Talk:Eyferth study

SES

I would have thought the environmentalists would have looked to the 8-point difference between boys and girls as providing additional validation, that is, low SES mothers being more likely to environmentally influence their daughters along those same lines (poor environment depressing scores), less so than their sons. PЄTЄRS J VЄСRUМВА ►TALK 21:38, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

That's unlikely, because the mixed-race girls had about the same average score as the mixed-race boys. I don't think Flynn, Nisbett or anyone else would consider this study as evidence for the claim that (white) women have a lower IQ than men. Nevertheless, they think that the study provides evidence for environmental causation of race differences. They simultaneously deny and admit that the data are anomalous.--Victor Chmara (talk) 06:22, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

I'll look for more sources that discuss this.

In this regard, by the way, I'll have to figure out what place Wikipedia has in general for specific articles about famous scientific studies or papers. I see the article about Jensen's "How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement?" is currently deleted, but there is a huge secondary literature based on the (Jensen 1969) paper, so I think the case could be made that there should probably be a properly sourced Wikipedia article posted about it. Similar reasoning, I suppose, would extend to Scarr's study, and quite a few of the other famous studies in this field. Thank you for launching the article. Step one for me is to continue to cobble together the Intelligence Bibliography on a subpage of my user page, so that all the editors can more readily look up sources. Then I'll try to do general fix-it-up on noncontroversial parts of articles on related subjects (are there such parts? I'll see) and eventually wade in with more substantive edits. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 22:13, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

I'm generally an inclusionist, since wiki articles don't take much physical space, and I think this is probably worth more than most lists of pokemon characters. But to defend against deletionists, you should look for some news articles which reference this study. There are countless studies (almost all of them) which have been cited by later studies, and most of them don't get wiki articles. But if you can find some news coverage anywhere which covers this as prominent, that will satisfy them. WavePart (talk) 02:34, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Here's Malcolm Gladwell on Eyferth in the New Yorker: [1] He also discusses it in one of his books (it may be the same essay). Here's Nisbett's piece in the NY Times: [2] For comparison, Wikipedia has articles on the Minnesota Transracial Adoption Study and the Milwaukee Project.--Victor Chmara (talk) 06:30, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Those two don't really mention it by name, but do seem to talk about it. Added. WavePart (talk) 08:16, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

The German articles

It seems that Eyferth and colleagues published three papers on this topic between 1959 and 1961, all of them in German. I have no access to them, and my German is a bit, umm, rusty, anyway. Has anyone read those papers or some secondary source that describes what there is in them? Flynn's 1980 book on Jensenism apparently discusses the study at length, but I don't have it, either. In the article, I have cited only the 1959 paper, because that's what Jensen cites as a source for the numbers in the table.--Victor Chmara (talk) 06:42, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

I have library access to the 1959 paper, and perhaps to follow-ups as well. My German is more practiced for reading about linguistics, but I will give this a try. As before, I'll give higher priority for several days simply to updating my Intelligence Citations list on a subpage of my user page. The next sources I'll be going to the library for will mostly be about genetics. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 13:25, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

It would be great if you could have a look at this at some point. I suspect that Eyferth et al. did not study only intelligence but other things as well. The other article is

• Eyferth, K. (1961). Leistungen verschiedener Gruppen von Besatzungskindern in Hamburg-Wechsler Intelligenztest für Kinder (HAWIK). Archiv für die gesamte Psychologie, 113, 224-241.

The third one seems to be a book:

• Eyferth, K., Brandt, U. & Hawel, W. (1960). Farbige Kinder in Deutschland. München: Juventa Verlag.

--Victor Chmara (talk) 14:32, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Kudos

Kudos on adding this material! The more that we can get decent Wikipedia articles on the most important individual articles, the better off we will be. At some point, I hope to re-add the article about Jensen (1969). In the meantime, you should feel free to edit it here. David.Kane (talk) 11:44, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Article uses the wrong Eyferth study

The study cited in the article (Eyferth 1959) is a preliminary report, which (among other tests) examines IQ scores of a smaller group of children (51 mixed race and 25 white). The results of that study are different from the ones reported here and do show a 3 point difference in IQ (mixed race IQ of 96.6 and white IQ of 99.5), albeit a difference which apparently is not statistically significant due to the low sample size. The correct "Eyferth study" that should be used in this article (and from which the data in this article are taken) is "Eyferth, K. (1961). Leistungen verschiedener Gruppen von Besatzungskindern in Hamburg-Wechsler Intelligenztest für Kinder (HAWIK). Archiv für die gesamte Psychologie, 113, 224-241." -- 2A02:810D:2A40:46B8:E508:6BA7:D5C2:88DB (talk) 16:53, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

Hereditarianism section

I feel that Arthur Jensen's hereditarian interpretation should be included. Removing it renders the article less informative.

It's also pointless (and ironic) to have a section titled "Interpretations" and then only present a singular interpretation.

And besides, it there was already had a big discussion about this back in 2010, see comments by User:Ephery and User:WeijiBaikeBianji 40.131.178.46 (talk) 02:56, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

Although this may be a misunderstanding, demonstration of personal preference concerning heritability of IQ interpretation [3] appears to disqualify editorial deletion of hereditarian content from Wikipedia. The standard for encyclopaedic editing is to present affirmative and opposing arguments for any contested proposition/explanation. Richardbrucebaxter (talk) 17:15, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

Any reference to Jensen's views would have to be presented in accordance with WP:FRIND, that is, by non-fringe sources independent of Jensen –– since his views on hereditarianism are decidedly WP:FRINGE per this RfC consensus. @Richardbrucebaxter: It's not clear to me what you are attempting to imply about my prior comment which you've linked to, but if you believe that I have "disqualified" myself in some way then I suggest you take it up at an administrators' noticeboard. As you may know, editors are required to assume good faith unless presented with solid evidence to the contrary. Generalrelative (talk) 18:02, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

Jensen's views are cited elsewhere on Wikipedia without needing to reference "non-fringe [whatever that means] sources independent of Jensen."

See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_race_and_intelligence_controversy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elementary_cognitive_task

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mismeasure_of_Man 72.46.51.6 (talk) 22:42, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

Those "WP:" / all-caps constructions (e.g. WP:FRINGE) are links to policies and guidelines. If you don't know what "non-fringe" means, please follow the link to familiarize yourself with the guideline. And thank you for letting me know about other places where Jensen's fringe views might need to be cleaned out. It's very much appreciated. Generalrelative (talk) 22:58, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

WP:ESDOS states "Don't make snide comments." I believe your last two sentences violate that policy. Mosi Nuru (talk) 07:14, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

They sound earnest to me.

When someone suggests we should violate a policy or guideline in an article with the justification that it is violated in other articles, as you did, it is only natural that those other articles are improved instead of the article itself made worse. See WP:OTHERCONTENT. --Hob Gadling (talk) 09:01, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

It is a sarcastic thank you, and thus an example of taunting or baiting. Mosi Nuru (talk) 14:15, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

I think you are still trying to win a minor point after it is clear that you were wrong. If you have complaints about user behaviour, go somewhere else. This page is for improving the article. --Hob Gadling (talk) 14:42, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

I am a new editor noting what I believe is rude and uncivil behavior by a more senior editor, in a reply to the specific comment that I believe was rude and uncivil. Mosi Nuru (talk) 14:49, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

@Generalrelative Thank you for referencing the RfC on racial hereditarianism. [4] [5] This explains the editorial decision to delete the scientific arguments sourced here. Richardbrucebaxter (talk) 12:14, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Not scientific. --Hob Gadling (talk) 12:54, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Request for comment on hereditarianism subsection

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

(non-admin closure) Before actually closing this, it'll be useful to set down a few points of order. First of all, there were accusations in the comments of canvassing/meatpuppetry. Evidence was provided for those accusations, and I find that evidence convincing. Accordingly, per WP:MEATPUPPET I will give significantly less weight to the !votes of new users or users with very small numbers of edits.

Second, several users were disputing whether or not "hereditarianism" is WP:FRINGE or not. Opponents offered this past RFC which unambiguously finds the topic to be WP:FRINGE. There's not much that can beat that, in my view, except a more recent discussion contradicting it, which supporters couldn't offer. Therefore, going forward I will be treating hereditarianism as WP:FRINGE.

Between these two factors, I find that there is a strong consensus for not restoring the hereditarianism section of the article. Just in terms of raw vote counts, there were far more exclude votes than include !votes from established users. I count only two (maybe three counting an IP) include !votes from users with more than 100 edits. There were many more exclude !votes than that and they were all from established users. And then furthermore, many of the include !votes rested on the presumption that Wikipedia shouldn't treat hereditarianism as fringe, which is already a settled question. In contrast, the exclude position gave several policy based rationales for excluding the material, including arguments based on WP:FRIND and WP:ONEWAY. Loki (talk) 20:28, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

---

Should the "hereditarianism" subsection of "Eyferth study" be restored?

See: Talk:Eyferth_study#Hereditarianism_section Mosi Nuru (talk) 07:05, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Comment: The removal of the section from this article was part of a much larger set of removals from articles about various aspects related to human intelligence, mostly by Generalrelative, for the same reason. The issue needs to be discussed in that wider context. There isn't enough space here to list all the other removals, but these are some of the major examples:

• Nations and IQ: 9 sources removed, including the books Cognitive Capitalism (Cambridge University Press), The Rationality Quotient (MIT Press), and papers published in the journals in the journals Personality and Individual Differences, Intelligence, and Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience. This included six of the eight academic sources cited in the article that were published since 2012.
• Dysgenics: 12 sources removed or rejected [6] [7] [8], including the books The Crumbing Genome (Wiley), An Introduction to Statistical Genetic Data Analysis (MIT Press), The Cambridge Handbook of Intelligence and Cognitive Neuroscience (Cambridge University Press), and papers published in the journals Journal of Biosocial Science, Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and Nature Human Behavior (among others). These removals were discussed here, and in that discussion there clearly was not a consensus for Generalrelative's edits.
• Spearman's Hypothesis: 12 sources removed, including papers published in Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Intelligence, The International Journal of Educational and Psychological Assessment, Child Development, Personality and Individual Differences, Journal of Biosocial Science, and Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

I can try to provide a more complete list of all the removals, if that's needed, but it will take a long time to compile.

The objection that I and others have frequently made to this pattern is that the sources being removed have overall been more recent, more numerous, and of higher quality than those that Generalrelative and others cited to justify the removals. For example, of the ten sources presented here to justify the changes, four were over 20 years old, and another two did not mention intelligence or IQ. According to WP:PARITY, fringe theories should be covered as much as their coverage can be cited to sources of similar quality to those that criticize the theories. The question of whether these removals, and the sources the removals are based on, are consistent with the requirements of WP:PARITY, is the central issue.

Last year the largest removals were covered in an article in Quillette, which lists them in the table near the end of that article. The issue went on to be discussed by several prominent journalists and academics, including Jerry Coyne [9] Ed West [10] and Andrew Sullivan. [11]. The world seems to be closely watching whether Wikipedia editors are capable of following WP:PARITY on these articles.

I and Ferahgo the Assassin both tried to start RFCs about these removals, but both got shut down before they could reach a consensus. Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_338#RFC_on_sourcing_in_relation_to_race_and_intelligence Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view/Noticeboard/Archive_89#RFC_on_sourcing_decisions_in_the_R&I_topic_area But maybe this time, the community can have a discussion about whether they support this approach to sourcing, and the effect it evidently is having on the public's perception of Wikipedia. --AndewNguyen (talk) 12:43, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Thank you, user:AndewNguyen, for an extremely thorough and contextualizing comment. Mosi Nuru (talk) 14:22, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

• The supposed pseudoscience here is that a small sample size increases sampling error - basic undergraduate statistics. This is an example of the urgent problem presented across the encyclopedia by scope creep of the FRINGE guideline. A guideline originally about snake oil cures and bigfoot sightings has become a winner-takes all approach to every scientific or political topic. The loose definition of "minority view" leads to even a 49% minority being vulnerable to WP:POVRAILROADing. It's time for people to stand up and recognize that NPOV is still a pillar.

Sennalen (talk) 15:04, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

As I stated at FTN, this argument is false. Here's what I cut from the article back in October, and which is for some reason attracting a rush of IPs, new accounts and LTA socks right now: [12] There were in fact four critiques listed (none of them referred to sample size), and the subsection was clearly framed as a defense of racial hereditarianism, which is definitively fringe. Generalrelative (talk) 17:05, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

I didn't look closely enough. It's not one valid methodological objection to this study, but four. There is no community consensus against heritability of IQ in toto. Sennalen (talk) 17:19, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for revising your view based on evidence. In this context, "hereditarian" does not refer to the idea that IQ is largely heritable (almost everyone agrees that it is), but rather that group-level differences in IQ have some sort of genetic basis (that's what's been determined to be fringe). If you read the RfC I linked to below, you will see this distinction explained at a couple points.

("Hereditarianism" is a really misleading label for what is essentially genetics-illiterate scientific racism, but these figures succeeded in making it the COMMONNAME within their narrow field. I prefer to follow sources that refer to it as "racial hereditarianism" to distinguish it from other, more mainstream branches of hereditarianism.) Generalrelative (talk) 17:36, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Sennalen, you might have been confused by the seeming contradiction between Generalrelative's statements that "racial hereditarianism" is the only thing considered to be fringe, and the fact that many of the sources they removed do not mention race, such as all the sources they removed from the Dysgenics and Recent human evolution articles. This happens because when "racial hereditarianism" is considered to be fringe, that means removing not only sources that discuss the idea directly, but also marginally related sources.

For example, race is not mentioned in either of these two sources that Generalrelative removed from the Flynn effect article. But the author of the first paper (Rindermann) has published a paper with similar methods in a different journal, and that other paper does include a discussion about race, so as I understand it Generalrelative's argument is that this makes Rindermann's paper about the Flynn effect a "fringe" source also. Generalrelative did not directly explain why they also removed the second paper, by Pietschnig and Voracek, but presumably it was because those authors agreed with Rindermann about causes of the Flynn effect. Generalrelative can correct me if I've misunderstood their reason for removing the Pietschnig and Voracek paper. --AndewNguyen (talk) 18:47, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

AndewNguyen: if you would like to discuss my behavior, I'm sure you know that an article talk page is not the place. Generalrelative (talk) 19:02, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

• Comment: Anyone unfamiliar with the race and intelligence topic area should see the prevailing consensus on racial hereditarianism here. Generalrelative (talk) 17:11, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

  Per the article, the Eyferth study is significant because it "contrast[s] to results obtained in many American studies, the average IQs of the children studied were roughly similar across racial groups, making the study an oft-cited piece of evidence in the debate about race and intelligence."

  Without articulating the view that the Eyferth study is famous for rebutting, the significance of the study is moot. Mosi Nuru (talk) 18:55, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

  I would be happy to include more context in the present article so long as it's sourced in accordance with WP:FRIND. That said, readers who are interested can simply click through the existing wikilink to race and intelligence. Generalrelative (talk) 19:04, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

• Comment I've come here from a Feedback Request and have no view on Jensen. However we do need to be consistent on whether its refered to or not. In the latest version of 21 Feb [13]. There are three Harvard references to Jensen but no corresponding reference. Further two of the other references seem to be commentry on Jensen, so as an uneducated observer it seems to be an important, if flawed,reference. At the least we should either remove an the inline references to Jensen or include the reference. --Salix alba (talk): 19:06, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

  Those Jensen references all appear to be used to state the results of the original study. If the study is notable at all we should be able to find better references. For the time being, though, I have no doubt that Jensen accurately presented the data. It's his interpretations we have to be wary of. Generalrelative (talk) 19:14, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

• Comment (invited by the bot) I suspect that this is an RFC of importance. But you should realize that as formatted it would take a large amount of reading of the articles in question and their history (which I haven't done) in order to thoughtfully comment, which will limit the amount of feedback that you will receive. Perhaps a narrower and more specific question would be good. One note, Wikipedia source requirements relate to whether or not they are suitable/sufficient to support the text in question, not whether the source and exist in Wikipedia. So, when in doubt leave a source in and instead focus on whether it is suitable/ sufficient to support the text in question. If not, what is most needed is better sourcing rather than removal of a source. North8000 (talk) 02:01, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

• Support removal (summoned by bot) I'm happy to endorse all of the removals presented in the OP and first reply, including Generalrelative's removal in this article, based on WP:FRINGE concerns. See, for example, the esteemed James Flynn who criticised Jensen's conclusions from this study as flawed, in the "Race and IQ: Jensen’s Case Refuted" chapter of Arthur Jensen: Consensus and controversy (1987). DFlhb (talk) 13:32, 26 February 2023 (UTC) struck off-topic; wish I'd not taken the bait. This RfC can only ever affect this article, not others 11:36, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

  I'd like to also bring up the following:

• Brody's chapter in The Scientific Study of General Intelligence (2003), which directly dismisses Jensen's criticisms of this study.
• Dickens 2005 finds Rushton and Jensen (2005)'s arguments "not probative".
• Nisbett (2005) says:

Rushton and Jensen’s (2005) article is characterized by failure to cite, in any but the most cursory way, strong evidence against their position. Their lengthy presentation of indirectly relevant evidence which, in light of the direct evidence against the hereditarian view they prefer, has little probative value, and their “scorecard” tallies of evidence on various points cannot be sustained by the evidence.

And brings up the Eyferth study as one of its first examples. I'll note that the distinction between "direct evidence" (contradicting Jensen) and "indirect evidence" (brought forth by Jensen) was echoed by Flynn in the chapter I cite above, and Flynn is similarly dismissive of the value of that indirect evidence.

• Even Colman (2016) briefly brings up the Eyferth study, and doesn't comment on it much more than to say:

Even Jensen (1998, p. 483) had to con- cede that this result is: “consistent with a purely environmental hypoth- esis of the racial difference in test scores.”

Colman then continues on to argue the following, and cites a rather large number of studies in support of that point throughout his paper:

the hereditarian interpretation gradually collapsed under the weight of accumulating evidence and a deepening understanding of behaviour genetics, although a few researchers with entrenched hereditarian views continued to believe it (e.g. Lynn, 2006; Rushton & Jensen, 2005, 2006)

I bring up that last one to back up my assertions of WP:FRINGE. DFlhb (talk) 13:59, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

Deleted two posts by a Mikemikev sock. Long time abuser. Their second sock to post in this thread. Doug Weller talk 17:11, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

Why is your list confined to sources published 7+ years ago, and only one source after 2005? As I and others have objected, most of the academic sources used to support the "fringe" assertion are older sources, and most of the recent sources used to support it have been non-academic books and blog posts. Even your selection of older sources is cherry-picked: The Scientific Study of General Intelligence contains more chapters favorable to Jensen than critical of him. (In fact the book's subtitle is, "Tribute to Arthur R. Jensen".)

The "fringe" assertion, which is based on sources like these, is being used to reject sources such as In the Know, The Cambridge Handbook of Intelligence and Cognitive Neuroscience, and Harden and Koellinger's paper in Nature Human Behavior, which all were published in 2020 or 2021. I'm aware those three sources do not discuss the Eyferth study, so I'm not suggesting they should be cited in this article. But you say you are "happy to endorse all of the removals", and the sources you've provided are not of comparable quality and recency to the sources being removed. --AndewNguyen (talk) 17:43, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

The other chapters of that book are irrelevant since they don't discuss Eyferth; and I'll, from now on, limit my arguments on this talk page to discussions regarding this article. DFlhb (talk) 18:06, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

AndewNguyen: I've responded to this comment on your user talk page since what I have to say deals more with conduct than with content. Generalrelative (talk) 18:17, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

• Exclude, for a few reasons. The more easily addressed: snippets of the removed content were copyright violations and need to be reworded, the page range of the Jensen citation would need to be slightly expanded, and the section attributes the skeptical view to multiple researchers despite only the Jensen citation supporting the content (the Jencks & Phillips citation does not). More seriously, there's the question of whether the content can be presented in a way that doesn't fall afoul of FRINGE. I doubt, based on the sources provided so far, that this view is due enough to justify such a lengthy treatment—Jensen's view is presented practically in its entirety—and our section on it would need to be lengthened in order to present the mainstream view on hereditarianism. I think the status quo, a nod toward the race and intelligence article, is tenable. I wouldn't support changes unless the proposal on the table is better. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 00:06, 27 February 2023 (UTC)
• Include. As others have pointed out, the preponderance of recent academic journal articles on this subject consider the "hereditarian" issue up for debate, and do not consider one side of question "fringe," the way they certainly would regard things like flat earth or creationism. Considering this, we must go with the majority academic view on whether this is an open scientific question (and if it is such, in the top scientific journals, then it is certainly not "fringe".) Therefore, any removed citations to legitimate scientific journals, publications, or publishing houses should be restored.

EDIT: it has been brought to attention that the question of whether hereditarianism is "fringe" has already been decided. I still think the things in question should be included because of the numerous reliable academic sources, but that's just my opinion. BonaparteIII (talk) 22:01, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

• Exclude. Per the previous RFC on the subject, hereditarianism is a fringe perspective; it is not considered a serious position in high-quality academic journals. (See my comments on the previous RFC for sourcing and discussion about the techniques its few academic advocates use to try and create the illusion of support for their position.) Therefore, per WP:ONEWAY, it is generally inappropriate to bring it up in depth on articles not directly about it unless independent reliable sources connect the topics in a serious and prominent way, which is not the case here. I'd also note the weakness of the arguments for inclusion presented above - some of them try to rehash the RFC that found hereditarianism fringe; others list blindly list random assortments of sources with no explanation of how those support their position on this article, or make scattershot arguments against every time their content was removed in any context across a wide range of articles. And the most bizarre argument of all is the listing of non-WP:RS cranks, talking heads, and activists who (largely) have no relevant expertise and who style themselves as academic outcasts due to the widespread rejection of their theories; obviously, the fact that advocates for fringe positions dislike the fact that we don't give their pseudoscience weight here is not a compelling argument for inclusion. --Aquillion (talk) 08:51, 14 March 2023 (UTC)
• Exclude per WP:FRINGE and WP:CONSENSUS. The use of sources that push pseudoscientific theories of racial hereditarianism has been discussed at length in recent RfCs, and the consistent consensus of editors has been that such sources are not RS. The refusal of some editors to accept this consensus is a violation of Wikipedia policy, since consensus is the way that Wikipedia works. NightHeron (talk) 09:29, 14 March 2023 (UTC)
• Include all of the removed material in both this article and the others, including Nations and IQ, Dysgenics, Spearman's Hypothesis and whatever other articles have had similar removals. As AndewNguyen pointed out, the recent practice of removing the highest quality sources, and favoring those of lower quality, is not supported by what policy says about proper sourcing. The assumption that all these academic books and papers are unreliable sources, despite being from reputable publishers and journals such as Cambridge University Press, Nature Human Behaviour and Behavioral and Brain Sciences, is not consistent with the criteria given at WP:SCHOLARSHIP for evaluating the reliability of scholarly sources. It has also caused a lot of negative publicity for Wikipedia in the past year, and the critics are right that Wikipedia's sourcing policies aren't being followed. In the past few weeks, several uninvolved editors such Mosi Nuru, Richardbrucebaxter, Sennalen and BonaparteIII have commented here to express similar concerns about the rejection of these sources. It would be unfortunate if the dominant group of editors on these articles overrules an entirely valid, policy-based objection that's being made by both the media and the wider Wikipedia community. Mr Butterbur (talk) 13:29, 14 March 2023 (UTC)
• Exclude per DFlhb. I've been waiting to see if someone would provide an actual argument for inclusion of the disputed material (which, to remind everyone, is the short self-cited section discussing Jensen's views on the Eyferth study that I removed in this edit). So far the only person to bring in any reliable, independent, secondary sources has been DFlhb, who points out that these sources dismiss Jensen's arguments as without merit. Of course meritless arguments can be DUE for inclusion if they are considered to be important in the secondary literature, but I'm not seeing that either –– just a few passing mentions. As I understand the P&G here, if we were to restore a section on the racial hereditarian view of the study, we would need to rewrite that section to hew closely to sources such as those which DFlhb mentioned above. But none of the "include" !voters (or commentators) have suggested that. Instead they appear to favor the restoration of content that transparently violated WP:FRIND. I will remind those editors that, per WP:LOCALCON, this RfC cannot override the more general consensus established at the RfC on racial hereditarianism nor the FRIND guideline itself. Generalrelative (talk) 16:15, 14 March 2023 (UTC)
• Include all of the removed material High quality sources reliable sources are being rejected in violation of wikipedia's RS policy. A group of editors with a POV have attempted to do this for years. As a result, we have multiple articles on genetics related topics that do not follow what reliable acadmeic sources conclude. Additionally, the entire topic of "hereditarianism" has not been settled. One side of the argument does not represent a "fringe" viewpoint. We are doing our readers a disservice by excluding an enormous amount of research from this and other related articles. 2600:1700:1250:6D80:9C64:ED3C:B456:CDBC (talk) 20:44, 14 March 2023 (UTC) — 2600:1700:1250:6D80:9C64:ED3C:B456:CDBC (talk) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
• Exclude. Articles shouldn't carry criticism from fringe perspectives. We don't have altmed answers to mainstream medicine, we don't give flat earther response on astronomy articles, and we shouldn't have hereditarian comments on articles about group intelligence. - MrOllie (talk) 00:22, 15 March 2023 (UTC)
• Exclude (came here from WP:RSN). Per MrOllie's comments on fringe, and Generalrelative's on the previous RFC. This appears to be trying to redo that RFC at a different location. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 19:00, 15 March 2023 (UTC)
• Include. There is a related discussion here where an editor is trying to modify the RS guideline to match the interpretation of it that many of the "exclude" votes are based on. However, there is very little support for changing the RS guideline to conform to how it's applied in this topic. It's clear from the discussion there that sourcing in articles related to "race and intelligence" is being handled differently from how it is in most other topics at Wikipedia, including other topics that are considered "fringe". Another editor commenting in that discussion gave the example of astrology, which is considered a "fringe" view, but Wikipedia does not exclude pro-astrology sources from reputable publishers in the articles where those are relevant, the way is done with "racial hereditarian" sources. It should not be acceptable for a consensus in a single topic to make an exception to sitewide content guidelines, as has happened in this case. 12.31.71.58 (talk) 18:15, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

  Note: The discussion linked to by 12.31.71.58 was ginned up by a socking troll who was disruptively editing the WP:RS guideline and making Joe job-style comments on the guideline's talk page in a rather transparent effort to substantiate AndewNguyen's allegations above. This is part of a larger pattern of this discussion being targeted by LTA socks, along with off-Wiki canvassing. Generalrelative (talk) 16:52, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

• Include. How can anyone look at this study and think it shows anything. Under a hederitarian perspective it is trivial to explain the results. The kids were mixed race, that easily accounts for half the closing of the gap. The other half is probably a combination of the fact that some percentage of the fathers were north African, and the unrepresentativeness of the African American fathers, and that the kids were pre-pubescent. Excluding those facts makes the article brazenly (almost comically) one-sided. Also, that standard that sources are not reliable if the author adheres to a point of view that is deemed to be fringe is ridiculous. That is what the peer-review process is for. Authors may be biased, deluded, or even dishonest, but if their work goes through peer-review in a reliable academic journal then who is to say said work is not reliable? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:581:C180:1980:206E:CD5B:8C72:BCC0 (talk) 04:12, 20 March 2023 (UTC) — 2601:581:C180:1980:206E:CD5B:8C72:BCC0 (talk) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
• Note to closer: This article / RfC appears to have attracted interest from first-time editors through this post on Twitter, and more recently through a post on 4chan. I ask that you briefly evaluate the contribution history of each !voter when determining consensus, as suggested by our policy on meatpuppetry. Thanks, Generalrelative (talk) 06:26, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

  Please read Ad hominem. Even if some comments are made by "meat-puppets" (whatever that is), that would not invalidate our arguments, and certainly would not be a reason to make this article worse by only presenting one interpretation of the data. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:581:C180:1980:206E:CD5B:8C72:BCC0 (talk) 13:23, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

  Please read Wikipedia:Single-purpose account and Wikipedia:Polling is not a substitute for discussion. Such notices are standard when people are canvassing off-wiki to try to influence our processes. - MrOllie (talk) 13:35, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

  Yes. See also Wikipedia:Sockpuppetry#Meatpuppetry if you missed my link above. Here's what the policy says: In votes or vote-like discussions, new users may be disregarded or given significantly less weight, especially if there are many of them expressing the same opinion. That's not to suggest bad faith; I'm sure you came here to express a sincerely held belief. But Wikipedia has safeguards in place to discourage brigading, and to ensure informed respect for our policies and guidelines. Generalrelative (talk) 16:13, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

  I do not have a single-purpose account, I have edited Wikipedia many times, but never created a user because I never felt the need. I think my ISP changes my IP automatically. I am sure you also have good faith, but you should also realize that removing content based on peer-reviewed research by ivy-leaguers and presenting only one side of a good faith scientific debate does not make Wikipedia look like a reliable, neutral point of view source of information. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:581:C180:1980:711F:5AF7:2BDC:A61F (talk) 01:34, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

• Include. Everyone participating in this RFC should read the discussion linked above at Wikipedia talk:Reliable sources, especially Generalrelative's denial that he/she and other editors are going against RS policy by classifying reputably published sources as unreliable, even though that was explicitly stated as the reason for their removals from the Recent human evolution article a year ago. [14] [15] [16] [17] I suggest also reading last year's media coverage about this set of issues, linked earlier by AndewNguyen. This RFC can't be adequately understood without that big picture, because the situation here is not a removal of just one or two sources in isolation. It is part of a broader attempt to remove "hereditarian" sources everywhere they are cited on Wikipedia, and to claim that the removals from this article are for some reason other than that is either uninformed or disingenuous. It is best to look at the actual removals diffs instead of talk page comments, because there is sometimes a disconnect between what the editors removing these sources say they are doing and what they actually are doing. Even if this RFC can't directly affect the entire pattern of removals, its outcome will send a message about the Wikipedia community's attitude on the attempt to remove this category of sources across the project. tickle me 21:40, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

• Include, for the reasons I explained in my initial few comments. This RFC probably will be closed soon, so I request that when determining the consensus here, the closing admin take account of several editors' comments that expressed an opinion about whether the removed material should be restored, but were not presented as votes. This applies to the comments by Sennalen, Mosi Nuru, Salix Alba, and North8000. These are all editors who have had no past involvement in this topic area. AndewNguyen (talk) 15:56, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

• Include: There is no point in having an article on "an oft-cited piece of evidence in the debate about race and intelligence" if half of that debate is unmentionable. If the Exclude argument is correct, the entire article stub might as well be deleted. Moreover, per WP:PRIME, the objective of this site is 1) free access, 2) to the sum of human knowledge, 3) for every single person on the planet. There is no credible argument that deleting Jensen's viewpoint advances that mission. Excluding serves merely to make the article less informative, and knowledge less accessible. Mosi Nuru (talk) 16:10, 24 March 2023 (UTC) — Mosi Nuru (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.

• Comment Most !include votes stand unrebutted so far, so I'll briefly address them. Leaving aside the arguments that address other sources removed from other articles, the most common arguments assert that WP:RS or WP:NPOV require the section's inclusion. But no one so far has substantiated that Jensen counts as a reliable source on this topic, or that his comments have dueness. I've presented several scholars who contradict his reliability and dueness, and haven't seen anyone present scholars that argue otherwise. DFlhb (talk) 16:27, 24 March 2023 (UTC) (note: this was written on March 20 evening, and sat in a tab for 4 days, as I forgot to hit publish)

  True, and more to the point I think: WP:FRIND / WP:ONEWAY explicitly prohibit us from including self-sourced material about Jensen's racial hereditarian views, since these have been definitively determined to be FRINGE. My removal of that self-sourced material is what this RfC is about (attempts to hijack it to cover a wider array of content on other pages fly in the face of WP:LOCALCON). This really is an open-and-shut case as far as P&G are concerned. Generalrelative (talk) 16:35, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

DFlhb, I suggest you read the recent discussion at talk:Reliable Sources that several other editors linked to. The claim that sources by authors such as Jensen are innately unreliable, despite being published in reputable academic journals, has been used several times by Generalrelative and other editors as a justification for removing material cited to these sources. But it is clear from the discussion on that page that this claim gets absolutely no support from the rest of the Wikipedia community.

This contradiction is the central issue in this topic area. Most major secondary sources about this topic published in the past 8 years, such as those I listed here, either support the hereditarian view or present as a valid hypothesis. Whenever discussions about this topic have gotten down to the nuts and bolts of sourcing, the argument for how this view can be simultaneously both fringe and well-supported in secondary sources has been based on rejecting these sources as non-RS. NightHeron's vote above is a typical example of this argument. Some editors supporting the source removals don't state this premise so directly, but it is always an underlying premise, and one that the wider Wikipedia community rejects. AndewNguyen (talk) 17:30, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

This RfC isn't the place to re-litigate strong past consensus on the fringeness of hereditarianismn, which you have repeatedly done. See Firefangledfeathers's comment at RSN. I will not engage further. DFlhb (talk) 18:11, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Closure

I believe the RFC closure was improper as user:LokiTheLiar was WP:INVOLVED. They previously voted in the herediatarianism RFC, and then quoted that same RFC in their closing decision. Also, some accounts were incorrectly labeled "meat-puppets", as they were neither meat-muppets, nor SPAs. Accordingly, I believe the close should be overturned. 2600:1012:B043:216D:E142:1465:184D:3D75 (talk) 00:07, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

Sounds like a grand opportunity to waste a bunch of time and effort to arrive at exactly the same result. MrOllie (talk) 00:56, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

So I take it you then have no objection to the close being reverted and performed by an WP:UNINVOLVED editor. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1012:B043:216D:E142:1465:184D:3D75 (talk) 01:16, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

That's pretty clearly exactly the opposite of what he said, actually. Loki (talk) 01:19, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

I reject the premise that LokiTheLiar was involved, and I'm sure anybody else would've closed it the same way. MrOllie (talk) 01:20, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

Honest question here, I read at the beginning of the rfc that a vote does not substitute discussion, but loki seems to have put a lot of weight on the vote count (specifically of established users) when closing the rfc, was their decision based on the vote or on the quality of the arguments as they assessed them? 2601:581:C180:1980:7CD2:6065:B13A:C7C1 (talk) 23:33, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

I'd suggest re-reading Loki's statement. It's clearly both quantity and quality. Generalrelative (talk) 15:58, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

I did, it looks like they just ignored the contributions from new editors. Looks like a perfect recipe for an echo-chamber. 2601:581:C180:1980:998A:2971:EF34:F150 (talk) 17:16, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

Hey IP 2600:1012:B043... I just noticed that you geolocate to the same location as the topic-banned LTA in the range 2600:1004:b100::/40. That wouldn't happen to be you would it? It would be a hell of a coincidence if not. Generalrelative (talk ) 05:20, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

user:generalrelative I think genuine confusion (as opposed to bad-faith) is what is happening here. The IP who you labeled (several times) as an SPA, is *not* an SPA. If you pull up the user's contributions and then write "/64" at the end of the url, the result will be all the contributions for that particular user. The IP editor in question is not an SPA, nor is he topic banned. Could you explain why you don't belive this to be the case?

I have removed the hat text since I cannot prove that you are the t-banned abuser in question. However you must not edit a closed RfC in any way. I ask you to therefore self-revert that edit, and that you abstain from other forms of abuse such as this. Generalrelative (talk) 23:57, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

Thank you, but you still haven't answered my question. Why are you labeling IP editors as SPAs (particularly right before an RFC that the IP participated in), when they are most certainly not SPAs? The IP editor you labeled as an SPA had exactly *one* edit in the race and intelligence topic area. I'm just not following why you are coming to these conclusions. 2600:1012:B068:8277:913D:9A22:CBC3:F283 (talk) 00:02, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

While I cannot prove that you are the t-banned abuser in question, I am not going to waste time splitting hairs with you. Revert your disruptive edit of a closed RfC, drop the stick and move on. Generalrelative (talk) 00:12, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

Fair enough, I would ask that you remove your request for page protection please. I will revert the edit regardless. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1012:B0C0:78A0:A195:8CE6:E101:BD5A (talk) 00:33, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

Done. Generalrelative (talk) 00:44, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

Disputed edit

I invite Kucuda to discuss their preferred edit here rather than edit warring ([18][19][20][21]). While they have added sources after being informed of our policy against original analysis, the content in question still represents original synthesis, since the final source is from decades before the study they're attempting to use it to critique. Finally, we've just had an RfC rejecting the use of Jensen as a WP:PRIMARY source for WP:PROFRINGE content here. Generalrelative (talk) 02:34, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

@Generalrelative Material added by Kucuda has been rev/deleted as too close to [22] by Rushton and Jensen. Doug Weller talk 14:48, 20 April 2023 (UTC)