Talk:Dysgenics/Archive 1

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

→

Archive 5

Blurb

I added a blurb on the way the word seems to be used in modern biology. Though "dysgenics" does seem to still refer to genetic deterioration.

I'm also looking for how dysgenics fit in with modern population genetics. - unsigned on 07:01, 2 August 2005 by User:Flammifer

References

There are several papers on this subject that I looked at a while back. Fisher, Medawar and A. W. F. Edwards spring to mind, but I may be wrong... I'll check when I have time. - Samsara 14:25, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Talk about IQ as nurture wrong for the article

Talk of IQ as a result of schooling has nothing to do with dysgenics. Though the degree to which that is a factor is debatable that debate is not suited to the article nor are assumptions outside the posited subject of the article. I believe there is too much talk about the human condition as a factor of nurture on an individual level; dysgenics would be a result of nurture effecting the outcome of our nature inherently, not the direct influence of nurture as an averse effect of an individual nature, but as an intrinsic quality passing on to each generation. I think there should be less talk about IQ in this article altogether and more in the lines of potential maladies along topics of Genetic drift & Population bottleneck in relation to the overall human genome. Nagelfar 00:20, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree. The author makes several assumptions about IQ that are far from unequivocal, including the extent to which IQ tests measure it, and its inheritability. Moreover, the term suggests a weakening of biological fitness: enhanced intelligence is no match for a virus, bacteria or other environmental danger for which modern medicine does not allow natural selection to weed out the less fit. It seems that in fact those in "less modern" societies would be less vulnerable to dysgenics since they are more exposed to natural stresses. The article needs the contribution of an expert with greater control over the terms, phenomena and mechanisms. Kemet 13:22, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

The better IQ tests measure intelligence with 80% accuracy. Intelligence is for 80% heritable. I'd suggest going to the appropriate main articles before dealing with fringe articles like this one if you have valid sources that have different findings. You might find one or two 'experts' there as well.

Also, I'm not entirely sure what the two of you are talking about. Could you word your exact problems with the article in a clearer manner? --Zero g 13:45, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

This is an absurd statement. What's your independent assessment of intelligence? How do you know IQ tests measure it accurately? This whole page seems to be full of pseudo-scientific rubbish like the above. That's my problem with it. Graft 00:55, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

There's quite a bit in the IQ and race and intelligence articles this article borrows from. I'd suggest taking the ideological POV pushing to the rubbish of those articles. --Zero g 01:03, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

NPOV

The current version of this article appears to me to be biased towards the point of view that these trends (a) exist and (b) are caused by the mechanisms outlined in the article, both of which are views which are enormously controversial. This article needs substantial editing to conform to Wikipedia's NPOV policy. -- The Anome 13:26, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Please find studies demonstrating that the trends (a) do not exist or (b) are not caused by the mechanisms presented in the article, and, if you are able to do this, put them in. Given the current presence of evidence in favor of the trends and their mechanisms, and further given the absence of mitigating evidence, the article as it stands is not POV and should not be labeled as controversial. Harkenbane 00:38, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

It's been a week, and I'm reverting the NPOV edit. (If necessary, I can locate additional studies on the subject for inclusion in the article, but the ones I'm familiar with gave results similar to those already given in the article.) If anyone knows of studies which contradict the findings of a small but significant dysgenic trend with respect to IQ, please find them and add them to the article. Harkenbane 19:29, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

It is notable that while dysgenics confers a disadvantage in microevolution, relaxation of natural selection (the supposed underlying cause) e.g. following a mass extinction seems to be strongly correlated with macroevolution, and indeed may be one of only two possible prerequisites for the latter (the other is evolution of a feature, e.g. ability to breathe air, that opens up completely novel ecological niches). So all the brouhaha is shockingly unimportant outside the field of (human) population genetics. Keeping your gene pool tidy will help squat in surviving the million years following a major bolide impact while being a freak actually helps. It is very questionable whether dysgenics is anything but a condition which only can occur in humans, if the pont where it becomes a problem will be reached at all in a natural environment. All the "maladaptations" that were earlier presented as result of "bad breeding" like the dodo and whatnot have turned out to be devoid of scientific merit. Dysmorodrepanis 10:47, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

The dodo is a pretty good example of dysgenics. While currently a mass extinction event is unlikely to wipe out mankind it might be a possibility if things get much worse in the distant future. Near sightedness might evolve to be much worse. Ceasarian sections might become necesary in the majority of births. Dependency on medical healthcare might become the norm as well as needing dental care. Take civilization away and you'd have a blind, teethless, feeble minded, sickly population that can hardly give birth, following the dodo in its lead. --Zero g 14:01, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Just to add a voice... to say the article is POV as currently formulated is insane. The bulk of the article is about the academic and literary history of the term. It's embarassing to WP to have a non-compliance tag on this article. (I agree that it doesn't seem to be a *great* article yet, but that's no crime.) 140.247.163.157 08:39, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

POV tag removed

After some re-editing, this page appears objective if not controvercial, based on the assumpion of good faith in the research. However, the citations and references seem a bit vague and I believe that tag is still relevant.

It seems that this article would beneift by a well supported paragraph or two documenting the critisisms of dysgenics.

Kevin Murray 21:34, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Oddly enough there is no criticism that I know of, then again, media portrayal on the subject is non existent, so I asume nobody bothered to try to discredit something few people know anything about to being with. Possibly there could be a section about the media portrayal of the subject. --Zero g 22:17, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

There is no justification for the inclusion of the POV tag.

MoritzB 11:25, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Noncompliant

I added the noncompliant tag.

• Because of the association of this and similar ideas (The Bell Curve) with racism, extraordinary care must be given to securing the highest quality sources for any assertion that could be considered controversial. Since this is a scientific (or pseudoscientific) topic, I think that means that it should be based on peer-reviewed mainstream scientific journal articles. Please review WP:V and WP:RS.
• The first section "Dysgenic decline in intelligence" seems to suggest that educational achievement is correlated with intelligence; instead educational achievement is much more highly correlated with social and economic background.
• No citation is given for Vining's 1982 study. Was it discussed or criticized in the scientific literature subsequently?
• Dysgenics Genetic Deterioration in Modern Populations, Richard Lynn, Praeger Publishers, 1996, is not a reliable source, in my opinion. No article for Praeger Publishers exists on Wikipedia. The Praeger Publishers main page does not suggest high editorial standards to me. [1] Moreover, the title is not available on Amazon.com. [2] ISBN 0275949176
• The footnotes are in an odd format and are incomplete citations. Moreover, two of them are newpapers articles (not scientific journal articles) and the third is a blog.
• Schockley was a physicist and his ideas were discredited in the scientific literature, not merely "unfavorably portrayed in the press".

--Walter Siegmund (talk) 03:50, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

1. I'd love to see a peer-reviewed mainstream scientific source confirming that dysgenics is indeed associated with racism. There are also many scientific articles on Wikipedia that aren't based on (often non existent) peer-reviewed mainstream scientific journals.

2. I know little about Vinings study. That the next study took 20 years to take place should give a good indication in the general scientific interest in this topic. I think you'll find more research about the Orchard Swallowtail Butterfly.

3. It's indeed not a reliable source, in your opinion that is, which you are entitled to. It's a valid source however, and given there are only a handful of sources on the subject to begin with it's ridiculous to suggest we remove the little we have.

4. The beloved blog entry was one of the 'critical' sources I think.

5. You mean his ideas were "discredited" in the scientific literature I think ;)

All in all I think your argumentation is weak. I'm also not sure if it's your interest to actually improve this article, since you are not offering any supposedly better qualified sources as substitutes. --Zero g 09:12, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

We don't use biased sources or ones that fail WP:RS and WP:V simply because there are no sources that are relaible and are within our policy of neutral point of view. Regardless of the attempt to balance the article, blogs are definitely not reliable as sources. The article as it stands in unencyclopedic since it based primarily on unreliable sources.--MONGO 10:13, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Since you seem badly informed, the sources are in fact reliable despite Wsiegmund's claims to the contrary. The blog is not a source and listed under 'notes' which makes me wonder, did you actually bother to read the article before Wsiegmund summoned you? Also keep in mind that Wikipedia is not a democracy. --Zero g 11:44, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I did read the article and find it to be based on a lot of POV research, much of which is not to be trusted. It doesn't matter where the blog is, blogs are worthless for inclusion in article space.--MONGO 12:05, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Then remove the link to the blog, not like the article falls or stands with it. Do you have any proof that the research is.. POV? Lynn's research is used in various articles and regarded as a respectable scientist, it's quite the accusation you make there really.

If you desire a different article the proper route is to find sources to research that backs up your personal POV. --Zero g 12:29, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Your suggestion is not consistent with my reading of the Wikipedia Policy in this regard (WP:V). "The burden of evidence lies with the editor who adds or restores material. Any material that is challenged or likely to be challenged needs a reliable source, which should be cited in the article. If an article topic has no reliable, third-party sources, Wikipedia should not have an article on it." If Richard Lynn is a respectable scientist, then he published in peer-reviewed journals. Why aren't his papers that are relevant cited? The fact that major university libraries such as Columbia, Ohio State, University of Texas at Austin, University of Washington, and Dartmouth College do not appear to list Dysgenics Genetic Deterioration in Modern Populations in their catalogs, along with its unavailability on Amazon, suggests that many Wikipedia editors do not have access to the work and cannot verify the article content that is based on that source. The fact that Dysgenics is not a topic of significant scientific interest or research, which seems not to be disputed, is an important fact, I think. It should appear in the introduction to the article. --Walter Siegmund (talk) 14:21, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

From the Lynn article: Richard Lynn was educated at Cambridge University, and has published at least 11 books, several book chapters, and over 60 peer-reviewed journal articles spanning five decades. Two of his recent books are written on dysgenics and eugenics, and are prominent works in those areas.

That there's little interest for the topic seems to be the case. --Zero g 16:45, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Just because one fellow wrote a book about Dysgenics, doesn't mean it has any science to it. If there has been zero fellow peers that are trained in such matters to support his findings, then all he has is a hypothesis and nothing more. Looking at the article on Richard Lynn, it definitely appears his hypothesis on Dysgenics has some published critics as well. I would really like to see his DNA evidence that backs up his thoughts that the darker the skin of African Americans = lower IQ. No doubt, the slave trade brought Africans to North America from different areas of Africa, and from what I learned when working on my degree is that there are at least 120 different "groups" of sub-saharan Africans, some which had been genetically isolated from each other for many thousands of years, or, in excess of 100 generations even. What I'm getting at is since this person is the only one of any repute who has written a book on the matter, it needs to be made clear that this is not a science, but a hypothesis...if even that.--MONGO 06:22, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Dysgenics is a well defined scientific concept backed up by all the studies on evolution, mutation and heritability. The only real criticism comes from mainstream religions (are you a creationist by chance?) who tend to target the evolution theory, and reductionists who state that negative and positive traits do not exist.

Dysgenics as a concept also needs no book to define it, given it's described in most dictionaries. What's left in that case are studies measuring dysgenic decline, which are listed in this article. Whether that be intelligence or the ever increasing number of near sighted people. It's odd that few people bother to research this area, but I don't think that discredits those who do. --Zero g 08:29, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

I have been searching around for anything substantive that supports Lynn's findings and I see none, therefore, there is no science here, only his hypothesis. When other researchers who have knowledge in this field also chime in either in agreement or disagreement, and a resultant finding of fact occurs, then there might be credence to his work or a dismissal of it. Until then, it's important that we accurately label the information here as being what it is, and that is merely a hypothesis. No, I'm not a creationist.--MONGO 09:06, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

What exactly do you find problematic? That allele frequencies change, that mutations occur, or that traits can be classified as positive / negative? Given that the concept of dysgenics borrows most or all of its scientific foundation from evolutionary theories your suggested changes are controversial because it implies that humans somehow don't abide to evolutionary changes?

You also seem to misunderstand the nature of the research. Statistical research is not a hypothesis, it's an observation. Are you implying Lynn pulled the results of the study out of thin air? And if the findings are so controversial why aren't there any studies disproving the findings by showing results that proof differently? All in all the findings of these studies are worth mentioning, but I guess a Criticism section could be added noting that due to the lack of broad scientific research in this area the results might not be representative, and other objections you may find.

While this would possibly be OR if you can't find valid sources making these claims I won't object if it's done fairly, for the sake of NPOV. --Zero g 10:16, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

A discussion related to this one occurred recently at Talk:Eugenics. [3] --Walter Siegmund (talk) 17:02, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

That discussion is even worse than this one, when it comes to consensus. Any suggestions what to do with the tags?

The topic being unencyclopedic doesn't stand and I'm going to remove it soon.

The request for an expert doesn't stand cause we've established that there's a neglectable amount of research, which means there are even fewer experts.

I think we've also established that the few main sources used are valid.

I'd say I remove the link to the blog, remove the tags, and perhaps open up a new topic on how to actually improve the article if there's any interest. --Zero g 01:13, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

None of the sources listed under "Notes" mention "dysgenics", or even posit a dysgenic theory. Under "References", Shockley is not a credible source. Do Teasdale and Owen mention "dygenics" by name? Other than Lynn, I don't see much else that we can use as a reliable expert. If there are no verifiable, reliable sources then we should cut this article down to what we can verify. -Will Beback 01:21, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

1. http://www.amazon.com/Shockley-Eugenics-Race-Application-Problems/dp/1878465031 looks like a valid source to me, besides that the book isn't by Shockley himself, besides, if he did write books on the subject it'd likely be credible.

2. The 3 links in the notes section can be removed if there's no objection.

3. According to google Teasdale and Owen are linked to dysgenics, didn't look into the actual pages (yet) though.

4. So far there's nothing to cut back. --Zero g 01:42, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Dysgenics Genetic Deterioration in Modern Populations by Richard Lynn does not satisfy WP:V, to wit, "Verifiable" in this context means that any reader should be able to check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source." Since this book is not available from most libraries, even from major university libraries, it fails this criterion. I think Wikipedia policy requires that content based on this source be removed, unless an alternative source that is available to readers can be found. Walter Siegmund (talk) 03:46, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Here is the abstract of the Teasdale & Owen paper: [4] It apparently concludes that a lowering of scores in intelligence tests is due to less education, not dygenics. That was properly summarized here"[5]. While the citation may be relevant to the Flynn Effect, I don't see its relevance here. The theory that the Flynn Effect masks dysgenics needs a source. As for the Shockly book, he's listed as the co-author on Amazon [6]. So far as I am aware, he had no credentials in the field of intelligence. Does anyone here even have a copy? -Will Beback 05:37, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Merge tagged

Since Richard Lynn is about the only person who has written about this subject, and it is not a recognized as a science, in keeping with the undue weight clause of WP:NPOV, I see no reason that the gist of this can't be covered in the article about the major author on the subject.--MONGO 06:02, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Given that the term has been used since the early 20th century this is a very bad idea, besides, Lynn isn't the only one who wrote on the subject. --Zero g 17:28, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Also, given the problems recently encountered at J. Philippe Rushton, I'd say this is a very bad idea indeed. To some, what Lynn does *is* recognized science, and this where all the trouble will start.--Ramdrake 17:30, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

I know that this is not science. The entire dysgenics argument is preposterous due to the unreliability of all data. It's junk science and just because someone may have done good work in one area of research, doesn't mean that this exempts them from being found negligent in this one. The only place this article deserves to be is in the Richard Lynn article, since he is the only one who is accredited as doing any recent examination on the issue. I'll take care of the merge here shortly.--MONGO 21:36, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Please heed the consensus here and at Richard Lynn which goes against the merge. In all likelihood, if you go ahead with the merge, it will be reverted. "Because it's a bad article" is not a reason to compound a biography with the problems in this article.--Ramdrake 22:36, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

If you feel this article is that bad, just nominate it for deletion.--Ramdrake 22:45, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Some Links

I'll be copying some links here that might be of interest. --Zero g 01:00, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

• http://www.crispian.demon.co.uk/LynnPINC.htm - Review of Richard LYNN, 1996, Dysgenics: Genetic Deterioration in Modern Populations.

Relevance?

I removed this line:

• During World War II the United States had difficulty training low-IQ military recruits; this led Congress to ban enlistment by those from the lowest 10 percent (an IQ below 80) of the population. [7]

Because it doesn't not have anything to do with dysgenics. -Will Beback 21:02, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

It's relevant to historic claims that world wars are dysgenic. --Zero g 16:11, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Says who? It isn't in Gottfredson. -Will Beback 18:03, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

David Starr Jordan wrote about it, it adds to the hypothesis. Your perseverance to remove it does as well I guess. --Zero g 19:02, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Jordan wrote that World War II was a dysgenic force? Then why are we using Gottfredson as the source? If Jordan didn't write about it then we're engaged in original research. I'm not sure what you meant by your last remark. Please explain. -Will Beback 20:26, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

My mistake, I thought it was you who deleted that section at first because it was unsourced. Gottfredson didn't mention it, however, on the effect of world wars it was noted that the fit fought and died at the front while the disabled stayed at home. So that's where the quote fits as an example of the disabled / challenged staying at home. If that particular instance is actually dysgenic or not isn't a concern until someone actually claims it is.

I'm curious though, given you don't find the article relevant as a whole, are some parts more relevant than others? --Zero g 21:08, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't know which article you're talking about. If Gottfredson is not the source for the association of dysgenics with WWII then we need to find a source that does. -Will Beback 22:24, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

• During World War II the United States had difficulty training low-IQ military recruits, leading Congress to ban enlistment by those from the lowest 10 percent (an IQ below 80) of the population. [8] This extended Jordan's believes to those of low intelligence being excluded from warfare.

According to whom does this extend Jordan's beliefs? This fact seems to be put in to try to prove the subject of this article, not to report what reliable sources have said about it. As evidence it is inconclusive, even given the theory of dysgenics, as we don't know what proportion of men survived and reproduced from the various intelligence ranges, or whether they were otherwise fit to be good fathers. In any case, it's original research in this context and dos not belong in this article. -Will Beback 01:05, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

No conclusions are drawn, this addition is of the same nature as the recent addition hinting at Shockley being a racist. Besides, the sourced statement falls within the scope of the article.

I once again strongly suggest finding sources that indicate that 1) a study found no dysgenic trends. 2) That the influence of dysgenic trends is neglectable and hence nothing to worry about. 3) Researchs that indicates that traits like health and intelligence aren't heritable. 4) Historical dysgenic research that has been proven to be biased. 5) Sources proving modern research is biased. 6) Whatever else you can think of that falls within the scope of the article.

The only problem with the text is that you don't like what it says. If you tried, instead of deleting stuff you don't like, to actually do some research and look into expanding the article (even if it only supports your particular pov) you might actually make a useful contribution. --Zero g 01:26, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Dysgnenics is nonsense

The term is supported only by persons with a completely erroneous misunderstanding of IQ testing as a means to establish intelligence and by racist misunderstadings about what constitites a race. "Lynn's distortions and misrepresentations of the data constitute a truly venomous racism, combined with scandalous disregard for scientific objectivity. Lynn is widely known among academics to be an associate editor of the racist journal "Mankind Quarterly" and a major recipient of financial support from the nativist, eugenically oriented Pioneer Fund." SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN February 1995 Volume 272[9]--MONGO 21:55, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Using your own reasoning this cannot be included because there is no mention of dysgenics.

The same goes for the statement that "It is not a topic of significant scientific research" which lacks a source as well. --Zero g 10:23, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

That "it is not a topic of significant scientific research" is amply demonstrated by the lack of sources from the scientific peer-reviewed literature. If they exist, please add them to the article. As written, the main source for the article is criticized in the harshest possible terms in the Scientific American quotation. Do you think that a Wikipedia article should be based on such a source? Walter Siegmund (talk) 16:28, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

A book review by Chris Brand has been added as a reference.[10] Brand is notable for being fired by Edinburgh University in 1997 for conduct that had allegedly "brought the university into disrepute." According to the web link, a personal web site not meeting the minimal standards of WP:V, the book review was first published in the Internet magazine, PINC (Politically Incorrect).[11] The editorial policy of PINC is, in part, "Material that is published here is published because the editors consider it interesting and worthy of debate, not because they believe it to be "correct" or "virtuous".[12] --Walter Siegmund (talk) 19:07, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Anyone who has doubts about this being an area that deserves coverage should see the undue weight clause of our neutral point of view policy...clearly, "Dysgenics" is not a science since it is not embraced except from some fringe elements and, well, bigots, to be frank. I'll quote the undue weight clause that is appropriate in this situation: "If a viewpoint is held by an extremely small (or vastly limited) minority, it does not belong in Wikipedia (except perhaps in some ancillary article) regardless of whether it is true or not; and regardless of whether you can prove it or not."--MONGO 19:36, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

While being highly controversial, I believe "dysgenics" does exist at least as a concept entertained in some scientiic circles, as Google Scholar finds at least 150 references to it: [13]. After all, the book Race, Evolution and Behavior has itw own WP article, while at the same time beign extremely controversial and decried. I don't think we can censor a word out of Wikipedia just because we don't like its connotations. Phrenology is definitely not a science, but it has its own article, and some other articles actually link to it. So, what is the problem?--Ramdrake 21:33, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

The problem is with the misuse of the term in related articles. It never appeares in the scientific literature when discussing the topic of human extinction or regressive genetic situations aside from when folks like Richard Lynn and Chris Brand try to use it as their basis of IQ=race mythology. They know nothing of genetics and the differences between whites and blacks "involves a change of just one letter of DNA code out of the 3.1 billion letters in the human genome -- the complete instructions for making a human being" [14]--MONGO 19:56, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

This was added to the intro: The term has not been accepted by biologists as a descriptive term to describe a regressive genetic tendency. If one just follows this link or that one, one will see that this statement is patently false. Even though dysgenicity is strictly theoretical in humans, it is a valid concept, even thouhg it also has been misused by racists. So, I'll be removing the sentence.--Ramdrake 20:02, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Then stop re-adding links back to this article in those articles that deal with human evolution...it is not germane to those articles. The persons currently trying to apply this term to a race=IQ basis only show their lack of understanding...as I said, the entire genetic difference in skin pigmentation and probably most other differences that are externalized, and related biological changes in the DNA from whites and blacks is only 1 DNA letter out of 3.1 billion, as linked above. Lynn and Brand must have zero knowledge of economic/availablity/quality level issues of educational opportunities among different regions/demographics in the U.S. and elsewhere. Besides, turning this article into one which in anyway embraces Lynn's and others stereotyping of traditional racist ideology is not the direction this article should be going..that is if I don't nominate it for deletion for it's inability to meet the undue weight clause of NPOV.--MONGO 20:37, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

The only external link I re-added treated dysgenics as a purely hypothetical process in humans, which is correct. Apart from that, I just reinstated internal links to the dysgenics article so that the word could be understood. This is much better than eradicating the word because its use in human genetics is too often associated with racism. If you want something to do to really help the anti-racist viewpoint, may I ask you take a look at the Race and intelligence suite of articles? We could really use some help on NPOV there.--Ramdrake 21:05, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

No thanks...all we need to do is keep this term out of the human evolution articles...it is not one with any basis in fact and aside from biased research, it does not have anything to do with human evolution.--MONGO 21:09, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Do you have any proof that the research is biased, or is this some kind of personal conspiracy theory of yours? --Zero g 00:14, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Biased research is usually done by biased researchers and as I continue to work on this article, maybe you'll learn something about the facts of the case here.--MONGO 04:57, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

The Theory of Eugenics of which this appears to be a subset was disproved a long time ago. it is a great example of psuedo science and it is a great example of what happens when people fall for psuedo science. But the belief that the gene pool is weakening is simply unsupported. If anything, recent (i.e. since jet travel was invented) racial mixing is strenghtening the gene pool by recombining isolated genes and increasing variation. Biologists mix breeds to enhance the hardiness of endangered species such as the Mexican Gray Wolf to enhance it's chance of survival. --Tbeatty 06:40, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

neither hybrid vigor nor outbreeding depression can be predicted a priori. --Rikurzhen 06:57, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes, that is true. I believe the MGW case is more of a suppression of inbreeding which is more predictable. You certainly couldn't extrapolate the effects of a very small gene pool like the MGW to the large pool of human beings. But it's also why the dysgenic theory is so preposterous. I am not a biologist but I have seen one on TV.  :) Tbeatty 07:08, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

check chapter 12 of Narrow Roads in Gene Land for W.D. Hamilton's theories about the dysgenic effects of modern medicine. --Rikurzhen 06:57, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Dysgenics is nonsense only if natural selection is nonsense. Any factor which favors survival until the age of reproduction applies evolutionary pressure. This article looks like a good example of vigorous debate and I hope the editors with knowledge of the subject and varying viewpoints continue to improve it with citations to reliable sources and with scrutiny of bias or inadequacy in sources. I don't see good coverage of population statistics: in a tests and measurements course the point was made that most very high IQ offspring (say the top 2%) do not come from the very high IQ parents (again say the top 2%), who are too few in number to equal the high IQ offspring of the people in the lower 98%. Yes, the high IQ parents have children of higher than average IQ, but of lower IQ (on average) than the parents. Regression toward the mean. Edison 22:19, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

It would be a questionable addition for this article because it's not a fact that supports either side of the argument. The main issue is the low number of studies in this field, and the even lower number that use the term dysgenic. Another issue is that there don't seem to be any studies that disprove dysgenic theories, resulting in editors finding other ways to express their pov. --Zero g 22:58, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Actually, it might be a worthwhile addition, if we don't set out with the goal to prove that dysgenics exists in this article (which I think wouldn't be NPOV). If we set out to describe it (in humans) as a matter of controversy, we just have to describe the controversy, not try to prove one side or another right. Just my twopence'.--Ramdrake 23:19, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

I also think you need to clarify the distinction between Eugenics/ devolution and Dysgenics. Because I feel that the dysgenics is getting roped into the eugenics/ devo camp. This article fails to treat dysgenics as a separate topic. I think you could do a lot to help remove the controversial side of this article if you remove the portions dealing with "criteria for selection," or rather the judgement of what are ideal traits in the human population. These questions definately fall within the Eugenics topic, and create the ambiguities in the article. The article starts well with the "Malthusian Catastrophe," section; however this shouldn't strictly be thought of as a question of "carrying capacity."

I think that what Dygenics is all about is the, ethical (non-racist, non genetics based) limitation of our population to ensure our economic and environmental well being in a world of finite resources. If we used this as a starting point we could do alot to eliminate the controversy surrounding eugenics, and create a more credible/ legitamate theory. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 76.9.32.109 (talk) 04:10, 30 April 2007 (UTC).

This theory is not "nonsense" just because it has not been widley recognized or acknowledged by scientists. That simply makes it unknown and\or obscure. It is foolish to call the theory nonsense anyway, considering it can easily be observed anywhere in america today...Busboy 01:25, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Historical usage?

I believe this was a very common belief in the early part of the century. Much like Global Warming is a common belief now. In fact, Michael Crichton cites the erroneous belief in his book State of Fear basically to show that popular belief science like Global Warming is often devoid of sound scientific reasoning and repeats the hysteria of the time. It is amazing the people who believed it. I have never heard this term but it sounds like proponents of Eugenics would need to believe in 'dysgenics'. Is this part of the Theory of Eugenics/ See this. The theory is psuedo-science at best.--Tbeatty 06:26, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

I think you have me confused...are you comparing the Dysgenics arguments of the 1930's to the current one today about global warming? I mean, that global warming is some kind of fallacy as well?--MONGO 07:53, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Yup, global warming is a total pseudo-science, we ought to remove the term from every scientific Wikipedia page sometime. Once the Northpole has melted we could always consider some minor changes to our pov.

Dysgenics was never disproven though, instead there was some massive hysteria following WWII that made these concepts highly controversial and led to the global adoption of humanistic thought, from which viewpoint dysgenics is irrelevant, though the easily misguided masses must at all cost be protected from these evil believes. --Zero g 10:18, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

That's a fallacy...Global warming has been embraced as fact by the vast majority of the world's experts on climate change and related research, whereby dysgenics has never had a vast following and outside the misuse of this term to ascribe it to some race=IQ mythology, it is not used as a descriptive in the teachings of human evolution...all the persons doing so now have contributed to what are known racist journals and have been involved in speculative research on the issue.--MONGO 11:12, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Eugenics had a very large following. It is indeed today the venue of racists. But in the 20s and 30s when racism was more common place, eugenics was thought of as a savior to mankind. Read this to see the people who bought into this idea. Global cooling and the next ice age was as recent as 30 years ago. Only time will tell if the predictions about global warming are real regardless of who has embraced it. My comparison wasn't that Global Warming is false, just that contemporary science intermixed with social and political pressure is a bad deal. One of the scary things about the Nazi eugenics program was that they found no overt political pressure in the science and policies of eugenics: meaning that the vast majority of the scientists involved believed in what they were doing from very broad social and political ideas. This is the ultimate definition of psuedo science. My comparison to Global Warming is the similiar types of pressure are being applied. Crichton makes this argument (comparing the political climate of eugenics pre-WWII with the political climate surrounding global warming) in his book and the similiarities are strking. Tbeatty 05:01, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

That's what I figured, actually. Crichton's anaology is a bit off still though. In the case of dysgenics, there never was anything based on science to truly use it as a word to describe the alterations at a genetic level, especially in human beings. But we have ice core samples and other data that extnd back hundreds of thousands of years, and by all evidence, the CO² levels today are as high as they were during the Jurrassic period. This carbon dioxide level has been increasing at a still not yet fully understood level due to fossil fuel use. IT may be anywhere from 1 to 30 percent. No doubt, humans are not the only reason the earth has been warming now for over 150 years, however, there are few if any scientists that can argue with the observable data, whereby, there was only bigotry to base dysgenics on. I don't disagree with Crichton completely, but think he could have come up with a better analogy than a comparison between global warming and dysgenics.--MONGO 05:12, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Not to devolve (dysgenic?) this into a GW debate, but Crichton's response would be that CO2 is 0.038% or 380 parts per million of the atmospheric gases and no one knows how variations in a tiny component would affect it. The big unknown for GW is water vapor. Water vapor makes up to 1% to 4% of the atmosphere (or 100 times more water than CO2 after the industrial revolution) As the atmosphere warms, it can hold more water increasing greenhouse effect, but as the water content increases so does cloud cover. Cloud cover reflects energy back into space and the Crichton's question (which is unanswered but very well sourced) is what the result of these competing events are. --Tbeatty 05:54, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

This article should be rolled into Eugenics and written as a controversy. It is not a valid scientific theory and shouldn't be treated as such. --Tbeatty 05:01, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Proof that the term "dysgenic" is used

The following discussion was copied from Talk:Human_extinction--Walter Siegmund (talk) 18:01, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

User Mongo requested that I bring proof that the term "dysgenic" is used. Here it is, with the Google Scholar hits to prove it: 2,590 hits for "dysgenic" and 152 hits for "dysgenics". There you go.--Ramdrake 19:49, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

It's being misused...it is not used as terminology by evolutionary biologists as an extinction of humans rationale...only as one involving other other biological entities. In Human evolution, this term is not widely used at all.--MONGO 20:23, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

It's only misused in the sense that in humans it is still purely hypothetical and not proven. But the idea itself has been entertained, unfortunately often by racists, but also fairly often by non-racists. The difference is that non-racists usually term it as something purely hypothetical in humans whereas racists (or racialists) usually take it as a given that it exists in humans. I think so far we can agree on this much. My point is that this isn't grounds to remove it from every single article of WP which mentions it. It *is* worhtwhile to point out every time that it is a purely hypothetical concept wherever humans are concerned, though.--Ramdrake 20:30, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Not purely hypothetical because there have been studies that showed correlations. I'm not sure where you get the information from that it are mainly racists who entertain the idea. What I've observed is that bio-egalitarians heavily oppose the concept, and I assume those are quite rare in the racist get-to-gethers on the internet. Also, a lot of studies exploring this area of research do not use the term dysgenics. I fear that any inclusion of research that falls in the dysgenics category but doesn't explicitly use the word will become the subject of pov warring once included. --Zero g 23:50, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

To my understanding, some of the biggest users of the words were researchers like Lynn, Shockley, Burt and possibly Rushton. All of these names are associated with views that are considered racists by many people. I'm not aware that there exists proof positive of a dysgenic effect in humans so far. If you know of one, I'd be interested to take a look at it.--Ramdrake 23:53, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Intelligent women have lower fertility rates throughout the western world. As far as I know this is a commonly accepted fact among researchers. Suggestions for why this is happening have been that intelligent women are more effective at using birth control, delay motherhood because they want to finish their education first, and place the importance of a carreer above starting a family. Combine this with the scientific consensus that intelligence is partially genetic and you have a dysgenic trend.

I think what highlights Lynn and Co is that they are bold enough to use the term dysgenics, make a value judgement about the importance of intelligence, and stand out in English literature opposed to French, Dutch, German, Italian, etc, researchers drawing the same conclusion in regard to the correlation between IQ and fertility. --Zero g 00:56, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Intelligent women have lower fertility rates - have you seen the latest research into what "intelligence" means and the issues around traditional quantification techniques? It's a whole field unto itself, that intelligence could even be "measured" in an objective way is controversial. For example I saw one test where they told a group of black men they were to play a game of miniature golf to "measure their intelligence" - they scored (golf game score) poorly against a control group. Then they did the same test with another group of black men except they told them they were going to "measure their athletic ability" - all other things being equal, they scored high. There are social stigma's and stereotypes that affect peoples ability to take a test. That is just one example there are many others. -- Stbalbach 15:54, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Mainstream expert opinion disagrees, given the overwhelming amount of correlations between IQ scores and intellectual and economic achievements. What's interesting however is that this study you mention seems to be carried out on adults instead of school kids. It's known that researchers desiring the right kind of results have a preference for children. --Zero g 16:19, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Actually the most famous study of this type was first done with school children in the 1950's in which the kids with brown eyes were told they are poor students and blue eyed students are good students, from which the kids then believed and performed accordingly (interestingly the next day the tables were reversed and the kids also reversed on test scores). BTW how can you correlate intelligence with income if you can't even measure intelligence objectively. One common belief is that rich people are smart so stereotype kids who are born into wealthy family as being "smarter" than average ("brighter".. etc..) they will behave accordingly, just as the blue eyed children did. -- Stbalbach 17:07, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Too many tags!

I removed the "unencyclopedic" tag since two tags are ugly enough, and three make it very unattractive, especialy considering the table of contents being there. The "not compliant with Wikipedia's policies" seems to cover that. If nothing else, maybe the "noncompliant" box should be substituted and have unencyclopedic included, so as to make it more readable. If not, at least the table of contents should go for the time being. Miltopia 06:55, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

prettyness isn't the objective of the tags. Editors have expressed valid complaints and they are being discussed and will be removed when consensus is reached. Tags create lists that are montitored by a number of editors. By removing the unencyclopedic tag, these particular patrollers have no insight into the concerns. More tags should be used, not less. At the bottom of the article you will see the categories implicit in the tag use. By removing the tag, you take the article out of the category. Tbeatty 07:02, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

True, prettiness isn't the objective, but the objective of an encyclopedia is to be read, right? And they make it pretty difficult. Miltopia 07:04, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

I'd just like to opine here that the two tags is more than enough. If tracking lists are the issue, there is no reason tags can't be here in the talk pages, vice the main article. I usually add them using {{tlx}} right in the subsection header line, so the TOC has a nav link to follow to the discussion. That organizes the pertinent discussion on the matters under the auspecies of that tag to that and some sub-headings, one of which would be an annotation that the tag has now been cleared.

   None of these make us look good to the customer-readers— more like a bunch of clowns. Best regards // FrankB 00:41, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Article sources

I think it's about time to remove the unencyclopedic and uncompliant tags. I think it's been established that 1. The subject of the article is encyclopedic 2. The used sources are compliant. --Zero g 09:38, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Will Beback has objected to Shockley and Teasdale and Owen. I've objected to Brand. I'd like to see the external links and the references that are relevant and verifiable recast as footnotes and the rest removed. I don't think any of the references qualify as general references for the article. They should be footnotes. "External links should be used sparingly and kept to a minimum." I will work on this as I have time. --Walter Siegmund (talk) 18:38, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

The article on Chris Brand indicates he's controversial, but there are no indications that he's inadequate in the field. I don't think Wikipedia should exclude people who are considered racists, pedophiles, homosexuals, feminists, pot smokers, no matter how controversial this might be in some nations.

Teasdale and Owen are reputable as far as I can see. I thought the dispute was whether the mention of the Flynn effect was OR, which isn't the case. As long as it's still mentioned that some research shows that the Flynn effect has come to an end, which in turn is dealt with in the subsequent article, I don't particularly care.

The 4 external links could be taken care off by creating a stub for Lynn's book on dysgenics.

I'd also like to see the references that aren't used in the article stay where they are, since they could be used for future improvements, and due to past criticism that there aren't enough references to validate the existence of the article. --Zero g 19:56, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

The Brand reference is a URL to a personal web site. "Self-published material may be acceptable when produced by a well-known, professional researcher in a relevant field or a well-known professional journalist. These may be acceptable so long as their work has been previously published by reliable third-party publications. However, exercise caution: if the information in question is really worth reporting, someone else is likely to have done so." "In general, sources of dubious reliability are sources with a poor reputation for fact-checking or with no fact-checking facilities or editorial oversight." Please see WP:V. According to the web link,[15] a personal web site not meeting the standards of WP:V, the book review was first published in the Internet magazine, PINC (Politically Incorrect).[16] It may be considered a reliable source if it can be established that it has a good reputation for fact-checking and editorial oversight.[17] I am dubious. More to the point, the article is not about the book that Brand reviews.

I don't think Dysgenics: Genetic Deterioration in Modern Populations is notable. Praeger is not on the partial list of academic publishers (Category:University book publishers). Marian Van Court is a collaborator of Lynn's and not an independent reviewer. The Brand review is not verifiable. Dysgenics is out of print and unavailable from major libraries (see above).

Will Beback points out that Teasdale and Owen is not relevant to the article topic since it does not mention dysgenics and Shockley is not a credible source. I mostly agree with both points. However, it is my opinion that Shockley may be used as a source of content related to the controversy over dysgenics as applied to human populations. --Walter Siegmund (talk) 06:40, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

1. It's notable in the dysgenics field.

2. I see no evidence that actually discredits Brand and Van Court. I also don't see the relevance of removing these sources, especially since the book hasn't been reprinted yet. I'll however try going through all 4 reviews at once sometime and see if some can be removed without damaging the available knowledge about the content of the book, which is my main concern.

3. Teasdale and Owen falls within the scope of the article. However, a general statement saying that researchers have indicated that the Flynn effect may have come to a halt is acceptable if the source is removed. --Zero g 12:19, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Move article to a new section within the article Eugenics?

I think this would be a great idea...any takers?--MONGO 17:54, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Bad idea, several articles link to dysgenics. Another issue is that dysgenics and eugenics aren't the same thing and there are sufficient sources to warrant its own article. --Zero g 19:47, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Support; I think it's probably a good idea. I notice that Neel in the Human Heredity article defines dysgenics as the opposite of eugenics. [18] Neel defines the third possibility, "isogenics", as changes that leave "the quality of that gene pool unchanged". Isogenics does not have its own article, so I'm not sure why dysgenics should. More people edit Eugenics than Dysgenics; the quality of article content on Wikipedia improves with the number of editors. On the other hand, Eugenics is 68 kB, longer than recommended by WP:SIZE, and incorporating Dysgenics and Isogenics would make it longer. But, it might make sense to create a new article "History of eugenics" before too long. That would move some of the less controversial content out of the main article and shorten it. That has already been done for Evolution.--Walter Siegmund (talk) 01:01, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Isogenics has only 12K google hits of which most are related to some weight loss program. Also using your reasoning, your recent attempts to strip Wikipedia bare from the mention of dysgenics would in theory have resulted in less editors finding this article, which subsequently would have damaged the future quality of this article.

Also compared with the countless articles on Wikipedia with a much lesser significance I don't quite understand your reasoning.

Finally, why do you consider splitting up the eugenics article, yet find it logical to merge in the case of dysgenics? That doesn't make sense at all. --Zero g 01:19, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

If we were to merge this article into Eugenics, then we could make it a redirect page, so anyone who might search dysgenics would still see all the same info for the most part, but in the Eugenics article instead.--MONGO 10:47, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Support. I tend to be rather sympathetic to the idea of merge-and-redirect of this article into eugenics; clearly, the term "dysgenics" has the limited use it does almost exclusively among eugenicists, and in direct reference to the better known term. LotLE×talk 18:16, 23 November 2006 (UTC) (aside from the apparent effort to be inflamatory with a strange analogy about white people/racism, I haven't seen any arguments against merger)

You ought to provide a source when making statements of that order. In my opinion statements like that are as biased as saying that only white people can be racist. Also, the argument for a merger should be discussed on the eugenics talk page instead, besides that many of my arguments against a merger remained unanswered. --Zero g 19:10, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

That is a good suggestion. I've added the appropriate tags to the articles and have placed a copy of the discussion above at Talk:Eugenics#Move_Dysgenics_to_a_new_section_within_the_article_Eugenics.3F --Walter Siegmund (talk) 21:09, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Copied following comments to Talk:Eugenics#Merge_Dysgenics_into_Eugenics. Walter Siegmund (talk) 17:26, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Support, dysgenics is eugenics under an alternative name. No reason to have two separate articles. Tim Vickers 21:41, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Oppose: the eugenics article is already too long.Rsheridan6 02:04, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Also oppose - they're not the same thing and the eugenics article, which I read some months ago, is definitely too long to sustain such a merge. Richard001 05:39, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Oppose. Agreed. The Eugenics article is too long.MoritzB 15:31, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Oppose. Eugenics is a (social) philosophy. In biology/genetics, Dysgenics is a... let`s call it "an action and its result". They belong to two compltetely different fields. The fact that Eugenics operates with terms like "dysgenics" is irrelevant. Compare Thermodynamics and Entropy or Emergentism and emergence, etc. Raborg 21:27, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Please add new comments at Talk:Eugenics#Merge_Dysgenics_into_Eugenics. Walter Siegmund (talk) 17:26, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

The UNICEF-Report: Child Poverty in Rich Countries 2005 and dysgenics

According to this report [19] , the proportion of children living in poverty has risen in an majority of the the world’s developed economies. The poverty threshold is defined as the percentage of children living in households with incomes below 50 per cent of the national median income (and such a definition is a similar one as the IQ). The percentage of children living in poverty could be high, because many children are born to the poor ore because the well-to-do have relatively less children. In Germany and Austria, for example, more than 40% of women with an academic degree remain childless. We read in the report (p. 6): “The Report series has regularly shown, there is a close correlation between growing up in poverty and the likelihood of educational under-achievement, poor health, teenage pregnancy, substance abuse, criminal and antisocial behaviour, low pay, unemployment, and long term welfare dependence. … Such problems are associated with, but not necessarily caused by, low income (for example, low levels of parental education or parental skills).” There could be an underlying common cause for both low IQ and poverty.

Finland with a mean IQ of 107 of PISA-transformed scores has only 2.8% of children living in poverty (data mostly from 2001). There are some countries where the IQ-values of the book “IQ and the Wealth of Nations” are lower than the PISA 2003-data, some are higher [20]. The PISA-2003 subjects are born in 1988/89, the subjects of Lynn and Vanhanen were the parents or grandparents of these. A high percentage of children in poverty could be a strong hint to a dysgenic trend in this country, a small percentage a hint to an eugenic trend. Indeed, the first 11 countries (Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Czech Republic, France, Belgium, Hungary, Luxemburg, Netherlands) in the “Child Poverty League”, Figure 1, p. 4 of the report) have a medium IQ gain (the difference between the Lynn-Vanhanen-data and the PISA 2003 data transformed into IQ) of 3 points (for example, Denmark 2.4% children in poverty, plus 4 IQ points; Finland, 2.8% children in poverty, plus 10 points). Because PISA-IQ seems generally to be 3 points higher than Lynn-Vanhanen-UK-Greenwich-IQ, there is no eugenic trend, but a standstill. But Germany (corrected IQ loss 5 points), Italy (children poverty 16.6%, minus 7 IQ points; it may be even 10 IQ points, if corrected) and Mexico (children poverty 27.7%, minus 4 IQ points) exhibit a clearly dysgenic trend. If we correlate the poverty percentages with the percentage of children who got a PISA-IQ of 88 and lower, the results are even far more clear-cut. The 15 countries who have a percentage of low IQ children below average (Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Czech Republic, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Austria, Japan, Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand) have a mean IQ gain of 4 points (corrected 1 point, which is no significant difference at all), the countries with an above average percentage of dull children (Hungary, Luxemburg, Germany, Greece, Poland, Spain, Italy, USA, Mexico) have a mean IQ loss of 2 points (corrected 5 points). In this way, comparing three bodies of data, Lynn-Vanhanen-IQ, PISA-IQ and children poverty percentages, we have for the first time evidence for eugenic and dysgenic trends on a national scale, reaching up to 7 points within one generation. There is additional evidence that a dysgenic trend is arising in Hungary, Czech Republic and Poland since 1990, and accelerating in Germany.

In Latin American countries as Brazil within the last generation the mean IQ has dropped from 87 to 78, in Peru from 90 to 76, in Uruguay from 96 to 87, in Chile from 93 to 83, and in Indonesia from 89 to 79. Data from other countries are lacking, but the trend seems to be clear. No wonder, for example, already since about 1970 in Brazil women of the social upper stratum have less than 2,1 children, women of the lower half of the income distribution about 7 children. Changes in the frequency of genes underlying IQ, creativity and so on, could and should be the consequence of such a demography.

Looking at the UNICEF report, I failed to see the word "Dysegenics" used even once. Naturally, higher educated people tend to have fewer children and poverty fosters a home situation in which not only is money a serious issue, but the children are raised in environments where educational attainment is lower and the quality of the education may be substandard. Therefore, the overall increase in lower IQ's is not genetic, but due to higher birthrates amoung the less educated, who in turn, foster less emaphasis on educational achievement in their children. Since the number of poverty children is increasing, that drives the overall national IQ's lower. That is not a genetic thing...it is a learned (or due to the lack of learning) situation.--MONGO 13:42, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Your are quite right if genes did not exist at all or could play no role. --Julia Neumann 13:57, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Your comments appear to be original research and hence are not suitable for inclusion in the article. However, content from reliable sources, especially Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) listed journal articles, is welcome. Walter Siegmund (talk) 02:13, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Hamilton review

The Hamilton review appears in Annals of Human Genetics, ISSN 0003-4800. This journal is not an Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) listed journal and does not satisfy WP:RS, in my opinion. I think it should be removed from the article. Also, a book review isn't a suitable source for a scientific article. Scientific articles should be based on research published in scientific journals that are listed by the ISI and books publlished by reputable scientific publishing companies. The ISI Master Journal List includes 14,067 journals, so this is not an unduly restrictive criterion. As I've argued above, a number of the sources used for the article are equally dubious. However, Lynn and Van Court (2004) is published in an ISI listed journal, Intelligence. To me, this demonstrates that adequate sources exist. Walter Siegmund (talk) 02:03, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Yet the journal is actually listed by ISI... MoritzB 00:23, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

This talk page

Is a stunning example of what's wrong with discussion about intelligence trends in humanity, both as a whole and in subpopulations. Most of the sources discussing it are funded by special interest groups looking for any scientific data that might back up their racist/aristocratic views, helping them overturn affirmative action and lending credence to their bigotry. Liberals, on the other hand, including the majority of scientists, won't touch it with a ten foot stick because 1) they have firmly held egalitarian beliefs they don't want shaken, and/or don't want to offend anyone and 2) are afraid of public policy changes that could stem from scientific affirmation of these issues; they'd rather shout down the topics as being fundamentally without merit rather than investigate them. So the only people even willing to bring up the issues are often racist and self-serving, but the other side won't even acknowledge the relevance of the issues or frankly discuss them, since they are meek and equally self-serving. In short, I think the article should stay, since it is a legitimate and important course of research, but if there are no meaningful or firmly supported conclusions to date then the article should include more in the way of counterarguments and note that the topic is still in its infancy and not well understood. - Chauncey

I don't believe that the existence or nonexistence of a dysgenic trend is relevant to the wisdom of retaining or overturning affirmative action laws. It is, however, directly relevant to the Western world's appraisal of eugenics; if dysgenics is actually occuring, then eugenics, which has as its primary aim the reversal of the current dysgenic trend, can hardly be dismissed. This is why it should be unsurprising that many researchers into the field of dysgenics do have political leanings, but that these are actually more pro-eugenic than they are anti-affirmatice action; and while it may be easy to insist that researchers are seeing only what they want to see, it is just as plausible that the facts of the case made converts of them. The tools of scientific inquiry are available to all, and it is quite telling that those who might oppose the idea of dysgenics have still failed to disprove its existence. Harkenbane 02:10, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Point of view

Everyone is so quick to label dysgenics as a "psuedoscience" that they wont look at the actual underlying validity to this fascinating concept. To determine its validity is not hard, people.Its qutie simple actually. Just use simple logic, for example: it dysgenics didn't exist, or had no real validity, it would not be practiced at all in any way, period. The vey fact that people practice culling on various domesticated animals, such as dogs shows that it does exist in some way.Busboy 01:48, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree. Dysgenics is becoming more widely accepted due to continued scientific scrutiny.Gold Nitrate 18:24, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps a more recent source than Weyl, N. & Possony, S. T: The Geography of Intellect, 1963, s. 154 could be found to indicate significant scientific interest in this topic, but I'm a little dubious There was a flurry of interest around 1994 due to the publication of "The Bell Curve", but very little was published in the serious literature. This article contains a some material from The Bell Curve and related sources as well as other material based on sources that do not satisfy WP:RS (such as book reviews published only on the web). Until these problems are cleaned up, I think it is important to warn readers that the article content is disputed by means of the totallydisputed tag or a similar one. I have tried to improve the article, [21] and would encourage others to contribute, also. However, I think it is important to follow WP:V and, if the article is intended to be about a scientific topic, as opposed to a literary device or pseudoscience, I think that means the content should be primarily based on sources from Institute for Scientific Information listed scientific journals. If good sources cannot be found among the 14,000 journals listed by the ISI, I don't think we can argue that the article topic is of significant scientific interest. Walter Siegmund (talk) 23:30, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Recently, content was added citing Weyl and Possony. Nathaniel Weyl was an American economist and Stefan Thomas Possony was an American military theorist.[22] I don't think their book, "The Geography of Intellect", is a reliable source for an article on a scientific topic. Walter Siegmund (talk) 23:56, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

It is definitely a reliable source as it is a book published by a respected publishing house.

MoritzB 14:01, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

Regnery Publishing in Washington, D.C. self-identifies as a publisher which specializes in conservative books characterized on their website as "contrary to those of 'mainstream' publishers in New York."[23] It is not a respected publisher of scientific work such as Wiley InterScience. I think scientific articles should be based on Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) listed journal papers and review articles whenever possible. Unfortunately, this article is mostly based on authors with an extreme point of view, yet the article does not clearly indicate that is the case. Consequently, I've added the npov tag.

The record shows that Auno3 (talk · contribs · count) and MoritzB (talk · contribs · count) seem to be WP:SPAs pushing an extreme point of view. Also, MoritzB has been blocked for "Edit warring on White people, numerous other pages".[24] Walter Siegmund (talk) 21:01, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

I point out that also such famous books like Unfit for Command about John Kerry's military service have been published by Regnery. That book about history and Weyl's book about eugenics satisfy WP:RS. Regnery is a respected published house although it is associated with the political views of "right-wing Republicans".

MoritzB 14:31, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Fiction

Removed the 'Gattaca' entry from the fiction portion. Dysgenics (if it exists) is unintentional in nature - none of the affects portrayed in 'Gattaca' were accidental.

Criticism about Lynn

The article says that "Lynn's work on dysgenics has been criticized in the mainstream scientific press." However, Leon Kamin in the reference provided actually criticises Lynn for citing certain studies about the average IQ of Africans.

"The remaining studies cited by Lynn, and accepted as valid by Herrnstein and Murray, tell us little about African intelligence but do tell us something about Lynn's scholarship. One of the 11 entries in Lynn's table of the intelligence of "pure Negroids" indicates that 1,011 Zambians who were given the Progressive Matrices had a lamentably low average IQ of 75. The source for this quantitative claim is given as "Pons 1974; Crawford-Nutt 1976." A. L. Pons did test 1,011 Zambian copper miners, whose average number of correct responses was 34. Pons reported on this work orally; his data were summarized in tabular form in a paper by D. H. Crawford-Nutt. Lynn took the Pons data from Crawford-Nutt's paper and converted the number of correct responses into a bogus average "IQ" of 75. Lynn chose to ignore the substance of Crawford-Nutt's paper, which reported that 228 black high school students in Soweto scored an average of 45 correct responses on the Matrices--HIGHER than the mean of 44 achieved by the same-age white sample on whom the test's norms had been established and well above the mean of Owen's coloured pupils. Seven of the 11 studies selected by Lynn for inclusion in his "Negroid" table reported only average Matrices scores, not IQs; the other studies used tests clearly dependent on cultural content. Lynn had earlier, in a 1978 paper, summarized six studies of African pupils, most using the Matrices. The arbitrary IQs concocted by Lynn for those studies ranged between 75 and 88, with a median of 84. Five of those six studies were omitted from Lynn's 1991 summary, by which time African IQ had, in his judgment, plummeted to 69. Lynn's distortions and misrepresentations of the data constitute a truly venomous racism, combined with scandalous disregard for scientific objectivity. Lynn is widely known among academics to be an associate editor of the racist journal "Mankind Quarterly" and a major recipient of financial support from the nativist, eugenically oriented Pioneer Fund. It is a matter of shame and disgrace that two eminent social scientists, fully aware of the sensitivity of the issues they address, take Lynn as their scientific tutor and uncritically accept his surveys of research."

Kamin doesn't even mention dysgenics in the article. MoritzB 01:08, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

MoritzB is right. Editors should read the article before claiming it's about dysgenics. If you want to quote an article critical of his work on dysgenics, then find one and quote it, but this just isn't it, (though anything that reduces Lynn's credibility is relevant). Better yet, maybe criticisms should be put in Richard_Lynn#Controversy, and this article could link to it.Lysine23 22:43, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

This is incorrect. An article about dysgenics should be about dysgenics, not to isolate African IQ as inferior. The sources are truly outdated. Biomet 01:08, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

The point is that Kamin didn't talk about dysgenics. He talked about the IQ of Africans which is offtopic. Thus, remove the entire sentence. MoritzB 01:17, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Let's avoid the whole issue by removing the reference and linking to Richard_Lynn#Controversy instead. Now you can criticize him for whatever you like in an article where it's not offtopic. A lengthy discussion of the pros and cons of Richard Lynn's research, which is what this would end up turning into, would be redundant and off-topic for Dysgenics anyway.Lysine23 12:31, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I don't know what the NPOV tag is doing in this article anyway.MoritzB 00:13, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

W.D. Hamilton's review

Nobody in the field of evolutionary biology is more mainstream than W.D. Hamilton. He reviewed Lynn's book very positively: http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/action/showPdf?submitPDF=Full+Text+PDF+%28190+KB%29&doi=10.1046%2Fj.1469-1809.2000.6440363.x

I will add some points Hamilton made to the article.MoritzB 23:47, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

No merge

I think this topic is distinct from eugenics and is, in fact, one of the reasons why eugenics must be persued. Gold Nitrate 04:45, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

About the latest revert war

Please MoritzB, stop claiming that you have talk page consensus for your changes. That "consensus" you speak of is an agreement between you and Lysine23 (talk · contribs) who is clearly a single-purpose POV-pushing account. Pascal.Tesson 06:19, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

The reason MoritzB and I have a consensus of two is that nobody who thinks that the Kamin article is critical of Lynn's work on dysgenics has actually bothered to post anything about in on the talk page, despite invitations by both MoritzB and I to do so. They just revert the article. As for POV pushing, I'm not trying to whitewash Lynn. Find an article that's critical of his work on dysgenics, or just say that his work in general has been criticized, and I'll be happy, but don't misrepresent an article about Lynn's work on race and IQ as being about dysgenics. In my edit, I replaced the link to a critical article about Lynn with a link to a discussion of criticism of Lynn which included a link to that very article and others. I don't see how that's POV pushing.Lysine23 12:24, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm, I wonder. Sockpuppet comes to mind. But, then again, I may just be paranoid. This place is getting on my nerves. - Jeeny ^Talk 06:21, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

I am not MoritzB. Google our usernames and ask yourself whether a German-speaker like MoritzB would have a 600+ item del.icio.us page without a single German language link.Lysine23 12:24, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

I see that some people are enthusiastic to revert my changes although they aren't interested of contributing to the discussion on talk page. I pointed out a factual mistake a week ago and in this case we simply had to correct that factual mistake. MoritzB 06:24, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Moritz' point is perfectly valid. He doesn't dispute Lynn's take on "dysgenics" is controversial. He is saying the article linked has nothing to do with that. --dab (𒁳) 12:07, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

I think our readers need to know that Lynn has exhibited "scandalous disregard for scientific objectivity" according to a review in Scientific American, a mainstream scientific news source satisfying WP:RS. In my mind, that calls into question his entire body of work, not merely his work on African IQ. To claim otherwise strikes me as disingenuous and tendentious. I might add that to devote so much space to Schockley, Lynn and Weyl and Possony would seem to me to violate the undue weight section of WP:NPOV, since dysgenics in non-humans, its main use, is barely covered in the article. That, along with the lack of critical comment on Weyl and Possony, justify the NPOV tag, I think. Walter Siegmund (talk) 15:48, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree, but just say that instead of saying incorrectly that Kamin's article was about dysgenics. I liked my solution of linking to Richard_Lynn#Controversy, but apparently nobody else did.Lysine23 21:39, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

I agreed but certain editors just started edit warring.MoritzB 21:55, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

This article isn't about Richard Lynn. Leon Kamin's position is fringe as he doesn't believe that there are genetic differences in intelligence. (Although according to the Encyclopedia Britannica article about intelligence and the American Psychological Association IQ is a substantially heritable trait).

Lynn's work has also been positively reviewed in the mainstream scientific press. (See W.D. Hamilton's review, Daniel Vining's review and John C. Loehlin's review)

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-7162(199901)561%3C216%3ADGDIMP%3E2.0.CO%3B2-S

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0032-4728(199803)52%3A1%3C120%3ADGDIMP%3E2.0.CO%3B2-0

MoritzB 22:43, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

You do realize that Lynn was cited in Hamilton's books? Of course they will have positive things to say about him. I am gathering other "mainstream scientific opinions" that are critical of him. To have Lynn dominate this article, when he is controversial, just like the authors of the Bell Curve is not NPOV! His views and findings are controversial and it is important to represent the other side for balance. - Jeeny ^Talk 01:43, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Do you even know who W. D. Hamilton is?MoritzB 01:45, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Hamilton credibility as a source will not be questioned by anybody with the slightest passing familiarity with evolutionary biology, but I read that review and didn't see it as particularly favorable. He praised Lynn for being thick-skinned in the face of spittle-spewing PC enforcers, and he dealt with Lynn as a scientist instead of a heretic, but that was as positive as it got, as far as I can recall.Lysine23 12:02, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Hamilton basically accepts Lynn's views:

"Richard Lynn, discussing the large bank of evidence that still steadily accumulates on heritability of aptitudes and differentials of fertility, shows in this book that almost all of the worries of the early eugenicists were wellfounded in spite of the relative paucity of their evidence at the time. Correct both in their intuitions and in their assessment of the tentative data available, for most of the past hundred years Lynn shows that they have been unfairly derided. The concerns they had about declines in health, intelligence and conscientiousness are matters that we should still be much concerned with"

Then he goes on to offer his explanation why the phenotypic IQ is constantly rising although the genotypic IQ is declining. MoritzB 12:27, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

About Lynn's book and Shockley

WSiegmund deleted this paragraph: "Lynn suggests in Dysgenics: Genetic Deterioration in Modern Populations, that the isolated effect of dysgenics may have been masked by the countervailing Flynn effect, the steady increase of IQ in Asian and Western nations during the 20th century, thought to be related to better diets and other environmental factors. Current research shows that the Flynn effect might have already ended around 1990 in several European nations. Teasdale & Owen (2005) "report intelligence test results from over 500,000 young Danish men, tested between 1959 and 2004, showing that performance peaked in the late 1990s, and has since declined moderately to pre-1991 levels." They speculate that "a contributing factor in this recent fall could be a simultaneous decline in proportions of students entering 3-year advanced-level school programs for 16–18 year olds."

This information is definitely relevant. Lynn's books satisfies WP:RS. Reviews of the book have appeared in mainstream, peer-reviewed, ISI-listed journals. (See W.D. Hamilton's review in the Annals of Human Genetics, for example) Hamilton's review is accessible to all editors.

Also, WSiegmund added that Shockley was "ridiculed" and "vilified". Those verbs are derogatory and should be avoided on Wikipedia. (WP:WTA) Shockley was "ridiculed" in newspapers mainly because he opposed racial equality, not because of his ideas about dysgenics. Thus, his reputation is irrelevant in this article. ~

See also Daniel Vining's review and John C. Loehlin's reviews:

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-7162(199901)561%3C216%3ADGDIMP%3E2.0.CO%3B2-S

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0032-4728(199803)52%3A1%3C120%3ADGDIMP%3E2.0.CO%3B2-0 MoritzB 17:50, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

The current article gives no indication that average IQ has not, in fact, been decreasing for the past century or two (possibly excepting the last 10 years or so - the jury's still out AFAIK). This is certainly relevant to the article. There should be section mentioning what has actually happened and dealing with hypotheses why the demographic-economic paradox has not (yet?) led to lower IQ.Lysine23 20:29, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

I've argued above (03:46, 8 November 2006) that Lynn's book does not satisfy WP:RS since it is not available in many major research or public libraries. Will Beback (05:37, 8 November 2006) says that Teasdale & Owen "may be relevant to the Flynn Effect, I don't see its relevance here". I agree. "Ridiculed" and "vilified" are the words used in the PBS biography of Shockley. "He was vilified, ridiculed, humiliated, and eventually forgotten. His reputation in tatters, he retreated to his home on the Stanford campus..."[25] Walter Siegmund (talk) 03:34, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

I cannot understand your argument because reviews of Lynn's book definitely satisfy WP:RS. They have been published in peer-reviewed, ISI-listed scientific journals. Are you saying that although the reviews are reliable sources the book is not. Those reviews can be used as a source for the same information.

And as I explained Shockley had controversial views about race and intelligence, not about dysgenics. MoritzB 03:46, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

What's our source for Shockley's views on dygenics being non-controversial? I don't see any prior discussion about it on this page, and the assertion seems unwarranted. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 04:39, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Shockley's view that intelligence declined because blacks had more children than whites was controversial. However, there is no mainstream opposition to the idea that there are heritable differences in intelligence and consequently dysgenics is possible. See W.D. Hamilton's paper: http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/action/showPdf?submitPDF=Full+Text+PDF+%28190+KB%29&doi=10.1046%2Fj.1469-1809.2000.6440363.x

MoritzB 16:32, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Are you serious? Where in Hamilton's book review does he address the distinction between Shockley's view of dysgenics and his opinions on the races? I agree with Will Beback. I'm dubious that a source for Shockley's views on dygenics being non-controversial can be found. Walter Siegmund (talk) 21:33, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

What specific aspects of Shockley's views do you mean? It is not controversial that there are genetic differences in IQ between individuals. It is more controversial whether there are such differences between races.MoritzB 00:51, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Dysgenics: Genetic Deterioration in Modern Populations by Richard Lynn does not satisfy WP:V, to wit, "Verifiable" in this context means that any reader should be able to check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source." Since this book is not available from most libraries, even from major university libraries, it fails this criterion. I think Wikipedia policy requires that content based on this source be removed, unless an alternative source that is available to readers can be found. BTW, another source, the Mensa Bulletin fails WP:V, in my opinion, also. It is not available in most libraries. Walter Siegmund (talk) 21:33, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

No, the book is available in most university libraries. W.D. Hamilton's review is available to everybody and other reviews to all people with JSTOR access. MoritzB 00:51, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

When I last checked, Columbia, Ohio State, University of Texas at Austin, University of Washington, and Dartmouth College did not list Dysgenics: Genetic Deterioration in Modern Populations by Richard Lynn in their library catalogs. It is out of print. A used copy is available via Amazon for $549.95, i.e., beyond the means of most volunteer editors on Wikipedia. I don't think it satisfies WP:V. Walter Siegmund (talk) 02:36, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

With interlibrary loans, it would be surprising if people with access to those libraries couldn't get the book. The University of Kansas has it and they have interlibrary loan agreements with lots of libraries, for example [26]. If you asked a librarian at any of the schools you mention, they would probably be able to get it. Should we waste their time getting them to prove it?Lysine23 04:03, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Why? WP:V does not state that most volunteer editors should have access to the book. MoritzB 06:34, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

WP:V says that content should be verifiable; if the source is not available in libraries or at reasonable cost, editors and readers cannot verify the content based on that source. If the book was the subject of the article, or if no other sources were available, you might have an argument for retaining it. Walter Siegmund (talk) 17:30, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, as the book is actually available at least in the British Library we should retain it.

http://catalogue.bl.uk/F/?func=full-set-set&set_number=103907&set_entry=000001&format=999

MoritzB 19:49, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Reviews of Lynn's book

Vining says, "Personally, I do not think this dysgenic trend can explain much; most adverse movements occur much too rapidly or at least occur within generations and cannot be explained by dysgenic trends." Hamilton argues that "perinatal and surgical gynaecological skill is permitting the birth of larger-headed babies than formerly" and "Lynn's calculations neglect them". Also, "[n]one of his calculations take [extra-pair paternity] into account and yet most estimates of western populations set the rate quite high, at about 10 %". I think it is inaccurate to suggest that these authors reviewed Lynn's book favorably.

The Loehlin review is favorable, but was written by an author of Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns which supported "The Bell Curve" and its conclusions. I think that if it is to be used in the article, the author's bias should be mentioned. Walter Siegmund (talk) 21:18, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Please don't quote selectively. Vining says that: "What might dysgenics mean? If we allow for the

hereditary transmission of traits like intelligence and even conscientiousness (and the research facts point in this direction, as Lynn shows), then the facts related above suggest a generational deterioration in such traits, a genetic deterioration in short, a dysgenic trend. How significant a deterioration? The significance of this dysgenic trend for the modern civilizations of Europe, East Asia, North America, indeed the whole globe, is to be explored in a second volume, as yet unpublished."

...

Personally, I do not think this dysgenic trend can explain much; most adverse movements occur much too rapidly or at least occur within generations and cannot be explained by dysgenic trends. The 'fast growing menaces presented by our cultural imbalances', as Hermann Muller called them (see Muller 1973, p. 128), do not seem to be due to anything as simple as dysgenic fertility. Rather, I would argue, dysgenic fertility is just one of those cultural imbalances.

and concludes: "Lynn's book has been reviewed elsewhere (e.g., Jackson, 1997; Lamb, 1997; Jones, 1997). The first two are laudatory. The last objects to the history of the eugenics movement given in the book, though, as the reviewer himself notes, the history is mercifully short."

By the way, Hermann Muller was a "hardcore" eugenicist who advocated very harsh, interventionist eugenics programs to Stalin when he worked in the USSR. See: http://www.mankindquarterly.org/muellersletter.pdf

Hamilton's review is positive: "Richard Lynn, discussing the large bank of evidence that still steadily accumulates on heritability of aptitudes and differentials of fertility, shows in this book that almost all of the worries of the early eugenicists were wellfounded in spite of the relative paucity of their evidence at the time. Correct both in their intuitions and in their assessment of the tentative data available, for most of the past hundred years Lynn shows that they have been unfairly derided. The concerns they had about declines in health, intelligence and conscientiousness are matters that we should still be much concerned with..."

You quoted Hamilton saying that "perinatal and surgical gynaecological skill is permitting the birth of larger-headed babies than formerly" and "Lynn's calculations neglect them". This is one of Hamilton's alternative explanations to the Flynn effect which is masking the dysgenic trend. If Hamilton's explanation is true the case for dysgenics is stronger.MoritzB 01:48, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

This is not an article about Richard Lynn.

Lynn only co-authored one of two studies mentioned, and the study he and Van Court published merely verified the earlier results obtained by Vining. It may be useful to mention that Lynn is a controversial figure who has been criticized by scientists, but no more is necessary. Harkenbane 04:47, 13 November 2007 (UTC)