Talk:Dysgenics/Archive 4

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Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Definition

I suggest the first thing to do is to find a definition of dysgenics we are all happy with. I have provided a few definitions above, probably the best thing to do is write our own definition and cite the others in support of ours. I'll have a crack at it. Feel free to modify this or supply a different definition:

Dysgenics (also Dysgenic and Dysgenesis) is a term sometimes used in biology to describe a selective process that does not select for organisms that are the most robust in a natural environment. It has been used to describe selective breeding in animal experiments, and to describe the theoretical weakening of the human species due to modern medical practices. Selection can be active, as in the case of laboratory bread strains of mice or fruit flies that are selected for deleterious phenotypes, or passive in the case of the theories of human dysgenesis, where it is the weakening of natural selective environments by modern medical and social welfare, that are theorised to cause the dysgenesis. The evidence for human dysgensis is contested.

This is just a quick go, I'm sure there are many errors, please make changes. Alun (talk) 05:51, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Could you give examples of dysgenics as it's used in biology? Perhaps TDS? [1]

How about:

Dysgenics (also Dysgenic and Dysgenesis) is a term used for the selection of genetic traits that are commonly accepted as a disabling, undesirable, or detrimental to the long term survival of a species. [2] It has been used to describe selective breeding in animal experiments, such as the Oncomouse, and to describe the theoretical weakening of the human species due to a lack of natural selection. Selection can be active, as in the case of laboratory bread strains of mice or fruit flies that are selected for deleterious phenotypes, or passive in the case of the theories of human dysgenesis, where it is the weakening of natural selective environments by modern medical and social welfare, that are theorised to cause the dysgenesis. The evidence for human dysgensis is contested.

One of the problems is that evidence of a dysgenic trend isn't contested, but largely ignored by mainstream science. What would be needed is a poll of mainstream scientists such as was once done for the R&I question [3]

I think the following line might be better to end the introduction: Dysgenesis is not a topic of significant modern scientific research, but appears occasionally in fiction and the popular media. --Zero g (talk) 15:45, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Actually all we need is a citation that contests the evidence for dysgenics. I read one only the other day, it was actually a review of Lynn's book, and it stated that we don't know what the so called "natural environment" is for humans and neither does Richard Lynn, he doesn't even attempt to broach the subject of what is a natural environment for humans according to the source. For an environment to be dysgenic we do at least need to know how it differs from the natural one. Therefore we can't claim that modern society is more dysgenic than past societies were because we do not know what the selective forces were in the past, and we don't really know what they are now. So we don't need a poll, we just need a citation to support the statement that it is contested. Regarding your statement that dysgenics is largely ignored by modern science, I agree, which of course is the main reason why it is a fringe theory, the fact of it being ignored proves it's fringe. I posted a link to over 400 papers on PubMed central that use the term in biology. I'm talking biology and not medicine, that is the selective breeding of laboratory organisms. I don't like the phrase "commonly accepted as disabling". Alun (talk) 16:47, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

It's an interesting argument, but in my opinion unclosed environments are too complex to really say anything scientific about. While it's possibly to determine dysgenic fertility in relation to IQ, it's close to impossible to exactly pin point the environmental cause, which in turn makes policy changes, aka eugenics, such a tricky issue. Hence my suggestion to incorporate a section about dysgenic rhetoric used as propaganda given the sources provided for that by Ramdrake. While we can't know the selective forces in the past, we do know that brain size and hence intelligence increased substantially over the past 5 million years.

My suggested wording also doesn't imply that dysgenics is ignored, but that there is no interest for the subject and hence there is no mainstream scientific consensus due to a lack of interest. In order for dysgenics to be fringe it needs to depart significantly from mainstream scientific thought. I have yet to see a valid source describing mainstream scientific thought about future human evolution.

What exactly is your problem with the use of the word disabling? It's less value loaded than "undesirable" and I think it'd be neutral to call traits like deafness and IQs below 70 disabling. --Zero g (talk) 16:11, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Point is, Zero g, the basic quality of fringe is "having few adherents", whether this is because of a lack of interest or because people don't believe in the hypothesis. The sentence I added to the intro seemed to me neutral enough not to disparage needlessly the dysgenic hypothesis, while conveying the undeniable fact that it has few adherents, thereby avoiding a value judgment. As for the sentence "commonly accepted as disabling", while I can't speak for Alun, I'd mildly object to the part that says "commonly accepted as". Again, there seems to be a value judgment needlesly buried in there. I'd suggest "usually considered", as an alternative, or just drop the qualifiers altogether.--Ramdrake (talk) 16:25, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

"usually considered" would work and is possibly more NPOV. I feel strongly however about clearly describing the dysgenic concept in the intro in common wording, rather than confusing academic language. Dysgenics after all is a value judgement of some sorts, but so are the worries about global warming, who are we to say the current temperature on earth is the "perfect" temperature? Anyways, is "... a term used for the selection of genetic traits that are usually considered to be disabling, or detrimental to the long term survival of a species." something we can agree on? --Zero g (talk) 17:30, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

I don't have a problem with that if the others agree too. I'd also remove the "long term" qualifier on survival, as some of the mutations studied would be quite deadly if it weren't for laboratory-enhanced survival conditions. I'd recommend just "survival of the individual". After all, with humanity's very high specialization, a much decreased intelligence would immediately and adversely effect the individual survival potential of the individuals, given the few physical defenses that we have relative to other species (or asone would put "unarmed, naked and stupid in front of a lion" - lunch! ;) ).--Ramdrake (talk) 17:48, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

My reasoning for adding "long term" is that traits that give a neutral or even reproductive advantage in the current environment might be a huge disadvantage if the environment changes, for example due to the collapse of civilization (for whatever reason). --Zero g (talk) 18:55, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

You're absolutely right, but isn't that true of any kind of biological specialization when you think about it? Every biological specialization may turn out dysgenic if environmental conditions change significantly, and conversely, usually dysgenic mutations may turn out beneficial if there is a sudden change in the environment which the mutation allows the organism to exploit.--Ramdrake (talk) 19:01, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Not exactly, dysgenic fertility, particularly in the case of intelligence, can be seen as causing a loss of diversity. While it's specialization to a degree, it could also be seen as deterioration, especially in traits like deafness. --Zero g (talk) 19:44, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

"in my opinion unclosed environments are too complex" that's all very well, but we can't include your opinion in the article. "we do know that brain size and hence intelligence increased substantially over the past 5 million years". Five million years ago our species did not exist, we can't compare macroevolutionary change with the sort of microevolutionary change "dysgenics" purports to examine, one is inter-specific (comparing different species) and the other is intra-specific (comparing different allele frequencies in populations of the same species). "it's possibly to determine dysgenic fertility in relation to IQ" I'm not sure that this is true, certainly Richard Lynn claims it's true, but other disagree with him, it's more accurate to say "it's possible to estimate dysgenic fertility in relation to IQ." I'm not sure how one differentiates between "ignored" and "no interest", these are close to saying the same thing. Besides the fact that there is no interest clearly says something about the lack of support within the scientific community for the theory. Whatever the reasons for the lack of consensus, there is a lack of consensus and it's cause is merely conjecture on your part. It is not correct to claim that a theory needs to diverge significantly from mainstream scientific thought to be fringe, Wikipedia uses the widest definition for fringe theories, and this definition includes any theory that does not have the support of a scientific consensus, that's clearly written in the guideline (WP:FRINGE).

"genetic traits that are commonly accepted as a disabling, undesirable, or detrimental to the long term survival of a species."

My problem with this part is the phrase "commonly accepted" (or "usually considered"), it's close to what we call weasel words, use of the passive voice (as in "traits that are .. considered") is not a good idea (though scientists use it all the time in papers, we are not writing a scientific paper). Then we need to define, from a source, what is "commonly accepted" as "disabling, undesirable or detrimental" and by who. It's the environment that determines what is "disabling, undesirable or detrimental" and not the "commonly accepted"/"usually considered" opinion of scientists or society. We are compare "natural selection" with "artificial selection" in both human and animal systems. So we need to differentiate between traits that nature selects for and those that are selected for in a putative non-natural environment. But I think we are close to agreeing. Alun (talk) 06:47, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

I used the following sourced statements to create that particular phrase: I shall use the term “dysgenic” as a culturally imposed genetic selection not to achieve any improvement of the human person but to select genetic traits that are commonly accepted as a disabling condition by the majority of the social matrix; in short as a handicap. [4]

affecting later generations detrimentally by passing on undesirable characteristics [5]

But I have no objections to more neutral wording. --Zero g (talk) 12:47, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I see. I'd point out that the first source is not trying to define the term "dysgenic" generally, but is defining the specific use of dysgenic in the context of the article. That's fine as far as their use of the word goes for their article, but clearly the term is used in a more general sense as well which is not limited to culturally imposed selection. That's not to say that their use of the term is wrong, it's just a more specific type of dysgenic environmnt they are discussing. I'm inherently sceptical of Encarta, I tend to think that we should be able to produce something of better quality using reliable sources, Encarta is not verified from reliable sources as Wikipedia is, and I'm very suspicious of the reliability of Encarta, we don't know who wrote it or what their claim to authority is. The main problem with the Encarta definition in my opinion is that it doesn't mention selection at all, which I think is fundamental to the concept of dysgenics. Why are only "later generations" dysgenically affected? Why are the detrimental characteristics passed on? If they are detrimental then they should be selected against and so not passed on in a natural environment. Let's go back to my initial definition, I'd like you to say what you'd like to change about it, if it's totally unacceptable to you then that's fine but please give reasons so we can come to some common ground. Thanks. I really think we're getting somewhere here. Alun (talk) 16:25, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

(unindent) Zero g, you asked above for some specific examples of use of the term dysgenic in biology, sorry I didn't respond before. There are lot's of examples over at PubMed Central.[6] Here's a few specific examples "Site specificity of mutations arising in dysgenic hybrids of Drosophila melanogaster.", "Hybrid dysgenesis in Drosophila: Correlation between dysgenic traits" (NB this article uses the term "dysgenesis" as a noun for "dysgenic"), "The relationship between structural variation and dysgenic properties of P elements in long-established P-transformed lines of Drosophila simulans", "A Hybrid Dysgenesis Syndrome in Drosophila virilis". Alun (talk) 10:38, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Seems like most (all?) of these articles are using "dysgenic" as an adjective for "dysgenesis" (not as an adjective for "dysgenics"). These articles are about hybrid sterility.--Anthon.Eff (talk) 20:17, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

I think dysgenic is the adjective of dysgenesis. All of these articles are no about hybrid sterility, some of them discuss sterility in hybrids. Other articles concern dysgenic mouse myotubules, which is concerned with muscle contraction e.g. "Cardiac-type EC-Coupling in Dysgenic Myotubes Restored with Ca2+ Channel Subunit Isoforms α1C and α1D Does not Correlate with Current Density", "Functional Interaction of CaV Channel Isoforms with Ryanodine Receptors Studied in Dysgenic Myotubes" or dysgenic eyes in mice "Defects in eye development in transgenic mice overexpressing the heparan sulfate proteoglycan agrin.". What we are discussing is finding a definition that fits all of the uses of dysgenic. These papers show that with both mice and Drosophila selective mating has dysgenic causes. Clearly when a paper refers to a "dysgenic cross" as the Drosophila papers do, they are not referring to the failure of the gametes to develop, the cross itself is being described as dysgenic, i.e. they are saying that the selection of this cross produces a dysgenic result. Alun (talk) 21:15, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

The other definition of dygenesis is of the failed development of an organ (or other tissue). Sounds like the mouse muscle article is about that. See if you can find one article that is neither about hybrid sterility nor about tissue mis-development. My guess is that you cannot, since there is no objective meaning of the word "dysgenic" (adj. form of "dysgenics") and therefore no legitimate uses for the word in experimental biology. --Anthon.Eff (talk) 21:49, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Anton, these experiments are performed by breeding certain Drosophila strains to produce weak offspring, this breeding is called a dysgenic cross. The dysgenic cross is a specific breeding strategy, they don't appear to me to be using dysgenic to refer to organ development when they use the term "dysgenic cross", they are referring to their breeding strategy. The breeding strategy is dysgenic because it results is maladapted offspring. Please read the papers rather than guessing what they are saying:

when males of a studied strain are crossed with females from an E strain (dysgenic cross)[7]
The Drosophila melanogaster mobile DNA sequences P factors and P elements transpose at elevated rates when P strain males are mated to M strain females in a hybrid dysgenic cross (Engels 1983).[8]
Interestingly, the rate of I-factor repression in the SF female germ-line largely depends on the repression capacity already pre-existing in their reactive mother's germ-line before the dysgenic cross (i.e. before introduction of the I-factor).[9]
These observations suggest that I factors are subject to at least two forms of regulation, one that prevents transposition in inducer strains but permits transposition in the progeny of a dysgenic cross and the other that restricts transposition to the germ line of females.[10]

I don't know how much you know about genetics, but this dysgenic cross in Drosophila melanogaster is discussing transposable elements. These are mobile genetic elements that integrate into the genome. It seems that one strain of the flies contains the transposon and the other doesn't, if the transposon is stable in the first strain then it is not jumping around the genome, but in the progeny from the dysgenic cross, the system that stabilises the transposon seems to be disrupted, causing it to "jump" around the genome again. This can cause disruption to the genome, silencing of genes etc. That is what makes it a dysgenic cross, these strains probably would not interbreed in the natural environment, but of course we can set up an artificial dysgenic cross in the lab. This is a clear use of the word dysgenic to refer to a selective breeding programme that produces unviable offspring. I don't see how this could mean anything else, of course organ dysgenesis can be one of the outcomes of the transposon's disrupting the genome.

The mouse model is called the mdg mouse, which is the muscular dysgenesis mouse, in this instance the mice have dysgenic muscle fibres caused by homozygosity for the mdg gene (ie mdg/mdg).[11] so this does seem to be a case of dysgenic referring to the failure of correct developement of an organ system. These mouse papers do not use the term "dysgenic cross" at all.

Clearly the term "dysgenic cross" is referring to a specific selective environment in the case of Drosophila, the mobile genetic elements (transposons) that are de-repressed in the progeny can cause organ dysgenesis, though the use of "dysgenic cross" is referring to the cross and not any dysgenesis of the organs in the F₁ generation. Alun (talk) 12:32, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

A dysgenic cross is the offspring of a hybrid mating, with the specific pattern of sterility characteristic of dysgenesis (i.e., it is the organism, not the mating). All four of the articles that you requested I read are about "hybrid dysgenesis". Hybrid dysgenesis appears incidental to these articles, in that there are some other issues (for example, the transposable elements stuff you so lucidly explained) that can be studied in dysgenic crosses. The mouse article doesn't mention "dysgenic cross" because it is not about hybrid dysgenesis--it is about the failure of tissue to develop normally.--Anthon.Eff (talk) 19:09, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

PubMed gives (me) 387,365 hits for dysgenesis, 2 hits for dysgenics (one concerns Lynn's book). For what it's worth, I get 2,594 hits for eugenics. The adjective dysgenic apparently appears only in PubMed as the adjectival form of dysgenesis.--Anthon.Eff (talk) 01:59, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

The dysgenic cross is the cross, that is it refers to the genotype of the parents, that's simple genetics. Furthermore only some of the offspring develop dysgenesis of certain organs, it's not only sterility either (and even here gonadal dysgenesis can be temperature dependent in the dysgenic cross [12]) sometimes it's eye colour or life span, and neither of these can be considered a failure of a specific organ to develop.[13] It also depends on sex and the transposon under investigation. Indeed use of the term "hybrid dysgenesis" is interesting because it clearly refers to a general decline in phenotype, rather than the failure to develop of a specific organ. Hybrid dysgenesis is used to refer to sterility in Drosophila crosses and to failure of organ development, but also refers to other effects of dysgenic crosses that cannot be considered a failure of organ development. "hybrid dysgenesis, which also includes male recombination, mutation and other traits" [14] Here's a correct use of the word cross "A new example of "hybrid dysgenesis" has been demonstrated in the F(1) progeny of crosses between two different strains of Drosophila virilis." They call the offspring the "F₁ progeny" and distinguish it from the cross itself. The paper also states clearly that the hybrid dysgenesis is not specifically referring to the failure of gonadal (or organ) development, but also refers to other traits not associated with organ development "The phenomena observed include high frequencies of male and female sterility, male recombination, chromosomal nondisjunction, transmission ratio distortion and the appearance of numerous visible mutations at different loci in the progeny of dysgenic crosses." A further example from the paper is "which we have recently isolated from a dysgenically induced white eye mutation",[15] white eye mutation is not a failure of organ development. Clearly in these papers the terms "dysgenic" and "dysgenesis" refer to crosses of organisms that produce genetically aberrant offspring, they are not restricted to a description of specific organ failure. In this sense use of the term is synonymous with "artificial selection for traits that are disadvantageous in a natural environment", and I don't see how this is especially different from claims of human dysgenics. On the other hand another way to describe the Drosophila matings is Outbreeding depression. I can't really see why there is any problem with the Drosophila papers, they are clearly not discussing organ dysgenesis, but genetic aberrations. On the other hand I suppose you want to claim that human dysgenesis is a special case and is different from animal experiments in laboratories, and I think this may be a good point. If this is what you are trying to get at, then I think we seriously need to consider content forking. By this I mean creating a specific article called something like Human dysgenics and another article called Hybrid dysgenesis syndrome, redirect the "Dysgenics" article to the "Human dysgenics" page, with a link to the "Hybrid dysgenesis syndrome" article. That would work and I think we can realistically call it a content fork, the claims of human dysgenesis are highly suspect, fringe and are mostly considered pseudoscience, whereas dysgenic crosses in Drosophila are well established as sound science. What do you think of a content fork? Alun (talk) 07:47, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

On the other hand we still need a definition, and I still think the defintion I give is relevant, absent the mention of lab animals. Alun (talk) 07:47, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

"Drosophila geneticists have recognized the occasional occurrence of dysgenic traits such as mutation, chromosomal aberration, distorted segregation, and sterility (1, 2). These traits were usually found in experiments with flies newly caught in the wild. Male recombination has also been found under similar conditions (3), generally associated with other dysgenic traits, particularly with mutator activity (2).... It was difficult to understand how such genes could be maintained in natural populations since their effects would be expected to result in a drastic reduction of population fitness (4).
The first contribution to clarification was that of Kidwell (5) who, on the basis of several crosses, suggested that high frequencies of dysgenic events do not occur under natural conditions but are the result of genetic interactions between strains newly derived from wild flies and long-established laboratory stocks. This idea was developed further, and the term "hybrid dysgenesis" has been proposed to designate a "syndrome of correlated genetic traits that is spontaneously induced in hybrids between certain mutually interacting strains, usually in one direction only" (6, 7).(Bregliano, J. C., G. Picard, A. Bucheton A. Pelisson, J. M. Lavige, P. L'Heritier (1980) "Hybrid Dysgenesis in Drosophila melanogaster" Science 207:606-611.)

Hybrid dysgenesis is therefore not a description of organ dysgenesis, but a "syndrome of correlated genetic traits", and it does not occur under natural conditions. Alun (talk) 09:39, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Apparently hybrid dysgenesis is especially interesting for understanding speciation; experimental geneticists are trying to see what goes wrong in the offspring (the "dysgenic cross") from a mating between two fruit fly strains that are distinct species. So that's why so many experiments are done with dysgenic crosses. As you point out, sterility is just one of a set of well-recognized problems of these particular dysgenic crosses, and geneticists therefore speak of a dysgenic "syndrome."

I found a passage from a Nature press release that appears to link the two meanings of dysgenesis (hybrid sterility plus failure of tissue to develop normally):

Separate but related species can also 'hybridize', that is, they can sometimes mate and produce offspring. In many cases, though, these offspring suffer from what is known as 'hybrid dysgenesis'; they develop incompletely, and have such severe abnormalities that they don't survive.[16]

The PubMed research is not about dysgenics (a "system of breeding or selection that is genetically deleterious or disadvantageous"). Words like "deleterious" or "disadvantageous" don't belong in experimental science, since they are relative and value-laden. The PubMed research uses the word "dysgenic" in specific, objective, and value-free ways: either to indicate a particular kind of sterile hybrid, or to indicate the failure of tissue to develop normally. --Anthon.Eff (talk) 13:18, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

There is no condition that the Drosophila strains need to be distinct species, for example hybrid dysgenesis will occur between two strains of Drosophila melanogaster if one strain contains the transposon and the other doesn't. The Science paper I link to above specifically mentions hybrid dysgenesis within D. melanogaster. It is incorrect to claim that hybrid dysgenesis only occurs in crosses between different Drosophila spp.. "It is now established that Drosophila melanogaster exhibits at least two causally independent systems of interacting strains: I-R and P-M (10)." This is clearly within species dysgenesis. I'm at a loss to understand what you mean when you say 'Words like "deleterious" or "disadvantageous" don't belong in experimental science,' that's clearly not correct, sterility, wing vestigiality, high levels of mutation etc. are clearly all deleterious and disadvantageous, and no experimental scientist would demure from calling these traits either deleterious or disadvantageous. Indeed the success of these dysgenic flies at reproducing can be quantified, and therefore just how deleterious or disadvantageous these trait are can be measured. "The PubMed research uses the word "dysgenic" in specific, objective, and value-free ways: either to indicate a particular kind of sterile hybrid, or to indicate the failure of tissue to develop normally." no it doesn't, much of the pubmed research is into dysgenic traits in flies and those dysgenic traits include effects that are not related to organ dysgenesis but to the underlying genetic causes, don't confuse geneticists use of phenotype to identify offspring that have a particular genotype, it's the genotype they are interested in. I don't understand your objection on this, the citations I have supplied are clear and unambiguous, why are you denying the obvious? As for "dysgenics", there is clear evidence that the terms "dysgenics" and "dysgenic" are used as synonyms or near synonyms.

dysgenics, "cacogenics (the study of the operation of factors causing degeneration in the type of offspring produced)"[17]
dysgenic, "cacogenic (pertaining to or causing degeneration in the offspring produced)"[18] (degeneration, a "value laden" term used to define dysgenic)
dysgenic: "System of breeding or selection that is genetically deleterious or disadvantageous."[19] (deleterious again a "value laden" term to define dysgenic)
dysgenics: "System of breeding or selection that is genetically deleterious or disadvantageous."[20]
DYSGENIC: Causing a reduction of desirable genetic qualities in natural or production populations.[21] (again a "value laden" term in the definition of dysgenic, "desirable").

If there is any meaningful difference between these words, then it is that "dysgenics" is the noun applied to the study of what causes deterioration of "fitness", whereas dysgenic is the adjective applied to populations or specific traits that demonstrate reduced "fitness". Clearly the study of dysgenic populations of Drosophila is the study of the deleterious mutations that cause a decrease of fitness in these populations. If anything we now have stronger evidence that the term "dysgenesis" is more appropriate to the article as a noun to describe the genetic deterioration in dysgenic populations, and supports Graves use of the term "dysgenesis" for the putative genetic deterioration in human populations. Dysgenesis is the decrease in fitness of the populations, dysgenic is an adjective describing this decrease in fitness, and applies to either specific traits or to whole populations, and dysgenics is the study of the causes of the weakening of fitness in populations. All of this evidence supports my original proposal for the definition in the introduction. As it stands I can't accept your argument, it seems to be tenuous to say the least, and appears to ignore a lot of the evidence, in favour of a very narrow, and frankly unsupported contention that "dysgenic" only applies to specific examples of "organ dysgenesis", while "dysgenics" applies to populations. I don't think there is any evidence for this above and beyond what you claim to "see" in a PubMed Central search, find a specific definition of dysgenic and dysgenics that supports what you are saying, and even then we still have reliable sources that directly contradict you. Alun (talk) 07:43, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Dysgenesis?

Dysgenesis currently redirects to Agenesis. On the OED, dysgenesis is defined in the midst of a long list of words beginning with "dys-" (an indication that it is not widely used):

dysgenesis (-dnss) [Gr. production], difficulty in breeding; spec. used by Broca for that degree of sexual affinity in which the offspring are sterile among themselves, but capable of producing (sterile) offspring with either of the parental races (Syd. Soc. Lex. 1883); so dysgenesic (-dnsk), a. [F. dysgénésique];

A quick perusal of Google Scholar and Google dictionary [22] gives the impression that it has a second meaning (in addition to the sterility of hybrid offspring mentioned in the OED) and that is a failure of an organ to develop, perhaps especially a reproductive organ. I say drop "dysgenesis" from the definition--it's not a synonym for "dysgenics".

Alun, if you want to settle on the lede first, that's OK with me, but we will make better progress if we try to resolve one issue at a time.--Anthon.Eff (talk) 17:24, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

My preference is to settle the definition first, that way we will have some common ground to move forward from, I hope it will concentrate our minds on the article and how we can work together rather than forming into factions that are constantly disagreeing. Then we can have a brief discussion about dysgenic lab animals, we don't need this section to be long, just say that it's called dysgencis and that its a selection for harmful traits. Then we can move on to the debate about human dysgenics, which is the most contentious part of the article, but hopefully by this time we will have realised that everyone here is here in good faith. Personally I don't see why any section needs to be overly long, the human dysgenics is not a major field of scientific research, we only need to give an overview of the thinking. Most of the major debate should be over at eugenics, which is a much more well known and discussed subject and closely related to this one.

I'm ambivalent about dysgenesis. Joseph L. Graves uses dysgenesis, that's only a single source I know. I don't know why he uses the term dysgenesis, it's from a different etymological root, "genesis" is the origin of something, whereas "genic" refers to genes. For example Graves states "It is this type of selection scenario that Francis Galton was referring to in Heredity Genius when he raised the specter of dysgenesis." (The Emperors New Clothes: Biological Theories of Race at the Millenium, Joseph L. Graves (2001)) Possibly we can say something like Dysgenics (also Dysgenic and occasionally Dysgenesis). Alun (talk) 18:15, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Graves made a mistake. We all do that sometimes. No need to repeat that mistake here.--Anthon.Eff (talk) 18:40, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Err, Alun, "-genesis" and "-genic" both stem from the same Greek root "-genés" (born). "Genetic" has admittedly a different origin, but I wouldn't be surprised if it were influenced by the same Greek root.

I kind of like the direction into which the definition is going. I especially like the phrasing "Dysgenesis is not a topic of significant modern scientific research, but appears occasionally in fiction and the popular media." It says that dysgenics is in fact fringe science (in the Wikipedia sense - few adherents, therefore not mainstream) without using the word "fringe" per se. Also, we could limit the definition to the traits which are "detrimental", as "undesirable" implies a value judgment, and I don't think we want to go there. The definition might also mention that the first use of dysgenics in humans was to describe the effect of wars on the population: Darwin also warned that modern war was dysgenic, exposing the finest young men to early death. Just my tuppence.--Ramdrake (talk) 18:34, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

The OED says:

that "genic" means "Of or relating to genes." etymology "ancient Greek γέυος race, descent + -IC suffix. Re-formed after GENE n.1 Compare earlier EUGENIC adj., and also -GENIC comb. form."
Whereas the etymology of "gene": ancient Greek γευ-, stem of γέυος race, offspring (see GENUS n.)
And the etymology of "genesis" is: Gr. γέυεσις origin, creation, generation, f. *γευ- root of γίγνεσθαι to come into being, be born.

I'm really not sure why Graves uses the word "dysgenesis", it is possible he made a mistake, but it is also possible there are good etymological reasons for his use of the word, all of these words have the same Greek root and quite frankly my knowledge of linguistics is not good enough to know if this was a mistake or not. I'm wary of making assumptions about his use of the word, he also uses it in his index, where the word dygenesis is used but there is no use of the word dysgenic and I can't believe that was a mistake. I suggest we keep the word in the article, and include a footnote on it's use in only a single source, as long as we can cite this source then there is no problem, remember verifiability not truth. Alun (talk) 07:26, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Alun, I don't have access to the OED (and the Larousse won't cut this one!), but I suspect you'll find that "genic" as an adjective refers to genes, whereas "-genic" as a suffix (as in orogenic belts' 'has the same connotations as "genesis". In a nutshell, all these words are related.--Ramdrake (talk) 23:12, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Introduction take two

The definitions between dysgenic as used in population genetics and biology are quite different. (see discussions above) Given that dysgenics as used in population genetics is more notable (there's a somewhat notable book and movie dedicated to the topic) I think we should go for a description of dysgenics as used in population genetics in the introduction and give a more detailed description of the biological definition in a yet to be created biology section. --Zero g (talk) 16:34, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Hmm, a notable movie doesn't make the subject scientifically notable, especially if you're talking about something like Idiocracy.--Ramdrake (talk) 17:24, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

I wasn't arguing that it made the subject more notable from a scientific viewpoint, but from what I gathered dysgenics as a biological concept is virtually unknown outside the scientific community. --Zero g (talk) 17:36, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Population genetics is a part of biology, and I don't think there is any evidence that it is different in biology to population genetics. Indeed none of the population genetics books I have refer to dysgenics at all. What is the evidence that it is a term used in population genetics, and what definition does population genetics use? All I've seen is it's use by eugenicists, these are generally not population geneticist but tend to be psychologists. Indeed I can't really see anything wrong with the definition I gave, you provided a definition of your own, which had certain faults, such as the use of what might be considered weasel words (this is not a criticism of you, we all fall into the trap of using weasel words sometimes) and the definition made the identification of the traits subjective "commonly accepted" as "disabling, undesirable, or detrimental" rather than based on selection. You haven't provided any specific criticism of the definition I attempted, even though I have asked for one twice. Can you please provide your specific reasons for refusing my definition? At least that way we can move on, currently we are just going round in circles. Thanks. Alun (talk) 17:48, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

What I dislike about your introduction is that it gives the impression that the term is mainly used in biology and that it doesn't clearly describe the concept in the first line. I can see your issue with the weasel wording. I'm also not a fan of labeling human dysgenics as contested, given there's only one study in the article that is critical of the theory, and that study itself has been critically reviewed. How about the following text:

Dysgenics (also Dysgenic and Dysgenesis) is a term used for the selection of genetic traits that are disabling or detrimental to the survival of an organism in a natural environment. It has been used to describe selective breeding in animal experiments, the incomplete development of organs, and to describe the theoretical weakening of the human species due to a lack of natural selection. Selection can be active, as in the case of laboratory bread strains of mice or fruit flies that are selected for deleterious phenotypes, or passive in the case of the theories of human dysgenesis, where industrial warfare, health care, and social welfare are theorized to cause the dysgenesis. Human dysgenesis is not a topic of significant modern scientific research, but appears occasionally in fiction and the popular media.

Given that human dysgenesis is labeled as a theory in the intro there shouldn't be a need to implicitly question its existence. --Zero g (talk) 13:19, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

This fails to mention that the most widely-hypothesized dysgenic effect in humans is neither due to modern medicine nor to social welfare, but to wars will give you an idea - about 1200 links. In comparison, the same research using "dysgenic" and "IQ" only gets 530 hits, and "dysgenic" and "welfare" only get 875 hits.--Ramdrake (talk) 13:53, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Good point, added industrial warfare to the list and changed modern medicine to health care. --Zero g (talk) 14:10, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Dysgenics is something different from dysgenesis, so all mention of dysgenesis needs to be dropped (all of the lab stuff is about dysgenesis). The key problem with dysgenics is the same problem with eugenics--it entails a value judgment and reflects class or ethnic bias. I propose the following two sentences as the beginning of the lede:

Dysgenics (sometimes cacogenics) studies natural or artificial selection in which genetic traits are selected that humans consider undesirable.[23] Implicit in dysgenics is a value judgment defining what is "undesirable"; this value judgment invariably reflects anthropocentric, ethnocentric, or class bias.

--Anthon.Eff (talk) 15:08, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

I think you've made a valid argument for excluding dysgenesis. I'm not sure about using the term undesirable rather than disabling. Very low IQs are disabling, and so are various other traits that are still considered dysgenic. In a way including the whole 'value judgment' discussion is a pov when the option of using an objective definition is available. I definitely support adding 'cacogenics' since it allows further expansion of the article. --Zero g (talk) 16:23, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Zero g, Alun and I have found no used of "dysgenics" in population genetics. We have provided sources to that effect. The uses to which you refer are in psychology and popular entertainment, e.g., Ulric Neisser: The rising curve: long-term gains in IQ and related measures Washington, DC : American Psychological Association, c1998., ISBN 978-1557985033 and Idiocracy. I wonder if you'd be kind enough to provide sources for its use in population genetics or desist in alleging its use in that manner?

In my opinion, Alun makes a good argument for retaining the first three sentences of the current lede.[24] I think that the last sentence might be replaced by words like the following.

"Dysgenics" is used by eugenicists to mean the opposite of eugenics. The term is used by a minority in psychology and the social sciences, some of whom are alleged by the Southern Poverty Law Center and others to be ideologically motivated, to refer to the supposed decrease in human intelligence due to differential fertility of different cohorts. However, it is not a topic of significant modern scientific research, e.g., in population genetics. The concept of dysgenics in humans appears occasionally in fiction and film although the word is rarely used.

Walter Siegmund (talk) 17:56, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Walter, the third sentence of the current lede needs to go ("Dysgenic mutations have been studied in a variety of animals such as the mouse and the fruit fly"). Alun and I have found that all of the lab work is in fact about dysgenesis. --Anthon.Eff (talk) 22:49, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

For the record, I don't see that "dysgenics" is anything else than the study of dysgenesis-type effects. I don't see that they are unrelated, quite the contrary.--Ramdrake (talk) 23:02, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

One example: Lynn's hypothesis that genes supporting high IQ are falling in frequency in the human population. This is neither a syndrome related to hybridization among closely related species, nor is it the failure of tissue to develop normally. --Anthon.Eff (talk) 02:32, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

No but it is supposed to be an example of artificial selection that is producing a genetically deleterious effect on the population. That's Lynn's whole thesis, that artificial selection is operating in human populations and that this is leading to a genetic deterioration of our species. In Drosophila we have artificial selection producing a deleterious genetic effect in the population. How is that different? Furthermore your contention that hybrid dysgenesis in Drosophila is due to matings between different species is incorrect, these deleterious genetic events are seen with matings between D. melanogaster strains, the only difference is that one strain contains the transposon and the other doesn't, usually the lab bred strain doesn't contain the transposon, so it may be that the strain recently taken from the wild received the transposon since the capture of lab strains. Remember that lab strains of Drosophila may be the descendants of captured wild Drosophila from the century before last, i.e. these strains have been kept in labs for well over a hundred years and the transposons could have been introduced to D.melanogaster species more recently than that in natural populations. Alun (talk) 08:07, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Also, etymologically speaking, "dysgenesis" litterally translates as "bad birth". Therefore, faulty organogenesis, inbreeding depression and the tranmission of deleterious traits (or of traits believed to be deleterious) would all be examples of dysgenesis. The study of dysgenic events (events involving dysgenesis) would be called dysgenics. Now, can we forego the rest of the semantic battles?--Ramdrake (talk) 16:46, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Lynn's book

If you watch this page will have already noticed that I have created an article on the book of the same name. One editor felt it didn't meet the notability guidelines, and has since decided to let it go, but I would like to know if any others feel it should be deleted (I don't want to work on something that's just going to be deleted later on). Richard001 (talk) 10:49, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, considering that Dysgenics is a tiny subject, and there's an article on it, it's being discussed in this author's BLP and there's an article on the book (which is still mostly a stub), I would recommend merging whatever appropriate content the book article may have here (mostly refs to reviews - the list of chapters isn'treally encyclopaedic). Just my tuppence.--Ramdrake (talk) 11:32, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean by 'dysgenics is a tiny subject'. One could easily fill volumes with the literature on it. Please respond regarding the book on its talk page though; I have posted this to several relevant places and would prefer to keep the discussion in one place. Richard001 (talk) 01:17, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Actually, no. There are only a handful of books or papers which purport to be on "dysgenics" (besides the biological studies on lab mice and flies). There are a number of studies which show a negative correlation between education and fertility, but hardly any of them claim the existence of a "dysgenic" trend.--Ramdrake (talk) 17:27, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

There is a huge amount of literature on this sort of thing, it just fizzled out when eugenics became unpopular. They may not have used the word 'dysgenics' back then, but they were certainly talking about the same phenomenon (that's why I think a different name for this article like science of eugenics would be more appropriate). Richard001 (talk) 09:38, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Problem is, if the literature in question doesn't specifically use the word "dysgenics" (or any variant, including "cacogenics"), then using it to support the article is WP:SYN and is not allowed. And BTW, there is already an article on Eugenics, so care must also be taken to avoid another POV fork here.--Ramdrake (talk) 11:34, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

It's clearly just a technicality that the word 'dysgenics' isn't used. It would be like suggesting that early research into any other issue should be disregarded because they used different terminology or hadn't invented a term for what they were talking about at the time. If there is any consensus that we should avoid including such material here I think we need to change the name of the article and its scope to something more inclusive such as the one suggested above. I don't think there is any perfect name for such an article but I definitely think we need to have one. Richard001 (talk) 01:47, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

I might agree that it's a technicality if all or most papers on differential fertility started using the term "dysgenics" after a certain point (say after the publication of Lynn's book). However, the case is that even today only a small minority of papers use the word at all, and these are papers related to Lynn and a handful of other researchers. Therefore, one must conclude that putting the word "dysgenics" on papers about differential fertility is meants to impart on them a specific POV. Therefore, we shouldn't qualify papers on differential fertility as papers on dysgenics unless the others specifically use the word, lest we violate WP:SYN.--Ramdrake (talk) 10:15, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Article on intelligence and fertility

I'm not going to start one any time soon, but I think there should be an article on this subject. There seems to have been a lot written about it and I'm surprised we don't have one by now, especially given the amount of material about race and intelligence we have one Wikipedia (there seem to be a whole complex of articles on the subject). Richard001 (talk) 01:14, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Why bother, it would only reproduce what is in this article, isn't that basically what the true believers in the so called "dysgenic trend" in human populations think? That "intelligent" people have less children, that the heritability of "intelligence" means that "intelligence" is caused by genes (even though heritability is not a measure of causation, therefore this is a non sequitur, but they don't care about facts) and therefore the population is getting stupider. How would this article be any different to the dysgenics article? I see this as nothing more than pov-forking. Alun (talk) 11:44, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

The objection has been made that intelligence and fertility was given an undue weight within the scope of this article (making up 2/3rds of the article space) because dysgenic trends can affect other traits than intelligence. Also, various studies on intelligence and fertility cannot be included in this article because they do not use the label 'dysgenics'. Given the wealth of information contained in older versions of this article it'd be relatively easy to create an intelligence and fertility article.

It also would allow the article to reference the I&F article and discuss the dysgenic IQ trend more briefly. --Zero g (talk) 16:50, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

However, this would definitely be argued to be a POV-fork of the Dysgenics article. I would recommend against it. There are numerous studies which show a negative correlation between education and fertility, but indeed few researchers (with the exception of Lynn and a couple others) have argued that they had a deleterious effect on whole-population IQ, even less on long-term survival of civilization.--Ramdrake (talk) 17:21, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Well Zero g, if you think you can write a good neutral article then I don't have any objections, but let's please not create a group of pov-forks, that's my only concern. If it's not a pov-fork and it remains neutral then no problem, though we ought to remember that these are all fringe views and we need to be careful about giving them undue weight. Alun (talk) 17:35, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Naturally the article would be about the phenomenon, and not about the controversial decrease in average IQ. One problem is that some researchers have formulated their results as such, instead of as a correlation.

Regarding my personal involvement, I'm planning to work on non controversial articles after this dispute is settled because the result vs effort ratio isn't worth it for me. --Zero g (talk) 17:50, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Intelligence is only one of many characteristics of humans that could be considered under 'dysgenics'; there are several others like conscientiousness and mental health. Dysgenics can also occur without differential fertilities if there 'natural selection' isn't operating, though that is a minor point. There have been whole books written on intelligence and fertility, and it was a topic that received much attention before the decline in popularity of eugenics. I don't think we could give such a specific topic a very adequate treatment as a mere subsection of this article, though a broader article on correlates of intelligence (there are many other things that could be discussed there that seem to receive very little attention here) is also an option (though they are not mutually exclusive).

The subject closely overlaps with education and fertility and 'socioeconomic class' and fertility, which might also be discussed under one article. There is a large amount of literature on these combined subjects, and summarizing it all here seems like a tall order. Richard001 (talk) 09:35, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Sounds suspiciously like WP:SYN to me. As far as I can see you are saying that "dysgenics" refers to any literature that you classify as leading to a decrease in 'fitness'" irrespective of whether the authors claim to observe a dysgenic trend. I'm at a loss to understand the obsession with human psychology, dysgenics is not about humans and it is not about psychology, though most of the proponents here seem to be fixated exclusively on this narrow anthropocentric concept. The psychologists who seem to be most prominent in this "science" have at best a tenuous grasp of evolution and natural selection as far as I can see. Dysgenics may just as well be applied to domesticated organisms. The fact is that "intelligence" as measured by IQ is increasing in the human population, is direct prima facie evidence the contradicts eugenicist mavericks like Richard Lynn. Frankly there is little or no evidence for "massive" research into this field, no scientific consensus and it seems to be limited to the thinking of sociobiologist selfish gene advocates such as W. D. Hamilton when it does get support from non-psychologists. Most biologists do not accept that genes predetermine human phenotypes, they understand that genes can at best predispose someone to a certain phenotype, but that environmental effects, gene-environment and gene-gene interactions are likely to be predominant.^{[25] [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] [33] [34] [35] [36] [37] [38] [39] [40] [41] [42] [43] [44]} They also understand that it is a fallacy to claim that genes act independently of each other, most genes are pleiotropic, increasing the frequencies of certain genes (eg those thought to be for intelligence) may increase the frequency of undersirable characteristics (eg autism).[45] At least that's what I was taught when I did a degree in genetics in the nineties. "Whatever Richard Dawkins says selection is at the level of the organism and not at the level of the gene", as one of my population genetics lecturers so astutely pointed out. Alun (talk) 17:12, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Unsourced information

The last sentence in the lead should be deleted due to the lack of sources for months, and is indeed untrue. Dysgenics is certainly a topic of research. I am a biologist, and for evolution to work, there must be diversity in populations. This diversity includes intelligence. Verwoerd (talk) 17:13, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your comment. As you can see above, the lede and content are being actively discussed in the aftermath of revert warring, page protection and a request for comment. While you are welcome to participate in the discussion, please seek a consensus before making major changes to the article. Walter Siegmund (talk) 18:23, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

It is WP policy. A statement like that cant stand with no citation for the past few months. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Verwoerd (talk • contribs) 18:58, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

The statement was revised just days ago, and has the backing of the current consensus of editors, while we are discussing ways to better write the intro. Please don't edit war over the article.--Ramdrake (talk) 19:06, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

The situation is indeed a bit strange with the removal of sourced content and the addition of disputed unsourced content. Please support your pov on the talk page consensus discussion rather than getting into a futile edit war with a team of editors. --Zero g (talk) 20:11, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

I think you have mixed up who made the edits. I took away unsourced information, and added sourced information. It isnt just unsourced but wrong to say that dysgenics has yet to be proven in humans. That is disputed at the moment. Many scientists as cited in the sources, including a nobel prize winner, believe they have evidence, but others have said, no... no. Also, the economic-demographic paradox works hand in hand with dysgenics, and that is a proven phenemenon. Verwoerd (talk) 03:53, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Ah yes, the famous nobel prize winner who is not a biologist. Are we to let far right wing nutcases with no biology determine what is biologically sound? I'm a biologist as well, and as far as I can see human dysgenics is little more than right wing political propoganda with a veneer of "science" provided by people who cherry pick the data that best support their preconceived ideas. Ive been reading recently how Richard Lynn chooses his data to get the result he wants and ignores data that do not support his personal political right wing agenda. This is not science, in science results should be able to be independently reproduced, we don't accept cold fusion because no one could reproduce it in the lab, we shouldn't accept human "intelligence" dysgenics, because those who promote it choose their data selectively so as to support their so called "theory". Alun (talk) 07:54, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

I support your argument that 'disputed' is the correct label. To bring you up to speed, several weeks ago Ramdrake invited two of his friends to help him edit this article, and improve it. After claiming to have reached consensus in a RfC (which should be somewhere in the discussion history) the introduction was rewritten and most of the article was deleted.

So how about implementing Verwoerd's suggestion? Also, please stay on topic Alun, this article isn't about conspiracy theories. --Zero g (talk) 22:41, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Again, the consensus is verifiable (although it is spread over 3 sections of the talk page). Please feel free to make another RfC to see if consensus has changed. But you cannot just dismiss it by saying it doesn't exist. If you can show consensus towards the inclusion of this material, I'll certainly abide by it.--Ramdrake (talk) 22:47, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Alright, I'll look into the RfC policies when I have the time, if anyone else wants to go ahead and start an RfC instead please do so. I think the points we should discuss: 1) Article should be mainly about dysgenics as historically used and the introduction should reflect that until a significant biology subsection has been added. 2) Sourced content relevant to the article subject and written in a NPOV manner shouldn't be deleted. 3) cacogenics should be added as an alternative term for dysgenics. --Zero g (talk) 23:31, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Until a source is found that Dysgenics has not been proven, there cant be such a statement in the lead. For your part Alun, to say that there is no diversity in intelligence or that intelligence is a trait that has no selective pressure in humans is something very few biologists will say. The evidence is quite strong that there are reproductive differences between intelligent and less intelligent humans. You can't change a major tenet in Biology just to be politically correct. And please dont say that intelligence is not heredity. There are many sources that state very clearly that the intelligence of a human offspring has a better correlation with the intelligence of his parents than any environmental differences. Verwoerd (talk) 01:20, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Please provide a source which proves that a dysgenic effect in human has been proven,and is accepted by most scientists in the field as such. Dysgenics in humans cannot be considered proven unless someone provides proof, this is basic logic. Please provide the evidence that there are reproductive differences between intelligent and less intelligent humans. Also, I would suggest you read the archives of the Race and Intelligence talk page, as there are a lot of informations there on heredity and intelligence. You sound like you may be mixing up some of the concepts.--Ramdrake (talk) 03:32, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

It's Wikipedia policy to remove statements with no source. There are, in fact, many who call dysgenics a real phenemenon. Others say no. So it is disputed. I'm not going to take one side or the other of the debate on the validity of dysgenics, but there are many reputable scientists who have published papers on this subject which are found in the article itself. I feel that I have been fair on this matter to include all significant viewpoints. If anything, the article has an bias against the existence of dysgenics. Verwoerd (talk) 02:06, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Of course there are "many" (see WP:AWW) who call dysgenics a real "phenomenon", though I don't think "phenomenon" is the right word. Artificial selection for deleterious traits is clearly something that does happen, we select all sorts of organisms that could not possibly survive in a natural environment, mostly these are domestic animals and plants, could a domesticated cow survive in a natural environment? Is it the product of natural selection? Of course not, these have been artificially selected not for "natural fitness", but for human food production. The question then is not one of whether dysgenics is or is not an observable biological reality. The question for academics is whether human populations are undergoing a dysgenic process.

There are many modern medical and social practices that could be considered "dysgenic". Should we treat people with bacterial infections with antibiotics? If we do are we "weakening" our immune systems? Should we allow children to die who can easily be cured from childhood illnesses? What are now considered easy illnesses to cure were once lethal (e.g. measles). Clearly these sorts of diseases kill irrespective of "intelligence", where's the evidence that an increase in "intelligence genes" has had a significant effect on human survival rates in recent centuries? There is none, because there are almost certainly no such things as "intelligence genes". There's the rub, it's the obsession with "intelligence", which is almost certainly significantly less "dysgenic" than many other modern medical/social practices, should we all go and live in caves and refuse to wash, allowing 90% of the population to die of curable diseases just so we can "boost" our immune systems? The real point is that no one knowns what a natural environment is for humans, no one knows the environment for which we evolved. What appears to be a small group of mainly psychologists claim that human "intelligence" is undergoing "dysgenesis", and claim to have evidence. Most other scientists (biologists, anthropologists, other psychologists, sociologists) have met this claim with either outright hostility (see reactions to the Bell Curve) or with supreme indifference (see reactions to Lynn's book).

Part of the question is the reliability of such scientists, for example you say that "reputable" scientists have made this claim, but how reputable is Richard Lynn? He's been criticised for his manipulation of data, for his selection of only data that support his predetermined thesis, for gaining funding from the "hate group" the Pioneer Fund and for contributing to the white supremacist magazine "Mankind Quarterly". For criticism of Lynn's so called "science" see "Behind the Curve" by Leon J. Kamin. Maybe Lynn is so discredited that no reputable scientist feels the need to respond to him? And take a look at these chilling words by Lynn himself, which call for genocide:

What is called for here is not genocide, the killing off of the populations of incompetent cultures. But we do need to think realistically in terms of "phasing out" of such peoples.[46]

To mitigate his words he misdefines genocide. But here's what the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide calls genocide:

..any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

So is a man who has cherry picked data to support a political agenda and who has called for genocide considered reliable? Alun (talk) 07:21, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

I see a significant amount of original research in what you've said. Many I agree with, however, there are scientists who have written papers on dysgenics, and that is what Wikipedia must include. Besides Lynn, there is Shockley, a nobel prize winner who later believed that his research on dysgenics was far more important than what others called his more recognized work. It should also be noted that the economic-demographic paradox is confirmed to be real through raw data, meaning that more intelligent people tend to have less children. Intelligence has also been shown to be hereditary, meaning that on average, there are fewer intelligent humans being born. Verwoerd (talk) 19:25, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Intelligence has not been "shown to be hereditary", that's simply incorrect, no reliable source would make such a claim. There is a genetic component to intelligence, but that's not the same thing as claiming that "intelligence is hereditary", that's like claiming that "speech is hereditary" or "walking is hereditary". If you mean that performance on psychometric scores has a high measured heritability within some populations, then that is correct, but that's not the same as heredity and the claim that this represents evidence that "intelligence" is biologically determined has been roundly debunked, I have numerous sources that discuss the dishonest use of heritability estimates for cognative ability.[47] [48] [49] Furthermore it has been comprehensively shown that when gene x environment interractions exist heritability estimates cannot be sensible measured, all complex human phenotypes have such interractions, I have many sources to support this claim as well.[50] [51] I suggest you might want to find out the difference between heritability and heredity. I also find it amusing that supporters of Shockley always mention his Nobel Prize while never mentioning that he was awarded this for physics and not biology. It's little more than a tenuous appeal to authority, all the more tenuous when the person in question was not an authority on genetics. As for your claims of OR, I don't know what you are talking about, is this an article? No it's not, it's a talk page, Wikipedia policies regarding NOR, NPOV and V apply to articles and not talk pages, so your observation is irrelevant. Alun (talk) 14:17, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

The fact that more educated (or more intelligent) people have less children by no means calls for a conclusion that intelligence levels are declining. Many research papers on the history of this trend seem to indicate this was true as far back as the Middle Ages, possibly even into Antiquity (sending the most learned of each family into a convent or a monastery to become a monk or a nun is very differential on the fertility of the more intelligent, wouldn't you agree?), yet we are here, several centuries later, our civilisation hasn't collapsed and modern measurements show that average IQs are actually rising instead of falling. Also, while there is a correlation that suggests heritability of intelligence, you cannot derive from that that "fewer intelligent humans are being born". Again, empirically, the reverse is being observed. Nobody says that Wikipedia shouldn't include a section on the differential fertility aspect of dysgenics. However, WP:UNDUE forbids us from giving it more relative importance than it should have based on real-world importance -- and that is demonstrably very little. So, we need to use summary style and be succinct.--Ramdrake (talk) 19:36, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

RfC: Inclusion of research on intelligence and fertility

A dispute regarding the importance of work into dysgenic decline of intelligence in human populations. The dispute revolves around whether this research is a fringe theory and whether it has been given undue weight in the article. The RfC is to estimate support for increasing the length of the section on human intelligence dysgenesis. Refactored by Alun (talk) 06:04, 27 June 2008 (UTC) originally posted by: Zero g (talk) 17:15, 25 June 2008 (UTC)[52]

support per above. --Zero g (talk) 17:39, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Comment. When requesting an RfC the rules say Include a brief, neutral statement of the issue below the template (ideally the same statement used in step 3).. The comment above was far from neutral, included wease words ("small group" How small, are they against consensus? I see it about evenly split myself) and biased language ("sourced and NPOV", "not provided sourced material", "nor have they provided sourced proof", "they have deleted all sourced content relating to IQ and fertility" etc. etc.). This is not how to start an RfC. The purpose of an RfC is not to encourage other users to come and support your position, it is not to try and sway others by including bias in the statement of the dispute and it is not to move any content dispute to another forum. This RfC statement displayed bad faith and the statement was a clear attempt to influence the result of the RfC before it's even begun. I don't know how this should be dealt with, but I'm at least going to reword the statement above to be more neutral. Alun (talk) 06:02, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

comment.I've updated the description with your criticism in mind. Your replacement text was inappropriate because it changed the motivation behind the RfC as well as the conditions that led to the RfC. --Zero g (talk) 23:55, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

comment. I have changed this again because I've just noticed you changed it back. You are in breach of guidelines by not introducing this in a neutral way. Content RfC's should not be used to make comments about other editors. Stick to content discussions. Breach this guideline again and I'll consider opening a user RfC regarding your tendentious editing and pov-pushing. Alun (talk) 08:08, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Oppose while there is a body of research supporting a negative correlation between education level and fertility (education level being sometimes used as a proxy for intelligence), very few of these studies relate to the "intelligence dysgenic trend" hypothesis as advanced by Lynn (see this article and Dysgenics (book)), therefore linking the two would constitute a violation of WP:SYN. Furthermore, "dysgenic", "dysgenesis" and related terms are terms used for laboratory experiments commonly conducted on mice and flies where crosses are deliberately made to express deleterious genes [53]. "Dysgenics" as envisioned by Richard Lynn has a handful of reviews, few adherents to the hypothesis and few hits [[54]] and therefore would qualify as WP:FRINGE under the basic definition of "a scientific theory which isn't mainstream". Therefore, devoting space in the article to studies which a few scientists claim are related to "dysgenics" when sometimes the very authors of these studies do not even make the claim is also a violation of WP:UNDUE, adding undue weight to a hypothesis which constitutes only a minor part of what can be called "dysgenics".--Ramdrake (talk) 18:15, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Support Whether one personally believes in this or not, it is

a)sourced in a third-party journal, which is the most preferred source.

b)an area that is of considerable research. There are thousands of articles on varying reproductive rates compared with intelligence in humans. Contrary to what you have mentioned, a random search of "fertility and intelligence" produces hundreds of thousands of hits. [55]

Verwoerd (talk) 23:29, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Comment: however, as I mentioned, less than 1% of these links contain the word "dysgenic". Saying that this is dysgenics when the authors don't even mention it is synthesis, as differential fertility rates aren't generally understood in academia as having a meaningful long-term effect on population IQ, and synthesis is not allowed at Wikipedia. Also, publication in a journal, even a peer-reviewed journal, doesn't ensure notability. Also, I would suggest that you limit your search at least to Google scholar (as opposed to Google in general), as this usually excludes blogs and personal web sites, which are usually inadmissible as reliable sources as per Wikipedia policy.--Ramdrake (talk) 00:08, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Comment. Verwoerd, the issue is not about "fertility and intelligence", it's about "dysgenics". A paper can discuss the relative differential fertility of high IQ people to low IQ people without assuming that the trend is "dysgenic". These are not necessarily related and to conflate them would be a synthesis. If an article specifically claims that the differential fertility between high and low IQ people is dysgenic, then we can cite it in this article. If the article simply notes the differential fertility of high and low IQ people without making reference to dysgenic trends, then it's not relevant to the article, and mention of the paper in support of dysgenic trends would constitute a synthesis. Remember to cite sources correctly we must report the conclusions of the people who wrote the paper, and not cite papers in support of dysgenic trends when the pepers themselves do not make mention of dysgenics. Your other point is well taken, but this is not about not including any mention of intelligence and dysgenics in humans, it's about the scale of the section. Given the relative paucity of papers discussing specifically dysgenic trends for intelligence there seems to be little evidence to support a long section, a single paragraph should suffice. Furthermore this is really an extension of the eugenics article, so to a certain degree an overly long section could be seen as a pov-fork. Alun (talk) 08:06, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Oppose The article includes a brief description of the use cited in accordance with WP:UNDUE. The term is rarely mentioned in the modern sciences of genetics, evolution, biology or population genetics and this is supported by sources (see article).

To investigate recent use of "dysgenics" in the sense of genetic deterioration in modern populations, I searched for citations of Lynn's 1996 book, "Dysgenics,Genetic deterioration in modern populations" using Google Scholar, a good tool for this purpose.[56][57][58] I considered papers published after 2000, not by Lynn and not book reviews, i.e., independent research citing Lynn's book. I found three papers/books by Kevin MacDonald, a psychologist; MacDonald (2006) "An evolutionary perspective on human fertility", Population & Environment,[59] MacDonald and Hershberger (2004), "Theoretical Issues in the Study of Evolution and Development" in "Evolutionary Perspectives on Human Development",[60] MacDonald (2002) "Conclusion: Whither Judaism and the West?" in "The Culture of Critique: An Evolutionary Analysis of Jewish Involvement in Twentieth-Century Intellectual and Political Movements",[61]

The other papers appear to be mostly papers on psychology, education and archaeology. In reverse chronological order, they are Shatz (2008) IQ and fertility: A cross-national study, Intelligence, [62] Ramsden (2007) "A differential paradox: The controversy surrounding the Scottish mental surveys of intelligence and family size", Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences,[63], MacEachern (2006), Africanist archaeology and ancient IQ: racial science and cultural evolution in the twenty-first century, World Archaeology,[64] Nunes (2006) "Deafness, Genetics and Dysgenics" Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy,[65] Cocodia et al. (2003), Evidence that rising population intelligence is impacting in formal education, Personality and Individual Differences, [66] Meisenberg (2003) "IQ Population Genetics: It’s not as Simple as You Think", Mankind Quarterly,[67] Howard (2001), Personality and Individual Differences, "Searching the real world for signs of rising population intelligence",[68], Geary and Flinn (2001), Evolution of Human Parental Behavior and the Human Family", Parenting,[69], Thienpont (2001), "Intelligentie, genetica, en de samenleving" in "Biologie van de geest: psychologie en pedagogiek door de genetica u",[70]

The paper by Meisenberg appears in Mankind Quarterly, "a notorious journal of 'racial history' founded, and funded, by men who believe in the genetic superiority of the white race", and not a journal of biological science or population genetics despite the title of the paper. (See wikilinked article for the quotation source and more information of this publication of the Pioneer Fund). I was unable to identify any of the authors of the papers as biologists or geneticists. I don't know if the papers listed use the term "dygenics" other than to cite Lynn's book; some may violate WP:SYN cited by Ramdrake above. I think "fringe" is an accurate description of its use in this sense. Walter Siegmund (talk) 05:16, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Comment: Just so everybody knows, I have mentioned the existence of this RfC on the Fringe Theories Noticeboard.--Ramdrake (talk) 10:38, 26 June 2008 (UTC)
Comment: Mindful of the fact that journal articles are often cited more commonly than books, I found two more published papers on dysgenics in the sense of Lynn (1996) to add to the list above. A search for citations of Lynn and Van Court (2004)[71] finds Johnson et al. (2007) "Fluctuating asymmetry and general intelligence: No genetic or phenotypic association", Intelligence,[72] and Dollinger et al. (2008) "Which factors best account for academic success: Those which college students can control or those they cannot?", Journal of Research in Personality.[73] I found no additional post-2000 papers searching for citations of Vining (1982).[74]

These two papers are by psychologists. I think this list of 11 papers and 3 books, published post-2000, that cite Lynn's work on dysgenics is fairly complete. The average publication rate of journal articles over the seven year period is less than two per year. Dominated by psychologists and educators, the authors of these papers appear to have no particular expertise or training in population genetics and may be unfit to make or evaluate the claims of dysgenics (Lynn, 1996). In this century, I find no evidence that ideas of Lynn (1996) have been cited by the population genetics community that would be most suited to credibly evaluate such claims. Indeed, "fringe" (ideas that depart significantly from the prevailing or mainstream view in its particular field of study — WP:FRINGE) is an apt description of this research. Walter Siegmund (talk) 17:44, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Please read WP:FRINGE carefully, it doesn't provide any basis for the exclusion of sourced material, and actually says the opposite of what you are claiming. Also, there are more than enough academic sources on the subject of dysgenics to establish notability. --Zero g (talk) 18:51, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

WP:FRINGE says that, "In order to be notable enough to appear in Wikipedia, a fringe idea should be referenced extensively, and in a serious manner, in at least one major publication, or by a notable group or individual that is independent of the theory." I agree that dsygenics in the sense of Lynn (1996) is a fringe idea that is notable. A few psychologists and educators who appear to be independent of the theory have cited Lynn in peer-reviewed journals. Consequently, it may be, and is, included in the article. As Ramdrake and Elonka point out, content based on sources that do not use the term may not included in the article. That material has been removed. That is in accordance with relevant guidelines and policies. Please review WP:SYN and WP:OR. Walter Siegmund (talk) 20:24, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

For the people who aren't familiar with the deleted content, WP:SYN does not apply to the deleted content because all sources used the term dysgenic and were as said before, relevant to the article. I see we're going from WP:FRINGE to WP:UNDUE to WP:SYN to WP:OR, wouldn't this behavior generally be considered as WP:Wikilawyering ? --Zero g (talk) 13:14, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Not at all. Several objections were raised, all based in policy (as per above), and many were backed with citation analysis to prove WP:FRINGE and WP:UNDUE mostly, as the RfC accused editors of not sustaining these points. Now that the point has been made again and sustained, you can hardly accuse editors of the opposing viewpoint of wikilawyering, as they are merely addressing the issues you raised, as per your request. The truth of the matter is, there are very few differential fertility studies which explicitly mention dysgenics, and that alone makes the subject fringe, even though differential fertility studies by themselves are a legitimate field of endeavour. One just needs to be careful not to mix both.--Ramdrake (talk) 13:38, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Stick to sources that refer to dysgenics. If reliable sources use that term, then information from those sources can be included in the Wikipedia article. But if we have another source that doesn't say dysgenics, but someone says, "it's obvious that this article is talking about dysgenics, even though it never uses the term", then no, that source is not appropriate. Just stick to the actual dysgenics sources that explicitly use the term. If there are such sources that discuss fertility research in the context of dysgenics, then yes, that information is probably appropriate to use as a source. --El on ka 19:11, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

The deleted sources and content all referred to dysgenics and didn't fall under WP:SYN. --Zero g (talk) 13:16, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

I beg to differ. The version that is preferred by Zero g and that is cited in the RfC, just now refactored by Alun in accordance with guidelines, is that of April 29.[75][76] The last three paragraphs are based primarily on sources that do not use the term "dysgenics".--Walter Siegmund (talk) 15:41, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Oppose PubMed Central has a whole 5 (that's five) papers listed for a search of "dysgenics" [77] I don't see how that can be interpreted in any other way to to indicate that this is not a very important topic for research. On the other hand PubMed central has 21145 articles on intelligence.[78] The sister site PubMed has 2 (that's two) articles for "dysgenics" and 43411 for intelligence. Google scholar gives a mere 320 hits for dysgenics (many are reviews of Lynn's book (sometimes the same review on more than one site), few are actually research into intelligence and dysgenics, (e.g. one is about the dysgenics of "war and alcohol" [79]),[80] whereas Google scholar produces 3,390,000 hits for intelligence.[81] No contest, this is a very fringe area of research and warrants only a brief mention in the article. This indicates to me that scientific articles on intelligence are rarely, if ever linked to dysgenics. Alun (talk) 07:51, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

How did this become a vote? Only papers specifically mentioning dysgenics can be used. Linking fertility and inteligence could just as easily be called eugenics (i know plenty of people who hate smart types!). Stupidity is clearly not a deleterious trait in many cases. (How can it even be defined as deleterious if it results in greater reproductive sucess?) Assuming it is dysgenics is original synthesis.Yobmod (talk) 11:02, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Removal of sourced information

I am concerned about an edit such as this one,[82] which appears to be removing a large amount of sourced information from the article. What exactly is the rationale for this? Could someone please point me at the discussions which allow this kind of removal? Thanks, El on ka 17:34, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

This is basically what was discussed in the last RfC (now archived), and is now being discussed in the current RfC. The main concerns are ones of WP:FRINGE, WP:UNDUE and WP:SYN. Not all of these references refer specifically to "dysgenics", and "dysgenics" as the hypothesis that differential feritlity leads to a lowering of whole-population IQ, is a fringe idea (ignored by mainstream, as many searches listed above demosntrate), but also the fact remains that "dysgenics" is above and before all the study of hybridization done in order to express deleterious genes in a population of (usually) lab subject. Therefore, a long section on differenteial fertility studies in the article on dysgenics violates WP:UNDUE, and also WP:SYN if those studies don't specifically mention "dysgenics".--Ramdrake (talk) 18:19, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

I agree that articles that are not about the actual subject, are questionable as sources. But based on even a quick glance,[83] it would seem that articles with titles such as "On the possibility of the reemergence of a dysgenic trend with respect to intelligence in American fertility differentials" and "New evidence of dysgenic fertility for intelligence in the United States", are clearly about "dysgenics". So why were they removed? --El on ka 18:26, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

As per WP:UNDUE Articles that compare views should not give minority views as much or as detailed a description as more popular views, and will generally not include tiny-minority views at all., the additions would expand a section devoted to a tiny-minority view of what dysgenics is to far beyond its real-world importance. Please also take a look in the archives at the old RfC (and the two section immediately following it, which also contain relevant commentary). This was also backed by consensus.--Ramdrake (talk) 18:31, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

It seems to me that these are perfectly acceptable sources. The question is whether we need a detailed discussion of every single paper published about dysgenics. As far as I can see a simple statement saying something like "Evidence for a dysgenic trend for intelligence in the US population has been presented in several research papers" would suffice, then the papers mentioned can be used to support the statement. I don't see any need to go into detail regarding every single paper, we're writing an encyclopaedia article and not a book, a review of the literature or a review article. The simple bare claim can be made in a sentence, then it can be supported by the citations mentioned. Is there a good rationale for including so much detail? I tend to think that when we use primary sources it's best to stick to the conclusions of the authors rather than their results, using primary sources can be problematic, I've used primary sources extensively myself in subjects for which I have some knowledge (for example genetics), but I try to stick to the basic conclusions of the sources, rather than the detail of the discussion or any data analysis/raw data included in the source. After all, anyone interested in finding out the detail of the paper can always go and read it in it's totality, isn't that why we cite sources in the first place? In any case it is always preferable to use a secondary source where available, this should give a better breadth of academic thinking on the subject as a whole. Alun (talk) 18:47, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Ramdrake, your core argument seems to be flawed. How is dysgenics a fringe theory, and how is rejection of dysgenics mainstream? Many scientists believe in the existence of dysgenics, and the data at this point seems to show that more intelligent people reproduce at a lower rate.Verwoerd (talk) 19:27, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

What "many" scientists believe is neither here nor there, it's certainly not an argument that the theory is not fringe, (and for articles see avoid weasel words). "Many" scientists believe in intelligent design, it doesn't make it a non-fringe theory. According to Wikipedia's own guidelines dysgenics is fringe because it is not does not have scientific consensus.

We use the term fringe theory in a very broad sense to describe ideas that depart significantly from the prevailing or mainstream view in its particular field of study.[3] Examples include ... ideas which purport to be scientific theories but have not gained scientific consensus,from Wikipedia:Fringe theories

The data certainly do show that more educated people reproduce at a slower rate than less well educated people, but the validity of dysgenics doesn't solely depend on reproduction rates, it depends on the validity of the highly controversial claim that "intelligence" is largely the product of genetic endowment and relatively independent of environment (i.e. Biological determinism "..there is currently no support for strict biological determinism in the field of genetics or development, and virtually no support among geneticists for the strong thesis of biological determinism"), something that is certainly not the scientific consensus. The main problem is the conflation of heredity with heritability. Heritability is the contribution of genes and genetic/environmental covariance to the variation within a population, heritability is not a measure of a trait, it is a measure of a population within an specific environment. Likewise heritability does not measure genetically determined variation, but the effect of genes on variation, even when this effect is indirect. Or as Ned Block says, it one lived in a society where red haired children were beaten about the head daily, then the low intelligence of red haired children would be genetically determined (because red hair is genetically determined) and highly heritable, but it is still an environmental effect, this is an indirect effect of genes. The conflation of heritability with heredity, i.e. the conflation of genetic contribution to variation with genetic contribution to a trait is the main fallacy of hereditarians. Furthermore it is apparent that by changing environments we can dramatically affect the performance of populations and individuals in, for example IQ tests. It is well known that practicing IQ tests raises one's score dramatically. Heritability tells us little or nothing about how genes and environment affect traits, and it was never meant to, it has bee sorely misused by "scientists" with a right wing ideological axe to grind.^[84] We still know next to nothing about how environments affect genes or vice versa, and no genes for "intelligence" have ever been found, probably because none exist. It's fringe because it is not a consensus, it's not a consensus because it's a theory that is full of holes and that uses dubious claims derived from dubious data using dubious statistical techniques. ^{[85] [86] [87]} Alun (talk) 20:34, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Elonka and Verwoerd are right in this case. First of all, no one here has established with even one source that dysgenics is fringe. The source they mentioned didn't say that dysgenics isnt a topic of significant scientific research, only that it's in fiction. I did a search myself, and I feel that POV pushing has been evident on both sides, although Ramdrake and his followers seem to be more egregious. EgraS (talk) 22:21, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

I have already supplied, several times (just check the talk archives), sources to the effect that eugenics as a whole and as a science, is fringe. Furthermore, several other editors here have done their homework on searches related to "dysgenics" in science-related search engines, only to find that there is in total only a handful of peer-reviewed papers related to "dysgenics. Now, that is fringe.--Ramdrake (talk) 22:29, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Like Socrates may have said, how about the opposition? I dont see them doing any better. Unless if a very mainstream source says specifically that dysgenics is a fringe view does it make it so. You're trying to connect too many dots here. I know there was even one article by the major publishers that said intelligence is inherited. In the scientific community at the moment, the nature vs nurture debate seems to have settled in the former camp's hands. EgraS (talk) 22:32, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

I think I'll let Alun answer this one; he's the biologist and geneticist. I'm just a lowly neurobiologist and physiologist. :) --Ramdrake (talk) 22:56, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

I don't know of any reputable biologist, anthropologist, geneticist or psychologist who would claim that "intelligence is inherited", not even Jensen, Lynn or Rushton claim that. Anyone who claimed that "intelligence is inherited" would be a laughing stock. No genes for intelligence have been identified, something indispensable to any claim that intelligence is inherited, and to claim that intelligence is inherited is to deny any environmental contribution whatsoever. No it's just incorrect to say that anyone would make that claim. There is no doubt that genes contribute to intelligence, but no one knows how much genes contribute or how much they interract with environments to produce a measurable phenotype. Probably gene-gene and gene-environment interactions are far too complex to reduce to a simple x% genetic 1-x% environmental dichotomy. As for the challenge that "no one here has established with even one source that dysgenics is fringe", that's not relevant. We do not need a source to claim that it's a fringe science, all we need is the definition of fringe science from the WP:FRINGE content guideline: We use the term fringe theory in a very broad sense to describe ideas that depart significantly from the prevailing or mainstream view in its particular field of study.[3] Examples include conspiracy theories, ideas which purport to be scientific theories but have not gained scientific consensus. It's clear that there is no consensus in the academic community regarding dysgenics and to make the claim that it is not a fringe science you need to provide evidence that there is a consensus amongst mainstream academics in the fields of biology, genetics, anthropology and psychology. You need to provide evidence for a positive, not demand evidence for a negative. I'd add further that the sources used to support the concept are published in journals that are far from what would be considered high prestige high impact factor journals. To establish non-fringe status one needs to show that an overwhelming majority of expert scientific opinion supports the theory and that would require publication of the theory in high impact factor journals. Scientific consensus theories might include Climate change, Big Bang theory, Recent African origin, Atomic theory, Theory of relativity, Plate tectonics, Evolution etc. These are well established consensus theories, and what makes them consensus theories is that nearly everyone has heard of them, because thet are discussed a great deal by scientists and taught in schools and colleges. Dysgenics comes nowhere near this level of scientific consensus, and I find it amazing that anyone would claim that it does, it's a fringe theory by Wikipedia standards of defining a fringe theory, we use Wikipedia standards here, we do not need a source that states "this theory meets Wikipedia standards for fringe science", it's obvious that it's fringe science from the poor quality and paucity of the sources cited. Alun (talk) 13:33, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

The issue as I see it isn't about the quantity of information that's being removed, it's that reliable sources are being removed. I am also concerned that editors at this article seem to be quicker to do wholesale reverts, rather than actually try to change the text, towards finding a compromise version. What I would recommend, the next time that someone adds reliably sourced information is: (1) Don't revert good faith edits. Instead, if there is disagreement about how much information is being included, try to change the text to something that is a compromise version. Then the next editor, if they don't like that, can try to change the text again, and each editor can try to tweak things to try and find a middle ground. And again: (2) Do not remove relevant reliable sources. You can change them, move them, condense the information from them, add other sources near them, that's all fine. But don't just delete them. Thanks, El on ka 23:22, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

May I remind you that this article is about dysgenics, so a source that claims eugenics is a pseudo-science would be WP:SYN when applied to the dysgenics article, in the case of the google searches, WP:OR applies and it's imo an entirely inappropriate argument given the various sources that are available on the subject. I also don't think it's appropriate to tell someone to dig up a link to a 200 page pdf that refers to 'dysgenics' twice in a far from meaningful manner, and certainly not in a way that is relevant to this discussion.

I also have concerns about the inclusion of the term 'dysgenesis', given no source been provided that shows that dysgenesis is considered the same as dysgenics. One source has been provided that used dysgenesis where dysgenics should have been used, but given that source didn't state it used dysgenesis as a synonym for dysgenics.. including that source as 'proof' would be WP:SYN. It should be noted that 'dysgenic' seems to be used as a noun for 'dysgenesis', so possibly you're confusing two different terms here Ramdrake? --Zero g (talk) 23:43, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Currently everything that doesn't suit your tastes seems to be a WP:SYN. You may "remind" all you like, but citing a source that states that eugenics is a pseudoscience is not a synthesis, even if it is cited in this article. A synthesis would be to take several sources and synthesise an original research from them. Like taking articles about human genetic variation and claiming that they "prove" race exists as a biological reality, even when the papers make no mention of "race". That is a synthesis, and it is one I have had to deal with several times over the last few years. What would be a synthesis would be to say that because these sources call "eugenics" a pseudoscience, then that claim also applies to "dysgenics". But if one were to include in this article the claim that "eugenics" is a pseudoscience, then that would not be a synthesis. What might be a synthesis would be something like, "Dysgenics is the antonym of the pseudoscientific study of eugeics". But simply citing a source that claims that eugenics is pseudoscience in this article is not in and of itself a synthesis. Alun (talk) 08:26, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Simply citing articles about human genetic variation in a race article is not in and of itself a synthesis. --Zero g (talk) 14:24, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

I agree, and have never claimed that it is. What I said was "claiming that they 'prove' race exists as a biological reality, even when the papers make no mention of 'race'" is a synthesis. See the difference? Citing a source and saying what the source says is not a synthesis. Trying to say the source says something it doesn't say is a synthesis. So if we cite a source here that says that eugenics is pseudoscience, then that's not a synthesis. If we cite this source and say that because it says eugenics is a pseudoscience, then dysgenics must also be a pseudoscience, that is a synthesis. See the difference? When we accurately report what a source says, it's not a synthesis, when we "interpret" sources, then it is a synthesis. So if one cites a source here as supporting human intellectual dysgenesis just because the source reports a higher birth rate amongst those with a low IQ, that's a synthesis if the source makes no claims about a dysgenic trend. Alun (talk) 17:06, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

As mentioned previously, this is what the current RfC is about. I understand the confusion however because Wobble decided to rewrite the description of the RfC (without proper notice on my talk page) in a manner that entirely misrepresented the original motivation for the RfC. I've restored the original description.

May I mention that the deleted content was the result of over a year worth of editing and tweaking. Hence I think the right thing to do is to restore it in its entirety and work from there, rather than have to start from scratch. --Zero g (talk) 23:49, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

I agree. The pervious version without the full-scale reverts was the longest-standing one. That massive revert got no attention nor consensus, so that should really be the starting point. EgraS (talk) 02:58, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

I just went through the whole article again, removing (as per WP:SYN and Elonka's guidelines) differential fertility studies discussions which did not mention dysgenics, and removing some superfluous text to make these sections of the article less verbose. However, I left the references to "dysgenics" intact.--Ramdrake (talk) 11:04, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

It seems to me to be reasonable to include references to dysgenics as Elonka advises and as your version appears to do so. At the same time, it avoids giving undue weight to the mostly ignored research of the psychologists, Vining, Lynn and Van Court. Walter Siegmund (talk) 14:33, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, that's what I was striving to do. Now, if anybody has issues with the editing I've done, I'm open to discussion here. I would simply like to avoid a wholesale revert of an editing session that took me a significant amount of time.--Ramdrake (talk) 14:39, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

You've deleted material that did in fact reference dysgenics as being WP:SYN. I'll go through it when I get the chance. I also suggest the disputed WP:UNDUE claims in a separate topic.--Zero g (talk) 14:49, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, there may have been a couple of instances where the passage removed did have a ref to an article which did mention "dysgenics", but in all cases that I can remember, the source linked was already linked from somewhere else in the article, and the sentence wasn't specifically about dysgenics.--Ramdrake (talk) 17:09, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

I see that there are some references which are effectively duplicated, except for page number. A better way to handle these, is to list the full reference in a lower reference section, and then have the actual "inline" reference only refer to a summarized identifier, and a page number. For an example, see WP:CITE#Shortened notes. If a similar system is adopted here, it won't look as much like someone is deleting "an entire reference", but will instead be clear that it's just a particular page reference that is being removed/changed. --El on ka 18:21, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Removal of sourced content, take two

After the restoration of the sourced content by EgraS, and an edit spree by Ramdrake, all of it has been deleted again.. is this a joke of some sort? --Zero g (talk) 15:07, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Can you be more specific about what "it" is? --El on ka 16:35, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

1. EgraS restores the section on Research on differential fertility [88] as per talk.

2. Ramdrake agrees to edit from that version in the history: [89]

3. After 10 edits by Ramrake the Research on differential fertility has been complete removed again. [90]

This is getting very annoying. --Zero g (talk) 18:56, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

That would be because about 99% of the research on differential fertility (my estimate, actually) doesn't mention dysgenics at all, and that citing research on differential fertility as supporting dysgenics when it doesn't even mention it is synthesis and not permitted, as I believe Elonka has already pointed out.--Ramdrake (talk) 20:09, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

It has been pointed out that Vining's, Lynn's, Retherford and Sewell's research all use the term dysgenic or dysgenics, sources which you have removed. Could you stop your tendentious editing? --Zero g (talk) 15:30, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

Are you claiming WP:SYN because the sources use the term 'dysgenic' and not the term 'dysgenics'? Even though the sources are obviously referring to dysgenics as the term is described? If that's the case, please read WP:DICK. --Zero g (talk) 16:06, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

Dysgenesis

According to the dictionary dysgenics and dysgenesis are two different concepts and hence should have separate articles. The confusion stems that sources about dysgenesis sometimes use dysgenic as an adjective, the more common adjective seeming to be dysgenetic. I'll be bold and remove the content relating to dysgenesis until a source is provided that states that dysgenesis is used in the same sense as dysgenics. Possibly an article on dysgenesis can be created by Ramdrake or Wobble given the interest they've shown in this subject. --Zero g (talk) 00:15, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Do you mean adjective? I have certainly seen 'dysgenic' used as the adjectival form of 'dysgenesis'. Richard001 (talk) 01:32, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Zero g, please provide reliable sources that say dysgenics and dysgenesis are two different concepts. Etymologically speaking, that doesn't sound right. You cannot proclaim that these are different things without source. This is POV.--Ramdrake (talk) 02:28, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Dysgenesis is used to refer to the population undergoing "deterioration", dysgenic is the adjective, so "this population is undergoing dysgenesis" or "this is a dysgenic trend". Dysgenics is simply the study of the causes of dysgenesis. I don't think there's any problem with this, we have sources to back up all these uses, see above. Alun (talk) 13:39, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Doh, I meant adjective Richard.

You're wrong Ramdrake, you're the one who needs to provide proof that dysgenics and dysgenesis are the same concepts. I cannot edit the Albert Einstein article and claim his real name was Bilbo Baggins, next argue that anyone who disagrees should provide an authoritative source that it is not so, which will be close to impossible to do. The burden of proof is on you, I checked several dictionaries, and none of them state that dysgenics and dysgenesis are synonyms. --Zero g (talk) 14:57, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

No. You cannot claim that both words have different meanings and then demand that other editors disprove your position. Please either support your position, or present it merely as your POV, without an appeal to authority.--Ramdrake (talk) 16:58, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Definition of Dysgenics and the Definition of Dysgenesis. Clearly the terms stand for different things, and given they have a different name they should be presented in different articles, even when researchers use the adjective 'dysgenic' for both terms. To avoid confusion a WP:Disambiguation page could be created for the dysgenic article that suggests going to either the Dysgenics or Dysgenesis article. --Zero g (talk) 19:01, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Then, consider these Google scholar searches, restricted to the fields of biology and medicine: first dysgenesis, then dysgenic and finally dysgenics, from which I first filtered out the names of three of four researchers like Lynn, Van Court, Shockley and Bouchard (who wrote a review of Lynn's book). What remains from the three searches are articles talking mostly about fruit flies and mice and other lab animals. It is true that "dysgenesis" refers more commonly to faulty gonadal organogenesis than other types of faulty organogenesis, the Merriam-Webster definition obviously doesn't cover all the academic uses, as my search exemplifies.--Ramdrake (talk) 20:24, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Your original research is pointless. Can you please give us a source that clearly states that dysgenesis is in fact dysgenics.

Your google search for dysgenics, that doesn't apply to negative selection, gives 9 sources. Given there are 20,900 results for dysgenesis it's obvious the usage of dysgenics are typing errors and it's clear those 9 links are refering to dysgenesis, and not to dysgenics. --Zero g (talk) 20:54, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm not trying to be sarcastic here, but can you explain to me how one can mistype "dysgenesis" into "dysgenics"? Also, please note that your digging up two definitions of "dysgenics" and "dysgenesis" would qualify as OR just as much as my Google searches. It's very much a case of the kettle calling the pot black.--Ramdrake (talk) 21:11, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

It certainly is not, because I'm not the one trying to incorporate my original research into the article. --Zero g (talk) 15:46, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

In his book "The Emperors New Clothes:Biological Theories of Race at the Millenium" the geneticist Joseph L. Graves uses the word dysgenesis to specifically refer to the intellectual genetic weakening of populations. He uses it in reference to Francis Galton's book Hereditary Genius and also states Intellectual dysgenesis, for Galton, resulted from the less intelligent classes reproducing at rates higher than the more intelligent classes. p. 98 ISBN 0-8135-3302-3 That's a direct quote from a reliable source. Alun (talk) 18:13, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

He however doesn't state that dysgenesis and dysgenics are the same, in fact, he randomly seems to use either dysgenesis and dysgenics. Using that single odd source to make that assumption, next use other sources that are clearly about biological dysgenesis, is WP:SYN, or in this particular case taking the history of this article into account, what appears to be an extreme form of pov pushing. --Zero g (talk) 19:44, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

However, the simplest possible conclusion from seeing that he uses the words interchangeably, is that he considers them interchangeable, i.e. synonyms. I don't see synthesis there, nor extreme POV pushing.--Ramdrake (talk) 20:04, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

No, that would be synthesis, so you do need a source that states they are synonyms, because other authors may not use the terms interchangeably. That is Wikipedia policiy, otherwise editors with bad intentions will make all sorts of weird illogical claims to push a particular pov, or if they have an anti-pov for that matter, fill up a page with properly sourced nonsense to make something they don't want people to read less noticeable on the article. --Zero g (talk) 20:25, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

No, this just means that Graves considers the terms interchangeable. I would also consider them interchangeable, and so would many other editors here. Without a definitive, sourced statement one way or another, it may come down to editorial consensus decision.--Ramdrake (talk) 20:28, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

(unindent) Zero g. I find your claim of synthesis very peculiar. Possibly synthesis means something different to you than it's standard use on Wikipedia. Graves uses the term dysgenesis to mean "the genetic weakening of a population". I don't think anyone has ever claimed that dysgenesis and dysgenics mean the same thing, they clearly do not, I've certainly never made such a claim. Dysgenesis can be used to describe the genetic deterioration of a population (as Graves uses it), this is not what dysgenics means, dysgenics is the study of the causes of such such a deterioration. Dysgenic is simply the adjective of dysgenesis as in "this is a dysgenic process". I can find no evidence that Graves uses the terms dysgenesis and dysgenics "randomly", do you have evidence to support this claim? Here's some examples of his use of the terms dysgenesis, dysgenics and dysgenic:

"Together Herrnstein and Murray resurrected the ideas of the innate cognitive inferiority of African Americans, the declining national IQ (dysgenesis), the lower intellectual quality of immigrants, and the wastefulness of environmental solutions to these problems..."(p. 163)
"It was this type of selection scenario that Francis Galton was refering to in Herredity Genius when he raised the specture of dysgenesis" (p. 113)
"He [Jensen] warned that the United States was in danger of intellectual dysgenesis owing to social welfare programs fostering a high African American reproductive rate." (p. 161)
"This idea contains the seed of dysgenic theories, which suggest that greater reproduction or immigration of genetically inferior populations will result in the overall decline of a nation. Dysgenics, the study of racial degeneration, is essentially a corollary of eugenics, the science of improving the hereditary qualities of a race." (p. 90)

You will observe that his use of the words dysgenics, dysgenesis and dysgenic far from being "random", as you claim, are precise, he uses dysgenesis to describe the genetic weakening of a population (and defines it as such), dysgenic as an adjective of dysgenesis ("dysgenic theories") and dysgenics for "the study of racial degeneration" and not as a description of population degeneration. Whatever your personal opinion regarding Graves use of the words, don't think it's relevant, your complaint that the source is "odd" cuts no mustard, he's a reliable source, and he clearly defines dysgenesis and dysgenics. Alun (talk) 20:37, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

Content fork

Yet another content fork of this article has been started, apparently with no consensus on this page.[91] Walter Siegmund (talk) 15:45, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

I guess you could put the article up for deletion. I'm looking forward to seeing your undoubtedly interesting argumentation - explaining why sources and content about dysgenesis, should be in the dysgenics article. And subsequently, given the great and astounding importance of dysgenesis - information that is actually about dysgenics, is WP:UNDUE, because it outshines the joyous information provided about dysgenesis. I hope I summarize the argument correctly, but if I did it's merely because the entire thing has gotten rather confusing. --Zero g (talk) 16:01, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Please consider rewording your response. It isn't helpful. Walter Siegmund (talk) 16:20, 28 June 2008 (UTC)