredity and intelligence like Rothman "sought media attention as a mechanism for making their policy views known." Conrad (1997) noted that Snyderman and Rothman echoed the claims of Richard Herrnstein, another psychologist of the hereditarian school, in claiming that "the media, relative to the scientific experts surveyed, were overly critical of testing and the heritability of IQ and that it continually manifested an environmental bias in explanations of IQ differences between blacks and whites." Conrad on the contrary suggests that this has been the reaction of the press every time the hereditarian views have become the centre of media attention and that the resulting "avalanche of commentary pieces" has inadvertently promulgated the original message, giving it "unintentional credence".

This is what I changed Mathsci's passage into:

Conrad (1997) noted that Snyderman and Rothman echoed the claims of Richard Herrnstein, another psychologist of the hereditarian school, in claiming that "the media, relative to the scientific experts surveyed, were overly critical of testing and the heritability of IQ and that it continually manifested an environmental bias in explanations of IQ differences between blacks and whites."

Mathsci clearly misrepresented these two sources, violating WP:NOR among other policies. Even thought Horowitz does not discuss Snyderman and Rothman's book or survey at all, Mathsci claims that he comments on S and R's motivation for writing it. Horowitz does not say that he writes in the capacity of S and R's publisher, nor does he say that he has published anything by them, but Mathsci makes it look like as if he did. Similarly, Mathsci quotes Horowitz on Rothman's supposed attention seeking as if Horowitz had commented on the survey or the book. Mathsci also makes it look like as if Conrad's "unintentional credence" bit was about Snyderman and Rothman, even though it is explicitly about the media reaction to The Bell Curve.

It is difficult for me to believe that anyone in good faith would try to reintroduce Mathsci's misrepresentations to the article.--Victor Chmara (talk) 01:18, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

Victor: You are clearly correct in the substance here. Feel free to fix the article again, unless someone has objections. But, also, please assume good faith. MathSci, presumably, made an honest mistake here. We all do, from time to time. David.Kane (talk) 01:28, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

I was a bit harsh. Maunus's claims were probably made in good faith.--Victor Chmara (talk) 01:48, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

I notice Mathsci has just undone my restoring of Victor Chmara’s description of Sternberg, Grigorenko and Kidd, which Maunus had stated was an improvement over the previous version. I would assume that since Victor Chmara was the author of this wording, he also agrees with Maunus that it was an improvement. David.Kane, what do you think? I suspect that consensus will oppose Mathsci about this, but I’m not going to undo his change until it’s clear that this is the case. --Captain Occam (talk) 04:46, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

See below. The edits by both Victor Chmara and Captain Occam misrepresent the source and are POV-pushing. I think most wikipedians would agree that a reference to an uncited 2005 paper of Sternberg, Grigorenko & Kidd which makes no explicit reference to the book/survey of Snyderman & Rothman is misleading and irrelevant. I can't see why an article by Sternberg, Grigorenko and Kidd which doesn't mention the book is remotely relevant to this article. These were very low quality edits which failed WP:V, WP:RS, WP:NPOV, WP:OR, WP:SYNTH and WP:UNDUE. Mathsci (talk) 05:45, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

Um, the source that you’ve quoted below does indeed refer to this study. Did you actually read what you quoted? The relevant part of the quote is this:

“I maintain that no argument should be regarded as a closed one when there are so many psychologists on both sides of a scientific position. In one study (Snyderman & Rothman, 1988), over a thousand psychologists and other experts in intelligence testing were surveyed regarding the Black–White IQ difference. Fifteen percent said the reasons for the discrepancy were entirely environmental; 46% said they were at least partly genetic; 24% said the evidence was inconclusive; and 14% did not respond. The fact that 24% of the experts surveyed expressed uncertainty means that more research and dialogue rather than a “case closed” orientation is needed.”

Templer is offering this as a rebuttal to Sternberg’s claim that the case is closed with regard to the IQ gap being 100% environmental, and that therefore the opinion that genes contributes to it is a political opinion rather than a scientific one. And that’s exactly what was said by the content you removed from the article. In what way did this content misrepresent the source? --Captain Occam (talk) 06:01, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

Captain Occam has not explained why his edits concerning an unspecified paper by "Sternberg, Grigerenko & Kidd" in the text, which made no reference to the survey, could make any sense to a reader or have any relevance to this text. Indeed the reader would probably assume it was a reference to the quite different 2006 paper that appears in the "References" section of the articlem, which is quite incorrect. That is a 2 page note, while the 2005 paper is in a different journal and a full length article. In that paper (directly linked in the section below), the authors don't mention the study; Templer's short letter is not a commentary on the study but on their 2005 paper. This article is not Race and intelligence: it is an article about the survey/book of Snyderman & Rothman. The 2005 paper of Sternberg, Grigerenko & Kidd, or any discussion of it, has no relevance to the article for which this is the talk page. Mathsci (talk) 06:23, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

So if I understand your point correctly, it’s that Templer’s letter is not relevant to the article about this study because even though it specifically discusses this study, it does so in the context of discussing a paper by Sternberg which itself doesn’t discuss the study. If you think this makes it synth for the article to mention Templer’s letter, why not also apply the same principle one step further? Sternberg’s statement that he does not attach much credence to this study was specifically in response to Templer’s letter. If you think the fact that Templer is discussing the Snyderman and Rothman study in the context of an unrelated paper makes Templer’s letter itself irrelevant to this article, then the fact that Sternberg 2006 is talking about this study in the context of Templer’s letter (which you consider irrelevant) would make Sternberg 2006 irrelevant also.

I don’t think Sternberg 2006 actually is irrelevant to this article; I’m just using this as an example to demonstrate the inconsistency in your reasoning. You’re interpreting the policy of WP:SYNTH in a very strange way, and applying it to sources selectively based on what’s conducive to the article conforming to your point of view—in other words, you’re wikilawyering.

I know from my experience with you on the History of the race and intelligence controversy article that once your mind is made up about something like this, there’s generally nothing that can change it, so I’m not particularly interested in having a long argument with you about this like I did there. However, I think I should point out the same thing that ultimately decided the outcome of our argument over that article: at this point, every user other than you who’s expressed an opinion about whether Templer should be used as a source has agreed that he should, including Maunus, who’s one of the more consistently neutral editors involved in these articles. In fact, my restoring of this part of Victor Chmara’s wording was specifically in response to Maunus’s statement that he considered Victor’s summary of these papers to be an improvement over the previous version (which you’ve now restored). If David.Kane ends up having the same opinion about this as me, Victor Chmara and Maunus, I hope you’ll be willing to accept that consensus opposes you about it. --Captain Occam (talk) 07:23, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

I appreciate the back-and-forth here.

I have the book at hand in my office. I'm reading other sources that are more germane to editing other articles on Wikipedia right now, so you see that I haven't joined in on editing this article after posting the NPOV tag. I'm glad that several editors are joining issue on what the Snyderman and Rothman study means, what influence it has had, how significant the book is, and whether the book's conclusions accurately represent facts in the world. Keep up the good work. Thanks. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 13:31, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

My own understanding is that not much has been written on the survey. However, here is a statement from 1998 by Lee Ellis [7] who conducted a similar survey in the 1990s:

Only recently have surveys been conducted among social scientists that even remotely bear on the heritability-of-IQ debate, and the results of the three that I am aware of, have provided only vague glimpses into where most social scientists stand on this debate. Snyderman and Rothman (1988) contended that a majority of the “psychologist experts” they surveyed believed that genetic factors were important in determining racial variations in intelligence. However, an earlier survey by Friedrichs (1973) based on sounder sampling procedures found that only 28% of psychologists held this view. In a survey conducted by Sanderson and Ellis (1992) p. 37) the “average sociologist” attributed only 13% of racial variation in academic achievement to any type of biological factors (with 4.6% specifically attributed to genetics). Notice that none of the questions asked in these three surveys pertained specifically to genetic influences on IQ except in the context of race variations. This means that even today, no one knows whether social scientists (let alone scientists in general) have shifted their positions with regard to the influence of genes on IQ. Regarding the narrower issue of genetic influences on racial variations in IQ, most social scientists appear to remain skeptical, and no study of scientists in general has ever been conducted.

Mathsci (talk) 13:40, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

his quoe seems particularly relevant to include in the article - perhaps more so than the orowitz/Conrad material.·Maunus·ƛ· 17:52, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

The current article doesn’t contain any quotes that are anywhere near this long, so I think including this entire quote would be WP:UNDUE, but it seems reasonable that Ellis’s view on this study ought to be mentioned here. Does anyone have any arguments against me reinstating Victor Chmara’s changes to the Horowitz and Conrad material, and also adding a summary of the Ellis article? --Captain Occam (talk) 00:48, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments. It seems to me that what makes a quotation undue in length or not has much to do with how much the quotation fits into the mainstream published literature on the subject, and little to do with the length of the quotation. Mathsci's search of the literature (thanks for that) raises to me the concern that this article goes beyond Wikipedia policy in devoting a whole separate article to what is, at best, a minor source that would be cited in perhaps a dozen or so articles across all of Wikipedia. I would think that job one here would be to review the criteria already established by Wikipedia policy for articles about books, and make clear whether or not this article meets those criteria. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 01:12, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

(ec) The problem is that, apart from the enthusiastic remarks by those involved in gifted educatin and by supporters of hereditarian research, there are very few statements in the literature directly commenting on this survey. The statements of Horovitz and Conrad concern a different issue to that discussed by Ellis, so I don't support any changes at the moment on that issue without a more extensive discussion.

The preamble to the statement of Sternberg et al still seems to be WP:SYNTH and involves selective quoting on issues not related to the survey. It's fine to quote Sternberg et al (2006), but the WP:NPOV way of doing that is to write something like:

Sternberg, Grigorenko & Kidd (2006), replying to comments on an earlier paper of theirs by Donald Templer who he had cited the responses on the Black-White IQ gap in Snyderman & Rothman, stated that they did not give "much credence" to the survey.

The statement by Ellis above was found after a long search (there could still be further comments elsewhere by other commentators). I agree with Maunus that ths commentary is very apt. I don't agree that cutting or summarising it is a good idea, since the formulation is rather precise. It is one of the only commentaries so far that compares the survey with similar surveys before and after, so its inclusion would not be WP:UNDUE at all. Perhaps it might be worth discussing why wikipedia has an article on the survey of Snyderman and Rothman (1984) but not on those of Friedrichs (1973) or Sanderson & Ellis (1992). Mathsci (talk) 01:34, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

“The statements of Horovitz and Conrad concern a different issue to that discussed by Ellis, so I don't support any changes at the moment on that issue without a more extensive discussion.”

The reason for Victor Chmara’s changes to the Horowitz and Conrad material has nothing to do with Ellis; it’s because your wording of this section involved original research. This has already been explained in depth, and if you don’t have anything to say in response to his explanation of this, saying that we need “a more extensive discussion” isn’t meaningful.

“I would think that job one here would be to review the criteria already established by Wikipedia policy for articles about books, and make clear whether or not this article meets those criteria.”

These are really two separate questions. If you think the topic of the article isn’t notable, then I suppose you could nominate it for deletion again (I say “again” because it survived a deletion attempt in October). But as long as it exists, our job is to make sure each viewpoint about this study is described in proportion to its prominence.

The “response and criticism” section actually does not contain any quotes like this; each author’s opinion is just summarized in a few sentences. In order for Ellis’s view to be presented differently from that of every other author who’s commented on the study, his view would need to be significantly more important than that of any other author. Is there anything about Ellis’s view that makes it inherently more important than that of Silverman, Lennon or Sternberg? --Captain Occam (talk) 01:54, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

There are no rules for quotes vs paraphrases. The claim of WP:OR seems to be incorrect, since the sentence about Rothman satisfies WP:V (see below). It could be tweaked if necessary. Mathsci (talk) 02:56, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

Horovitz article

Here is the paragraph from the 11 page article of Horowitz that I used:[8]

In such a context, the media drives the data as much as the data drives the media. Attention to racial elements in intelligence is hardly unprecedented. In the 1960s there was the work of the late William Shockley, in the seventies that of Arthur Jensen, and in the 1980sthat of a group of people much closer to media studies, such as Stanley Rothman. These individuals sought media attention as a mechanism for making their policy views known. The fact is that for a non-discussible subject, the issue of race and genetics has been rather widely examined. The sequence has typically been to break out of the narrow professional journal literature first in a major book or, sometimes articles in general interest magazines. The next step is the widespread publication of reviews and commentary in newsprint form, followed in quick order by cover stories in news weeklies, radio and television talk shows, and the conversion of the whole communication chain into an object of news unto itself. Behind the information curtain is generous support from funding agencies with special interests in publicizing issues of racial imbalance and inheritance. Indeed, a review of major figures in psychology supported by the Pioneer Fund, ranging from Jensen to Rushton, indicates a more than casual interest in those who work the area of racial genetics. Such foundations measure success as much by media coverage as by scientific results.

I can't quite see what I'm supposed to have misrepresented (elsewhere in the article Horowitz explains his role as editor). Mathsci (talk) 02:53, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

That's a good research example, Mathsci. Thank you. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 02:56, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

The problem with this, as Victor Chmara already pointed out, is that it doesn’t talk about this study. It’s not even clear whether the author of the quoted paragraph had this study in mind when he wrote it, or some of Rothman’s other writings. For us to assume that Horowitz was specifically referring to this study when he wrote that is an example of original research. And if we don’t assume that he was referring to this study, and assume that was just writing about Rothman in general (which is all that he states), then for us to include it in the article about this study is an example of synthesis. Either way, it doesn’t belong in the article. --Captain Occam (talk) 03:16, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

It talks about the motivations of the author for publication in this particular area. Of course that is relevant. And what was written has not been misrepresented or synthesized as you and Victor have claimed. Mathsci (talk) 03:18, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

The Horowitz article doesn’t even mention Mark Snyderman and Stanley Rothman in the same sentence. The article is mostly about Rushton, with a few brief references to other authors. And this is coming from the same person who claimed it was synthesis to cite the Templer letter which specifically discussed this study, because of the fact that the letter was mostly in response to Sternberg? Do you not see what a glaring double standard you’re using, depending on what does and doesn’t support your personal point of view?

As I said previously, I don’t expect you to ever admit you’re wrong here. But if all or most of the other editors involved in this article disagree with you, you’ll still need to let us restore Victor Chmara’s wording. --Captain Occam (talk) 03:34, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

What is it in the text that disagrees with the source? Only Rothman is mentioned. Could you please confine your discussion to the secondary sources? Thanks, Mathsci (talk) 04:00, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

What disagrees with the source is stating that Horowitz was commenting on “the motivation for writing the article and the book”. He was commenting on Rothman’s motivation for writing about this topic in general, but assuming that he was commenting on this book specifically is original research. Horowitz could have just as easily been referring a completely unrelated unrelated piece of writing from Rothman about this topic. And as I said above, if he wasn’t commenting on this book specifically (which he wasn’t), it’s synthesis for the article to include a general comment about one of the book’s authors from an article that’s mostly about Rushton. As the person who complained about synthesis in the discussion about Templer’s letter (which did specifically discuss the study), you should be aware of this. --Captain Occam (talk) 04:27, 14 August 2010 (UTC)