Talk:Gregory Cochran

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Arbitration Ruling on Race and Intelligence

The article Gregory Cochran, along with other articles relating to the area of conflict (namely, the intersection of race/ethnicity and human abilities and behaviour, broadly construed), is currently subject to active arbitration remedies, described in a 2010 Arbitration Committee case where the articulated principles included:

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Scientific Racism

Cochran is bluntly described here as a racist: "a proponent of human biodiversity, a contemporary branch of scientific racism." One of the sources given for this accusation is the Southern Poverty Law Center, a highly partisan group that sometimes unfairly labels its political opponents as hate mongers (ex: Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Maajid Nawaz, etc). If you are going to make a serious charge of racism, you had better be able to back it up with a lot more evidence than this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bws92082 (talk • contribs) 11:41, 23 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note that the first two references do not mention Cochran. GC and the 10000 year explosion have received a good deal of coverage in RSs -much of it positive. calling him a proponent of scienfici racism in wikipedia's voice would need to be sourcing (better than the splc) that actually does that. NPalgan2 (talk) 13:31, 23 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I’ve attempted to address this by stating that he is associated with the ‘human biodiversity’ milieu, and note that critics have described it as scientific racism; both these statements are much more easily supported, including with sources friendly to Cochran (in the Taki’s article, Steve Sailer even asserts that his HBD mailing list is how Cochran and his 10000-year leap coauthor/West Hunter collaborator Harpending met). 23.115.162.60 (talk) 05:24, 26 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Deprecated sources and exceptions

Unfortunately, many of the article’s sources for the subject’s controversial ongoing work in "human biodiversity" (see also discussion above) came from his own or his admirers’ writings in otherwise deprecated sources. I made a couple of attempts to note this in edit comments, citing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deprecated_sources#Acceptable_uses_of_deprecated_sources, but the bot obviously can’t understand that.

23.115.162.60 (talk) 04:57, 12 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, editors should try to use reliable secondary sources. I don't think self-published and unreliable sources are appropriate. Citing Cochran's own self-published blog is probably not allowed. Sxologist (talk) 23:39, 20 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Section about homosexuality

Agree cochran's views are WP:FRINGE (actually, complete BS)... and I think we can include scientific consensus but I'm not sure that "incomplete masculanization of the brain" is the scientific consensus...

I'd much rather we have something along the lines of "scientific consensus is there is no scientific consensus and that homosexuality, while being a function of both nature and nurture, is likely not pathological nor something that can be controlled for" (with the appropriate sourcing ofc) Bluethricecreamman (talk) 16:51, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Bluethricecreamman, I have rephrased it to say the organisational hypothesis. That is the dominant hypothesis (nowhere did it say that is the scientific consensus, it is talking about the dominant hypothesis, which is fine). The Bailey review is quite clear there is currently no evidence of nurture/upbringing effecting male sexual orientation (see page 87 for a summary of their conclusions on the PDF). Cochran is only talking about males, so that seems important.

The sources you added are not clear about the male vs female distinction (e.g. Bailey review says there is more evidence female sexual orientation may be effected by social factors, although even this remains controversial). Given Greg was only talking about males, the distinction is necessary.

Finally, I think the sources you relied on are not authored by topic experts, but just brief summaries in small segments of larger textbooks. It's always better to stick with the sources authored by topic experts (as all the authors in Bailey et al are). Zenomonoz (talk) 23:42, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Alright. i stole the refs from the biology and sexual orientation article's lede, so i didn't read into the full context of it all. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I'm putting the see also to link to the appropriate article with more info too. Bluethricecreamman (talk) 23:54, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Understandable, I have been meaning to do a refresh on that article when I have some time. Zenomonoz (talk) 23:57, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]