Talk:History of the race and intelligence controversy/Archive 1

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Kudos

Kudos to you for an amazing amount of work on this. Assuming no objections on your part, I will add some photos of the various characters to liven things up. David.Kane (talk) 13:05, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for this message which I didn't see initially. However, great minds think alike :) Mathsci (talk) 08:50, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Last sentence

I have three issues with the last sentence of the opening. First, there are non-psychologists actively involved in the debate. Charles Murray is a political scientists and Linda Gottfredson is a sociologist. Second, I am not sure if the Pioneer Fund is important enough to mention in the opening. (But all your discussions of it in the body of the article are perfectly reasonable.) I just don't see the Pioneer Fund as being nearly as important as, for example, Jensen's 1969 article or the Bell Curve. Third, I think reasonable people might differ about how "small" the group pursuing this research is. I can certainly cite a dozen or more. David.Kane (talk) 13:45, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Could you explain why "psychologists" is used in the last sentence, given that many of the most prominent folks in this field are not psychologists? For example, Charles Murray is a political scientists and Linda Gottfredson is a sociologist. We need a more inclusive term. Scientist? Researcher? David.Kane (talk) 14:23, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

By the way, I am willing to grant that, given the current content in the article, mentioning the Pioneer Fund in the lead is justified. David.Kane (talk) 14:52, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Sorry that sentence in the the lede summarises what is in the main text of the article, taken directly from the secondary source (Tucker 2002). Surely you don't need every wikipedia editing policy to be spelt out to you? Linda Gottfredson is also discussed at length in Tucker, but mostly about the events surrounding the University of Delaware's reaction to her funding source.

The article by Gray and Thompson (from Yale and MIT) is a fine secondary source for the statement that "very few scientists do resarch on race and intelligence, and those that do are predominantly white". That was the 2004 article in the Neuroscience part of Nature Reviews.

You see the rule is that we don't use this talk page as a WP:FORUM, for open-ended discussion. That's what a blog is for. Any argument you give about content has to be backed by a secondary source (or possibly some other relevant wikipedia policy). Mathsci (talk) 15:13, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Help a newb

Can someone explain what was wrong with this addition to the history section and what I need to change to include it?

In 1998, Douglas Detterman, founding editor of the journal, Intelligence, published a special issue as a tribute to Arthur Jensen's research on the topic of human intelligence. Detterman's introduction to the special issue is entitled "Kings of Men," and is followed by commentary from respected scholars in-field on the integrity and impact of the contributions Jensen has made to this field. Bpesta22 (talk) 14:08, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Because it is not attributed to a secondary source. It is your own commentary. Mathsci (talk) 14:19, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

There is no Wikipedia policy which requires that a fact be reported in a secondary source. David.Kane (talk) 14:25, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Confused as to how it's commentary. It seems to be entirely factual. Given that, am I ok to add it back in? -Bpesta22 (talk) 14:31, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

(ec) I'm sorry, but there you are completely wrong. Go and read Wikipedia:RS#Primary.2C_secondary.2C_and_tertiary_sources. "Wikipedia articles should be based mainly on reliable secondary sources." That's quite clear, don't you think? We don't get to be the historians if we can't find a seconday source - Bpesta22 seems to have written those words, they're not a paraphrase of a secondary source that I can check myself. That is what WP:V says. Anyway that kind of detail in this article is WP:UNDUE and seems against WP:NPOV. Mathsci (talk) 14:45, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

"primary sources are permitted if used carefully" is the policy. Of course, if there was a secondary source which mentioned this issue of Intelligence, then we should use that. But there is no such secondary source. Once we have established that policy, we can address your (reasonable) concerns about WP:UNDUE and WP:NPOV. David.Kane (talk) 14:50, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Never for history, when there are plenty of secondary sources available. I don't think it's a very good idea to continue to twist wikipedia rules and wikilawyer like this, just to push an WP:UNDUE point of view. And talking about what's allowed and what's not allowed, what gave you the idea that you could just lift the lede of one article (which doesn't need to be sourced) and place it in the main body of another article? That is absolutely against the rules. Sources and citations are needed in the main text. I had to add them myself - what on earth did you think you were doing? Mathsci (talk) 15:21, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

I thought that copy/pasting the lead was the common way that article incorporation was handled. Which "rules" are you referring to? Can you point me toward something that would educate me on this topic? For example, see how A_Song_of_Ice_and_Fire incorporates Game of Thrones (TV series) with a similar copy and paste. (Not claiming that that is correct. Just explaining why someone like me might think it the standard procedure.) David.Kane (talk) 15:30, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Then you were completely wrong once more. Mathsci (talk) 15:47, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Can you please cite a Wikipedia policy to that effect? Again, I am not trying to be a wikilawyer. I want to educate myself on this topic so that I can better edit articles in the future. David.Kane (talk) 16:02, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

What you write is trolling. All edits in the main text must satisfy WP:RS and WP:V. That measn that they must be properly sourced form secondary sources. That means that if you copy paste something from elesehwere, which is deperecated, you have add a whole set of frsh citations, as if you are writing the material for the first time. Mathsci (talk) 19:26, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Title

I admit -- I hopped here from doing some New Pages Patrolling, fully expecting to find a nasty WP:SYNTH / WP:OR disaster... and am very pleasantly surprised to find what appears to be a well-sourced, interesting work. That said, the title seems clunky to me. Does anybody have any alternative suggestions? I for one can't think of any off the top of my head, so perhaps I'm answering my own question/concern with regard to the title, but I figured it was worth an ask. ɠǀɳ̩ςεΝɡbomb 20:30, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

I am happy to defer to MathSci since he spent so much time and energy on this article. One alternative might be Race and Intelligence (History). I expect that, over time, the main Race and Intelligence article might generate other daughter articles, so something that allowed for a consistent naming convention might be useful. David.Kane (talk) 20:56, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

That seems like a very reasonable title, and an improvement to my eyes. I, too, would prefer to defer to MathSci. ɠǀɳ̩ςεΝɡbomb 22:17, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

I like David.Kane's suggestion and agree that the present title is clunky. Perhaps we could wait a little bit. Mathsci (talk) 17:26, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Aye, let's give it a few days, or at least until when any edit conflicts surrounding the article die down a bit (don't want to add another controversy!). ɠǀɳ̩ςεΝɡbomb 13:49, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

I will leave it to the two of you, not least because I don't really know how to change article titles . . . David.Kane (talk) 13:54, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Aye aye! And for future reference, it's actually pretty easy: You just move the article to a new name (and then fix any pages that link to the old title). Anyway, I think we're right to wait a few days -- looks like this article has stirred up some controversy and a retitle, even one as innocuous as the proposed, can muck up a conversation. ɠǀɳ̩ςεΝɡbomb 15:08, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

NPOV

First of all, I'm glad to see that this section has been made its own article, and that it doesn't include the irrelevant information about Rushton writing for American Renaissance. However, I this section still has some NPOV problems that need to be addressed.

• The article provides a rather biased caricature of Jensen's views, particularly in these sentences: "In 1969 the educational psychologist Arthur Jensen published a long article reviving the older hereditarian point of view, with the suggestion that eugenics was more likely to increase the average intelligence in the US than remedial education for blacks." and "He decried the "misguided and ineffective attempts to improve [the] lot" of blacks which would only result in "genetic enslavement" unless "eugenic foresight" was brought into play, i.e. population control." In his 1969 article, the main position that Jensen advocated is that education should be tailored to each person's individual needs and limitations; interpreting him as advocating population control is both POV and a misrepresentation of his position.

• This sentence: "Although earlier in his career Jensen had favoured environmental rather than genetic factors as the explanation of race differences in intelligence, he had changed his mind following extended discussions with Shockkley during the year 1966-1967 spent at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in Stanford." This is Tucker's interpretation of what caused Jensen to become a hereditarian, but Jensen himself offers a different explanation for it. I think it should be obvious that when someone is providing an explanation for a researcher's motives that differs from the researcher's own explanation of them, it's inappropriate for us to ignore the researcher's own explanation of their motives and report someone else's interpretation of them as though it were fact.

• At the end of this section of the article, we have what's basically a WP:COATRACK of criticisms of the hereditarian position. What's more, most of these criticisms (the second, third and fourth) are rejected by the APA in their 1995 report, but the article makes no mention of the fact that these criticisms are now rejected by the psychometric community.

• This sentence: "Many critics, including Stephen J. Gould and Leonard Kamin, pointed out flaws in the analysis and unwarranted simplifications." I shouldn't have to explain how this sentence displays an obvious bias against The Bell Curve's conclusions. The article needs to take a neutral position as to whether these criticisms are valid or not.

There are some other NPOV problems also, but these are the ones that stand out to me. Unless someone can present a convincing case for why these parts of the article need to remain the way they currently are, I'll be changing them shortly, unless someone else gets to them first. --Captain Occam (talk) 21:37, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Kudos to you Occam for taking the time to improve this already excellent article. Well done! If anyone has the energy, it might be useful to have an entire section of this history devoted to the Bell Curve, pulling material from that article. Alas, I am too lazy to do that myself. David.Kane (talk) 00:15, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

I think I’ve fixed most of the major NPOV problems now, but I’m not sure if I missed anything. Is there anything else in this article that you think ought to be changed? --Captain Occam (talk) 00:19, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

You will be blocked if you continue editing out of conformity with secondary sources, This complete failure to address and use secondary sources will result in you being blocked if you continue. Mathsci (talk) 03:30, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

I noticed all of the same problems on reading through the article. These are serious and need to be addressed. --DJ (talk) 07:29, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

These are all in the sources. However, since so many editors posted here after receiving messages from Captain Occam on their talk oages, I have derferred the discussion of NPOV to the usual noticeboard. However, as mentioned below, this seems to be a classic case of WP:TAG TEAMing and might result in administrative action if it continues. Mathsci (talk) 07:34, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

The anachronistic factual arguments are probably the easiest to fix -- we can just eliminate them. We don't need a recounting of the details of arguments about things like the heritability of IQ considering that we now know much more about it. A historical recounting of people, their opinions, and pivotal events should be sufficient.

Attribution is also missing in some cases on what amount to contentious opinions by the cited sources. Adding attribution would help. Where controversial opinions are reported, we need to give a sense of how widely shared those view are if possible and what other views exist. --DJ (talk) 07:44, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Sorry but that is a summary of what is in Benjamin's textbook. This is obviously part of the history and it's nowhere else on wikipedia. I don't understand the comments about anachronistic. Are you suggesting that Ludy Benjamin is an incompetent historian of psychology? Mathsci (talk) 07:53, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Historians, as the postmodernists philosophers tell us, are a product of their culture. They present opinions, and opinions are POVs that need to be attributed and balanced for neutrality. The anachronistic facts are in the section Occam called COATRACK. We don't need an accounting of technical disputes from a fixed point in time -- let's stick with the current understandings presented in the main article.

As to a fix, these edits seem sound: [1]. Jensen (1970) is the best historical source on what Jensen meant in Jensen (1969). I wouldn't be opposed to substantially expanding the section if there really is that much to say about differing opinions about what Jensen (1969) meant and what motivated him other than his own accounting of those events. The other major source is his biography by Miele. However, the article on Arthur Jensen covers that pretty well already. --DJ (talk) 08:08, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Hmm. Are you not using this talk page as a WP:SOAPBOX? Your opinion of historians of psychology or historians in general is not relevant. If you have a view like that, why exactly are you commenting on an article within the History of psychology? As far as I can tell your only complaint is WP:IDONTLIKEIT. If a historian quotes from Das Kapital or Mein Kampf, is that anachronistic or is not instead perhaps the normal way that an academic historian recounts events by making reference to historical documents? Mathsci (talk) 08:48, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

(1) Historical narratives are POVs not objective facts. We have a clear example of conflicting narratives and cannot privilege one simply because it's in a "textbook". My objections is that this presentation violates WP:NPOV. (2) The anachronistic arguments section present one side of a very out-dated debate with the same narrative structure that one presents a present controversy. By way of example, it would be as if we presented a history of physics and then went into a long list of objections to quantum mechanisms that were raised at the time with no indication that years later those same objections are no longer part of the mainstream discussion. --DJ (talk) 16:23, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

POV-pushing by Captain Occam

• Captain Occam (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

It is unacceptable to add and remove material which does not match the secondary sources as Captain Occam has done. Any edits of this kind, which depart from the secondary sources, will be reverted and continued efforts to "sanitize" the history or alter ii will be reverted. Captain Occam risk being blocked if he removes material that he does not like. Being a die h-hard fan of hereditarianism does not entitle Captain Occam to rewrite history, removing for example the role of William Shockley. That is unacceptable POV-pushing on wikipedia. His alternative is to find other neutral secondary sources that satisfy WP:RS amd WP:V. Mathsci (talk) 03:27, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Mathsci, you’ve just reverted around 20 edits while offering only a pithy one-paragraph personal attack as an explanation. I’ve explained in detail why I think these changes are justified and necessary, both in my edit summaries and in the section above. David.Kane has also pointed out that several other users have expressed POV concerns about this content that are similar to mine; for that reason I think these changes are supported by consensus. If you object to them, it’s your responsibility to explain why you disagree with the detailed justifications that have been provided for them.

If you aren’t willing to explain why you disagree with the justifications provided for these edits but continue removing them from the article, this is a case of WP:OWNership. I’ve also warned you about personal attacks once already on your userpage. If you aren’t willing to work with the rest of us in a collaborative manner, I’ll be reporting you for this behavior at AN/I; I don’t intend to warn you about this again. --Captain Occam (talk) 04:38, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Unless you say why my summary of the secondary sources is inaccurate, your objections have absolutely zero value. Look at the books and tell me why I have paraphrased the material incorrectly. Otherwise your personal point of view is not in the slightest bit relevant. This is not a WP:FORUM, so, yes indeed, I am completely unwilling to waste my time on any discussions beyond the material on specific pages in the sources I have used or other secondary sources for the history which satisfy WP:RS. That is unfortunately wikipedia editing policy. Again it is up to you to look at the specific sources and explain whether my summaries are accurate or not. It is not my responsibility to engage in discussions which have nothing to do with secondary sources for the history: discussions like that are a waste of time for everybody involved. Mathsci (talk) 06:25, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Captain Occam, please stop leaving messages on my talk page. I know you haven't edited a wide range of articles on wikipedia. This article is neutral and not controversial. It has been created by the following process, the standard process for writing normal mainstream wikipedia articles. (a) Find a comprehensive list of secondary sources WP:RS (b) Summarise them so that the summary is verifiable. So in the case of a normal article like this, the only way you can object to material is by directly discussing the secondary sources and whether they have been accurately summarised. It is not permitted for you to make modifications without reference to the secondary sources. In fact what you are doing in that case is editing disruptively to push your personal point of view. If your intention is to edit articles in that way, you'll just be blocked. I am quite willing to discuss material in relevant secondary sources or possible inaccuracies in my summaries, but nothing else. Thanks, Mathsci (talk) 06:41, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

The problem isn’t that you’ve misstated anything in the source material you’re using; I thought I’d made that clear. The problem is something more subtle than that.

Almost all of the sources you’re using for this article are sources which take an anti-hereditarian perspective. Some users might have a problem with that, but I don’t, as long as they meet Wikipedia’s standard for reliability. However, if we’re only going to use sources that take one of the two perspectives about this topic, we need to be very careful to separate universally-acknowledged facts from the opinions of the authors. This is also necessary when we’re using sources that take a variety of viewpoints, but in that case it’s not quite as challenging to identify the information that is or isn’t contentious, because if it isn’t contentious then sources that take different perspectives will agree on it, and if it is contentious then they won’t.

Perhaps this will be clearer if I provide an opposite example: suppose we were to have an article about some topic related to race and intelligence that uses only Jensen’s writings as sources. Would it be possible to write a neutral article in this way? It would be difficult but not impossible, as long as we were careful that what we present as fact in the article is only the data which Jensen is reporting, and not the (herediterian) conclusions that he’s drawn from it. The same principle applies here also, except for the opposite viewpoint.

I know that the information I removed is in the source material, but it’s still contentious, and the only reason that isn’t obvious is because virtually every source you’re using for the body of this article takes the same perspective. The fact that other sources claim otherwise about most of these points is enough to demonstrate this. If we’re going to use only sources that all take an anti-hereditarian perspective, it’s essential that we separate facts that the authors are reporting from their own opinions, and not include the latter in the article. The only alternative to this is using different sources entirely, which would have to involve rewriting most of the article.

I’ve explained in the section above, as well as some of my edit summaries, in what ways this information is contentious/disputed. And this is what we’ll need to discuss if you want these changes to be kept out of the article. --Captain Occam (talk) 06:44, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

I don't understand this argument at all. The sources are neutral and satisfy WP:RS and WP:V. It seems you're asserting that they are anti-hereditarian just because the details of the history upset you in some way. But the authors are professional academics, experts in psychology or the history of psychology. The way the sources are evaluated is in book reviews. I think most of the texts have been extremely well reviewed in the literature. In fact William H. Tucker won several prizes for his book on the Pioneer Fund (Winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Award, 1995. Winner of the Ralph J. Bunche Award, American Political Science Association, 1995. Outstanding Book from the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Human Rights in North America.) All I can see at the moment is that some of the material in the books upsets you. But history can be like that. Mathsci (talk) 07:08, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

<- I note that you just left this message.[2] That looks like an attempt to be disruptive. This message [3] was similar. Again not the way wikipedia is usually edited. In fact this borders on WP:HARASSment and wikihounding. Mathsci (talk) 07:19, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Update And now this extra message. [4] Mathsci (talk) 10:10, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

And this now from Varoon Arya. Oh dear. [5] Mathsci (talk) 12:38, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

As I said in my last comment, I think the fact that other (equally valid) sources disagree with these claims is enough to demonstrate that they’re contentious. Going with just one example, Tucker claims that it was Shockley who convinced Jensen to become a hereditarian. Jensen himself offers a different explanation for his opinion: that he became a hereditarian as a result of reviewing the U.S. Civil Rights Commission’s report on compensatory education, which concluded that it had not produced any benefit to disadvantaged children. You’ve chosen to cite Tucker about the source of Jensen’s opinion, while ignoring what Jensen has to say about it himself. I know that Tucker is a reliable source, but isn’t it obvious that when he disagrees with Jensen about Jensen’s own opinion, Tucker’s assertion about this is not neutral?

I’ve provided several examples of things like this. You keep bringing up the fact that the sources used by the article meet Wikipedia’s standards of reliability and verifiability, but I’m not arguing against that claim. Verifiability/reliability and neutrality are two separate things, so demonstrating that something is reliable isn’t enough to demonstrate that it’s neutral. Jensen’s writings also meet Wikipedia’s standards for verifiability and reliability, but when Jensen expresses his own opinion in them about the cause of the IQ difference, his writings aren’t neutral. Do you understand this distinction, and how it’s relevant to the examples I’ve provided such as the one above? --Captain Occam (talk) 08:05, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

The article does not say that Shockley changed Jensen's mind: the word is "following" not "because" - Tucker uses "after". It gives the historical sequence events as presented by Tucker. I just summarise this. I don't understand your funny interpretation of WP:V and WP:NPOV. The relevant passage is on page 147-148 of Tucker and says a lot more in fact: [6], [7] As does the connected footnote 43 on page 255 of the book, which I have made available here.[8] Tucker's scholarship is impeccable.

Which other equally valid secondary sources are you referring to? Unless you cite books or articles explicitly I haven't got much idea what you're talking about. Tucker does not "claim" things - his history is supported by actual incontrovertible documentary evidence. But we are not here to discuss whether Tucker is right or not. You appear to be challenging a book because it conflicts with you personal point of view. The way wikipedia works, we don't discount impeccable sources like this. If there is another secondary source which says the opposite, please find it and the we can discuss it. Unfortunately, if we're talking about the Pioneer Fund, that would obviously exclude literature written by authors directly or indirectly funded by it or involved in its administration. For example Lynn's book would be discounted immediately, since it is a primary source. It can be relied on for certain details, e.g. details of the documents lodged in NY in 1937 when the Fund was set up. So by all means look for these other secondary sources and when you have produced them, we can start to discuss them. But please don't try to use primary sources such as autobiographical comments by Jensen. Mathsci (talk) 09:58, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Marxism and (N)POV

The most glaring fault of the article in its current state is the complete omission of the role of Marxist and neo-Marxist ideology in the historical development of the race and intelligence controversy. This needs correction if the article is to approach something resembling a neutral point of view. I assume that Mathsci, the primary editor, has not intentionally failed to make mention of this aspect, but is instead simply ignorant of the wider politico-historical context in which this debate has unfolded. I provide some information below in the hopes of turning both his attention as well as the attention of other editors to the need for this article to discuss both sides of the debate on equal terms.

Articles and/or books which could be reviewed as background material include:

• "A Contribution to Eysenck's Debate upon the Relationship between IQ and a Marxist Interpretation of Ideology" by Stephen Furner in: Bulletin of the British Psychological Society, Vol. 36, pp. 179-180.

• "Marxist Criticisms of IQ" by James T. Sanders in: Canadian Journal of Education / Revue canadienne de l'éducation, Vol. 10, No. 4 (Autumn, 1985), pp. 402-414

Radical Marxists critics have charged that IQ testing and IQ research, as represented by the work of Arthur Jensen, are either disguised racist ideology or pseudopsychological science. This article argues that the historical evidence marshalled in support of the first charge is both selective and irrelevant, and that the technical arguments advanced to support the second charge that IQ research is pseudoscience reflect both serious misunderstandings and misrepresentations of Jensen's views on the nature and heritability of IQ.

• "Marxism and the IQ Debate" by Michael R. Matthews in: Canadian Journal of Education / Revue canadienne de l'éducation, Vol. 12, No. 1 (Winter, 1987), pp. 184-199.

• Defenders of the Truth by Ullica Segerstråle (Oxford, 2000).

• Race, Social Class, and Individual Differences in I.Q. by Sandra Scarr, 1981.

Advocates of certain political and economic ideologies, most notably neo-Marxist and similar collectivist and totalitarian philosophies, are intolerant of the idea that not all of a person's behavior and not all social conditions are potentially amenable to the control of the political and economic system. To maintain the belief in complete economic determinism of the conditions of life, the importance of genetic factors - which are not directly subject to political or economic control - must be denied. This was the philosophical underpinning of Lysenkoism, which prevailed for many years in the Soviet Union, with ultimately disastrous consequences for the science of genetics and for its applications in agriculture in the U.S.S.R. Despite this lesson, in recent years we have seen a good deal of Lysenkois thinking in the so-called nature-nurture controversy over IQ - most blatantly promulgated, of course, by left-wing groups such as the Progressive Labor Party, the Students for a Democratic Society, the American Communist Party, and other minor, but highly vocal, political and social activist groups. (pp. 487-488)

• Intelligence: A New Look by Hans J. Eysenck (1998).

All these criticisms tend to have a political context, as one might have anticipated from the dislike expressed towards IQ testing by Hitler and Stalin, brothers-in-arms to ban any sign of objectivity from the political landscape. Modern writers who seeks to castigate IQ testing often sail under the flag of Marxism; this would include people like Stephen Rose, Leon Kamin, and R. L. Lewontin, whose book Not in Our Genes received much favourable attention from journalistic reviewers in the media, and severe criticism from experts writing in scientific journals. The same was true of Stephen Jay Gould, whose book The Mismeasure of Man has more factual errors per page than any book I have ever read. (pg. 10)

Much more can be found by anyone interested in the subject. I suspect that Mathsci, being the primary editor, will spare no effort in ensuring that the article becomes compliant with NPOV policy and will himself undertake the work of integrating material such as that presented above into the article. --Aryaman (talk) 13:45, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Comment In addition to my remarks below, all of these sources are primary, Varoon Arya. They are useless as history sources. Eysenck has been a Pioneer grantee for a long time. Concocting any content from these sources would be WP:OR and WP:SYNTH. Perhaps you can find a secondary source about this topic, but you haven't done so far. Mathsci (talk) 20:23, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

VA: Please, play nice. Much of the material you provide above is excellent. But, MathSci is a busy guy, so it is not his responsibility to add it. So, you should! Or Occam should. Or I should. Or some other editor should. The more we work together, the better the article will be. David.Kane (talk) 14:33, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

What about egalitarianism? Also, the concept of equalitarian dogma is discussed here.[9] --120 Volt monkey (talk) 15:48, 13 April 2010 (UTC) Checkuser has deteremined that this user is a block-evading sock of Jacz. Beyond My Ken (talk) 07:40, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

(ec with sockpuppet) When I helped Hemlock Martinis (talk · contribs) extensively rejig the history section of Europe a few years years ago, one of the secondary references used was by Eric Hobsbawm. He wrote extensively on 20th century European history. Now, when that book was used, there was no indication at all in the text that Hobsbawm was a Marxist historian. So I would say this particular line of argument, while doubtless quite amusing to both of you, is WP:UNDUE. If you really want to have a laugh and cause a little bit of havoc on wikipedia, why not start a new spin-off article called Marxist history of the race and intelligence controversy. You could do a dry run on Marxist history of Europe, since that's still a red link. Varoon Arya did make a remark on his talk page about tiring me out prior to coming here qafter being invited here with lots of other editors by Captain Occam. So these particular circumstances might lead administrators or even members of ArbCom to interpret this curiously titled section as a piece of deliberate disruption. It's hard to tell. Mathsci (talk) 16:03, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Let's add that Hobsbawm was ahistorian and much of Marx's work is on history, so it is natural that Marx has had an influence on many historians. But marx was not a biologist. I'd love to see evidence that Stephen Jay Gould or Richard Lewontin are/were marxists. Oh, and I'd like to see evidence of unicorns too. Slrubenstein | Talk 16:37, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

A(ec) Actually, I think there's a very old version of the WP article on Race and intelligence on the psychology wiki that mentions some of the insults hurled around in the aftermath of the Bell Curve debate.[10] These are a bit similar to what happened in the 1970s to the four people who I named, who were very badly treated. The hereditarian Glayde Whitney did make remarks about "a Marxist-Lysenkoist denial of genetics". And there are other statements about scientific misconduct - both Rushton and Gottfredson had repeated problems with their universities and these are documented in Tucker's 2002 book. I suppose these items about Rushton, Whitney and Gottfredson could be added as extra detail. These are all Pioneer grantees of course and all are discussed in Tucker's book. A good secondary source might be "Science for segregation: race, law, and the case against Brown vs. Board of Education" by John P. Jackson (2005), which discusses Glayde Whitney on the first page. Should all these Pioneer grantees and their different conspiracy theories be discussed or might that be WP:UNDUE? Mathsci (talk) 16:43, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure that we want to get into details of the career of Glayde Whitney, also described in Tucker. President of the Behavioral Genetics Association - made a colourful speech about ethnic minorities and Marxists - the minutes show that the executive committee dissociated themselves from the statements of the president - and then Whitney was listed as Past President not long afterwards in his introduction to the autobiography of David Duke, the former Grand Wizard of the Klu Klux Klan. He died in 2002 and seems to have been both a racist and a Holocaust denier. Hmm. Is this what you wanted to include, Varoon Arya? Mathsci (talk) 17:12, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

In addition to the sources above, we could look at John Alcock's Triumph of Sociobiology (Oxford, 2001):

The mid-1970's were years of intense political activity on campuses, much of it initiated by left-wing professors and their students who opposed the war in Vietnam. At Harvard University, the war and various other injustices came under fire from a number of scholars of the Marxist or semi-Marxist persuasion, including Wilson's colleagues Lewontin and Gould. Lewontin and another colleague wrote about this time, "As working scientists in the field of evolutionary genetics and ecology, we have been attempting with some success to guide our own research by a conscious application of Marxist philosophy.... There is nothing in Marx, Lenin or Mao that is or that can be in contradiction with the particular physical facts and processes of a particular set of phenomena in the objective world". Marxist philosophy is founded on the premise of the perfectability of human institutions through ideological prescription. Therefore, persons with Marxist views were particularly unreceptive to the notion that an evolved "human nature" exists, fearing that such a claim would be interpreted to mean that human behavior cannot change. If our actions really were immune to intervention, then the many ills of modern societies could not be corrected. Such a conclusion is needless to say a repugnant one, and not just for Marxists. (pg. 20)

Here's the abstract of Roger Pearson's Race, Intelligence and Bias in Academe (Scott-Townsend, 1991):

This book details evidence of widespread efforts to withhold from the public any clear understanding of the importance of heredity in shaping human abilities, particularly with regard to research into the genetic basis of human behavior, with particular reference to heredity and intelligence. Eminent academic authorities such as Arthur Jensen at Berkeley, Richard Herrnstein of Harvard, Thomas Bouchard of Minnesota, William Shockley of Stanford, Philippe Rushton of Western Ontario, Linda Gottfredson of Delaware, and numerous other scholars have been criticized by Marxist faculty members such as Leon Kamin and Richard Lewontin, pilloried in Leftist publications, described in less than favorable terms in the general media, and had their classes disrupted—even suffering physical assault in some cases—by Marxist student organizations. All this is amply documented, and the result is an up-to-date book which makes entertaining reading but provides solid, documented information on what is currently happening in major segments of the university arena. What makes all this important is that the role of heredity in shaping human abilities has now been demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt by research into behavioral genetics. Yet due to a concerted campaign by Leftists within the academic world and the prevailing political climate in the media, these facts are little known to the general public. For those interested this is also a useful source book.

Of course, the abstract alone is not quotable, but it's a lead worth following up on, particularly given the title of the work.

There's nothing "disruptive" about suggesting this article make mention of the role of Marxist ideology in the history of the race and intelligence debate, particularly as an offshoot of the wider sociobiology debate (which is really little more than infighting among the branches of post-Classical positivism). It's documented in reliable sources and is obviously relevant to the topic. Segerstråle (Oxford, 2000) discusses it in depth. What, exactly, is the problem here? Is it somehow taboo to mention that the beliefs and actions of some of the most vocal opponents of hereditarianism, such as Lewontin, Gould, and Rose, were influenced by Marxist ideology? --Aryaman (talk) 11:03, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Proposal to Varoon Arya

Varoon, Roger Pearson is a Pioneer grantee, so this is a primary source for history. His role is described at length in Tucker. As far as the first quote gos, this article is not about sociobiology. If you read the 2001 OUP book by Ullica Segerstråle, which I have added to the reference and linked with a footnote into the text, she makes it clear that the race and intelligence debate should not be confused with the sociobiology debate (a common source of confusion) even if some of the players on the environmentalist side were the same; she also makes it clear that political ideology really had nothing to do with the scientific merits of the debate. That requires looking through the book as a whole, not cherry-picking quotations: she says that she wrote her book to clarify what exactly had been going on in the debate.

However I have a contructive suggestion to make, I hope along the lines of extra content of the type you want to see in the article.

Her book is an excellent source for the behaviour and ideology of the group around Gould and Lewontin. Not even Segerstråle describes them as Marxists. She is far more cautious, even if in print Lewontin at one stage made such an assertion of that kind. The allegations and counterallegations (which Wooldridge calls "insults") exchanged between these groups of scientists - words like "racist" or "Marxist" - should be handled in the same kind of cautious circumspect way in our writing, which should paraphrase secondary sources. I would certainly be absolutely against going into things like Glayde Whitney's links with the Grand Master of the Klu Klux Klan, etc. I did note that Segerstråle asserts that Gould and Lewontin chose their approach to divert attention from a possible vacuum in their own scientific careers by deliberately putting other scientists in the spotlight. I think that's discussed at length in her book.

So my recommendation is to use Segerstråle's, Wooldridge's and Tucker's books (I might have missed some) to have a slightly more refined and detailed set of comments on the activities of both sides, i.e. to amplify and possibly explain the insults traded between both sides. However, we should not act as historians - we should quote historians and what they write in secondary sources, not assemble quotes ourselves. I am totally against that. It amounts to WP:SYNTH and WP:OR.

I have listened to your suggestions several times and acted upon them: hence (1) the inclusion of the material on the Sociobiology Study Group and (2) adding Segerstråle as a reference (I had actually looked at it while finding material for (1)). Certainly the interaction on the lede of another article was positive. Slrubenstein was delighted that we could work together on the lede and I have to say that he has privately encouraged me to make the most of that excellent collaboration (I hope you're reading this Slr :) ). This material is even more neutral, so I actually don't anticipate any kind of problem.

So would you be ready to work out some not-too-extended specific content of the above kind, based on those three (or more) secondary sources, and then use that material as a basis for linking to primary sources (such as quotes)? Mathsci (talk) 13:57, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Of course I'm willing to collaborate on this. You've done a good job of researching the literature from the environmentalist perspective. There are ample connections made to the Pioneer Fund and more than sufficient examples of unqualified usage of the phrase "scientific racism". Your coverage of the literature from the hereditarian perspective, however, is far less satisfactory. Eysenck, Jensen, Shockley, Gottfredson and others have commented - some quite extensively - on what they perceive as an ideology-driven campaign to malign their characters and to misrepresent the results of scientific research to the public. Pearson identifies this campaign as Marxist in nature - and he's not alone there, either. There is sufficient material from reliable sources to support a statement to the effect that some of the most vocal opponents of hereditarian research - and Lewontin's published exchanges with Jensen in the 1970's are well-noted here, not least of all because Lewontin specifically mentioned that exchange as an example of what he would like to see done to combat "racism" in the wider academic field - have either themselves admitted to actively pursuing the realization of radical egalitarian and/or Marxist goals through their academic work or have been closely associated with those who have. The issue is significant enough that scholars have written articles (cf. above, "Marxist Criticisms of IQ" by James T. Sanders and the response "Marxism and the IQ Debate" by Michael R. Matthews, as well as "Egalitarian Fiction and Collective Fraud" by L. Gottfredson) and books on it (e.g. Pearson's Race, Intelligence and Bias in Academe). In short, the current article quite clearly asserts that hereditarianism has been historically supported and perhaps even funded by those with ideological interests - namely, racist/eugenecist ideology - but says absolutely nothing of environmentalism's (or better: environmental determinism's) support by equally ideological groups - namely those supporting radical egalitarianism and/or (neo-)Marxism. There is no discussion of potential bias in academia, and the role of the popular media in all of this goes untreated, despite the fact that it has been commented upon at length, and was itself the subject of a study published in 1987. Until these problems are corrected, we don't need a Marxist history of the race and intelligence controversy. We already have it in front of us. --Aryaman (talk) 15:35, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, what you write is nonsense. Please stop wasting my time. Mathsci (talk) 23:16, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Primary versus Secondary sources

The current version of the article uses Lynn, Richard (2001), The science of human diversity: a history of the Pioneer Fund, University Press of America, ISBN 076182040X as a source. Perfectly reasonable! I don't want to get caught up with the semantic debate over what is a "primary" and what is a "secondary" source. But if Lynn (2001) is a reasonable source for this article (and I think it is), then surely Intelligence: A New Look by Hans J. Eysenck (1998) is a reasonable source as well, right? David.Kane (talk) 21:00, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

It's only there as a link/reference not a source. It was not used for writing the article and appears alongside the actual source that was used. I put it in because it is a document that gives the precise terms of the original 1937 bequest, quoted partially in Tucker. I used the Lynn booklet elsewhere off-wiki for dating this image File:Draper.jpg. Similarly the footnote to Rushton and jensen is for the reader's convenience.Mathsci (talk) 21:15, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

So, you have no problem with another editor using, for example, Intelligence: A New Look by Hans J. Eysenck (1998) as long as he uses it correctly to, for example, cover material that is not found in a secondary source as you have used Lynn to get "the precise terms of the original 1937 bequest?" David.Kane (talk) 21:27, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Yes I do have a problem because Eysenck was a Pioneer grantee. It is a primary source. So obviously is the Lynn article. It is a history of the Pioneer Fund written by a board member and grantee. It was not used as a source but as an extra note that could be helpful for the reader (it contains a precise statement of the terms of the 1937 bequest, partially quoted in Tucker). That has now been made a little clearer in the footnote. In the same way Mein Kampf is a primary source for the article on Adolf Hitler. It appears in footnote 111 of the WP article, but the structure and content of the article has been determined using secondary sources.

Depending on the context, with appropriate qualification, the Eysenck article could be used in conjunction with a secondary source. There are plenty of secondary commentaries on Eysenck, and at least one biography from 1981. He was another Pioneer grantee and he has been involved in controversies after all. In the same way one could quote from the The Bell Curve, but it couldn't be used as a secondary source in this article. So, especially if controversial events are involved, care has to be taken: every attempt should be made to find a secondary source. Mathsci (talk) 21:59, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

As Slrubenstein has said, the Eysenck quote could definitely not be used to show that Stephen J. Gould, Richard Lewontin and Leon Kamin are or were Marxists. But the political activities of Gould and Lewontin on the one hand and Whitney on the other are described in multiple secondary sources. Mathsci (talk) 22:37, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Mathsci, I think it’s obvious to most of us that you’re applying Wikipedia’s rules about reliable sources in a very selective way. First of all, primary sources are allowed in Wikipedia, as long as they’re used with care and we avoid original research. Your insistence that we claim Jensen’s opinion to be something other than what he himself says that it is, because Jensen’s own writings are a primary source, is wikilawyering. In addition, you haven’t explained why all of the sources provided by Varoon Arya are primary. Ullica Segerstråle is not a pioneer fund grantee, nor is she one of the people covered by this article; do you have any justification for calling her book a primary source other than just that you want to exclude her views from the article?

In addition to the people who’ve expressed NPOV concerns about this article on the race and intelligence discussion page, there appear to now be three of us currently involved in this discussion who think it needs to cover more than the narrow range of views that it currently does—me, David.Kane, and Varoon Arya. I think it’s pretty clear that this is the consensus. Can you accept that? --Captain Occam (talk) 22:50, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

I noticed that you have explictly asked a number of editors who share your point of view in editing Race and intelligence to come to this page. I have notified a senior administrator, in case you try to argue that you have some false kind of consensus.

Ullica Segerstrale wrote about the sociobiology debate, which is distinct from the race and intelligence debate as the author herself points out. It is an excellent book mostly about the controversy surrounding E. O. Wilson, but not directly about race and intelligence. Moreover the author concludes that political ideology does not seem to have influenced the scientific research. It does describe the two periods of disturbance in the seventies and mid-nineties following the publications of Jensen and Herrnstein-Murray, which got mixed up with Wilson and sociobiology. These events are mentioned in two different sentences in the current article. It's not quite clear what else needs to be added, since so far nothing explicit has been mentioned. I suppose "right wing" could be inserted in front of Pioneer Fund and "left wing" in front of Science for the People: that would seem to be one likely outcome. Another less neutral and contentious outcome, which I would be totally opposed to, would be to insert "racist" in front of Pioneer Fund and "Marxist" in front of Science for the People. Extreme terms like that are best avoided in this article. Mathsci (talk) 00:03, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Mathsci, you haven't answered my question. In response to Varoon Arya's suggestion about additional sources we could use, you said "all of these sources are primary, Varoon Arya." One of the sources he suggested was Segerstråle's book, so I am asking you to support your assertion that this book is a "primary source". Are you going to support your assertion about this, or do you admit that you were wrong to claim that all of VA's suggested sources are primary?

"I noticed that you have explictly asked a number of editors who share your point of view in editing Race and intelligence to come to this page. I have notified a senior administrator, in case you try to argue that you have some false kind of consensus. "

And yet when I look at your contributions, I see that you haven't posted on anyone's talk page (either an administrator's or anyone else's) since this comment from you on Maunus's page. Bluffs like this from you would be more convincing if they weren't so easily shown to be empty. But in any case, if you want to actually go ahead and do what you're claiming to have done already, I don't have a problem with it. This page alone contains enough personal attacks and wikilawyering from you that it's pretty unlikely that bringing it to an admin's attention could work to your advantage. --Captain Occam (talk) 00:45, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

<- Could you please stop wikilawyering and trying to twist my words? The source satisifies WP:RS, but it is only tangentially relevant to the subject. If somebody suggests a specific new piece of information in the form of a new sentence or sentences that are to be added to the article. using the source then that can be discussed. So far none of you have suggested specific content changes/additions. This page is not a WP:FORUM. You might be used to prolonging discussions on Race and intelligence interminably - here all that is required is for the specific piece of content to be added either directly to the article using WP:BRD or for that content to be mentioned here. Nebulous discussions are useless. As the recent changes patroller remarked, at the moment this is a normal, neutral and well-written wikipedia article. So as I've already said, specific content changes using this source or any similar source can of course be discussed. I have no objection.

I used wikipedia email. Please redact your second paragraph. Mathsci (talk) 05:32, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

• In this post [11] to Varoon Arya's talk page, reproduced below, you claim that you have worries that you think this article is not neutral. Why do you think it's not neutral? Why do you mention me "running out of steam"? What is that supposed to mean? You give every appearance of being the organizer of a WP:TAG TEAM, discussing tactics. Is this really how you imagine wikipedia articles are edited?

I’m not sure it’s reasonable to assume he’ll be running out of steam anytime soon. You didn’t get to see much of this during the mediation case, which he deliberately refused to be part of because he objected to Ludwig as the mediator, but before the article entered mediation he could sometimes keep this up for more than a month at a time.

However, I don’t think that should be a reason for us to not work on improving the article. You, me, and David.Kane appear to all agree that the article has NPOV issues which need to be addressed, and Bryan Pesta and Mikemikev have also raised similar concerns on the race and intelligence talk page. If Mathsci is the only person who disagrees with the five of us about this, I think it’s pretty clear what the consensus is.

If your own time is the limiting factor here, though, I’m all right with waiting until whenever you’re more available. I find dealing with Mathsci to be kind of taxing, so I’d prefer to do it at a time when I’d be able to have some help from you with this. --Captain Occam (talk) 00:30, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Mathsci (talk) 05:51, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

“Why do you mention me "running out of steam"? What is that supposed to mean?”

Why don’t you ask him? If you look at my conversation with him, you’ll see that he’s the one who brought up this idea in the comment that I was responding to. You’ll also notice that I did not initially ask him to come help me with this article in particular—I told him that I’d like him to become more involved in the race and intelligence article now that mediation for it is over, without mentioning either you or this article, and he was the one who brought up your behavior for this article, and the idea of him becoming involved in it.

I’ve already explained why I think this article is not neutral, and so have a few other users. If you aren’t willing or able to understand or acknowledge this, that’s your own problem, and doesn’t require us to repeat ourselves multiple times. The important thing is that of the users who are currently expressing this opinion—me, Mikemikev, David.Kane, and Varoon Arya—none of them are users whom I specifically solicited to come help me with this article. They all reached this opinion independently of any influence from me, and the consensus among us and you is four to one. The only reason I haven’t already made another attempt to edit the article based on this consensus is because you don’t seem willing to acknowledge it, so I think it needs to be made as clear as possible by having several of the editors who feel this way participating here at once.

Until then, bluster and threaten me all you like. It won’t change anything, and I probably won’t reply again if you don’t have anything to say that’s relevant to improving the article, which is what we’re supposed to be discussing here. --Captain Occam (talk) 17:20, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

EDIT: Whoops, I forgot to mention DJ as someone else who's explained why they agree about the NPOV problems with this article. See his comments about this above. --Captain Occam (talk) 18:29, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

These edits have nothing to do with content. The same applies to what Varoon Arya has said above. since neither of you is bothering to suggest any content, It seems that you and all the others you have invited to this page are just here to be disruptive, by writing trolling remarks, making unjustified statements about historians, That's more or less what I wrote to Shell Kinney and now you seemed to have confirmed that. Mathsci (talk) 23:24, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

The only reason we aren’t suggesting specific content yet is because you’re remaining adamant that the article has no NPOV problems and does not need to be changed at all. (And are reverting any efforts from us to change it, even if that change is only to add an NPOV tag.) If we haven’t convinced you that the article should be changed at all, isn’t it a little premature for us to be trying to get you to agree with specific changes?

That said, I notice that you’ve stopped trying to address the points that other users have raised about the article’s lack of neutrality. (Unless you consider calling VA’s last post “nonsense” to be addressing his point.) So in that respect, I think it has been adequately demonstrated that this article has NPOV issues which need to be fixed, even if you’re not willing to acknowledge this yourself. For that reason, I think we’ll probably be ready to start discussing and implementing specific changes to the article soon. When we do, it’s up to you whether you want to work collaboratively with us on this, or try to disrupt it / edit war over it.

VA, DJ: do you think we’re ready to start working on fixing some of the NPOV problems that have been brought up here? You can see the sorts of changes that I had in mind by looking at the article’s edit history. Both of you are giving me the impression that what you have in mind is something a little different from this, but I’m sure we’ll be able to come up with something that pleases at least three out of four of the users involved in this article. (Four out of five if we include David.Kane.) I may even prefer whatever version of the article you come up with over what I had. --Captain Occam (talk) 00:19, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Suggestion to move forward

Perhaps the best way to build some trust and work together is to suggest a series of small changes, easily reverted and clearly explained? Worth a try, any way. I just went first by replacing one word (psychologists) with, I think, a better one (researchers). What does everyone think? David.Kane (talk) 00:32, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Varoon Arya has made vague suggestions and innuendos about historians which appear to be his personal opinion not borne out by the slightest evidence from any reliable source of any sort. Captain Occam has been even less specific - just WP:IDONTLIKEIT. That is unsatisfactory and, as mentioned in my report at WP:ANI, seems to be disruption for the sake of disruption. The article only summarises what historians have written about events and statements. Nobody has explained which statements are contentious and from which source. That would in fact be the way forward and is the normal method of editing wikipedia. Indeed as far as I can see, nobody has even bothered looking at the sources.

I assume that David.Kane, Captain Occam, probably Ludwigs2, Varoon Arya want to act as historians themseleves and select comments themselves from the literature. I assume that they want to reproduce the chaos occurring in race and intelligence - attempts to discuss the scientific content directly instead of using secondary sources. But since this is not the way normal wikipedia articles are edited, there is no reason happenijng here. It would facilitate the POV-pushing by a small but dedicated group of WP:SPAs who could then destroy ordinary balanced content.

I asked Varoon Arya for specific suggestions above and he has so far not produced anything concrete. That seems unconstructive and unhelpful.

So users can suggest further sources or criticize with page numbers why they think the content does not reflect the source. Nebulous discussions which are not related to reliable sources are simply not going to happen, because that is not how history articles are written. Mathsci (talk) 01:56, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

I do not want to "act as historians themseleves and select comments themselves from the literature." Where have I given you that impression? I think that this article can be improved. Surely you agree? I look forward to working with you, and others, on that process in a collaborative fashion. Changing "researchers" to "mostly psychologists" is, for example, perfectly reasonable since it directly addresses my concern. I agree with you on this. Progress! David.Kane (talk) 02:20, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

A lot of people descended on this article, making unreasonable and inflammatory comments. What you've just said is completely reasonable and the normal sort of thing that happens in wikipedia editing. You also made suggestions above (pictures) which I didn't see but which is what I usually do when creating articles (as you probably guessed from another article that you recently edited). Of course I have no objections at all to edits like this. I wish Varoon had made some concrete suggestions on the "insults" topic. I don't think the history is written from either a hereditarian or an evolutionist point of view. There are also currently discussions about page bans on WP:ANI, which might let this talk page reurn to normal. In the meantime, of course there's no problem in tweaking the article. Just check with the sources when doing this. All of them are available in one form or another on the web. Mathsci (talk) 04:12, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

For anyone who hasn’t noticed this already, Mathsci’s attempt to get me banned from editing this article (as well as from race and intelligence) can be found here. --Captain Occam (talk) 05:43, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Revising the article

At this point, six different users have agreed that this article has NPOV problems which need to be fixed: me, David.Kane, Varoon Arya, DJ, Mikemikev, and Bpesta22. One of us just needs to take the initiative and actually fix them. After what I just had to deal with in the AN/I thread, though, I'd really rather not have to make another attempt at this myself right now. (“Another” meaning after my one on the 12th.) Is anyone else willing to volunteer? --Captain Occam (talk) 06:02, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

The Mind of Primitive Man

"In 1911 Boas published The Mind of Primitive Man, a series of lectures on culture and race. It was often referred to in the 1920s by those who were opposed to new U.S. immigration restrictions based on presumed racial differences. In the 1930s the Nazis in Germany burned the book and rescinded his Ph.D. degree, which Kiel University had in 1931 ceremonially reconfirmed."[12] Franz Boas later updated the book and the revised edition was published in 1938.[13] --120 Volt monkey (talk) 15:02, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

Interesting. Feel free to add well-sourced statements to the article. David.Kane (talk) 13:00, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

Kudos

Kudos to DJ for some constructive additions to this article. I think that this takes the excellent work that MathSci has done and makes it even better. Soon, we will be able to remove the NPOV tag. David.Kane (talk) 18:18, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

Reverting sourced edits

I modified the summary of Jensen's article using a new direct quote of Jensen in Wooldridge. It does not seem that Captain Ocacam in the few seconds he took to revert has had time to check either source. That is not acceptable editing behaviour. This summary seems to agree with both sources. Statements made by Jensen in 1982 are of course irrelevant to this portion of the history. Is there another secondary source in the history of psychology, not by jensen, summarising the paper differently? I considerably shortened what Wooldridge wrote, so it might be worth looking there. I don't think eiher of he summaries represeny Jensen's paper inaccurately. The more quotes from the paper that are used, the less reason for complaints. Mathsci (talk) 23:19, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

The version you’re reverting to (three times in the past hour) is undoing most of the changes that DJ and David.Kane have made over the past day. If you want to add or change an individual quote, then we can discuss that. But there’s no justification for this sort of wholesale reverting of the entire article, when it’s already clear that consensus opposes you about most of the changes that you’re trying to undo. --Captain Occam (talk) 23:27, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

No changes by David.Kane have been undone. However, DJ's version did not match the sources. It is also not permissible to use a quote from 1982 of Jensen in describing his 1969 paper. That has to be done from a WP:RS. If editors don't use secondary sources or check the ones that have been used (you don't seem to have done so), their edits contravene wikipedia rules. Editors are not allowed to be historians themselves, citing primary sources, to make some kind of point: that is WP:OR and WP:SYNTH. The summary of the paper is straightforward: why introduce all these difficulties? Mathsci (talk) 23:34, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

You’re repeating the exact same point that you made before, and DJ has already addressed it in his last comment here. You haven’t attempted to address what he’s said in response. This appears to be a clear case of WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT: continuing to reinstate the same edit that’s been reverted by multiple users, repeating the exact same argument for it that you’ve made before, while not acknowledging what’s been said in response or the fact that you’re the only user involved in this article who thinks your version is appropriate. You also aren’t attempting to justify your other major change: devoting around five paragraphs to two issues of a psychology journal, even though it’s clear that consensus opposes you about this also.

I don’t recommend that you keep edit warring over this. I’m not going to revert you again right now, but unless you make more of an effort to justify your edits here, I think you can be fairly confident that someone else is going to. If you revert the article again in the next 23 hours, you’ll have violated 3RR. I’ve already warned you about 3RR for this article on your userpage less than three days ago, so I don’t intend to warn you about it again. --Captain Occam (talk) 23:53, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

Here we should be discussing secondary sources and producing new secondary sources if possible. At the moment I'm just applying the usual rules for editing normal articles. In the absence of any other valid secondary sources, the only thing to be done at the mement is to check that the one paragraph summary of Jensen's 1969 article written in the WP article agrees with both sources, i.e. WP:V. If necessary just having direct quotes appearing in those sources might be be best. Wooldridge devotes 2 or 3 pages to his summary.Mathsci (talk) 00:09, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Without weighing on the details of this dispute, I will note that I agree with MathSci that good secondary sources are wonderful to use. To that issue: Would MathSci (and others) agree that Race Differences in Intelligence by John C. Loehlin, Gardner Lindzey and J.N. Spuhler (1975) is a good secondary source? (It looks excellent to me and has a couple of pages on Jensen (1969). David.Kane (talk) 00:46, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Yes, of course, that would be a good source. I saw you'd added it in the refs but haven't been able to access a copy so far. But if they give a summary, that is a third source to use. Some form of fairly precise summary is obviously needed. Mathsci (talk) 00:57, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Um, isn't Loehlin a Pioneer grantee? I don't think he is, but this [14] is a little confusing. Perhaps it's his coauthor Horn that's the grantee ... and yes that's what is is [15]. Mathsci (talk) 01:05, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Tucker's narrative seems to be inconsistent with Jensen's own narrative. I didn't remove Tucker's narrative but it must be attributed to Tucker given the ostensible differences in their accounts. Jensen can write about what he meant in 1969 at any time after 1969. Given the singular importance of that first publication, Jensen has written about it many times. We could expand that section enormously with all of the material that's been written about the events of that time period. What we can't do is leave out Jensen's own account of what he wrote and what he intended. --DJ (talk) 01:11, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

What about Wooldridge? That is also being used and is the source for example of the final quote. If you haven't already done so, you should read Wooldridge. As I say he writes far more and it could be that a longer summary, also with the quotes he chooses from Jensen, might be better. What Jensen says in 1982 can't be used for writing history: it's a primary document and he could well have been giving his own later spin on the paper. We need to quote expert commentators in secondary sources. Mathsci (talk) 01:18, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

The two NPOV problems

I'll reiterate the two problems with this section as concisely as possible in hopes that all we lack is a clear understanding of the problems.

1) The summary of the events surround Jensen (1969) are ostensibly different than Jensen's accounts (at least from 1970, 1972, 1978, 1982 and 2002 which I'm familiar with to one degree or another). Jensen's own accounts of his work and intentions are secondary sources describing the primary material (Jensen 1969). Minimally, the existing narratives need to be attributed and Jensen's narrative included as well.

2) The section closes with a list of scientific criticisms of Jensen 1969 which are beyond the scope of a historical narrative, including many anachronisms and violate NPOV because they present only one one POV. For example, debate about whether the heritability of IQ is 45% versus 90% is obviously entirely inappropriate here for those three reasons. The only solution that permits keeping this material is to (a) include a matching summary of what Jensen (1969) argued [three points: the failure of compensatory education, the heritabilty of IQ, and the possibility of a hereditarian explanation for black-white IQ differences] and (b) pointers to what the contemporary consensus is on these points in the main article. A better solution is to do away with scientific criticisms and stick to history. --DJ (talk) 02:20, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

I think Mathsci has had this explained to him more than enough times at this point. If he still isn’t wiling to acknowledge it, except to repeat his earlier claim that we can’t cite Jensen’s writings because he’s a primary source, the evidence suggests that he’s just trying to stonewall this article by refusing to accept what consensus has determined about it. I’d suggest that one of you just go ahead and fix this problem again in that case. (I’d do it myself, but I’m trying to limit myself to two reverts per day.) I don’t think he’ll try to edit war with us over this, since he won’t be able to do so without violating 3RR. --Captain Occam (talk) 04:14, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

@ Captain Occam. Statements like this are of absolutely no value. What you have written is an emotional rant. Please stop doing this.

@ DJ. The commentary on Jensen (1969) cannot directly use his subsequent attempts to clarify himself. That is not how history articles are written on wikipedia.. Besides which it was this paper in unaltered form which was circulated throughout the US by Shockley (as stated with documentary evidence in Tucker (2002)). Again let's stick to the secondary sources. Anything by Jensen is a primary source. If the book by Loehlin et al mentions these clarifications, then we could make reference to these statements by Jensen, as reported by Loehlin et al. But certainly we cannot produce WP:OR and WP:SYNTH in this article. The criticisms are not beyond a historical narrative, because they do occur in a history of psychology book (Wooldridge). That sort of writing is completely standard. What can be written is that "In the analysis of Wooldridge (1994), five main types of criticism were determined, ..." or some similar phrase. Any assertions about what goes in or out must be based on wikipedia editing policies. I can't see any policies that justify your claims of limiting the scope of an article, in fact quite the contrary. Wooldridge gives a very cautious, lucid and carefully reasoned analysis of what happened in the debate. He is both a skilled journalist and academic. He can't be accused of bias, as far as I am aware. Indeed the book has had rave reviews by historians in the academic literature, eg this one. Tucker has also won at least three prizes for his book and I haven't seen any book review that has accused him of distorting facts.

@David.Kane. Is there a copy of the book by Loehlin et al accessible on the web? I have not found a readable link yet. All three authors (one of whom is now dead) have impeccable credentials. Mathsci (talk) 08:10, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

I did find this review of the book of Loehlin et al, which can be read here. It's not very positive. Mathsci (talk) 09:19, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

It's telling that one of the main points in that review is Lewontin's fallacy. Surely Lewontin's fallacy is more relevant in 'scientific criticisms' than his pointing out of the already established 'corn analogy'. I mean anthropology departments were trotting out that 'more within than between group genetic differences' nonsense for thirty years. Or is it just criticisms of Jensen you find in your 'secondary sources'? mikemikev (talk) 12:15, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

The secondary source by Adrian Wooldridge does not criticize Jensen. It summarizes what other people have written. Wooldridge has a Ph.D. in modern history; he writes dispassionately and cautiously. There's no point in starting a fresh discussion about primary sources.

Your reponse to Captain Occam was fairly quick.[16] Mathsci (talk) 12:31, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Mathsci, you do understand that every other user involved in this article opposes you about this, right? --Captain Occam (talk) 08:25, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

No, I don't agree. You have written that, but David.Kane and I are having a discussion on sources, which you are at present interrupting. As far as I can tell, without any wikipedia editing policies to support you, you are trying to bully me into having a wikipedia article edited by a method that contravenes most wikipedia editing policies; the suggestions do not agree with the only secondary sources we have found to date. Administrators are watching the way you edit and I would suggest you participate in a more constructive way. With a few exceptions, the editors that you have summoned here are supporters of the hereditarian point of view. It is intellectually dishonest in those circumstances to argue by strength of numbers rather than the strengths of the points being made, particularly if those points (a) refer to sources and (b) are backed by wikipedia policy. So far you have not directly engaged with the specific content of any one source. Please now try to do so. Mathsci (talk) 09:19, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Before we get into a discussion about whether there are any sources about Jensen's paper that you'd find acceptable other than your preferred one, I think it needs to be pointed out that you haven't responded to DJ's and my other criticism, which is that it's WP:UNDUE for us to devote five paragraphs of the article to two issues of a psychology journal. Since three of the five criticisms mentioned there are rejected by the APA in their 1995 report, it's also unbalanced to include them without mentioning that most of them are now rejected by mainstream psychometrics. (The APA is about as mainstream in psychology as you can get.) I know these criticisms are covered by the source you're using for this part of the article, but we have more policies to consider for the article than just reporting what the source says. NPOV policy, particularly the "undue weight" portion of it, need to be followed also.

If you don't have any response to these criticisms, I'll be reinstating this part of DJ's edit sometime soon, while leaving the summary of Jensen's paper alone for now. (I'm hoping David.Kane and Mikemikev can handle that aspect of the article themselves.) --Captain Occam (talk) 01:31, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Why not address the WP:UNDUE problem, which I sympathetic to, by adding more material? Indeed, the APA report is important enough to justify its own subsection. In that subsection, you could describe what it concluded and point out, NPOVly, that these conclusions contradicted some of the criticism of Jensen. To the extent that you would rather press on, it would be useful to deal with DJs edits one at a time. I think that views will vary depending on which specific edit you are talking about. Also, MathSci is on a Wikibreak, so it would certainly be polite of us to wait for his return. David.Kane (talk) 01:39, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

I think it would make more sense to just leave out the detaile

d explanation of how Jensen’s paper was criticized in these two issues of HER. If the article includes both all of these criticisms and the ways in which the APA rejects them, we’ll be getting into specific arguments and counter-arguments about the data itself, which I don’t think belongs in this article. That sort of thing belongs in race and intelligence, while this article is about the history of the debate. Judging by how incredibly selective Mathsci has been about sources thus far, I also suspect he would have a problem with us using the APA report as a source, since it isn’t written specifically from a historical perspective.

Is it all right with you if I remove these detailed criticisms for now, and if other users think they ought to be added back, we can discuss whether there’s a way to do this that doesn’t either violate NPOV or devote too much space to specific interpretations of the data?

Also, I don’t think it would be reasonable to avoid editing the article just because Mathsci is on Wikibreak right now. Despite how much work he’s put into this article, he has no more right to dictate what can go in it than any other user does, and for him to claim otherwise would be WP:OWNership. Plenty of other users who have made useful contributions to this article or race and intelligence are also on Wikibreak, such as DJ and Varoon Arya. If nobody avoids making decisions about these articles in their absence, I don’t see any reason why Mathsci should deserve special treatment in this respect. --Captain Occam (talk) 03:43, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

-> (on wikibreak - about to travel by ferry to England, where I will be extremely busy) I disagree. This is history from the early seventies. We can't write history oursleves and include statements from the 1990s. That is absurd. By all means find other secondary reliable sources and add from them if there is relevant material of whatever kind. But please don't tamper with the chronology. The purpose of this article is just to describe the historical events in the controversy. For example Adrian Wooldridge quotes Jensen's response at the time amongst other things: (page 374 top)

If my article had been faulty, one competent critic should have been sufficient to put it down. The fact that dozens of criticisms have steadily appeared for more than five years after its publication is a social-psuchological phenomenon perhaps worthy of study in its own right.

Arthur Jensen, "What is the Question? What is the Evidence?", Page 235.

Wooldridge devotes 3 or 4 pages to these criticisms. We report what the sources say not what we would like to see in the article. So no, it is not alright to remove material because WP:IDONTLIKEIT. That is called POV-pushing. Please could Captain Occam find his own secondary sources and please stop asking the same unreasonable question so many times. Also could he please stop making meatpuppetry requests to other users. These decisions are not decided on strength of numbers - artificially increased by users he has summoned here - no matter how many times he tries that ploy.

Captain Occam is moving closer and closer to some kind of indefinite block at this stage. He has left messages on four or five users' page requesting support for his unreasonable point of view and is using the number of people on his side as an argument. This is clearly disruptive, since he never discusses any of the sources. I wonder whether he has actually bothered to read any of the sources. Mathsci (talk) 05:09, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

I have already specifically addressed what you’ve just said here. I know this is what the source material says, but there’s more to editing articles here than just carte blanche repeating everything that’s in the source. If you want to keep this material in the article, you’ll need to address the arguments that have been presented against its conclusion that have nothing to do with whether it’s in the source or not.

David.Kane, could you please answer my question about what you think of my suggestion? I would like to come to a compromise with you about this, even if Mathsci isn’t interested in letting me to come to one with him. --Captain Occam (talk) 05:45, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Please what you write is just nonsense. A rather feeble excuse for WP:IDONTLIKEIT, WP:IDONTLIKEIT, WP:IDONTLIKEIT. You haven't read the source from what I can tell. Your persistence is admirable, but it is POV-pushing at the moment and will at this rate lead to an indefinite block. The day you discuss or come up with a reliable secondary source, you will receive a barnstar from me.

You can add anything from a relevant reliable secondary source that you can find, if it is not WP:UNDUE and if it is chronologically valid (i.e. in the 1970s, this section of the history). Mathsci (talk) 05:50, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

"Please what you write is just nonsense. A rather feeble excuse for WP:IDONTLIKEIT, WP:IDONTLIKEIT, WP:IDONTLIKEIT. You haven't read the source from what I can tell. Your persistence is admirable, but it is POV-pushing at the moment and will at this rate lead to an indefinite block. The day you discuss or come up with a reliable secondary source, you will receive a barnstar from me."

Do you really think your name-calling or threatening me with a block makes any difference? You’ve already just filled half of the page at AN/I with your previous unsuccessful effort to get me blocked, and the only thing I’m doing anything differently from what you complained about last time is that I’m now making more of an effort to contribute to non-race-related articles, since people here apparently care more about that than I’d realized. If you make another AN/I thread about the exact same thing you complained about there last time, all you’ll be doing is forum shopping.

"You can add anything from a relevant reliable secondary source that you can find, if it is not WP:UNDUE and if it is chronologically valid (i.e. in the 1970s, this section of the history)."

So what if I were to add several paragraphs of text cited to The IQ Controversy: The Media and Public Policy in which I claimed that in the 1980s, the media systematically misrepresented the state of research about race and intelligence, without any qualifications that this is only the opinion of the book’s authors? That’s what this source says, and as far as I can tell it meets all of your qualifications in terms of being a reliable secondary source. By stating these authors’ conclusions as fact, and devoting a large amount of space to them in the article, I would be doing the exact same thing that you’ve done here. Perhaps you can better understand what’s wrong with doing this when it involves a viewpoint that you disagree with: can you see why my doing this would be an NPOV violation?

I suspect that you will, but if you do, you need to explain how this would be any different from what you’re doing. This book is no less reliable as a secondary source than the sources you’re using, and stating the author’s conclusions as fact is exactly the same thing you’ve done with your own sources. --Captain Occam (talk) 06:25, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

There is no "name calling", just your own misinterpretation of core wikipedia policies. Any discussion here will start with somebody suggesting another secondary source. David.Kane has done so. I'll make a copy of the relevant sections of the book by Loehlin et al in Cambridge and then we can proceed from there. And no you can't add loads of paragraphs to make a WP:POINT. That would just be WP:UNDUE and disruptive. Produce your source here and then we can discuss it. David.Kane has already mentioned caution in editing articles like this. You should drop this WP:BATTLEGROUND attitude as it will only earn you a topic ban or indefinite block. So please, produce the secodary source, let other editors decide whether it satisfies WP:RS and then you can explain here the content you which to add. Please do not make any major change to the article without consultation. Mathsci (talk) 06:46, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Mathsci, if you think I deserve a block, just post a new section about this in your existing thread at AN/I, and see if anyone pays attention to it. The thread is now at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents/Slrubenstein, and it’s still somewhat active. Since your efforts to get me blocked are what the majority of this thread is about, and we’re supposed to avoid multiple simultaneous AN/I complaints about the same issue, that’s the appropriate place to bring this up. If you think my behavior warrants a block, I’d much rather you just post about it there than keep threatening me.

The source I’m suggesting is The IQ Controversy: The Media and Public Policy by Snyderman and Rothman. But I want you to stop evading my question. I’m not actually intending to add several paragraphs cited to that book where I describe the author’s opinion as fact; that was just a hypothetical example of the same type of behavior you’ve been engaging in since you created this article.

You said for me to do this would be WP:UNDUE. Why? That the media has been misrepresenting the science about this topic is the authors’ central conclusion in that book, and they devote over 100 pages to discussing it. If you think three or four pages from Wooldridge is sufficient to warrant five paragraphs in this article, shouldn’t 100 pages in Snyderman and Rothman warrant considerably more coverage in the article than that?

Either they both deserve to this kind of coverage, or neither of them does. I think the latter is the case. But you apparently think that what gets three or four pages of coverage in Wooldridge deserves more coverage than what gets 100 pages of coverage in Snyderman and Rothman. Can you come up with any justification for why you think this, other than just applying a double standard to sources based on whether or not you personally agree with them? --Captain Occam (talk) 07:22, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

It’s now been over a day and a half since I provided this explanation of why giving five paragraphs to what gets three or four pages in Wooldridge’s book is undue weight, as well as why it violates NPOV to describe the opinions of any of these authors as fact. And I know Mathsci’s lack of a response to these points can’t be because of his Wikibreak, because he’s continuing to post other comments on this page. If I were to assume good faith about Mathsci, that would involve assuming that since my point about this remains unaddressed, he would not have a problem with me revising the article in order to fix the problems that I pointed out above. However, Mathsci’s conduct over the past week has made it very difficult for me to assume good faith about him. DJ, David.Kane, do either of you have any suggestions about what I should do in this situation? --Captain Occam (talk) 00:11, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

Well, I think that all editors should follow the same procedure when making changes that they feel are likely to be controversial. First, take a well-defined part of the article to tackle, either something that is a section on its own or something that should be a section. (I think that, in this case, the topic is Jensen's 1969 article. I certainly believe that this article deserves its own section, with at least a couple of paragraphs.) Second, draft up a candidate version on either this talk page or your talk page. This should look precisely as you want it to look in the article. (I think that you could draft an excellent section based solely on Loehlin.) Third, request feedback from all users. Fourth, modify the article in conjunction with the feedback. Fifth, iterate. That procedure worked well for MathSci in History and me in Assumptions. Now, in this case, it is not exactly obvious what would be kept and what would be replaced, but I am sure that this could be figured out. I share some of your concerns about the article as it is, but the best strategy for fixing is, I think, something like the above. Good luck! David.Kane (talk) 01:31, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

What I’m wanting to focus on at the moment isn’t specifically the coverage of Jensen’s article, but the unusual amount of space and detail that’s being given to the criticism of his article, as well as how some of the more contentious assertions made by the authors we’re using as sources are being described as fact rather than as the views of the authors. Since the changes I’m hoping to make will mostly involve removing and/or rewording things, I can’t propose a draft of them as easily as I could for a change that involved adding several new paragraphs like what you’re suggesting. I also think I’ve already made it fairly clear above what I’m intending to change, and Mathsci appears to not have a counter-argument against my justification for why these changes are necessary. Do you think it would be acceptable for me to go ahead and change these things, or is it necessary for me first provide a more detailed explanation of everything I’m intending to re-word? --Captain Occam (talk) 02:32, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

sources to use

There are many other secondary sources that speak to the 1969 HER article, the events that led to its writing and the events that followed its publication. I'll start a list. Attribution of views already in the article and inclusion of a range of other views is needed. --DJ (talk) 13:58, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

• Jensen, A. (1998). "Jensen on "Jensenism"". Intelligence. 26 (3): 181–208. doi:10.1016/S0160-2896(99)80002-6.

Here are the key pages [17] about Jensen (1969) from Loehlin et al. Race Differences in Intelligence. I think that we all agree that this is an excellent secondary source, at least when it comes to Jensen. Anyone want to use it to draft a paragraph or two about the Jensen controversy? I think that this deserves its own subsection under the 1960-1980 section. David.Kane (talk) 17:09, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

• (from Calais next to rue Marie Tudor) Thanks David for putting this on Scribd. That saves me a trip to the UL in Cambridge. The volcanic dustcloud has made me part of the huge exodus on the ferries from Calais to Dover - people from all over world have converged on France, some coming on very long journeys - one person came from Qatar, via Istanbul where he was chucked out of his hotel after one night, while waiting for a flight to Paris. I should really have gone through Dunkerque to relive those famous evacuation scenes on the beaches...
• Jensen on Jensenism (1998) is obviously inadmissible for history in the 1970s. It is a primary source with the wrong chronology. If a secondary source mentions it post 1998, then it can obviously be included as part of the third section of the history (1980-present). For example Nesbitt might mention it with quotes; or Mackintosh, or other popular books post 1998. For the aftermath of the 1969 paper, if there are secondary sources quoting Jensen's reactions in the 1970s (like the quote from Wooldridge above) that is quite OK. I think a sentence or two on Jensen's reaction at the time (mid 1970s) quoted in a secondary source with context is fine. I don't think that should be too hard to locate. The quote above from Wooldridge is a start.
• Loehlin et al is fine. It seems to be in agreement with the other sources. It has less quotations than the other two sources. The sociobiology source, so far not used except in a footnote, also describes the turbulent events of the 1970s in a more detailed way - more could be added there about the physical attacks and threats, etc. It is clear that Tucker has had access to more documents from the 1960s and 1970s unravelling the role of Shockley, so his account is undoubtedly more accurate and detailed. Also the uncovering of the problems in Burt's twin studies by Leon Kamin in the early 1970s is omitted in Loehlin. Important points like that are described in detail by Wooldridge, who is a trained historian writing 20 years later. So I don't think a new section is needed, since the book is largely in accord with the other later accounts; however, three or four extra sentences could be added with citations. For that matter more detail could be added from Wooldridge; my summary was quite brief and omitted quite a bit of detail. Mathsci (talk) 19:14, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

I think you already know that I approve of using Loehlin as a source. (And I also approve of the source that DJ linked to.) However, after all of Mathsci’s accusations against me at AN/I of POV-pushing and the like, I’d really rather not be the person who edits the article in order to incorporate these sources. In the AN/I thread, Stephen B. Streater has suggested that in situations like this, I ought to leave it up to other people to make these sorts of edits. Can either of you add these sources yourself? --Captain Occam (talk) 18:01, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

@Mathsci: you're essentially saying that autobiography is inadmissible as a source for history, no? Or more broadly that a review paper written by a subject expert isn't a reliable secondary source for any of the expert's own work. Jensen's own account of how and why he wrote a paper in 1969 is a reliable source on the events of 1969, whether it was published by Jensen or someone else and whether it was published in 1970 or 1998, so long as the account is attributed. The prohibition against primary sources is that they require the editor to make interpretive judgments we shouldn't be making. No such situation exists here. Jensen's historical accounts written at later dates have the same standing to the events of history as any other source. --DJ (talk) 17:55, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

We can't use a primary source which is out in chronology by 40 years. History articles on wikipedia are not written like that. We can't include direct statements by Jensen "explaining himself", even at the time, unless they are quoted in a reliable secondary source by an uninvolved commentator. Commentators have explained that Jensen's statements on Cyril Burt, whose twin study he used in 1969, have wavered between supporting or criticizing Burt over the years. That is what can be reported from the secondary source. In the same way BLPs are not written using autobiographies, except to check a few factual details. Mathsci (talk) 23:42, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

"History articles on wikipedia are not written like that." Really? Please point to a Wikipedia policy which backs up that claim. The very first articles I checked Winston Churchill, uses works written by Churchill on an article about Churchill. I can produce arbitrary numbers of similar examples. Why can't we use articles written by Jensen in a section about Jensen? As usual, I will cop to not being an experienced editor. Perhaps there is a policy that spells this out. But if there is not . . . David.Kane (talk) 12:23, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

It's a primary source and that is spelt out in WP:RS. But as you can see from what the historian Franz Samelson says below, Jensen's statements vary with time and thus require qualification by a skilled historian. We are not skilled historians, we are just wikipedia editors. We use the sources detailing the history; we do not use primary sources in this case. There was an ArbCom case a while back concerning PHG (talk · contribs); he wrote the history of the Franco-Siamese War himself using primary sources - letters of French soldiers - and this was considered to be against wikipedia policy. This is similar because history is concerned. Similarly I wrote an article on Auguste Pavie. Pavie wrote extensive memoirs on his experiences in French Indochina - all primary sources. Fortunately there were plenty of recent 20th century sources which provided context and quotations from these memoirs, and that's how they were used. All of this is fairly standard. Probably the best example is the article on Cyril Burt. All the citations used in that historical article, which involves a fair of not unrelated controversy, are to secondary sources on Burt. Mathsci (talk) 19:06, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

In other words, you can't "point to a Wikipedia policy which backs up that claim." WP:RS has nothing directly on this point. (If it does, then quote it.) The fact that, on some of the articles you have seen and/or worked on, certain practices are followed tells us little about Wikipedia policy in general. See, aa another example, Ghandi, which features extensive use of Gandhi, M.K. (1940), An Autobiography or The Story of My Experiments With Truth. If a book by Ghandi is acceptable in an article about Ghandi, then books by Jensen in a paragraph about Jensen are fine too. David.Kane (talk) 20:52, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

David.Kane, I would suggest that you stop trying to wikilawyer. As you are undoubtedly aware, several administrators are watching this page. Statements like the above would probably identify you as yet another WP:SPA and POV-pusher. If an ArbCom case were initiated, it is highly doubtful that statements like this would be viewed in a favourable light. They read like a kind of threat. At the moment you are apparently pressing to use primary sources and you are giving every appearance of being part of a WP:TAG TEAM. Are you aware what it means to be a civil POV-pusher? Might it not be an idea for you to clarify this with an uninvolved administrator like RegentsPark (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) or Dougweller (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)? Thanks, Mathsci (talk) 23:46, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

Wow, this is really getting quite disturbing. Accusing people of wikilawyering and threatening behaviour, while exhibiting the worst wikilawyering and threatening behaviour I've ever seen. I wonder if anyone else feels an RfC would be helpful here? It's kind of sad that MathSci feels this is an acceptable substitute for addressing the point. mikemikev (talk) 13:27, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

I've noticed that there are some accounts that exhibit SPA-like behavior, while not meeting the definition of WP:SPA. --120 Volt monkey (talk) 17:29, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Mikemikev, are you suggesting an RFC/U about Mathsci, or a general RFC for the whole article? If it’s the second one, I’m kind of doubtful about whether it would accomplish anything. You, me, DJ, Varoon Arya and David.Kane have all expressed similar concerns about this article, and for the most part Mathsci has refused to listed to all five of us. Even if an RFC causes more people to comment here expressing the same opinion (which is the most it would accomplish), I don’t see what reason there is to assume Mathsci would listen to them more than he has to any of us.

I agree that an RFC/U would be useful, though. If that’s what you have in mind, I think we should first make one more effort to revise the article, and see whether Mathsci reacts again by edit warring over whatever changes we try to make. If he doesn’t, then an RFC/U isn’t necessary, and we can just revise the article normally, with or without his help. And if he does, then when we report him about this we’ll have another recent example of the fact that he’s still doing the same thing, both for this article and race and intelligence. --Captain Occam (talk) 12:32, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

RfC/U was the idea. But I agree it may be premature, it would be better to give Mathsci a chance to improve his conduct.

Incidentally, I'll have access to the University of London libraries within the next few weeks (need to renew my alumni status). I hope to share some useful material. mikemikev (talk) 12:50, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

@Mathsci. I believe my question stands. Per David.Kane, I see nothing that rules out the use of Jensen's post-1969 autobiographical writings, and I see much that commends its use per WP:NPOV. --DJ (talk) 01:33, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

OK everybody, here’s what I recommend. I think we should try to reinstate David.Kane’s last edit from the 17th again, at least as a starting point, since it improves on several of the problems being brought up here. It fixes the problem I mentioned about WP:UNDUE space being provided to what gets three or four pages in Wooldridge’s book, to which Mathsci had no response when I explained this problem above; and it also provides an alternative perspective on Jensen’s 1969 article cited to one of Jensen’s later writings, which is something where David.Kane has explained why it’s appropriate, and Mathsci responded with nothing but name-calling and threats. There are obviously a lot more things that could be improved about the article beyond this, but what I’m suggesting seems to be the simplest course of action supported by consensus here, and also will be a good litmus test for whether Mathsci will be willing to be reasonable about this.

If he isn’t, not only will he be making reverts that he’s either unwilling or unable to justify here; he’ll also be going against the opinions expressed by at least six other users: me, Varoon Arya, DJ, Mikemikev, 120 volt monkey, and David.Kane. If he tries to edit war against all six of us (or however many of us six are participating at the time), that’ll definitely be something worth bringing up in the user conduct RFC.

Do the other users here (other than Mathsci, I mean) agree that what I’m suggesting is the best course of action? --Captain Occam (talk) 12:42, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

I think it would improve the neutrality. The 'criticisms' section needs to be balanced, or to go. It's a clear violation of NPOV. mikemikev (talk) 12:55, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Other secondary historical sources discussing "Jensenism" and Jensen's statements

I have found this long chapter by William H. Tucker, pages 180-268, '"Unaided by eugenic foresight": The controversy over Jensenism' in

• Tucker, William H. (1994), The Science and Politics of Racial Research, University of Illinois Press, ISBN 0252065603

There is also a discussion of Jensen's use and subsequent oscillating support and retraction of support for Burt's twin studies in this article by one of the leading US historians of psychology, Franz Samelson. This was in fact some of the main data used by Jensen in his 1969 paper as Samelson mentions.

• Samelson, Franz (1997), "What to do about fraud charges in science; or, will the Burt affair ever end?" (PDF), Genetica, 99: 145–151

Here is for example is Samelson's description of Jensen's attempt in 1992 to rehabilitate Burt:

Yet after the new campaign to rehabilitate Burt had got under way, Jensen was invited to give an address to Division 1 at the 1992 APA meeting, in which he accused the recently deceased Hearnshawof bad scholarship and blamed the whole Burt Affair on a leftwing plot abetted by the sensationalist media. His address was promptly published in Div. 1’s General Psychologist (Jensen, 1992a) and was also made available on cassette by the APA – which apparently had learned little from the BPS’ problems – without any indication whatsoever that the speaker was not exactly a disinterested party and his account might be somewhat selective if not polemic.² It also contained some errors and, as a look at original documents shows, misstatements.

2. In 1976, TIME had quoted Jensen as saying: ‘It is a political attack. The real targets are me, Herrnstein, and the whole area of research on the genetics of intelligence (p. 66)’.

I shall try to find other historical accounts of Jensen by uninvolved commentators. Nicholas Mackintosh wrote a book on the allegations of scientific fraud againsts Burt in 1995. This, alas, is all part of the history, which is quite complicated! Mathsci (talk) 14:41, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

There's also "Intelligence: a brief history" (2004) by Robert Sternberg and Anna Cianciolo. Mathsci (talk) 15:23, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Are you interested in Cyril_Burt#.22The_Burt_Affair.22? Or in Arthur Jensen? The Burt Affair may make an interesting note here, but we can link to the full section at Cyril Burt. I don't see how the truth value of scientific statements in Jensen (1969) are of much interest to the history of race and intelligence per se. The controversy the publication caused, who responded to it and in what context, and how it affected both the academic debate and society overall are interesting as history. Moreover, the truth value is only best known from contemporary sources. There are papers from 2009 on the heritability of IQ which are far superior to anything available in 1969 - 2008, and there are more appropriate articles for them to be summarized in. --DJ (talk) 01:57, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

Richard Lynn

MathSci and Captain Occam, please stop edit-warring. MathSci: it is perfectly appropriate to begin a sentence by naming the person whose views are being presented. You cannot delete it because it is compliant with our NPOV policy. Captain Occam: please do not add Tucker's name to every sentence that is attributed to him. His name needs be provided only once, the first time that his views are introduced. After that, the fact that there is a citation makes it very clear that a view is being presented, and it is being attributed to a source. To keep adding the name is not only unnecessary, it is poor style. I have just restored the name and title of the book the first time his views are provided. I hope both of you will accept this, and move on.Slrubenstein | Talk 16:47, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

I last edited the article a week ago to add references. I have absolutely no idea what you are referring to. Could you please clarify? Mathsci (talk) 17:49, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

I haven’t edited this article since the 17th, so I’m not sure what you mean by edit warring either.

Attributing Tucker’s views to Tucker, rather than describing them as fact, is one of a few changes I wanted made to this article. But there are several others also, which DJ, David.Kane and I have described above. I imagine that the rest of us will probably be making another attempt to fix some of the other problems shortly, as long as the other users involved in this article agree that this is the most reasonable course of action. --Captain Occam (talk) 18:59, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

Captain Occam, you accused him of edit warring here:

Mathsci, you've made this removal four times within the space of less than 24 hours, which is a violation of 3RR. You also haven't yet made any attempt to justify it, other than claiming in your edit summary that it's original research, and not replying when I ask you to justify this claim. Everything in that paragraph is properly sourced, and is supported by the sources that it's using. Are you going to make any attempt to justify this removal, or are you going to just keep removing it while refusing to cooperate with our attempts at discussion about it? --Captain Occam (talk) 12:09, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

Do you retract the accusation? Slrubenstein | Talk 19:43, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

Oh, sorry. I see what’s confusing you: it looks like I posted the wrong link. When I said what you’re quoting on the race and intelligence talk page, I was meaning to link to one of his reverts on that article, not this one.

The article that Mathsci was edit warring over recently was Race and intelligence, not this one. Some of his behavior with regard to this article has been problematic in other ways (particularly WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT), but he hasn’t edit warred on this article recently. --Captain Occam (talk) 13:56, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

revert of Jensen's narrative

MathSci wrote rv abusive use of primary sources from after the event - Distributivejustice (talk · contribs) is producing WP:OR and WP:SYNTH)

What I wrote was a near verbatim summary of Jensen's autobiographical writing cited and quoted in the text. Therefore it cannot be either WP:OR or WP:SYNTH, but rather is the attributed view of Jensen from a secondary source in a peer-reviewed scholarly journal. Moreover, WP:NPOV demands his view of what happened ca. 1969 be included. --DJ (talk) 23:17, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

If you attempt to write history like this using primary sources, written 30 years after the event, your editing privileges are likely to be curtailed fairly rapidly. Please stop this abusive and disruptive editing. It is fairly clearly blatant POV-pushing by a WP:SPA. Thanks, Mathsci (talk) 23:38, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

Primary sources - Jensen justifying himself 30 years after the event

• Distributivejustice (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

This single purpose editor inserted material by the main subject of the section 1960-1980, written in 1998, not reported in secondary sources. This is not how history articles are written. It seems to be an attempt to POV-push the article into a non neutral state by an editor who has made no secret of his advocacy of Jensen. If Distributivejustice thinks history about controversial individuals is written using statements written 30 years after the event, he is mistaken. It is exactly in such cases that it is essential to use secondary sources. If he, or any like-minded editor, attempts to insert anachronistic commentaries from primary sources, unsupported by secondary commentators, they are quite likely to have their editing privileges restricted due to blatant POV-pushing. The historian of psychology, Franz Samelson, made it quite clear that Jensen has vacillated over the years in his public statements: that is what we can report, not this concoction of WP:OR and WP:SYNTH which contradicts all chronology.

Diana Mitford in her autobiography was able to justify all her actions in the 1930s and 1940s - she related how anybody who had met Adolf Hitler could not fail to be charmed by him. That has been reported in secondary sources and that is why the article on her do not rely on her personal pronouncements. This is exactly in line with wikipedia core editing policies. Thanks, Mathsci (talk) 23:32, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

MathSci: I have made this point several times. I will make it again. There is nothing in any of Wikipedia's "core editing policies" that prevents the use of Jensen's writing. Nothing. If you disagree, provide a link and quote. As I note above, articles like Ghandi make extensive use of the subject's own writings. Therefore, making use of Jensen's own writing is just as reasonable. I am happy to entertain complaints along the line of WP:UNDUE about DJ's additions, but you can't keep citing non-existent "policies" when reverting. I will add his changes back. David.Kane (talk) 23:39, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

Unfortunately you are wrong. If you attempt to tag-team now on this neutral article, as you currently seem to be doing, you will probably precipitate an ArbCom case which could result in your own editing privileges being restricted. Please find those secondary sources if you want to include any kind of material like this. Thanks, Mathsci (talk) 23:45, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

This makes no sense to me. As far as I can tell, you are saying that Tucker 2002 is a reliable source for events in 1969 and Jensen 1997 (Intelligence, Volume 26, Issue 3; the entire issue was about Jensen's work and legacy) is not a reliable source. How is that possible? --DJ (talk) 23:52, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

It's inadmissible to use commentary written thirty years after the event to explain what happened then. Jensen was clearly involved in a controversy which was potentially embarrassing to his career: secondary sources confirm that the funding for at least some of his research came from private sources in the 1970s. Historians have pointed out that the pronouncements he made after the event have changed this way and that - his own statements about left-wing conspriracies have been recorded by historians. In this case what you have to do is find secondary sources, by academics like Franz Samelson, that report on Jensen's reactions and statements. I don't think that is so hard and I already started to discuss this in a section above. I certainly won't engage in an edit war - but you will certainly be reported if this disruptive and abusive editing continues. Thanks, Mathsci (talk) 00:11, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

You appear to be making a case that he's personally unreliable and cannot speak to history but that Tucker can. Do I understand your reasoning? --DJ (talk) 00:26, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Not at all. Franz Samelson, an eminent historian of psychology, has recorded Jensen's vacillation in peer reviewed articles, what we call secondary sources. It is not a view I have formed myself. Any way, Distributivejustice, that is why we use secondary sources in history articles, particularly when controversy is concerned. At the moment I would suggest that you try to locate secondary sources, preferably about Jensen's statements between 1960 and 1980. Thanks, Mathsci (talk) 01:03, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

• "Jensen, Jensenism, and the Sociology of Intelligence" (Intelligence, 1998, 26(3), pp. 291-299) --Aryaman (talk) 00:38, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Linda Gottfredson is a Pioneer Fund grantee and advocate/lobbyist for the hereditarian point of view of Jensen. Is her view surely not rather one-sided as an active researcher in the area? It is an autobiographical account, an appreciation of Jensen by a dedicated admirer and an attempt be Gottfredson to counter once more the arguments in this never-ending debate. None of the other writers on the history of psychology so far are actively involved in research in this area. Indeed, it might be an idea to include the account in Tucker's book on Gottfredson's protracted legal proceedings with the University of Delaware concerning her applications for Pioneer funding. These events are reported in other secondary sources. Mathsci (talk) 00:51, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Gottfredson is an award-winning researcher in good standing with the APA, MERF and FIRE - despite your shouting about the Pioneer Fund and your abject speculation regarding her motives. Using her peer-reviewed article as a secondary source on Jensen's views is entirely permissible. --Aryaman (talk) 01:22, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

The Pioneer Fund issue is pretty much irrelevant because people doing research in this area can have problems getting funding from other sources. The Pioneer Fund issue seems to be used as a rallying cry by POV-pushers. --120 Volt monkey (talk) 02:43, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

<- Neither of these arguments are valid. An autobiographical tribute by an involved researcher and lobbyist is certainly not a historical account. When Varoon Arya says "award-winning", no-one on the heriditarian side is a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences or comparable body. Might he be referring to MENSA? As for 120 Volt monkey (talk · contribs), this account appears to be an alternative account of another user, possibly banned. Please could he stop using this discussion page as a forum? The book by William H. Tucker won at least three prizes when it was first published, is published by a university press and has had excellent reviews. The history cannot be written using auobiographical commentaries by those involved, like Gottfredson and Jensen. By exactly the same token, articles by Lewontin, Gould and Kamin are primary sources and not used as direct sources for writing the history. The kind of wikilawyering and POV-pushing going on here seems to be disruption by a tag-team, an attempt to sabotage a neutrally written article by a group of advocates for a particular minoritarian point of view. Using primary sources written by those directly involved in the history of a controversy, be it Lewontin or Jensen, is not permissible, unless it is reported by a reliable secondary source. Mathsci (talk) 06:35, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Mathsci, you’ve been repeating the same claims about this for the past two weeks, without answering any of the points that users have raised in response. In the most recent discussion about this (before the current one, that is), you had nothing to say at all in response to my own points, and the only thing you had to offer in response to David.Kane was name-calling and threats. No one else here agrees with you about this, and there are at least six users who disagree.

It would be nice if you could accept what consensus has decided about this article, rather than engaging in this WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT behavior. But even if you choose to stonewall this article indefinitely, you can’t permanently prevent it from being improved. We’ve given you around two weeks to accept our offers for coming to a compromise with us, which is a more than reasonable amount of time. So if you still aren’t willing to at this point, I think the only sensible course of action is to proceed with the course of action that six of the seven users involved in this article have agreed on.

Mikemikev has pointed out above that if you’re unwilling to be reasonable about this, he intends to start an RFC/U about your behavior here. I recommend that you not edit war over this article, since if you do that’s what it’s likely to result in. --Captain Occam (talk) 14:29, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

There is no use in using a primary source like Jensen to report on his actions in the late 60's and early 70's. That would be comparable to using the writings of General Mugabe as the main source for the history of Zimbabwe. Any further attempts to use primary sources in this way, or to make spurious arguments about page numbers in Wooldridge, will probably result in the tag-team editing here being the subject of an ARbCom case. Thanks, Mathsci (talk) 14:33, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

As I said, David.Kane has expressed this exact point before, and your only response has been name-calling and threats. Until you can come up with a more substantial response to his points about this, his points still stand.

If you really want to bring this issue up with ArbCom, I guess you might as well go ahead. I doubt they’d accept a case involving a disagreement is between one user and six of them, but that would at least be preferable over you continuing to edit war on this article. Why don’t you go bring this issue up with them, and leave the article itself alone until they make a decision about whether or not to accept it? --Captain Occam (talk) 14:41, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Please read my suggestion below. We simply cannot mix autobiographical comments (the worst kind of primary source) with legitimate and impeccable secondary sources. Mathsci (talk) 14:46, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

There's a rather helpful thread here: Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#Jensen_1998_writing_about_Jensen_1969. --DJ (talk) 16:53, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

My own conclusion is that we need additional sources to speak to the events of the time. --DJ (talk) 16:55, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

DJ, have you considered using Eysenck’s 1971 book The IQ Argument? If the important thing here is just to avoid using books that are written by Jensen himself whenever possible, Eysenck’s book could provide a secondary account of some of the same events. --Captain Occam (talk) 17:56, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Incidentally, if you’re trying to find reliable sources from people other than Jensen that present an opinion about this different from Tucker’s (which is what it looks like you’re trying to do, based the noticeboard thread that you linked to), the Gottfredson paper that Varoon Arya linked to looks pretty good also. In case you haven’t noticed, Varoon Arya also listed several sources here that might be useful. --Captain Occam (talk) 19:33, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

• We do need to pay attention to WP:SELFPUB. A person's own description of his history may need to be included for a neutral point of view, but it is certainly not an objective source on the facts of the period - Jensen is what I would call a "questionable" source in this area, and we shouldn't be allowing his versions to be treated as fact. I actually think Jensen is probably accurate in what he's saying - I get the impression that he actually did say "black people are dumb" in 1969 and there was a real outrage. Who would've thought? II | (t - c) 03:26, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

An article published in the journal Intelligence is published by Elsevier. It's not WP:SELFPUB. --DJ (talk) 05:23, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

WP:SELFPUB is about self-published and questionable sources. I think this could arguably fall into questionable, as could any reporting of history from a deeply involved person. I'm sure there are some newspaper articles reporting on the issue at the time, and they would be preferable. II | (t - c) 06:09, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

In essence, this article is nearly a POV fork of race and intelligence, but I think it could be better. One way to easily make it better to is to get a balanced account of what actually happened around the events of 1969. Comparisons of a professor at UC Berkeley to a murderer really aren't appropriate here, nor is the suggestion that Jensen needs to "justifying" his scholarly work, but they do highlight the WP:BLP concerns around letting this NPOV issue remain unfixed. Concerns about primary sources are not paramount compared to WP:NPOV, and a publication in a peer-reviewed journal speaking to the history of a scholarly debate is hardly akin to the kind of raw data that people mean by "primary source" with respect to WP:RS. The alternative to fixing this article is that we need to merge this back into race and intelligence where the context will make it clearer. --DJ (talk) 05:06, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

DJ, do you think there’s anything wrong with the sources that Varoon Arya and I suggested? I don’t think Gottfredson or Eysenck could be considered “primary sources” about the debate over Jensen’s article. --Captain Occam (talk) 11:05, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

DJ, no need to get side-tracked. We wouldn't use John Major's autobiography as the main source for writing about him. (Note for the reader: this is a comment on how wikipedia articles are sourced; there is no intention of a comparison of Arthur Jensen with the former British prime minister John Major.) Why not have a shot at writing wikipedia articles in other subjects for a change? I just created a biographical article on Otto Klineberg, who's mentioned in the article. It's good practice in finding sources. Mathsci (talk) 12:17, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

MathSci: The John Major article does, in fact, use Autobiography by John Major as a source! All that any of us are suggesting is that the same rule --- Written work by person X is acceptable when writing about person X --- apply here. No one is suggesting that only work written by Jensen be used. Your position is inconsistent with every other Wikipedia example that I have checked, including the one you came up with. David.Kane (talk) 12:32, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

<- Ahem,2 out of 40 citations - the first a quote and the second a minor remark. But this is somewhat irrelevant. Evidently the initiator of a controversial event is not suitable to provide the principal historical commentary on that event. You with Occam are just POV-pushing to include unduly primary sources. I don't have a view on Jensen, except that he is a distinguihsed academic who in his career appears to have provoked some controversy and possibly made some errors of judgement. This is best illustrated by two quotes for Samelson's article about the "Burt affair".

• In 1983 Jensen wrote that he was then "fully accept[ing] as valid ... Hearnshaw’s biography... " and predicting that "of course [Burt] will never be exonerated for his empirical deceptions"
• In 1992 Jensen wrote, "the essence of the Burt affair ... [as] a cabal of motivated opponents, avidly aided by the mass media, to bash [Burt’s] reputation completely".

These statements about Burt are contradictory. As Samelson points out, Jensen kept changing his mind on the "Burt affair". That is why, directly involved as he was, he cannot be used as a primary source. I think this is pretty clear. It's exactly why we use secondary sources for history. I already mentioned that for the Franco-Siamese War when the biased and ill-informed reports of French officers were not permitted as sources. If they were quoted elsewhere, then yes those quotes could be used.Mathsci (talk) 23:58, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

If your only issue here is that you don’t think Jensen can be a reliable source about the reaction to his own article, then you wouldn’t have a problem with us using Eysenck or Gottfredson as sources about this, right? --Captain Occam (talk) 00:09, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

That was one example. Eysenck was also directly involved in the controversy. And both he and Gottfredson are Pioneer grantees, so are probably biased. For that matter, Lewontin, Kamin and Gould would not be suitable sources, since they also were involved. It's for that reason that they have not been used as sources, although if a reliable source quotes them, that quote could be used. Can I ask why you are only interested in using the writings of Pioneer grantees and not those of Lewontin, Kamin and Gould. Why is only one side important to you? Mathsci (talk) 00:36, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

Because the sources currently used by the article have a fairly strong anti-Jensen bias, and I (and DJ, David.Kane, Mikemikev and 120 V. M.) want to present the other side of viewpoints about this topic in the interest of compliance with NPOV and BLP. Multiple other users have already pointed out in what ways the existing sources display anti-Jensen bias, and in some cases you haven’t responded to their points about this at all, so if you still aren’t willing to acknowledge this it isn’t something I should need to explain again.

You also haven’t explained how being a pioneer fund grantee disqualifies someone from writing about this topic. In 1969 Linda Gottfredson wasn’t even out of college yet, so you certainly can’t claim she was directly involved in the dispute over Jensen’s article. You can claim that she’s likely to view Jensen favorably, just as Tucker views him unfavorably, but we need more of the former type of viewpoints in order to balance the latter. Is there any part of WP:RS that you think disallows the use of Gottfredson’s paper as a source? If there is, quote it. --Captain Occam (talk) 00:54, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

Please stop asking the same question repeatedly. The Pioneer grantees and avowed hereditarians Eysenck, Jensen and Gottfredson are not used as sources for exactly the same reasons as Lewontin, Gould and Kamin, some of the main scientists who disagreed with them. In writing about a controversy, where not much science is in fact involved, authors are chosen who have all the historical documents at their disposal, write in the conventional way of historians or historians of psychology and were not involved or unduly biased in the controversy. You claim that Adrian Wooldridge the main source is anti-Jensen. That does not seem to be the case, so can't really be discussed any further. He writes all the history dispassionately, as one would expect from somebody with an Oxford D.Phil. in history. Tucker writes mainly about research related to the Pioneer Fund - without this funding almost all the hereditarian research would have been unfunded. I have no idea whether he's anti-Jensen or not. Certainly he is quite critical of Rushton, but not of Jensen as far as I am aware. The relations between Shockley and Jensen were published with careful documentation and so are irrefutable. It is a mistake to say that authors are either pro- or anti-Jensen. Historians are far more subtly nuanced than that. Now I know that you and your team seem to be pro-Jensen. I think you personally removed from the article the summary of the criticisms of Jensen, including the names of the critics, listed dispassionately by Wooldridge. Now you are requesting, over and above disallowing this material by a neutral historian, that the history of the controversy be rewritten from the point of view of the hereditarians. I presume that means suggesting to the reader that Jensen very innocently wrote his paper - not even his own idea -hardly realising that there was anything controversial in it. He was then was shocked at the disproportionate reaction to it largely orchestrated by left-wing extremist manipulating the media apparently in the name of science but in fact due to their Marxist aversion to an unpalatable yet undeniable Truth. Accounts like that can be read on sites like The Occidental Quarterly and VDARE.com, where Lynn and Rushton contribute. But that is not a neutral way to write history and certainly not the way on wikipedia. We summarises the events described in secondary sources as accurately as possible. It turns out that there is very little disparity between Tucker and Wooldridge; Tucker is possibly less cautious in his language. This is what is to expected from well written books. There are plenty of quotes of Jensen in secondary sources but these cannot be used in the way attempted yesterday, reverted by other users. Mathsci (talk) 04:37, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

All right, you’re stonewalling again. And I think you know that you are; all of this has been explained to you enough times that I’m not able to believe that you actually still don’t understand it. WP:AGF has limits, and I suspect that you’ve reached most of ours after two weeks of this. But I guess it doesn’t really matter, since there are enough other users involved in this article that we can cite Gottfredson’s paper regardless of whether or not you’re willing to engage in a reasonable discussion about this. (And just to be clear, what I’m referring to here is the multiple times that other users have previously addressed what you’re saying here, and had you either ignore them entirely or brush them off with snide comments like this one.)

Mikemikev, David.Kane, DJ, 120 Volt Monkey: do you agree that Gottfredson’s paper would be good to use as a source here? It’s clearly both reliable and secondary, despite Mathsci’s complaints, and complying with WP:BLP is the one of the most non-negotiable rules on Wikipedia. Unless one of you can come up with a better source to use about this than the Gottfredson paper, let’s add it. --Captain Occam (talk) 06:49, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

JENSEN, JENSENISM, AND THE SOCIOLOGY OF INTELLIGENCE

The only relevant section on history in this nine page paper by Linda Gottfredson seems to be in the last 2 and a bit pages (short!), which is reproduced below (and will be removed fairly soon).

Jensenism, the Reaction

Fortunately for the science of intelligence. Jensen's intellectual integrity has been as dependable as his scientific acumen. The study of mental abilities has always been vulnerable to political pressure precisely because it deals with human differences that have major social consequences. Jensen's 1969 article in HER could hardly have been published at a time more likely to provoke violent controversy. The late 1960s were a time of unbounded hope, indeed of sure expectation, that federal funding and social engineering would eradicate poverty annd racial differences. Naive environmentalism reigned. Jensen's paper surely came like a punch in the stomach for many people. There was sufficient evidence by 1969 for Jensen to conclude that then-current interventions for raising IQ did not raise g. and perhaps could not, but it was not a message that many opinion leaders were prepared to hear. Some critics labeled the heresy "'Jensenism.'" as if it were an ideologically motivated absurdity. The specter that they too might be touched by public controversy drove many researchers from the field of intelligence. The controversy spurred a few incumbents to defend science and a good scientist against persecution, the first and most unhesitating being Hans Eysenck (1971), but it drew far more people into the field in order to disprove Jensen (e.g., Brody, 1992), Ironically, such researchers together built the massive body of evidence that would eventually prove Jensen right. All his most "controversial" claims in that 1969 article--that intelligence is highly genetic, not very malleable, and probably differs between races partly for genetic reasons--are now mainstream conclusions in the science of intelligence. This would not become apparent until 1988, however, when Snyderman and Rothman (1988) surveyed intelligence experts, giving them an opportunity to report their views anonymously. For nearly twenty years Jensen would labor under the presumption that his was a minority view in the field of intelligence. And this was despite his knowing that there were many "closet Jensenists." sometimes eminent scholars who would agree with him privately but not in public or who would quibble with him sufficiently to create the false impression for non-experts that they rejected his ideas wholesale. Critics had a free ride in the public sphere despite ever mounting scientific evidence that they were wrong and Jensen right. With little fear of public contradiction, however, they could proclaim near and afar that Jensen was but a fringe character holding long-discredited ideas. I did not know Jensen in the worst of these times, although I have read accounts of the abuse he experienced. A model of scientific integrity and professionalism, he has always responded with dispassionate reasoning to criticism of even the most scurrilous sort. And apparently never derailed by the tumult, even whcn losing access to his research samples, he continued to publish at a prodigious rate on the same matters that had thrust him into the public spotlight in 1969. I am sure that Jensen paid a steep price for his scientific integrity. because his wife once warned me that my going into matters of race and intelligence would cost me more dearly than I might imagine. But Jensen has never brought up the personal costs in the twenty years I have known him. In our conversations, even those concerning the special difficulties of conducting or publishing certain research, he has never fulminated or whined about his critics. At most he has seemed puzzled or disappointed by their frequent dishonesty and by the reticence of unnamed closet supporters. More than once I have been buoyed by his example. Viewed in retrospect, the most controversial sentence in Jensen's 1969 HER article seems tame: "The preponderance of evidence [on racial differences in IQ] is, in my opinion, less consistent with a strictly environmental hypothesis than with a genetic hypothesis, which, of course, does not exclude the influence of environment or its interaction with genetic factors." That near hysteria should greet such a reasonable and scientificallygrounded hypothesis--and also The Bell Curve's cautious echo of it--shows that influential segments of American society are still deeply threatened by the possibility that social inequality (particularly racial inequality) may be rooted to some extent in biology. In my experience, those who are upset by such claims tend to become even more adamant if somehow convinced they might be true. The critics correctly sense that genetically-based inequalities undercut the legitimacy of social policies premised, as were some Marxist regimes, on the belief that people are infinitely malleable and the state can thus create whatever sort of citizen or social order it wishes. For those who believe that nature imposes no constraints, the truth may indeed seem dangerous. Driven by political fears, critics project onto Jensen political motives. Such attributions have been convenient for attempting to discredit his science, although a moment's thought would suggest that there are far easier and more comfortable ways of promoting political agendas than making oneself a pariah in political circles. The irony is that "Jensenism" actually results from the apolitical nature of Jensen's science. Anyone who follows the path of his career (Jensen, 1998) will be struck by his devotion to psychology as a natural science. His heroes are empiricists, his skills those of the experimentalist. As he says, his scholarly approach is quantitative, analytical, experimental, and reductionist. Anyone who thinks otherwise should be sentenced to read the works of behaviorist Clark Hull, 1943, which Jensen (1998) reports consuming so avidly as a young man. To my knowledge, the closest that Jensen has come to expressing a political opinion in print has been to render the judgment that the environmentalist assumptions of extreme egalitarianism are inconsistent with the genetic evidence on human differences (and can thus do harm if enacted in social policy) and that individualism better accommodates such differences in personal traits. In other words, his so-called politics consist of little more than disputing the unfounded and false claims of the ideology that often seems to motivate his critics. Jensen argues that the term intelligence is scientifically useless, partly because it carries so much social "'baggage" with it. For those who study the psychology and biology of g. that is surely true. This baggage dogs all intelligence researchers who wish to work in peace. For those who investigate the sociology of intelligence, however, that baggage is itself a fascinating object of study. When Jensen broke the social taboo against discussing the genetic basis of individual and especially group differences in intelligence, he inadvertently provoked various segments of society into revealing their views and fears about certain matters concerning intelligence. The critics' most general fear has always seemed to be that widespread belief in a genetic basis for IQ differences would undermine support for egalitarian social programs, because such a belief might legitimate social inequality as "natural." Much social policy and many professional reputations today do indeed rest on the presumption that unequal outcomes result solely from the exercise of unjust social privilege. However, evidence that some inequality is natural taps real anxieties that are integral to the American national character. The truth about intelligence will never be popular because it points to a dilemma that most Americans would fervently wish away. The unwelcome truth is that human freedom will never produce equality of outcome because people differ in native ability. This is the "'democratic dilemma"--the tension between freedom and equality--about which John Gardner (1984) writes so eloquently (see also Gottfredson, in press). it is all the more disturbing to Americans to contemplate that some group differences in outcome may be natural under conditions of equal opportunity. However, the sociopolitical dilemmas owing to genetic differences among individuals and groups do not disappear when we wish it so, no matter how comforting our myths or ignorance may be. By persistently pursuing the reality of intelligence, Jensen has done more than any other scientist to encourage the nation to confront its dilemma and deal with it more constructively. The sociology of intelligence can help take the measure of that challenge and the physio- logical study of g may one day provide knowledge for ameliorating it somewhat. For this, Jensen deserves the gratitude of scientists and citizens alike.

This reads like an opinion piece and seems exceptionally inaccurate and imprecise. It is not a meticulous historical account with careful references and names. It is fairly obviously a primary source. It is in no way comparable to the 10 pages or so in Wooldridge's book, the work of a trained and skilled historian. How is this in any way useful for writing the article? I can see that it wouldn't be bad for a blog. But wikipedia? You must be joking! Mathsci (talk) 09:04, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

I'd say it's secondary. WP:BLP requires us to provide some balance here, this is perfect. I'm not sure how you judge it's meticulousness, but it seems OK to me. mikemikev (talk) 11:13, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

I think it is pretty obvious that in an article on history, the works of proessional historians should be privileged. One psychologist's personal views are not that important. Now, I have no objection to using Jensen as a source in a sentence that begins, "Jensen has claimed ..." or something like that. But when using primary sources, such claims should be restricted to the most basic thing. Anything that has been subject to interpretation is highly problematic, because using the primary source then becomes very difficult without implying an interpretation, which we cannot do. Better to see what professional historians have written, and rely on them for the most part in a history article. Slrubenstein | Talk 20:26, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

I was asked to comment here from a policy perspective. In terms of policy, Jensen's own writings are regarded as reliable source material, so his 1997 biographical work can be used as a source, and in terms of BLP his own view of the situation is something we wouldn't want to exclude. It's also correct that secondary sources are preferred, and that's particularly true when you're talking about the work of academic historians. Looking at the edit in question, [18] would it not make sense to use in-text attribution for everyone? "Woodlridge and Tucker write that xxx. Jensen, writing in 1997, argues that ...," making sure that Jensen's input does not overwhelm the other views. SlimVirgin ^{talk contribs} 10:14, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

I was also asked to comment on policy, but I will start by commenting on the historical method: It should go without saying that autobiographical writings are not reliable sources about events in the authors life. This is something like the first rule of historical source criticism. Autobiographical writings are sources only to the authors personal views of those events. This means that Jensens autobipgraphy can be used to supply Jensens own views, but it cannot supplant, replace or override statements from secondary sources such as analyses by historians. Our applicable policy states that Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable secondary sources. Tertiary sources should be used only for overviews and summaries. Primary sources should be used with extreme caution (this should be understood as not when used to source anything controversial) because of the risk of OR. About the use of primary sources our OR policy states that: "A primary source can be used only to make descriptive statements that can be verified by any educated person without specialist knowledge. For example, an article about a novel may cite passages to describe the plot, but any interpretation needs a secondary source. Do not make analytic, synthetic, interpretive, explanatory, or evaluative claims about material found in a primary source." This means that we can write "In his autobiography Jensen writes that he did X (pp)" but not "Jensen did X" as already that is an interpretation, especially if we have a secondary source saying that Jensen did in fact not do X. The BLP concerns are invalid as we are perfectly allowed to present controversial material about living persons if that material is impeccably sourced to reliable sources. Anyway BLP only authorizes removal of poorly sourced content - not the replacement of content with one bias for content with another. I agree with Slim Virgin that Jensens view should be included for the sake of fairness - but as I said it can not be considered more reliable than secondary sources or replace secondary sources.·Maunus·ƛ· 10:19, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

The difference between historical method and Wikipedia is that we have the BLP policy, so in the interests of fairness a person's own view of a situation can't be excluded. But the subject certainly can't be allowed to rewrite history. That will involve some careful writing, so that the historians' perspective and the subject's can co-exist in a way that's both accurate and fair. SlimVirgin ^{talk contribs} 10:31, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

I agree completely as I stated in the last line of the above.·Maunus·ƛ· 10:35, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

I think if I were writing this, I'd approach it summary style. I'd give a brief summary of the subject's perspective in a separate paragraph so as not to contaminate the historians' position. I'd then link at the top of that section to a section in the subject's BLP where his own views are described in more detail. SlimVirgin ^{talk contribs} 10:34, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

Thank you all for making these valuable comments. I agree with all that's been said. It is also very important to remmeber that Jensen is not the only figure historically involved in the 1970s debate. Wooldridge gives a whole list of scientists in the debate then. They represent many different points of view, not just a simplistic division into hereditarian and anti-hereditarian. The same considerations for Jensen could be applied to scientists like Richard Lewontin and Leon Kamin, still living, and Stephen J. Gould, who died in 2002. the participation of these scientists has been discussed in reliable secondary sources; they have also written their own accounts, which I take to be primary sources, The OUP book of Segerstråle, "Defenders of the Truth: The Battle for Science in the Sociobiology Debate and Beyond", is one secondary source on that group. It would be a mistake to frame the debate around one person like Jensen: no history of psychology book that I have consulted does that. Mathsci (talk) 11:34, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

Maunus, SlimVirgin, I would appreciate it if you could comment specifically on the text quoted by DJ below, which is what's in question here. Although it's cited to Jensen's autobiography, it makes it very clear that these are Jensen's own views on the matter in question, rather than describing his interpretation of events as fact. This seems to be consistent with what you've said we should be doing in this article, but I would like it if you could verify for certain that you approve of this text. --Captain Occam (talk) 15:12, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

To me it reads like an uncritical acceptance of Jensen's story, I don't think it makes it sufficiently clear that this is only the Jensen POV, and that it gives much to much detail about his rather inconsequential description of what brought about the article. I think the current version is preferable, but that it could be improved by not using pejorative words such as "alleges" about Jensen's view. I think a paragraph about Jensen's version and the negative repercussions he faced for breaking the taboo could be added to the current version to balance it. Also Jensens own explanation of why he changed his mind seems to be relevant and it would make it fairer. Other than this I don't see any grave problems with the representation of Jensen and certainly no cause for BLP concerns. Comments by Eysenck and others may be relevant if they contribute both information and a balancing viewpoint to tuckers but the description should not be longer than the Tucker material. ·Maunus·ƛ· 15:49, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. Here’s one more request: could you possibly add this balancing material to the article yourself? Mathsci seems to have more respect for your opinion than for any of ours, so I think he’s less likely to edit war over this change (as he’s done over similar changes in the past) if it’s from you than if it’s from one of us. --Captain Occam (talk) 16:30, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

I'll try to get time to look at the material and concot something tomorrow.·Maunus·ƛ· 18:24, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

FWIW, I'd also appreciate a draft from Maunus. Stephen B Streater (talk) 20:21, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

Material from Wooldridge removed by Captain Occam should probably be reinstated. As written below, there are other scientists, eg Christopher Jencks, Leon Kamin, Richard Lewontin, Stephen J. Gould and Luigi Cavalli-Sforza, who, according to secondary sources, made statements at the time. If it is to be applied to Jensen, their statements also, possibly from 2010, should be included in the article. (I actually don't think that's a reasonable way to write a history article - it's a recipe for disaster.) Most of these people are still alive. If we were to repeat Gottfredson's withering description of what she calls "the critics" - some of them eminent academics and members of the United States National Academy of Science (unlike her or Jensen) - that would probably count as a major BLP violation, unless she was specifically mentioned; and possibly that would then be a BLP violation. In the cases of controversial primary sources like Gottfredson, it's probably best to be guided by secondary sources, and follow them to the letter. Mathsci (talk) 22:42, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

Why don’t you just let Maunus decide for himself what should and shouldn’t be included? Since you’ve already said that you agree with his opinions, and view his involvement here as helpful, there shouldn’t be any need for you to micromanage his edits to the article, should there? --Captain Occam (talk) 23:14, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

The change you’ve made looks pretty good to me, Maunus, but you gave the impression that you’d be changing more than this, such as adding some material from sources like Gottfredson and Eysenck as long as they didn’t take up more space than the Tucker material. Were you intending for the change you’ve made to be your only change, or were you planning to change some other things also? --Captain Occam (talk) 08:54, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Well I don't currently have acces to those sources and I don't see exactly where they might be useful, I think it is important to keep an eye on the ball (to make a good coherent article) and not diverge in to he said she said just to give a voice to all involved editors. Are there any particular statements that you think could be supplemented well by short statements from other sources. Why don't you describe your concerns and proposed solutions here so we can see how best to accomodate them. I personally don't think the current text is unfair to Jensen it simply describes that his article generated controversy and with my additions it even gives him the opportunity to mention where he differs from others' descriptions of him. It is already mentioned that Jensen also garnered support from Eysenck and others. I am not sure that including descriptions from Eysenck or others have anything important to contribute, I'd like you to show me what it is you think is lacking. ·Maunus·ƛ· 09:08, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

If it’s all the same to you, I’d prefer to let DJ or Varoon Arya explain this, since I know they have the same NPOV concerns that I do and I think they’re also a little more familiar with the source material. They’re both online here kind of sporadically, though, so if they don’t get to this sometime soon I’ll try explaining it myself.

DJ, VA: do either of you care to explain what other NPOV issues in this article there are that still ought to be addressed, and what sources we should use to fix these problems? --Captain Occam (talk) 09:53, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

<- I have included the direct quotes of what Jensen wrote in 1983 and 1992, as documented by Franz Samelson, with links to the original primary sources. This contains the statements about a cabal of left-wing academics, supported by the media. These types of comments were made at the time by both sides in 1970s. In Wooldridge there are reports of allegations from the other side - charges of racism or scientific racism - which I would favour adding for balance as they show the extreme and undoubtedly unjustified reactions of some of Jensen's contemporaries. Here are screenshots of page 376 in Wooldridge's book where this is discussed: [19], [20]. Note that the statement about the Association of Black Psychologists is taken from an article by Jensen. Contributors to the debate at the time included Sandra Scarr, Christopher Jencks and Luigi Cavalli-Sforza, but it's unclear they really need to be listed. Mathsci (talk) 11:34, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

• I have added a segment on racial bias using as sources Jensen's 1980 book, a 1986 article of Hickman & Reynolds and Wooldridge. The main source was Hickman & Reynolds, who cite Jensen: he quotes the same response of the ABP. Mathsci (talk) 14:13, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Sorry for the short reply: the worst NPOV problems are mainly from the unattributed views of Tucker (2002). Note that William H. Tucker is a psychologist, not a historian. Here's the worst text:

In 1969 Jensen wrote a long article in the Harvard Educational Review, "How Much can We Boost IQ and Achievement", arguing that racial minorities, should be taught, not through conceptual explanations, but instead by relying on their ability to associate rather than understand, i.e. learning by rote. He decried the "misguided and ineffective attempts to improve [the] lot" of blacks. As he wrote,"Is there a danger that current welfare policies, unaided by eugenic foresight, could lead to the genetic enslavement of a substantial segment of our population?"[24] [25]

And this is what Jensen says his article was about:

Based on a review of the empirical literature, my HER article made four main claims: (i) experimental attempts to raise the IQ of children at risk for low IQ and poor scholastic performance by various psychological and educational manipulations had yielded little, if any, lasting gains in IQ or scholastic achievement: (ii) individual differences in IQ have a high heritability (.70-.80, corrected for attenuation), but environment also plays an important part; (iii) most of the exclusively cultural- environment explanations for racial differences in IQ and scholastic achievement were inconsistent and inadequate, so genetic as well as environmental factors should be considered; and (iv) certain abilities, particularly rote-learning and memory (i.e.. Level I ability) have only a weak relationship to IQ. which suggests that these Level I abilities might be used to compensate to some extent for low IQ (i.e.. Level II ability) and thereby make school instruction more beneficial for many children, regardless of their racial or social class background, who are below average in Level II but are average or above in Level I. (Pupils with this pattern of abilities constitute the majority of those who are most at risk for failure under traditional classroom instruction.)

And this is what Gottfredson says about his article:

All his most "controversial" claims in that 1969 article--that intelligence is highly genetic, not very malleable, and probably differs between races partly for genetic reasons--are now mainstream conclusions in the science of intelligence.

I won't suggest solutions so as to leave that open for discussion. --DJ (talk) 18:08, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing this out, DJ. I have a few other NPOV concerns to add:

1. As Varoon Arya mentioned here, several sources point out the role that Marxist ideology has played in this debate, but the current article makes no mention of this. In the interest of compliance with NPOV, I think it should.
2. I think the article ought to provide a little more detail about what caused Jensen to become a hereditarian, as well as the reactions to his paper. (Slashing his tires, painting swastikas on his door, etc.) According to Eysenck’s book (which quotes Jensen about several things, including this), what changed his mind was reviewing the report from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights on compensatory education, which concluded that these programs had produced no lasting gains in IQ for the children they were intended to help.
3. My last complaint is a fairly general one. The article seems to cherry-pick facts that portray Jensen in as unfavorable a light as possible, such as the fact that he changed his mind about Cyril Burt, and the ABP’s accusations about him encouraging “Black genocide”. Equally notable things that aren’t mentioned are:

• Ability Testing: Uses, Consequences, and Controversies, a report from the National Academy of Sciences that affirmed the majority of the conclusions that Jensen reached in his 1980 book Bias in Mental testing (this is pointed out in the Gottfredson paper)
• Snyderman and Rothman’s 1988 study (and the accompanying book) that concluded that the majority of intelligence researchers agreed with Jensen about the cause of the IQ gap, and that the popular media was misrepresenting the science about this topic
• The 1998 issue of the journal Intelligence which was devoted to honoring Jensen, with the title “A King Among Men: Arthur Jensen”.

Incidentally, one other source I’ve found that covers a lot of these topics is The sociology of psychometric and bio-behavioral sciences: A case study of destructive social reductionism and collective fraud in 20th century academia by Helmuth Nyuborg. Judging by his curriculum vitate here, Nyuborg certainly seems to be both a reliable and secondary source about this topic.

Maunus, do you agree that this material is worth adding? And if you do, would you be willing to add it yourself, or would you prefer that I or DJ add it? The reason I’d prefer if you could add it is because almost every change I’ve tried to make to this article has resulted in an edit war with Mathsci. If we end up making these changes ourselves, though, maybe that he won’t edit war over them if you agree beforehand that they would be reasonable.

There are also several minor issues of wording that I’d like to see addressed; I can’t easily list them all here. I’ve tried to fix them in the past, which resulted in an edit war between Mathsci and around five other users who agreed that this wording was problematic, which in turn resulted in Mathsci complaining at AN/I about “tag teaming” on this article. The AN/I thread went nowhere, and Mathsci’s newer AN/I thread about the same issue does not seem to be going anywhere either. And in the meantime, these issues in the article still need to be fixed. What would you think of monitoring this article and the changes to it for the next little while, as sort of an unofficial mediator, in order to make sure the changes made by people like me are appropriate, and to stop Mathsci from edit warring over them if they are? --Captain Occam (talk) 08:03, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Does nobody have anything to say in response to this? I was hoping that Maunus at least would be willing to offer his advice about which of these things are worth changing, and possibly even change some of them himself.

If he doesn’t want to do that, I can also make some of these changes myself, if other people agree with them. Does anyone? Mathsci, if I make the changes I’ve suggested here, do you intend to edit war over them? --Captain Occam (talk) 17:53, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

No changes for the moment for at least two days, thank you. It's not a good idea to make claims about edit warring - you're the thrice blocked edit warrior, not me. Weren't you blocked last time for a week? Please stop trying to write history yourself with questionable primary sources to push your point of view. The article seems fairly balanced at the moment - at least that's what most of the administrators have said. I haven't quite worked out who the "expert editor" is that Slimvirgin is talking about. Do you have any idea whom she means? Please could you try to spend a little time editing other wikipedia articles, unrelated to race, to gain some experience editing other articles, as various administrators have suggested? At the moment, by the impatient nature of your edits, you are putting undue pressure on other editors. That is unreasonable. Thanks, Mathsci (talk) 19:11, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

I don’t know who SlimVirgin is talking about, and I don’t know how you would expect me to.

I’m asking you a very simple question here. If I wait until two days (which I guess I’m willing to do) and them make the changes I’ve suggested here, do you intend to revert them, and keep reverting them multiple times if other editors add this material back? This is what you’ve done for similar changes to the article in the past; it doesn’t matter whether you consider it edit warring or not. If this is what you intend to do it again, I would like to know what specific changes I’ve proposed here you have a problem with. Maunus has said that using Eysenck and Gottfredson as sources for certain things would be acceptable in the interest of balance as long as they aren’t given more space than the Tucker material, and you’ve said that you agree with the opinions he’s expressed here, so that at least shouldn’t be a problem.

If there’s anything else about the changes I’ve proposed here that you would have a problem with, I’d like to know about that before I make them, which is why I’m asking about this now rather than just being bold. --Captain Occam (talk) 19:41, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

<- I suggest that in the next week or so, Captain Occam prepares whatever extra neutral content he thinks might be added and then in a section here on the talk page puts down the sentences he wants to add. Gottfredson made no comments at the time, so her personal opinions in 1998 in the collapse section above are not really appropriate material. She is just repeating things said by people at the time, and it's better to locate and report those directly. Jensen's already used the language of "left-wing media-fuelled conspiracy", so there's not much need to repeat that. I don't think any space needs to be added about Marxism - certainly Segerstråle's book points out that it's a red herring. The ABP made some of the most extreme charges of racism, so again it's not necessary to belabour that point. Trying to place unchronological information into the article that tries to prove Jensen was correct and that most mainstream scientists agree with him because of some much later opinion poll or newspaper article seems completely irrelevant to the history. That would be classified as WP:UNDUE, WP:OR. WP:SYNTH and WP:Civil POV pushing. At the moment I can't see how any wikipedia editing policy supports Captain Occam's objections to present content. Racial bias for example is accurately discussed in the article and the quote I gave appears in Jensen's book on bias and the other two sources cited in the article (I took the most complete version). I've no idea why Captain Occam describes this as "cherry picking". Was Jensen wrong to include that quote in his book? The same applies to the statements about Jensen's position within the "Burt Affair", which I think is documented in many sources. There's no reason to rewrite or interpret the history of events in the early 1970s by using opinion polls and newspaper articles from the late 1980s or 1990s. That makes no sense at all. Commentaries by reliable secondary sources or later accounts of significant individuals involved in events at the time could be used, but not third party accounts like Gottfredson's. Also, as Maunus has said, too many "he said, she said" passages are not appropriate here as they will just make the article unreadable. Mathsci (talk) 20:53, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

So, to summarize: you object to every one of the changes that I’ve proposed? Is that accurate? If so, I don’t think there’s anything to be gained by posting my proposed additions in a section of the talk page; I don’t see how that’s likely to change your attitude about this.

Here’s a second question: if enough other users who comment on my proposed changes agree that they’re appropriate, would you be willing to accept that consensus opposes you about this, and allow them to be made to the article? Or would you continue to revert these changes whenever they’re added, even if multiple other users are adding them back? --Captain Occam (talk) 21:08, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Until you post your suggestions here in a few days, I really don't know what you want to include. It might take some time to compose the neutral material that you want to add. That might involve using university data bases as well as the web to locate the appropriate sources, which can be time consuming. So take a few days trying to find sources reporting directly on events in the 1970s, and then propose your additional sentences below. Thanks, Mathsci (talk) 21:18, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

I think I’ve explained my proposed changes in enough detail for other users to comment on them. If the majority of users who comment here agree with you that these changes wouldn’t be appropriate, then I’ll accept the consensus about this and not add them. But if the majority of users approve of these changes, I hope you’ll accept consensus also. --Captain Occam (talk) 23:49, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Incidentally, something else I ought to point out is that if you’re wanting me to edit more non-race-related articles, you’re the main person who’s preventing that right now. I’ve done some work on the William Beebe article recently, and was intending to do a lot more work on it, but at the moment dealing with you and your attempts to get me banned is sucking up every bit of the time and energy that I can devote to Wikipedia.

If you want me to be less of an SPA, the only thing you would have to do is take a break from this article and the race and intelligence one, and let Ludwigs2 take your place as the person who argues for the position that you’ve been arguing for here. He’s said in the AN/I thread that he agrees with you in terms of content, but isn’t willing to participate in either of these articles as long as you’re active in them, because he can’t tolerate your behavior. Since he’d be participating here and arguing for your viewpoint if you were to leave, you wouldn’t have to worry that your absence might cause this viewpoint to not be represented on the talk page, and it would also result in a lot less stress for all of the editors you’ve been complaining about at AN/I. It might even be enough to cause some of the rest of them to stop being SPAs.

I don’t suppose that’s something you’d be willing to do, is it? --Captain Occam (talk) 20:20, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

No administrator would accept your claim that I am the main reason you are editing race-related articles. That is an unreasonable statement to make. You alone are the one who chooses the articles you edit or create. Your second paragraph also makes no sense at all to me. What has Ludwigs2 got to do with your editing here? Your suggestion is crazy. Mathsci (talk) 21:06, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Ludwig has said in the AN/I thread that if you leave, he would start participating here, and would be making most of the same arguments here that you do. He's also said that the only reason why he isn't doing this currently is because he can't stand being around you. But in any case, it doesn't really matter; I'd figured you would view it as "crazy" for me to suggest you take a break from this article. I just wanted to make certain of that. --Captain Occam (talk) 21:12, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, this has nothing to do with this article. Mathsci (talk) 21:26, 1 May 2010 (UTC)