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Ashkenazi Jews

People seems to inflate the Ashkenazi Jew IQ, I remember a few years ago, in this very article, it was standing at 115, but did not cite an acceptable source. So I modified the United States section however someone removed my contribution for "no reason": Many old studies such as that of Backman (1972), Levinson (1959) and Romanoff (1976) estimates Ashkenazi Jews to score above 0.75 to 1.0 standard deviations above the general European average in verbal or crystalized IQ, corresponding to an IQ 112-115. A recent review by Lynn (2004) however concludes that the advantage is slightly less, only half a standard deviation.[1][2]

The earlier version was also by me, however this version is a lot more objective. The most extensive study also came to the same conclusion which is about 107.5 in verbal or crystalized IQ. —Preceding unsigned comment added by TrueObjectivity (talk • contribs) 01:01, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes, that is more objective than what you originally added. I perhaps was overzealous in just restoring the section to its original state. I tweaked a little - since you provide dates, the reader can decide for himself if the research is "old" for example. And saying that "the existing research literature on Ashkenazi intelligence is lacking and inconsistent" (as originally added)is something I'm inclined to agree with but an opinion like that obviously needs to be sourced. Hopefully what we have now is an improvement. CAVincent (talk) 01:35, 24 August 2008 (UTC)


giftedness

Regarding these edits diff, diff:

  1. The CNN article cited does not address "intelligence", it discusses "giftedness". It defines "giftedness" differently to "intelligence", mentions "intelligence" only once, and explicitly states ""giftedness" is typically concentrated in one area and doesn't refer to overall intelligence".
  2. The citation does not say that "giftedness" is "built in at birth" as the edit here does, it simply states that "You can't build giftedness; it's mostly built in." Something of a meaningless statement, but it implies that we don't understand the aetiology of "giftedness", and therefore cannot promote it, it does not say that it is "genetic", and even if it were "built in at birth", this does not necessarily indicate a "genetic" causation.
  3. The source is not about "intelligence" or "giftedness", but how to provide an environment where children can develop their world-view optimally. It's really about providing the best environment for one's child. So it's about the environmental effect of development, and instinctively we all know that environment is critical, or else why would parents spend so much time, money and effort to send their children to "good" schools?
  4. The claim is not "well sourced" as stated in one edit summary. This is an article from a news network, try to remember we should avoid citing the popular media when we discuss science. A "well sourced" claim would have numerous citations from independent and authoritative publications.
  5. CNN make no reference to group abilities, only individual abilities and doesn't mention "race" a single time. This is a clear case of synthesis, claiming a source says something that it does not. Alun (talk) 05:17, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Article notices

I suspect that the multitude of notices at the head of this article are better placed at the subsections. I believe some people here want to perpetually keep this entire article under the cloud of being biased or poorly written, when only a small part is in dispute. I have tried removing those notices, only to have them reverted. EgraS (talk) 05:22, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

This is a contentious subject, that is founded on the pseudoscience of eugenics, that's just a fact. As such it is unlikely to achieve any sort of neutral status. We need to sort the reliable information from the nonsense that's here, but we probably won't be able to do that due to the fact that this article will always be a magnet for racists and pov-pushers. It's a vicious circle. Alun (talk) 09:52, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
Race and intelligence is certainly not founded by eugenics. The current eugenics movement does not fundementally depend on differences between races. Instead, it is about desirable traits found in all humans. Race and intelligence does lend support to some eugenicists but even then, for those people, the cogency of eugenics depends on race and intelligence not the other way around. Therefore, it is race and intelligence that influences these eugenicists, not the other way around. I see no bias of the nature you're refering to. EgraS (talk) 22:16, 21 September 2008 (UTC)


There is no Hispanic "RACE"

Everyone knows that. And I mean EVERYONE who isn't 5 or mentally challenged, such a statement (Hispanic is not a RACE) is already proven not only by sheer reality but by the hundreds of other wikipedia articles on White Hispanics and Black Hispanics and so on. So Stop. Stop deleting the improvements from anyone who mentions such a unbelievably humongous flaw in the so-called *RACIAL* studies on Intelligence.

People who wrote this article are a bunch of racists. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.79.183.250 (talk) 13:24, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

That's grown up. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.123.253.130 (talk) 22:24, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Subarticles?

I notice that the "very long" notice for this article suggests that it be split into multiple sub-articles. Has anyone considered this? It seems like it might be a good idea, for several reasons.

  1. If separate articles are created for each of the major hypotheses which have been proposed to explain the differences in IQ, this could help deal with the issue of balance. Right now, a lot of relevant information about the hereditarian hypothesis from Legalleft's proposed edit is needing to be excluded, in order to avoid skewing the balance of the article in that direction. If the "Genetic hypothesis" and "Environmental effects" were each their own article, though, this information wouldn't have to be left out.
  2. It would obviously help fix the problem of the article's length/readability.
  3. Wikipedia has an entire category of articles about the Race and intelligence controversy, including articles about topics as insignificant as the author Tatu Vanhanen. It seems that if minor authors who have written about this topic deserve their own articles, each of the major hypotheses about the cause of this difference in IQ certainly would also. There is no question that both of these topics meet the standards of Wikipedia:Notability.

Captain Occam (talk) 19:10, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

I am afraid you are proposing a POV fork, forbidden at Wikipedia. Slrubenstein | Talk 21:46, 11 October 2008 (UTC)
I think you may have a good idea but it needs clarification. If i may build on it, I would like to develop your proposal:
  • Proposal One: "Controversies over Race and IQ in Popular Culture" This article is ostensibly about debates concerning the relationship between race and intelligence; much of it seems to be about the view that racial differences cause differences in IQ. This is a nonsense view among scientists. But it seems to be a view popular among many non-scientists. So let's call a spade a spade. The key to an NPOV article is to find reliable, notable sources first, however, and then decide on the contents and structure later. Essential for the article I am proposing or any comparable article on the popular beliefs about race, or racist science:
  • The Problem of Race in the Twenty-First Century. Thomas C. Holt. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002. 146 pp.
  • Race in Mind: Race, IQ, and Other Racisms. Alexander Alland Jr. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002. 219 pp.
  • The Funding of Scientific Racism: Wickliffe Draper and the Pioneer Fund. William H. Tucker. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002. 286 pp.
Draw on major popular magazines (Time, Newsweek) and newspapers to see how the popular media reports the issue. Also, look for articles in the major media studies journals:
  • Communication Theory
  • Human Communication Research
  • Public Opinion Quarterly
To see how they analyze the portrayal of this issue in the medial.
  • "Constructing Paper Dolls: The Discourse of Personality Testing in Organizational Practice" Majia Holmer Nadesan. Communication Theory, Volume 7, Issue 3, Page 189-218, Aug 1997,
  • "Poverty as We Know It: Media Portrayals of the Poor" Rosalee A. Clawson; Rakuya Trice The Public Opinion Quarterly Vol. 64, No. 1 (Spring, 2000), pp. 53-64
  • "Race, Public Opinion, and the Social Sphere" Lawrence Bobo The Public Opinion Quarterly Vol. 61, No. 1, Special Issue on Race (Spring, 1997), pp. 1-15
It is also worth looking at:
  • Public Culture
  • Representations
for possible analyses of this issue in popular culture.
"The Regents on Race and Diversity: Representations and Reflections" Marianne Constable Representations > No. 55, Special Issue: Race and Representation: Affirmative Action (Summer, 1996), pp. 92-97
"The Trope of a New Negro and the Reconstruction of the Image of the Black" Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Representations > No. 24, Special Issue: America Reconstructed, 1840-1940 (Autumn, 1988), pp. 129-155
"Individual Fairness, Group Preferences, and the California Strategy" Troy Duster Representations > No. 55, Special Issue: Race and Representation: Affirmative Action (Summer, 1996), pp. 41-58
"Darwin's Savage Mnemonics" Cannon Schmitt Representations' > No. 88 (Autumn, 2004), pp. 55-80
Proposal Two: "The Heritability of IQ" The question is whether there is a genetic component to differences in IQ scores and this question has nothing to do with "race." Study on the biology of IQ hinges on twin studies. Here is a fair sample of the major sources:
To start us off, I propose we look at these articles:
  • Bouchard, Arvey, Keller, Segal, 1992, Genetic Influences on Job Satisfaction: A Reply to Cropanzano and James,” Journal of Applied Psychology 77(1): 89-93
  • Devlin, Daniels, Roeder 1997 “The heritability of IQ” Nature 388: 468-471
  • Jacobs, Van Gestel, Derom, Thiery, Vernon, Derom, and Vlietinck, 2001, “Heritability Estimates of Intelligence in Twins: Effect of Chorion Type,” Behavior Genetics 31(2): 209-217
  • McCartney, Harris, and Bernieri, 1990, “Growing Up and Growing Apart: A Developmental Metanalysis of Twin Studies” Psychological Bulletin 107(2) 226-237
  • Phelps, Davis, Schwartz, 1997, “Nature, Nurture and Twin research Strategies” in Current Directions in Psychological Science 6(6): 117-121
  • Plomin and Loehlin, 1989, “Direct and Indirect IQ Heritability Estimates: a Puzzle” Behavior Genetics 19(3): 33-342
  • Race, Townswend, Hughes, 285-291, “Chorion Type, Birthweight Discordance, and tooth-Size Variability in Australian Monozygotic Twins” Twin Research and Human Genetics 9(2) 285-291 (no, not about IQ – but as it is about other clear phenotypic traits it provides a good benchmark for assessing the value of twin studies and the various factors one must also take into account)
  • Reed, Carmelli, Rosenman, 1991, “Effects of Placentation in Selected Type A Behaviors in Adult males in the national Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute Twin Study,” Behavior Genetics 21(1) 1-19
  • Segal, 19999, Entwined Lives: Twins and What They Tell us About Human Behavior
  • Sokol, Moore, Rose, Williams, reed, and Christian, 1995, “Intrapair Differences in Personality and Cognitive Ability Among Mynozygotic Twins Distinguished by Chorion Type,” Behavior Genetics 25(5) 456-466
  • Stromswold, 2006, “Why Aren’t Identical Twins Linguistically Identical?” Cognition 101(2): 333-383
Yhe point is not to cherry-pick quotes that we agree or disagree with. The point is to examine reliable sources to find out - yes, find out, as if e may actually learn something new - what the notable views are. From what I gather from this literature, most of the current scholarship - mainstream scholarship - on IQ scores is not even concerned with the debate "is it environmental or is it genetic." There is a body of literature, and I provided many citations above, and obviously an article on this research must be organized around the most notable and mainstream views on the matter - it should include all notable views ... but I think that the major notable views should be the principle factor in the organization and presentation of the article.
Virtually all scientific research on the genetic determinants of variation in IQ scores is based on twin studies and above (perhaps now in archived talk) I provided a bibliography of major (i.e. from major peer-reviewed journal journals, and which are frequently cited) articles. These studies indicate an ongoing debate between scientists who measure the heritability of intelligence at .40, and others who measure it at between .60 and .70. In addition to these contrasting calculations, there is a debate over the effects of of the shared prenatal environment - some argue that identical blood supply should lead to greater similarities between monochoriatic twins than dichorionic twins; others argue that competition for blood supply should lead to greater differences between monochorionic twins than dichorionic twins. I think we need to have a good article that provides a clear account of this research and these controversies.
Proposal Three: "IQ and SES" Anthropologists and sociologists do howeve recognize races as social constructions. What this means is that "race" is a marker of social differences. So if someone says that race may cause difference in IQ, they could be saying that social factors cause differences in IQ. Indeed, social scientists argue that to understand differences in IQ between races we have to look at non-biological stuff. By the way, we might want to include various achievement scores given to school children at different ages. In any event the book by Flynn is robably the state of the art in current research on the matter and would be invaluable.
James Flynn, What is Intelligence
But we should also just put the terms "IQ" and "SES," or even "race" and "intelligence," into search engines for these journals and see what we come up with.:
  • Review of Educational Research
  • American Anthropologist
  • American Ethnologist
  • Anthropology Quarterly
  • Cultural Anthropology
  • Current Anthropologist
  • Journal of Anthropological Research
  • American Journal of Sociology
  • American Sociological Review
  • British Journal of Sociology
  • Journal of Historical Sociology
Again, I do not know what we would come up with - that is my whole point, this is unbiased - but whatever we come up with would reflect good solid scholarship.
I did a search of some anthropology journals and came up with this:
"Institutionalized Racism and the Education of Blacks" Arthur K. Spears Anthropology & Education Quarterly. Jul 1978, Vol. 9, No. 2: 127-136
Blacked Out: Dilemmas of Race, Identity, and Success at Capital High. Signithia Fordham . Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. 411 pp.
"Social Stratification and the Socialization of Competence" John U. Ogbu Anthropology & Education Quarterly. Apr 1979, Vol. 10, No. 1: 3-20.
Minority Education and Caste: The American System in Cross-Cultural Perspective. John U. Ogbu .
"High-Stakes Accountability, Minority Youth, and Ethnography: Assessing the Multiple Effects" Kris Sloan Anthropology & Education Quarterly. Mar 2007, Vol. 38, No. 1: 24-41.
"The Comparative Motor Development of Baganda, American White, and American Black Infants" Janet E. Kilbride , , Michael C. Robbins , , Philip L. Kilbride American Anthropologist. Dec 1970, Vol. 72, No. 6: 1422-1428.
"The Collection and Analysis of Ethnographic Data in Educational Research" Stephen E. Fienberg Anthropology & Education Quarterly. May 1977, Vol. 8, No. 2: 50-57.
"Social Economic Status and Educational Achievement: A Review Article" George Clement Bond Anthropology & Education Quarterly. Dec 1981, Vol. 12, No. 4: 227-257.
Interrogating "Blackness": Race and Identity-formation in the African Diaspora Crosscurrents: West Indian Immigrants and Race. Milton Vickerman . New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1999. xi + 2)1 pp.
Black Identities: West Indian Immigrant Dreams and American Realities. Mary C. Waters . Cambridge, MA, and London, UK: Russell Sage Foundation and Harvard University Press, 1999. xii - 413 pp.
I haven't read these so I have no idea what view they support- again, that is the idea of not cherry picking.
Proposal Four: How to deal with theories that are fringe among scientists but notable in popular culture? I would propose additional single articles. So, for example one article on J. Philippe Rushton, that goes into great detail about his book and its reception. One article on The Bell Curve that goes into its arguments and the reception. (e.g. The Bell Curve Wars: Race, Intelligence, and the Future of America Steven Fraser , ed. New York, NY: Basic Books, 1995. 216 pp.) Slrubenstein | Talk 22:01, 11 October 2008 (UTC)
While something similar to what you're suggesting might be appropriate, all of your suggestions appear to run against Wikipedia's NPOV policy. For example, you suggested that we describe Rushton's and Jensen genetic hypothesis as a "fringe" hypothesis. This has been discussed before on this talk page--although the genetic hypothesis is less popular among psychologists than environmental explanations, it has also been discussed in peer-reviewed journals (for example http://psychology.uwo.ca/faculty/rushtonpdfs/PPPL1.pdf ), which cannot by definition be fringe. So for Wikipedia to refer to this theory as "fringe" would not only be a violation of Wikipedia's NPOV policy; it would also contradict Wikipedia's definition of what constitutes a fringe viewpoint.
The same goes for your suggestion that we describe this in terms of race being a "social construct", implying that it has no genetic basis. Some sociologists hold this view, but it is only held by a minority of geneticists, so for Wikipedia to make this assertion would not be NPOV. To get an idea of the opposing viewpoint, I recommend that you look at Race and genetics, as well as this article in the New York Times.
You seem to be suggesting that we revamp the entire article on this topic, which is a much larger and more complex change than what I'm suggesting. Having articles which cover each of the major hypotheses about the difference in IQ would not have to be a POV fork, if each article covers the arguments both in favor of and against the hypothesis in question. This is what Wikipedia does for each of the subtopics related to the Global warming controversy, so there's no reason why the same thing can't be done here also.
Captain Occam (talk) 00:31, 12 October 2008 (UTC)
If nobody brings up any other problems with my suggestion in the next day or so, I'm going to create a couple of new articles covering the hypotheses about the cause of this IQ difference, and move some of this article's content there.
Captain Occam (talk) 00:00, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

You have not adequately responded to my proposal. Your comment about Rushton is irrelevnt, his theories are fringe. look, he is a psychologist, with no training in genetics. His theories about psychology might not be fringe, but his theories about genetics certainly are. A creationit's views of creation may not be fringe theories mong theologicans, but they certainly are among evolutionary biologists. As you say this has been thoroughly discussed and there is no evidence at all that experts in human races and human genetics and human evolution view Rushton as anything but fringe. Slrubenstein | Talk 00:16, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

If Rushton's theories are not fringe within the field of psychology (and they certainly aren't; this chart shows the portion of IQ experts who consider the IQ difference to contain a genetic component), then we should not describe them as though they are. As long as we don't give Rushton undue authority on the matter of specific genes, the fact that he is not a geneticist shouldn't be a problem for what I'm suggesting, since the basic question of which traits are hereditary and which aren't is well within the realm of psychology. On the topic of specific genes, there are other experts we can cite about this--it isn't as though Rushton is the only person who has studied it.
All of your proposals seem to involve suggesting that there is no scientific debate about this topic within the field of psychology, and that the only controversy worth addressing is the undue attention given to certain theories by the public, but as the chart shows this issue is not nearly so one-sided. This is one of my problems with your suggestions, but you haven't made it clear what your problem is with mine.
As I said before, what I am suggesting does not have to be a POV fork, and it would improve the main article to have some of its information split into sub-articles. Jensen's and Rushton's theory also clearly meets Wikipedia's standards for being notable enough to warrant its own article. What specific problem do you have with my suggestion?
Captain Occam (talk) 01:58, 13 October 2008 (UTC)
I'm not sure what you mean when you claim that Rushton's theories "are not fringe within the field of psychology". How are you defining "fringe"? Here on Wikipedia any theory is fringe if it departs considerably from the mainstream scientific view. Rushton's ideas about so called "race" are clearly a departure from mainstream views about so called "race", and I don't think his politically motivated "theories" about biological "race" can be considered as anything but far right politics, and in an academic sense on a par with Steady State theory or Intelligent design. The chart you link to is of no value, it's from a study that has been heavily criticised, that was conducted by two far right individuals with a political axe to grind, and of course it's twenty odd years old, and so cannot be claimed to represent the state of psychology as it stands today. Obviously fringe theories can be notable, and the notability of the ideas of people like Rushton, Jensen, and the usual wingnut suspects are notable because the media give them so much prominence, this is almost certainly because they make good journalistic "copy" rather than a reflection of the robustness of the so called "research". Let's not confuse the issue, there's an overwhelming body of research that shows that biological "race" is pure fiction, and the likes of Rushton do not represent anything like a mainstream element even within the field of psychology. Alun (talk) 06:39, 13 October 2008 (UTC)
I was kind of concerned that you might get involved in this, because I've read many of your other posts on this discussion page, and you never fail to try and turn it into some sort of argument over politics. Are you aware of how many of these people are actually liberal democrats? Jensen certainly is, and as the person who first proposed the theory that genes play a role in this IQ difference, he is the person who would determine whether the theory exists for politically motivated reasons. Based on Jensen's politics, if this theory itself has any political bias at all, it would be a liberal one.
I've also seen how every time someone edits the article to imply that race has any biological meaning, or that Jensen's theory (let's not call it Rushton's; Jensen is the person who came up with it) has any scientific value, you never allow the edit to last very long. I have two things to say about this. The first is that you are holding these arguments to a standard that completely goes against Wikipedia's policy--for example, you say we should treat Rushton's and Jensen theory the same way that we treat "intelligent design", when the intelligent design movement has yet to publish a single peer-reviewed paper in support of its claims. While in the case of the genetic hypothesis about IQ differences between races, Jensen alone has had at least a half-dozen of these published, in mainstream journals such as Psychology, Public Policy, and Law. The only way in which this theory is on a par with "intelligent design" is the extent to which you don't like it.
The same goes for your claim about what the scientific consensus involving race. Your claim about this is even more wrong than your claim about Jensen, since in Jensen's case you're at least right that his views are in the minority. But within the medical community, the concept of race is so entrenched that certain drugs are only marketed for particular races, because as a result of the genetic differences between races, those are the only races for whom they will be helpful. The New York Times article I linked to a few posts ago talks about this a little. Have you ever done a search on the word "race" in a medical journal search engine such as PubMed? If you do, any one of these will return thousands of results, yet you still claim that the scientific community is virtually unanimous that "race" is biologically meaningless.
So that's my first problem with what you do here: trying to turn science into politics, in violation of Wikipedia's policy on peer-reviewed research. And my second problem is that your repeated removal of edits which go against your opinion on this matter constitutes POV-pushing. Ironically, you tend to accuse other people of this, but I don't think you can make this claim in my case. None of the arguments or changes I've made have been based on anything other than attempting to preserve Wikipedia's neutral point of view, and this particular topic happens to be one that needs a lot of work in this respect.
What I would like is to have a simple discussion about whether it's possible to have separate articles about the genetic and environmental hypotheses without a POV fork, and to be discussing it in terms of science and Wikipedia's policy. If multiple articles about this have been tried before, and past experience shows that there's no way this can be done without turning into a POV fork, then I'll concede it isn't a good idea. But if you insist on making these kinds of unsupported assertions such as Jensen's hypothesis being no more mainstream than "intelligent design", and rejecting or reverting any proposed changes based on reasons such as this, then what you're doing is clearly POV-pushing and I'll need to get a moderator involved.
Captain Occam (talk) 17:34, 13 October 2008 (UTC)
Please review the talk page archives in regards to this having been tried before. Regarding expert medical opinion on the validity of race as a construct, please see for example here. There are also an abundance of sources who regard Rushton's theories as fringe. The references can also be found in the talk page archives. I would also invite you to comment on edits, not editors.--Ramdrake (talk) 18:05, 13 October 2008 (UTC)
I'm aware that there are experts who regard race as a social construct, but my point is that this point of view is not a consensus of the medical community, so Wikipedia should not describe it as though it were.
I've looked through the archives of discussions about having multiple articles about this topic, and all of them seem to be about the idea of having one article which argues for the genetic hypothesis, and another which argues against it. Obviously that idea isn't an acceptable solution, since it would constitute a POV fork, but what I'm suggesting is something different from this. What I'm suggesting is that there be separate articles here about the hypotheses themselves, and their pros and cons, the same way there are articles about the pros and cons of alternative hypotheses regarding global warming such as Solar variation theory and the Urban heat island effect.
Has the idea of covering this topic in the same way as the global warming controversy been previously discussed also? If so, where has it been discussed / what problems are there with it?
Captain Occam (talk) 18:40, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

No, I am saying psychologists have no professional standing to make biologial claims about race. They are free to do it just as I can write an essay on psychology but just because I have a degree in another field doen't make my writings mainstram psychology. That is what Rushton is doing. He is a psychologist when he writes about the research psychologists specialize in. When he write about human evolution and polulation genetics and biology, he is just an amateur.Slrubenstein | Talk 02:27, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Oh no no no I object to subarticles - trim and fix this one, pleeease. KillerChihuahua?!? 02:40, 13 October 2008 (UTC)
Agree. Alun (talk) 06:39, 13 October 2008 (UTC)
Agree also. This article was merged back from a collection of sub-articles over a year ago in part over concerns of POV-forking.--Ramdrake (talk) 11:29, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

questionable statement that should be removed

I find the following unsourced statement very questionable: "Current scientific consensus is that IQ scores in developing countries are depressed to some extent by environmental conditions, such as macronutrient and micronutrient deficiencies."

Reason being that in poor and malnourished countries like North Korea and Mongolia, the IQs are still highest among the world.

A source should be provided for this questionable statement or it should be removed since it doesn't make sense.

The data on which you base your example, from IQ and the Wealth of Nations, is itself most questionable and mostly debunked already.--Ramdrake (talk) 19:58, 12 October 2008 (UTC)
So you're saying North Korea has a low IQ? Provide your source. According to all sources North Koreans have IQs despite being malnourished. The point is, the statement is questionable and a source needs to be provided or it needs to be removed. Also, for the time being please stop removing the citation request tag.
North Koreans are not malnuorished or poor. The same goes for Mongolians YVNP (talk) 00:23, 24 October 2008 (UTC)
  • According to all sources North Koreans have IQs despite being malnourished.?? Do some people not have IQs at all? How do they achieve this miraculous feat? Besides what's all this nonsense about? The anonymous user is clearly has a right to ask for a reliable source, I can't see that this would be a problem, if it's a scientific consensus then we should be able to source it easily. On the other hand the anonymous does not have the right to question the statement on other grounds. He gives reasons such as "in poor and malnourished countries like North Korea and Mongolia, the IQs are still highest among the world", that's irrelevant. If we have a source that states that malnourishment in poor countries causes developmental problems (and I don't think any respectable biologist would ever claim that malnourished people do not suffer developmentally, to do so would be to claim that things like Deficiency disease do not exist, clearly that would be a stupid claim) then we cite it, if we have a source that claims that malnourishment does not affect intelligence (something I think no reliable source would ever do because it would imply that humans develop normally on poor diets, something that contradicts all modern biological and nutritional science) then we should also include that, i.e. we give all reliable pints of view. We do not include original research, we only include claims that North Koreans are "malnourished" but still have high IQs if a reliable source claims this. I'm sceptical of any data that come from North Korea, this is not a free society and we can't assume that data deriving from there are representative of the general population. Alun (talk) 05:51, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

National IQ map in the article again

An anonymous IP has again introduced the National IQ map in the article. This is inappropriate for at least two major reasons:

  1. This article is about Race and intelligence, not country and intelligence
  2. The map is the work of two researchers, Lynn and Vanhanen, and is rather widely considered fringe in the field.

I would also like to invite said IP to review WP:VANDAL to learn what is vandalism and what isn't.--Ramdrake (talk) 19:53, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't see why you would want to remove a scholarly work other than maybe being offended by it. Please remember that Wikipedia is against censorship, please stop removing it just because you might be offended.
  1. Obviously race is associated with countries/geography (eg. everyone knows East Asia is "Asian", Europe is "White", Sub-Saharn Africa is "Black", Mexico is Hispanic, etc)
  2. That that scholarly work is "fringe" is your POV. According to Wikipedia guidelines as long as it is a scholarly work it is acceptable.
Race isn't associated with countries: are the people in the United States or Brazil or Canada, or any other country of the same race???
Please re-read WP:NPOV, and the article archives too. This subject has been discussed time and again, and consensus has always been that this nmap isn't relevant to this article.--Ramdrake (talk) 20:02, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

United States is over 73% White, Canada is 74% White, and Brazil is mixed but still almost 50% white. Most readers are smart enough to have a rough idea of that.

No one is removing the map because they are "offended" by it. Ramdrake removed it because it is not relevant to the subject at hand. It will continue to be removed. CAVincent (talk) 21:01, 12 October 2008 (UTC)
Using worldwide statistics is biased. Most of the research comes from Richard Lynn. Most of the iq scores he used were not from actual studies, some were studies of mentally retard children from foreign countries, and even the people who found the scores he used were not comfortable with his usuage of them.YVNP (talk) 05:22, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
Reference? 122.105.221.214 (talk) 07:54, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
The page for iq and global inequality mentions some of these criticismsYVNP (talk) 00:18, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

Can someone please link the image in question? It's a handy resource, and keeps getting taken down. I came here specifically for it and was dissapointed to find it had been taken down again. It's a shame that people trying to be politically correct perpetuate the opression and lack of special needs assistance for others because they want to hold everyone up to standards of equality. It's quite clear certain regions have underlying issues and need help more than others and the longer we pretend that's not the case, the longer people have to suffer in this world. 122.107.31.132 (talk) 20:45, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

The appropriate place for this image is not in this article (as this deals with races, not nations), but you'll find the image in this article.--Ramdrake (talk) 20:50, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

blacks are wealthier than hispanics

In terms of per capita income and education blacks strongly outdo latinos. Why then do latinos have higer iq scores? Isn't the average latino score 86 now and the average black score 88? YVNP (talk) 09:43, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

86 isn't higher than 88. Perhaps you meant it the other way around? Saimdusan Talk|Contribs 09:18, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Question about image

File:IQ-4races-rotate-highres.png

What is the source data for this image? Are the whole graphs actual values or was it made from just the means and standard deviations? If the later, then it is misleading. --Apoc2400 (talk) 22:28, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Approximate cumulative IQ distributions in the U.S. based on Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale IQs for Whites (mean = 101.4, SD = 14.7) and Blacks (mean = 86.9, SD = 13.0) from (Reynolds, Chastain, Kaufman, & McLean, 1987, p. 330); distributions for Hispanics (mean = 91) and Asians (mean = 106) are less precise.

So the data clearly comes from Reynolds, Chastain, Kaufman, & McLean paper on page 330.
I can see why disclosing the mean and standard deviations of the data sets might suggest that was all Quizkajer used to generate the curves. Quizkajer is no longer active on Wikipedia and did not provide an e-mail address so we can’t ask him. But if he had plotted raw data and had used *just* the means and standard deviations (as you are conjecturing), then I can’t see how the 0–20% portion of the black curve can converge and collide—as it clearly does—with the hispanic curve without the same thing occurring at the 80–100% end. The two means are so close to each other (86.9 v.s. 91), those two curves would have a relative relationship more like that of the white and asian curves if the curves had been generated as you conjecture. It appears to me that true curve-fitting somewhere along the line had been done to make the curves match the raw data. Either Quizkajer did the curve fitting, or (more likely) he copied a graph on pg. 330, which, if done with any care whatsoever, is a perfectly valid technique since it still amounts to curves matching the raw data. This sort of data (lopsided bell curves in certain populations) bears the classic hallmarks of the data being “human” in origin and of the curves being true to the data.


The overlapping of the black and hispanic curves below about the fifth percentile indicates that the distinction between the two races is an exceedingly poor predictor of the likelihood that an individual will have an IQ below 65. Greg L (talk) 22:58, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

where in the world hispanic is a race? Hispanic is classification economic-social and NOT of race.

Refimprove tag

An editor has just placed the {{refimprove}} tag on the article. Seeing as there are already over 150 references supporting the article, it would be appreciated if the editor could specify in which way exactly the article's references could be improved. Otherwise, the tag might be removed as the reasons for its addition seem nebulous.--Ramdrake (talk) 23:39, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

I put it, not because there are too few references, but because they are hard to navigate. What is up with the scrollable mini-boxes? I have never seen those on other articles. Also, is it possible to have the refs under Notes link to the relevant one under References? I don't know of any way but it would be very useful here. --Apoc2400 (talk) 23:57, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Scrolling lists and boxes that toggle text display between hide and show are acceptable in infoboxes and navigation boxes, but should never be used in the article prose or references, because of issues with readability, accessibility, and printing

Even though the references is obscenely lengthy, and even though I don’t buy the “accessibility” argument one twit (scrolling is still required on the Web), readers should certainly be able to see all references when they print this article. Accordingly, I deactivate the scrolling aspect. Greg L (talk) 01:25, 26 December 2008 (UTC)
Right. I removed the scrolling from the "References" section as well. MOS is not a law, but scrolling sub-frames is quite unusual and a bit confusing. --Apoc2400 (talk) 10:19, 26 December 2008 (UTC)
  • Yes, “not a law”. Yet, there is no fighting “guidelines” since, as a practical matter, they might as well be law when it comes to editwarring. Better to cave; particularly when at least some portion of the guideline’s point makes a good point. I rarely employ Jimbo’s Wikipedia:Ignore all rules unless I am convinced I’m right and am willing to fight the good fight. Greg L (talk) 23:04, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

A good source worth using

I looked on Richard Lynn's website and found this article. Basically he estimated the overwhelming majority of the iq scores based on either neighboring countries or ethnic groups in faraway nations. Since his research is almost the back bone of race and intelligence research don't we have an obligation to mention it? http://www.rlynn.co.uk/pages/articles.asp YVNP (talk) 09:56, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

  1. Lynn's work is not the "backbone" of "race" and intelligence research. I think Jensen and Eysenck hold that dubious distinction.
  2. Lynn's work estimates the so called "IQ" of different individuals from various ethnic groups and nations, it does not discuss "race" at all. We need to discriminate between research that purports to measure differences between "races" as opposed to research that purports to measure differences between groups that are not usually considered "races". Lynn discusses difference between nations and not "races".
  3. Lynn's work has been heavily criticised, for example in the 1999 edition of Montagu's book Race and IQ there is an essay (I can take a look for it when I get time) that shows that Lynn took data from a range of tests that do not measure IQ, and pretended he could estimate IQ from these data, often arbitrarily choosing a low score for certain groups. Indeed Lynn's meta-analysis has been criticised for taking research out of context and for miss-representng the conclusions of the research he cites. Alun (talk) 10:42, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
I wanted to include this because it's often used by race and intelligence researchers among them Rushton and if I'm not mistaken Jensen. I also see many who support race and intelligence research use his work as well(Such Jared Taylor). That's all YVNP (talk) 14:52, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
Well, I can understand that, YVNP, but we still have to make decisions about inclusion based on policy. Lynn's research (especially this article, which was not as far as I can tell pulbished in a peer-reviewed journal) is not significant and does not meet the threshold for significance to be included. It is too fringe. Slrubenstein | Talk 16:12, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
Is Lynn's map really used by researchers in "race" and "intelligence"? I'm amazed if it is. I suspect that Lynn's map is only used by a subsection of researchers into intelligence, the ones supporting racism. I note that the people you cite are all well known proponents of racist theories, I suspect that those who do research into intelligence that is not racist and who don't promote fantasist ideas about racial supremacy, don't use Lynn's map at all. It's still true that Lynn did not measure so called intelligence by "race", but conducted a meta-analysis of previous research from many different ethnic groups, nations and state wide populations. Let's take the USA, what "race" is that then? These previously conducted papers made use of many different assessment tools, and these tools were often not compatible with estimates of "IQ", and could not be compared to each other. If one has to invoke the name of people like Taylor, then one is on a very slippery slope indeed. Wikipedia does not exist to promote the beliefs of people like Jared Taylor. Should we cite Mein Kampf? Alun (talk) 13:16, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
On second thoughts it's amazing that this article doesn't have any mention of NSDAP ideas of "race" and "intelligence". It probably should, don't you think? Alun (talk) 12:22, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
No, the nazi viewpoint on this is adequetley put forth in their articles, there are already tenous links to the eugenics article also.

Lynn has connections with white nationalists in the US and elsewhere. How can people like this be taken seriously in these issues. It is as if Hitler would be considered a reliable source regarding these debates. Jan. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.8.187.137 (talk) 20:19, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Agree Lynn has strong ties to racist groups-- he is not a good source. 71.190.92.19 (talk) 15:12, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Removing a couple of names

This should be non-controversial. It is true that they are notable - Arnold Schwartzeneger and Madonna are notable too - but they are notable in specific fields (astronomy and molecular chemistry) and neither have conducted any research on the relationship between race and intelligence. There remarks were not published in notable sources which is part of our NPOV threshold for inclusion (they were quoted in newspapers and did not publish in peer-reviewed journals for example). Their support of a particular view in this context is no more meaningful than Madonna's or mine or yours - it is just their personal opinion. This is relevant perhaps to the articles on them but not to an article about a topic that is the object of scientific study. Science is vast and highly specialized. An expert on one field generally is no better than a layman on another field. Ther are scientists who are creationists but we do not mention them in the article on evolution because their field of research is not evolutionary science. I just want to adopt the same principle here as it makes sense. Slrubenstein | Talk 14:52, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

First, let's be clear that these are not just "a couple of names". These names are William Shockley and James D. Watson, both Nobel prize winners. Comparing them to Arnold and Madonna is completely disingenuous. Second, Watson in particular seems to be a pretty important person to discuss when the topic of genetic comes up. Third, I'm not sure why you consider Watson's views in Nature (journal) and Medical Hypotheses (with 3 Nobel laureates--one a double laureate--on the board) to be not notable, but I have to disagree with you there. Similarly, Shockley's views were published in a book by Scott-Townsend, which also publishes 2 academic journals.
Let me be very clear that I don't agree with these views at all, but I think the article might benefit from a discussion of these views and how these preeminent scientists fell from grace for holding these views. This article definitely needs work, but to remove these two names is to hide a large part of the debate at large. NJGW (talk) 16:01, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
I believe Slrubenstein is making a good point here. Shockley and Watson are notable figures; that goes without saying. But when it comes to population genetics and psychometrics, they are laymen. Their expertise in other fields makes it so their opinion is probably better informed than say Madonna's, but I'd give them little more credit than an Ann Coulter on Evolution. These are not expert opinions. These are personal opinions of notable figures. There needs to be a clear difference betweem the two.--Ramdrake (talk) 17:18, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
That's an interesting position to take considering that none of the folks listed in the genetics section are geneticists, and yet we are talking about their understanding of genetics and heritability. Watson is a geneticist (to say the least), hardly a "layman" when it comes to issues surrounding genetics. His views are so notable that Nature took the time to publish a refutation of them.[1]
Further, most of the rest of the section is simply opinion and conjecture. Jenson's book is not peer reviewed, and Jenson's recent work is published in Law and Policy journals. There is one little blurb about how geneticists have been unable to find a link at the very bottom of the section. Like I said, the whole article needs work, and it would only help to point out that when Noble laureates start going on about intelligence having a genetic component, they actually get publicly dressed down. NJGW (talk) 19:48, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
NJGW, it sounds like youa re arguing for removing more contexnt. Go for it! I personally find this article an embarassment to the encyclopedia in the way that it forwards fringe theories as if they were mainstream, and popular prejudice as if it were science. What do you propose? Slrubenstein | Talk 13:34, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
Something along those lines, but I think the article needs a ground-up rewrite by a good sociologist. It looks like it's been a wp:battleground for a long time. I like the wording of the lead from older versions, but I would be in favor of stubbing this article and starting over to avoid any genetic (so to speak) link with the current version. Incidentally, I appreciate Gould's approach in Mismeasure of Man which uses anthropology and sociology to show how the psychometricians have usually been pretty far off base with their assumptions of intelligence, and how this concept and its measurement has almost always been used as an oppressive and absolute tool (for example, as opposed to the constructive and interpretable tool Binet was originally commissioned to create with his precursor to the IQ test). This is a big project though, and I think we need someone on board who is very familiar with both the psychometric and sociological material... do you know any wiki-sociologists? NJGW (talk) 17:58, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
NJGW, I generally agree with you. A year or so ago (actually, March 2008 I think; if you are interested look at the section "How to move forward," here) I made a major proposal to split this article into four as a way of handling controversial themes in a rigorous way ... other editors disagreed. Unfortunately, while we have pretty good articles on Race and Ethnic groups and Culture, this article has traditionally attracted fringe POV pushers. The sad fact as you imply correctly is, Wikipedia does not have enough people who are either trained sociologists (psychologists, evolutionary biologists, anthropologiests etc) or well-enough trained to do the serious research needed to turn this into a good article. In fact I think this article alone representes a good deal of what is wrong with Wikipedia. In the meantime, I think the most we can expect is that it is as encyclopedic as possible. NPOV must be enforced i.e. multiple views - but NPOV never means "all views" - they must be significant views from reliable sources and what we mean by significant and reliable is relative to the subject matter of the article. An interview of Einstein in Science in which he expresses his personal views on race and intelligence for example would just not merit inclusion. Sure, Einstein is important, and so is Science, but a personal interview is not a research article, and a notable physicist who has not done research on race and intelligence is just not significant for this article. I agree with you that there are ways to turn this into a great article, but I have to focus on my actual job now, and the sorry fact is WIkipedia does not yet have enough editors with the context-appropriate knowledge or research skills ...

Ashkenazi Jews

Since when exactly Ashkenazi Jews fall into the race category? I certainly wouldn't mind that an article is dedicated to this, but it has nothing to do with the article, unless we rename it into "ìntelligence and heredity". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.29.238.33 (talk) 21:25, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Jews are broadly divided into Sephardi and Ashkenazi. Ashkenazi score a higher "g" than any other group, whereas Sephardi only moderately higher; hence the reason for specifically using the term "Ashkenazi Jews" and not just "Jews". For the purposes of the point under discussion it is useful to define race as any group with historical inbreeding such that there is a clear genetic flavor. Of course one can define "race" in terms of spoken language, originating land, skin color, or nationality; but these definitions are not useful to the intelligence debate since it makes no sense that these four factors per se are directly related to intelligence. Only the environment and genetics of the individual are deemed factors. If we would follow through on your suggestion, it would ultimately imply that the designation "Jew" on it's own might magically cause an increase in one's IQ, and one can increase one's IQ just by filling in a different religion on our census form. (I assume of course that you are not saying that "Jew" is a religion and not race - which is patently ridiculous.)
 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Paulsheer (talk • contribs) 18:42, 20 June 2009 (UTC)
The Ashkenazi Jews are hardly a race, at least in forensic science. They are classified as Caucasians--they are of White/Turkish stock. Also, I heard in many occasions--although it is quite absurd--the claim that Ashkenazi Jews have an IQ of 115; however, we cannot put a lot of credence to such a claim. Indeed, it's more likely that they have a verbal IQ of 107.5 and a normal performance IQ, which would put them roughly at 103-104.

NPOV

This article fails to make the connection between scientific racism and "race and intelligence" research-- it is ahistorical and sanitized. We need an honest accounting of this topic. scientific racism isn't even mentioned in the history section. 71.190.92.19 (talk) 15:15, 23 May 2009 (UTC)\

That is bad. The entire article is weasely though; its less "claims" and more "have been found to be". That there is a difference in the mean IQ and similar test metrics of whites and blacks in the United States is utterly uncontroversial; some claim the tests are racist, some that the differences are purely environmental, and some that they are genetic and environmental. Titanium Dragon (talk) 05:58, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

An expert

I'm an industrial psychologist with 10 year's experience in the field, and my speciality is psychometric tests, such as I.Q. tests.

This issue is a contentious one, but the answer is actually very simple.

Firstly, a basic primer on how a psychometric test is constructed. Researchers develop a construct and give it a name. In this discussion the construct is intelligence quotient (I.Q.). Remember that this is just a label, and as with all labels the contents may not necessarily match the label. The traditional I.Q. test measures only certain types of intelligence, which is why in the last decade we've seen a whole lot of new intelligence tests, like emotional intelligence (E.Q.), etc. Just because the can says, "beef", you can't assume it contains beef, or just beef, you need to read the label describing the ingredients very carefully. In psychometric tests how the construct is defined is normally described very carefully in the test manual, so until you read the test manual it really is a case of "buyer beware", which is why these tests should not be interpreted by anyone other than a trained professional, simply because of the grossly incorrect assumptions that people leap to.

With reference to EQ. There is far less evidence (read none) that EQ exists as separate to IQ than any of the outcomes you dispute in this discussion. I read from your words that any research-outcome that shows one racial group to have higher IQ should be questioned, whereas any outcome that shows an egalitarian result should be embraced without question. This ought only be true if one is intrinsically racist (a closet racist) and afraid that a scientific result might cause him to begin to hate someone he previously liked. One ought to realize that no-one need feel improved or diminished by the greater or lesser performance of their ethnic group, unless that performance is falsely represented. Indeed, a fraudulent stance is never a positive one however well intentioned. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Paulsheer (talk • contribs) 16:28, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

After the researchers have labeled the construct they take all the existing research in relation to the items they want to incorporate into that construct, and identify the key variables. If, for example, you're trying to develop a test that predicts aptitude for science then the research would indicate that high scores in mathematics tend to predict success in this field, so that would be a key variable.

Next the researchers come up with a range of tests related to these key variables. These might be questions (either asked verbally or in writing), physical tests (playing a video game, solving a physical puzzle, walking a line), and so on.

What happens next is where all the fun starts. The researchers get volunteers to do the test, containing all the test items. Normally the minimum number considered for these tests is 100 000. These tests are normally longitudinal, which means that the people do the test several times, normally a 3 to 5 years apart. The researchers also get data on salary level, academic achievement, field of employment, and any other variables associate with what they're trying to study. The researchers then correlate the results to the test as a whole, individual test items, combinations of test items, etc. In short the test is put through the statistical wringer, trying to determine which items show a strong correlation to the aspect being studied. Normally the minimum requirement is that the test correctly predicts the performance of 95% of the individuals tested. To take a simple example, if 98% of the individuals who answered Yes to item 10 also showed a high level of success in the field of science then it is reasonable to assume that item 10 is related to the prediction of success in the field of science; although not necessarily an absolute truth, this response could the the RESULT of success in the field of science, which is why these studies are longitudinal, so that the researchers can determine if this result is the consequence or genesis of the variable being examined.

After this the test is trimmed down to those questions that showed, on statistical analysis, an apparent predictive validity. The test is re-administered to a new group, normally again longitudinally, and the overall predictive value of the test is re-validated. If the test doesn't meet the minimum 95% predictive value then it must be re-engineered and re-tested. If it does then it can be held to predict the attribute being examined.

This is an extremely long and drawn-out process, and a properly developed psychometric instrument takes about 20 years to develop, an immense investment in time, money and man-hours. This wasn't true of most of the early psychometric tests, neither is it true of many of the tests currently on the market, and almost all of the tests available on the internet. Furthermore, psychometric tests are extremely sensitive, and even seemingly inconsequential variables, such as an overly warm test room, noise, a hostile tester, etc, have been shown to have a significant effect on test scores, which is why it is critical that the tester is properly qualified, and by this I do not mean a 2 day course in how to use the test, I mean a fully qualified and registered psychologist.

As you can see, the development of a psychometric test is as much psychological phenomenon as it is a statistical phenomenon, and relies heavily on the science of statistics.

I'm sure that most of you are familiar with the concept of 'normal distribution', so I'm not going to go into a full explanation here. Look it up. In very basic terms any properly sampled population, when graphed, will produce a curve that looks like a bell, with the apex of the bell on the average. When analysing a psychometric test this is one of the statistical tests it is subjected to. The African-American population's test-scores do not form a bell-curve then something is clearly wrong with the test. It is possible for a group to have a 'competitive advantage', having a slightly higher or lower average score, but if the groups have been sampled correctly then each group should show a bell-like curve around the average. If it doesn't then the discriminatory test questions need to be identified and removed. This clearly wasn't done in some of the earlier tests.

You might be jumping up and down and shouting at this point, but there are very good reasons for this. Population groups, whether distinguished by the shade of their skin, gender, language, or whatever criterion people choose to use, tend to share more than just the surface difference being used to discriminate between groups. For example, such groups often live in the same area, share a common language, attend the same type of schools, etc. As I mentioned above, psychometric tests are very sensitive, and can be influenced by these factors. Let's take a very simple example. In America the term "black" has negative connotations, whereas in South Africa it is used far more neutrally, and can even assume positive connotations in certain areas, such as employment equity. If I imported a test from South Africa that used the word "black" extensively it would create a negative impression in the mind of African-American (and possibly other) test-takers, resulting in lower scores.

For this reason a test must be validated for each country and population group, and subjected to the 'normal distribution' test. If it fails this test then it is not the population group that is at fault, but rather the psychometric test.

I hope this answers everyone's questions regarding Intelligence and Race. Simply put what you're seeing is a statistical error, nothing more. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.213.160.228 (talk) 03:11, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Except, of course, that you are presupposing that the differences in test scores are due to the test being racist, and not that one group is actually intellectually inferior to the other, which is precisely what such tests are designed to measure. Ergo, your test is worthless as a measure of it, because you are making an explicit assumption in your test construction that there is no difference between the mean intelligence of the races.
Sorry, but clearly your education has failed you. Take a course in experimental design. Titanium Dragon (talk) 05:57, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Titanium i dont believe you understood the point that he was trying to make the IQ tests as we know it test merely your Potential to make it in western academic institutions or in general: in the western society those tests come up with questions that predict how likely you will be a scientist for example but becoming a scientist doesnt nedessarily take intelligence scientific work for ecample takes many virtues: discipline, teamskills, hard work and others so if the question in the IQ test gives higher points only to people who later become doctors and lawyers that doesnt mean necessarily that it tested intelligence it might have tested a wild mixture of propertys but still its the only validation asd the psychologist above stated and this has nothing to do with racism it has more to do which skills WE as westerners need to survive and strive in this western civilization other peoples might need other skills in their societys so its a wild speculation that these tests are aplyable to compare others than westerners with each others also if u cant even really answer what Intelligence actually is, that what are you actually testing? also these test have nothing to do with racism but are more of a shortcircuit tests made by people of our culture to test people of our culture so basically these iq tests mostlikely imply, trhat a certain amount of knowledge about the western world are necessary, what i basically whant to say is if these tests are constructed in such a way that they test our abilitys to make it in this society as a academic or anything else, then isnt it only logic that people who are part of a different upbringing and surrounbdings will have lower results? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.176.34.219 (talk) 23:55, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

needs better source

Genome projects and other biological studies have found no genetic differences which cause differences in intelligence capacity or differences in neural wiring between humans based on race.[3]

while i think above is true, it definitely needs a better reliable source, and am therefore temporarily removing the reference. 79.101.242.230 (talk) 22:13, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

They have found no genes..., but that doesn't mean they don't exist.
Actually, they've found a few. The gene DTNBP1, and the varying distribution of its alleles among Caucasians and Africans, is able to explain around 1/3 of the IQ gap between these two groups. Check the sources for the linked article; it's right.
At this point, the real question is whether additional genes which influence IQ will be found to follow the same pattern. Unfortunately, as this article points out, scientists are often scared away from studying this topic because of the controversy it can produce. So it might be quite a while before we'll know whether DTNBP1 is part of a pattern or not. --Captain Occam (talk) 11:23, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

The purpose of investigating a genetic cause of the disparity in socio-economic-status (SES), performance, and intelligence is to determine if it is fair to discriminate against a good performer on the bases of ethnicity or race, which discrimination is currently plentiful. Morally and legally, governments should always provide greater support to ethnic groups that are in greater need - that is without question. However to prejudice a group because it performs well, or try to sabotage the performance of a group, is unfair if the reasons for that group's good performance are genetic, as apposed to, say, because of historical bullying of the under-performing group. If it can be conclusively shown that intelligence is 75% genetic (as some studies purport to do) then it is clear that no amount of environmental bias will ever completely remove the disparity in SES; and it would give governments better predictive power as to the outcome of targeted spending, education programs, and affirmative action. A conclusive result would ultimately be beneficial for every ethnic group. A falsified result would be worse for every ethnic group. It is important to see this in the context of other countries besides the USA that have greater racial asymmetries in SES.

It is absurd to say that such research only exists to bolster racial hatred amongst white supremacists, because the very same research consistently shows Japanese, Koreans, Chinese and Ashkenazi Jews to perform far better than they.

I therefore suggest the article should be extended to discuss the importance of intelligence research in the context of "reverse-racism" happening around the world as well as in the USA. Otherwise the article is indeed no more than a festering pool for a specific brand of Aryan/Anglo-Saxon racial hatred and should be removed from Wikipedia altogether.—Preceding unsigned comment added by Paulsheer (talk • contribs) 16:28, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

At your suggestion, I've edited the article to mention this.
Incidentally, the last paragraph of Race_and_intelligence#Utility_of_research is completely without references. Whoever added that information to the article should provide sources for it; otherwise it'll need to be deleted. --Captain Occam (talk) 14:50, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

notes vs references

what is the difference between the two? 79.101.242.230 (talk) 22:20, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

As it relates to this article and the way it has happened to develop, "Notes" are footnotes identifying where specific claims can be found/verified. "References" are more of a "related readings" - some that have deeply informed previous versions of the article. The whole article is quite a mess and could probably do with a complete restart.-- The Red Pen of Doom 22:27, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
What specific things are there about the article that you think need to be changed? If you point them out, I can try to improve some of them. --Captain Occam (talk) 17:46, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Ashkenazi Jews IQ estimates

According to Lynn's 2004 review of Ashkenazi Jews IQ, the estimate of half a standard deviation is for verbal IQ or gC and not for IQ, which comprise gF and gC, or verbal IQ and performance IQ. Therefore, I suggest we remove the claim of an IQ of 110-115 among Ashkenazi Jews according to three old researches. It is simply biased and in Lynn's own terms "unrepresentative".

http://www.apfn.net/Messageboard/02-14-04/discussion.cgi.24.html

Removing this message is unwarranted by Wikipedia policies, Captain Occam. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Aerain (talk • contribs) 15:53, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Are you suggesting you think I removed something? I haven't edited the article at all yet. --Captain Occam (talk) 22:29, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

For a summary of Backman's (1972) work please see "The Jewish Mind":

http://books.google.com/books?id=6jNniq7Ji7YC&pg=PA295&lpg=PA294&ots=03i4fE-M5V&dq=margaret+backman+mental

You'll find raw data summaries and discussion in the google books preview (pages 294-296)Aprock (talk) 21:29, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

The article includes claims that "Other examples of the Flynn effect include the phenomenon of Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants at the turn of the century scoring low on IQ tests[71], which was used by eugenicists and racists at the time to bludgeon them and push anti-Jewish immigration policies[72][73] where as now Ashkenazi Jews score subtantially better on IQ test" and "for example Marks (1996) argues that the eugenics movement of the 1920s identified Ashkenazi Jews from Europe as intellectually inferior due to their genetics".
This misinformation should be removed from the article.

"This high IQ and corresponding high academic ability have been long known. In 1900 in London Jews took a disproportionate number of academic prizes and scholarships in spite of their poverty (Russell and Lewis, 1900). In the 1920s a survey of IQ scores in three London schools (Hughes, 1928) with mixed Jewish and non-Jewish student bodies showed that Jewish students had higher IQs than their schoolmates in each of three school, one prosperous, one poor, and one very poor. The differences between Jews and non-Jews were all slightly less than one standard deviation. The students at the poorest Jewish school in London had IQ scores equal to the overall city mean of non-Jewish children. The Hughes study is important because it contradicts a widely cited misrepresentation by Kamin (Kamin, 1974) of a paper by Henry Goddard (Goddard, 1917). Goddard gave IQ tests to people suspected of being retarded, and he found that the tests identified retarded Jews as well as retarded people of other groups. Kamin reported, instead, that Jews had low IQs, and this erroneous report was picked up by many authors including Stephen Jay Gould, who used it as evidence of the unreliability of the tests (Seligman, 1992)." http://homepage.mac.com/harpend/.Public/AshkenaziIQ.jbiosocsci.pdf —Preceding unsigned comment added by Khurshid85 (talk • contribs) 01:37, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Noted, but why did you removed sourced material and replace it with something about Southern Italian immigrants instead? I'm putting it back in because it is correctly cited, as well as leaving your new material in since it, too, is cited.TeamZissou (talk) 00:38, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Updating the article slightly.

I’ve removed a few irrelevant and/or unsourced statements from this article (such as the bit about eugenics), and added some relevant and notable information which it didn’t previously include, and which is properly cited. I’m hoping no one will disagree with these edits, but if anyone does, I’d appreciate them discussing it here rather than simply reverting them. --Captain Occam (talk) 16:11, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Change of IQ over time and racial gap

There is a part of the "Flynn's effect" section that doesn't make any sense, although I'm not suggesting it to be erased or edited, because it does cite references. The part is the following one:

"Other recent studies have found that g has improved substantially.[118][119] Cranial vault size has increased and the shape changed during the last 150 years in the US; these changes must occur by early childhood because of the early development of the vault.[120] It also estimated that the average white IQ in past decades was lower than current average black IQs, a fact which shows the change of IQ over time. [121] But while black Americans in the early 21st century may score higher than white Americans in the early 19th century, the fact remains that the roughly 1 standard deviation IQ gap between black and white Americans living at the same time has held constant since the earliest days of intelligence testing, convincing some observers like Richard Lynn that the black-white gap in the U.S. is not only genetic, but 100% genetic. Indeed Arthur Jensen is struck by how consistent the gap has been, despite the enormous rise in the scores of both races".

What on Earth would explain that IQ may change over time, being, therefore, not immutable, while racial gap would hold constant over time? This is equivalent to say that, despite IQ being innate, it may vary over time due to unknow circumstances, but racial gap may not. Racial gap would not only be innate, but immutable!

It seems that every time one points out the fallacy of the genetic hypothesis, racist academics manage to bring up some "evidence" to support it.

Please, notice that I'm not only making a moral judgement of the above-cited paragraph, but also pointing out what seems to be an unfundamented claim: if IQ may vary over time within the same race, why couldn't IQ racial gap vary, too?

The only thing that persisted over time practically unmodified was racism and its harmful effects. I'm not forgetting about all the changes occurred since the civil rights movement began in the mid-20th century, including Obama's victory. But I imagine no one can deny that racism still persists and racist structural effects are still damaging people's lives. The more I read, more I get convinced that the IQ gap is, if not entirely, at least mostly impacted by environmental factors. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 200.198.217.194 (talk) 19:42, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Free advertising for Rushton

This article is unbalanced in that there are 40 references to Rushton, which is excessive, unless Wikipedia wants to be construed as a public relations machine to sell Rushton's books. Skywriter (talk) 19:48, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Rushton happens to be a psychologist and expert on the field. And the vast majority of references you are talking about are mere name-mentioning. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Niño-wr (talk • contribs) 21:02, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

He's also very much fringe stuff.--Ramdrake (talk) 01:12, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Unreliable source

The archives of this article will demonstrate that there was discussion that http://www.lrainc.com/swtaboo/taboos/apa_01.html Stalking the Wild Taboo - APA Statement on The Bell Curve- Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns egregiously distorts the study by the American Psychological Association and should not be used. At the time, I provided direct references to the APA document on the APA site. Unless those links can be resurrected, no cite is better than using this intellectually dishonest and unreliable source. wp:rs Skywriter (talk) 20:52, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Adding unrelated material

New user has three times added unrelated material from book by Michael Levin on topic of slave reparations. I've tried to gently persuade this user that this is irrelevant to this article.Skywriter (talk) 08:29, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

The added material is related to the article in that it is about refutation of the slavery argument which is discussed in the same section the material was added in. And actually the topic of that book is race and intelligence, not slave reparations. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Niño-wr (talk • contribs) 08:43, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

I may be wrong about this, since the article is an ungodly mess, but I think it's supposed to be more about research and data about the relationship between race and intelligence, and not a history of racism, anti-racism, and reactions to such. Aprock (talk) 00:10, 25 August 2009 (UTC)
I spent a few hours yesterday copyediting and cleaning up about half of this article and to that point, I think it is OK in the sense that it addresses the article title and that section of the article is balanced. I stopped when unrelated material was added. I would have continued copyediting to a professional standard but see no point unless the off-topic material is deleted. If it stays, I would be happy to add gobs of unrelated material, a veritable Festschrift of anything and everything related to black, white, and shades of gray especially, and of course, reparations and the kitchen sink. There can be a contest to see who adds the most off-topic text, pictures, and graphics with special awards for those who arrive with the most irrelevant and unfocused material. I especially like "Scrooge Defended" Mises Daily by Michael Levin and would add that immediately. Let me know your thoughts. Skywriter (talk) 01:44, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Reverted undiscussed deletions

I reverted two undiscussed deletions: one based on the claim that McPherson was fringe (where is the evidence to support it?) and one in the history section based on the claim that the book it came from didn't discuss race and intelligence(when the section is about racism and its history - and so is the source of the ref). I'd like to invite further discussion of this, as both deletions seem dubious to me.--Ramdrake (talk) 21:39, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

History section of article

The History section of the article may not currently be in compliance with the following Wikipedia policies:

The history section is inferring that today there are racial differences in intelligence throughout the world but it is because of the way blacks were treated in the United States. --Heretofore (talk) 14:01, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

What is Race?

This article starts out with a statement that race and intelligence are two human characteristics and throughout the article the word race is used without providing a definition. What is meant by race? In what way is it a human characteristic? This article is written in a way that presupposes that race refers to something reflected in the genetic makeup of individual racial groups - so that if there is a difference in intelligence in a racial group it might be explained by their unique genetic composition. Is there any actual scientific basis for this assumption? That is, certain phenotypes that are markers of racial difference can be assumed to have a genetic basis. That does not, however, mean that the categorization based on those phenotypes reflect an underlying biological category. The biological reality of racial categories is something that needs to be proven, and cannot simply be presupposed as a starting point for a discussion about race.

As an anthropologist I don't think that race refers to an biological reality, but rather to arbitrary cultural distinctions. If there is an actual biological basis for racial categorizations I'd be interested in seeing what it is. If not, this article needs to be edited to reflect that race is not a scientific concept. --Alabasterj (talk) 01:56, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Anthropologists disagree on whether race is a valid biological concept. --Heretofore (talk) 04:23, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
The same can be said for "intelligence". There is no definition and no way to measure it directly. I tried to deal with this issue in the first sentence but was denied [2]. When I get a chance I'm going to work on a rewrite of the whole article, and hopefully get consensus to rename it to someting more meaningful and descriptive. T34CH (talk) 07:27, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
This has been one of the most contentious articles at Wikipedia. In my experience, the only way to deal with it in a way that limist melodrama nd conflict and maximizes the representation of many informed/informative views is to stop thinking of this article as being about the relationship between two things that exist in the same way that water, soil, and trees exist, and instead to present the article as being about a set of debates among social scientists and in the general public. Obviously the people engaged ino those debates believe that "race" and "inteligence" are real in the same way as "water," "soil," and "trees" but no wikipedia policy requires us to take a position on the reality of these things. In my experience it best if we ourselves stay agnostic and just stick to the notable debates. If one of the notable debates centers on the reality of one of these terms, we report the debate. If another notble debate just assumes they are real, again, we just report it. If there is a notable view that argues aganst the terms of all other debates, we include that. If everyone working on this page can agree to this as a starting point, then the main thing we need to discuss is how to organizae the article. My own sense is that the debates can be pegged to specific works e.g. articles or books by Jensen, Murray and Hernstein, Rushton, and Flynn. Why not ivide the article into four parts, in each one begin with a fairly literal account of the argument of the book, then its reception, then the debate, and summing up its current status ... and then move on to the next one. I think we need always to distinguish between works aimed at a popular audience and works aimed at other scholars. think we need to identify the expertise of each scholar. For example, I think for each major protagonist we should list the discipline in which he earned his PhD and what his PhD research was on, and name his current appointment. In some cases, some researchers shifted from researchon something else to research on this topic mid-career. We shoud note this. Context is simportant and I am sescribing context about each major scholar that will take up one short paragraph each, and I think it is ighly relevant. I hope we can all agree that this is just important basic background. Slrubenstein | Talk 10:51, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
What would you call the 4 parts? I don't think it's a good idea to name them "Jenson", "Murray", "Hernstein", and "Flynn", or to make 4 sections which strictly deal with those writers. I would be interested however in exploring ways to divide the article into theoretical camps. T34CH (talk) 18:27, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
I do not know there work well enough but the first question is, are they using the same arguments, the same data, or drawing the same conclusions? If the answer is "no" for any on of these axes, thenwe can name the se3ction after that issue. This would indeed be better than naming it after one person or book s the section could accomdate other researches addressing the issues. But i would not completely foreclose n naming it after those peopple. Their work is significant, but my sense is that thee work has always been the site of controversy. My idea is to organize much of this article by different controversies. Now, if these peopl have been making the same argument using the same data, hat would be intefrestng too Slrubenstein | Talk 09:05, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
That would work for a section called controvercies, but the rest of the article should be about consensus... even if it is short. Otherwise this article would need to be renamed "controvercies in the correlations between race and intelligence". T34CH (talk) 13:28, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
I'm not sure what you mean by consensus here. I'm sure you'll find lots of well funded research with various agendas coming to starkly different conclusions in this realm. If you're observation is that the entire field is controversial, then yes you are correct. Aprock (talk) 16:59, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
I didn't say the entire field is controversial. I think there are those with "various agendas" that would have us believe there is zero consensus, or perhaps some very skewed version of consensus. But I maintain that this article needs to be focused what consensus there is. If you look at the mainstream text books on intellegence and intellegence testing, there is almost nothing about race. It's not something that most unbaised researchers see as an important determining factor when compared to health, testing methods, definitions of intellegence, and cultural/social pressures. This goes back to the fact that this article is just a coatrack for those trying to show that something called race actually exists and is important from a eugenics perspective. All these "Race and ..." articles are problematic that way. If we focus on what we know first, condense that and present it rationally, then have a seperate section on the controversies, I think this article will get much better. T34CH (talk) 17:51, 8 September 2009 (UTC)


"As an anthropologist I don't think that race refers to an biological reality, but rather to arbitrary cultural distinctions. If there is an actual biological basis for racial categorizations I'd be interested in seeing what it is. If not, this article needs to be edited to reflect that race is not a scientific concept." As an anthropologist how can you not believe in race? Bone structure alone is enough to determine race. When anthropologists look at human skulls they can easily tell the region of the globe that the person the skull belonged to originated. Asians tend to have thicker foreheads than people from other parts of the globe. Just by eying people on the street it as easy to estimate their genetic region of origin as it is to visually differentiate breeds of dogs. Race is a genetic fact, unarguably, and any good anthropologist will tell you that. Now if race has any real effects on intelligence is more than open to debate and you can be as politically correct on that as you want to be. I'll support you in it. But please don't be the fool that claims that race is not a biological reality, it's a political claim, not a scientific one.

It is obvious that you do not now squat about anthropology or populaton genetics. Slrubenstein | Talk 06:48, 28 September 2009 (UTC)
"it is not strictly true that race or ethnicity has no biological connection" -- Francis Collins, former director of the huamn genome project and now director of the NIH, writing in Nature in 2004 to address overstatements made circa 2000 about there being no biological connection to race. source: Radiolab. Nowadays, companies like 23andMe can pinpoint your ancestry to the subcontinental level with a DNA test. Best to leave race undefined rather than trying to make a definitive editorial statement of what it is or isn't. More precisely, race is what people say it is, varying by context so there's no hope of defining it here -- far more on-topic controversy to describe. --Distributivejustice (talk) 07:45, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

See also

I inserted a see also section with the following links:

  • Sex and intelligence
  • Neuroscience and intelligence
  • Height and intelligence
  • The Mismeasure of Man
  • IQ and the Wealth of Nations
  • IQ and Global Inequality
  • Race Differences in Intelligence

but was denied due to WP:UNDUE... any explanation how WP:UNDUE is a concern? 204.124.182.189 (talk) 14:13, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

I have re-inserted the section. 204.124.182.189 (talk) 15:41, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Verbal IQ not IQ

"This paper provides new data on the theory that Jews have a higher average level of verbal intelligence than non-Jewish whites. The theory is considered by examining the vocabulary scores of Jews, non-Jewish whites, blacks and others obtained in the American General Social Surveys carried out by the National Opinion Research Centre in the years 1990–1996. Vocabulary size is a good measure of verbal intelligence. Jews obtained a significantly higher mean vocabulary score than non-Jewish whites, equivalent to an IQ advantage of 7.5 IQ points. The results confirm previous reports that the verbal IQ of American Jews is higher than that of non-Jewish whites."

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V9F-48761M2-B&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1009383794&_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=20d4adee70c91c748c631ffbe955a902 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Aerain (talk • contribs) 18:44, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

To clarify what's going on in this paper -- The author pulled the WORDSUM (a 10-question vocabulary test) scores from the NORC's General Social Survey database as well as the self reported race, ethnicity and religion. He partitioned the respondents into "Jews" (N=150), "gentiles" (N=5300), "Blacks" (N=806), and "Others" (N=219). The mean number of questions answered correctly for each of these groups were 7.32, 6.28, 4.96, and 6.09 respectively. By standardizing the "Gentile" scores to 100, the average for the "Jews" is 107.5, the average for the "Blacks" is 89.7, and the “others” is 98.6. However, there's no reason to make a big deal out of the distinction between "Verbal IQ" and "IQ". The author argues they are nearly interchangable in his methods. It seems that you can access the GSS dataset online at http://sda.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/hsda?harcsda+gss08 I've found that the relevant variables are RACE, WORDSUM and RELIG. You can basically do this analysis yourself in about 5 minutes. --Distributivejustice (talk) 08:10, 28 September 2009 (UTC)
Lol, you do realise that the sample base of 150 for jews leads to an inherent statistical uncertainty of 1/sqrt(150) = 8.2%. Meaning that their standardized result should be quoted as 107.5+-8.2 (to one standard deviation), meaning that it falls within the range of the 100 value of the standardized result, rendering the whole survey statistically meaningless. This ignores any systemic errors that could be inherent in the data gathering process (potentially many when dealing with such potentially socially biased studies). For stuff like this one needs sample bases of at least 10000 (1% stat. error) to conclude anything meaningfull. It is for the same reason that voting intention polls with sample bases of 1000 are laughable when they conclude things on swings of 2 or 3 percent. 1812ahill (talk) 16:59, 29 September 2009 (UTC)
(1) I agree that this isn't a very impressive study (see my edit summary). Moreover, there's not much point in discussing it further unless there's reason to use it somehow. (2) For the record, the SEM is sigma/sqrt(N) not mu/sqrt(N). So the difference is significant, especially if you consider the comparison to the "gentile" group. (3) FWIW, the real problem is the convenience sample selected and the 10 question test. The cool part is that in the raw data the "Jewish" group does better no matter what their "race". =) --Distributivejustice (talk) 09:26, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
Sorry to continue this, and I'm a little confused about your terminology in (2), but by sigma/sqrt(N) I presume you mean 1/the sqrt of the sum of all N. That calculation would give you the stat error on the study as a whole (to which you obviously have nothing to compare with - apart from other studies). If you take a subset of the data for comparison with another subset of the total set, then what I said previously holds true. Imagine if the N for jews was 1, with a measurement of 107, then you would have to say the Verb IQ for jews was 107+-107, even if the total number of samples for all races was a million. It's obvious. So in the case of the above study, error for gentiles is 1.37% (N=5300), error overall is 1.24% (N=6475). I would concede that these stats do suggest some evidence in favour of the study's claims, since the error on the jews' results lies very close to the Gaussian 1 standard deviation boundary (which gives us a probability of 0.68 that the results are correct), but you can not use the smaller error on the data for whites to conclude that the result for jews is any more accurate than the 107+-8 I quote above. For this, a greater jewsish sample is still required, especially, as I said, I would suspect there are systemic errors of even greater significance, a possible one of which I point out below.
Again, apologies for going on about this :) 1812ahill (talk) 13:41, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
Verbal IQ is fundamentally different from IQ, it encompasses Performance IQ and Verbal IQ. He can argue otherwise; however, it is only his opinion and it is pretty much baseless and nonsensical--I highly doubt he even said that. The study of Backman is probably the most reliable study on Ashkenazi intelligence, it measures a score of 107.8 on Verbal Knowledge.
You (unsigned above) just said VIQ encompasses PIQ and VIQ. THAT doesn't make sense, and sorry, who is 'he'? I suspect that American Ashkenazim knowledge of a relatively highly inflected language like Hebrew and their, and their parents'/ grandparents' knowledge of other (European) languages may well give them an advantage in terms of VIQ (although I admit I don't know the exact definition of it). It would be interesting to see the results of such a study carried out in a country like the Netherlands, or Sweden, comparing 'native' jews to other natives. 1812ahill (talk) 13:41, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
IQ encompasses Performance IQ and Verbal IQ not Verbal IQ. Anyhow, the study states that it measured Verbal IQ. I doubt a Verbal IQ of 107.8 or a similar value would result in an IQ of 107, especially if performance IQ is 100 or near that value.

Spurious tags

The tags at the top of the article seem to be spurious, or have been ignored for a long time. They seem to be inserted into the article merely to detract from the topic. They should be removed (other than the one suggesting input from an expert on the topic). As I see there is no active discussion on the tags, I am going to go ahead and remove them (again). At least one of them is a year and a half old. Fixentries (talk) 11:15, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

The tags are there for a reason. In the archives, you will find multiple discussions about the issues that caused the tags to be placed. However each time someone came by and tried to fix the issues, there have always been editors coming in to disrupt the discussion. So, in the end, most editors went home, so to speak. If you want to engage a serious discussion about why the tags are here and solutions to address the issues they are meant to flag, I'll gladly discuss them with you.--Ramdrake (talk) 13:50, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
Yes, I'm interested in a discussion of the problems and why they haven't been resolved yet, and in discussing restructuring the article in a way that would eliminate the need to have them at the top. In general, I think that if the people who placed or supported the tags have given up on fixing the problems, the tags should be removed. Fixentries (talk) 14:24, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
For starters and in a nutshell, the viewpoint issue was arguing that the article was very US-centric, in the sense that most of the studies cited in the article were conducted there. I'm sure you already know this but the USA has rather specific race issues which may have given a specific twist to the debate. Then, the unbalanced tag is there because this article cites J.P. Rushton, Richard Lynn and a few others many, many times. These researchers are demonstrably fringe, not experts in anthropology (this question relies heavily on anthropology for the argument on race) and less weight should be given to their arguments and more weight to those of really mainstream researchers such as Niessen, Lieberman and many others. The POV issue is in part reflected by the unbalanced tag and is sustained by many of the same arguments. In a previous discussion, all these points were eventually agreed upon by many editors, but a few with an obvious agenda (most of which have left Wikipedia since, or have been shown the door) kept stalling rewriting of the article, to the point where many editors decided to let it sleep for awhile. Personnally, I have health issues that prevent me from devoting enough time to rewrite the article, but I still proofread edits and try to keep some balance to the current article. Sorry for the long-winded explanation; there is much more information in the archives if you want to read up first-hand on those discussions. However, I believe significant work needs to be done on the article in order for one to be able to remove these tags. Otherwise, editors will keep putting them back. It's not a very active article right now, but it is on a lot of science-oriented editors' watchlists. Hope this helps.--Ramdrake (talk) 18:26, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
What I see looking at the article is that we have some widely agreed upon correlations between ethnicity or race and IQ, and basically two possible explanations - that genetic intelligence causes social classes, and that social classes cause intelligence (article seems to ignore that both may be a factor, not sure which published works may touch on that possibility). The introduction seems to handle this properly, explaining the "nature vs. nurture" dispute. It's very hard to "prove" either explanation of the correlations so all these published sources seem to have the same basic credibility. Wouldn't the best solution for this article be to give both points of view equal weight (Rushton can certainly be considered an expert on intelligence), more or less like the introduction tries to do.
As far as the US-centric problem, I can see what you're saying. On the other hand, these sort of studies might be illegal or strongly discouraged in other countries, and the US offers an example of people of different ethnic backgrounds living in more-or-less (subject to the obvious sociological arguments) the same conditions. So maybe the world-point-of-view should stay.
I agree that removing the Rushton citations would cause problems again, but it seems like there must be a way (possibly with an extensive rewrite) to present both arguments equally and fairly. Fixentries (talk) 05:49, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
The problem is precisely that in fact, the hereditarian viewpoint is presented in the article as more-or-less equal in credibility to the socioeconomic/environmental viewpoint. In reality,nothing could be further from the truth: the hereditarian viewpoint is a fringe position (it's like putting on the same footing hypotheses which date Tiwanaku from the first millenium AD with those who think it dates from 15,000 BC). This is probably the biggest problem this article has: it fails to treat fringe opinions as fringe opinions, and gives them WP:UNDUE weight.--Ramdrake (talk) 13:18, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
You believe there is absolutely no genetic heritability of either abnormally high or low intelligence? That's certainly a position but it doesn't seem any more credible (to be generous) than the opposite position. Fixentries (talk) 17:06, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
"You believe there is absolutely no genetic heritability of either abnormally high or low intelligence?" That's a strawman if I ever saw one. Ramdrake said that the position that an individual's intelligence is preordained based heavily on something called "race" is wrongly treated as a non-fringe viewpoint in this article. I would go further and say that the very title of the article presupposes this fallacy (or at least heavily influences both readers and editors before any actual views are even given). This article is not about "abnormally high or low intelligence." This article is about a poorly tested hypothesis that not only does G exist, not only are there well defined things called "races", but that G differs between races. The consensus of literature does not support either of these three constructions. T34CH (talk) 19:34, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
To Fixentries: I didn't say that. In fact there is some evidence for a genetic component in intelligence. What I said was a fringe position was to believe that the genetic component of intelligence (whatever it is) is distributed according to the social construct called "race".--Ramdrake (talk) 20:01, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
I'd like to point out that according to Wikipedia:TAGGING, if there is not an ongoing dispute about the issues discussed in the tags, they should be removed. --Captain Occam (talk) 20:53, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
Well, I guess it's a good thing we're discussing this then. T34CH (talk) 23:00, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Well what do you want to do with the article. The tags are pretty much just vandalism if there is no intent to fix the problems. Ramdrake has indicated they have been there for years, and that he and others have given up on changing the article. They also indicate that the article is unacceptable because it gives equal time to both sides of the issue. I'm not sure I see a solution but I'm open to anything constructive we can do to word the article fairly (and the problem seems to be that it's already worded fairly). Fixentries (talk) 22:17, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Do you really think they are wp:vandalism? Do you really think there is no intent to fix the problems? Have you read this page or the archives, which indicate the opposite of what you are saying? Have you read wp:UNDUE, which explains that "equal time to both sides" is not appropriate? T34CH (talk) 23:00, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
Yes, it appears to be vandalism. If the article falsely portrays a kooky unscientific idea as credible, why leave it like this? The tags seem to say "I don't want this article on wikipedia; I dispute the entire premise, but I am unable or unwilling to take the steps to have the article removed." Fixentries (talk) 23:19, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
Because the editors got sick and tired of the bickering and decided to take a break from the article. This in no way can be construed as vandalism. The reason why it remained like this is that the article would need an extensive rewrite from its current form, and that after the latest round of discussions on the talk page (read archives 69 and going back), we found out that every attempt to rewrite the article was being argued to death by racialist editors, therefore got reverted even though the consensus is that this article needs a serious rewrite. By the way, I would very much appreciate if you went over some of the material in archives 69 (and going back), as it will avoid repeating a number of explanations.--Ramdrake (talk) 23:32, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
(ec)
So you really believe that those tags are an "addition, removal, or change of content made in adeliberate attempt to compromise the integrity of Wikipedia"? How exactly is the integrity of wikipedia compromised by this ongoing discussion? Who is it exactly that is "deliberately" trying to reduce the quality of wikipedia?
By the way, based on your reading of the literature, what are your opinions on the issues at stake here? T34CH (talk) 23:35, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
The tags are certainly not spurious, although I don't have a problem with an editor raising the question on the talk page. But to call them vandalism is absurd. T34CH hit the nail on the head in her 19:34, 5 October 2009 (UTC) comment. Mainstream scientists have a pretty clear view on this issue. Those evolutionary biologists and molecular geneticists - fields in which Rushton does not have any training or credentials - do in fact discuss the influcence of genetics on intelligence but what they actually debate, and the major sides, are far removed from Rushton's views and sadly not represented here. That is because we have too few editors who are molecular geneticists or who care to read the published research by geneticists on the topic, and because Rushton's biological determinism, while reflecting a profound misunderstanding of evolution and of genetics, is nevertheless popular among a general audience that also does not really understand evolution or genetics. There is a place for covering Rushton's views in an artice on the public (or popular) controversy over race and genetics, but in an article that is about the science on race and genetics (this page) Rushton's views are too fringe to justify inclusion. The fact that few people have worked on this article for some time is indeed simply explained, by the fact that good editors get tired of arguing with people who have beliefs but are uninerested in researching mainstream science, and because in Wikipedia people with expertise on this field are woefully underrepresented. It is easy to write some controversial articles - e.g. Sarah Palin, when there is a wealth of material published in a wide range of newspapes many editors read, each day. it is harder to write on a controversial theme like this, where expert geneticists publish periodically injournals most editors do not know about and are not inclinded to spend time in a library reading. That is a sad fact but true and accounts for the state of this article, which requires that we keep the tags. otherwise some high school student might read this and think that it is a balanced and accurate account of state-of-the-art scientific thinking on the topic. It is not. To be frank, if you compare this article to the one on evolution or quantum mechanics, this article starts to smell like last week's garbage (or, to read like an encyclpedia article written a century ago). Slrubenstein | Talk 23:53, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
My personal opinions? I don't see how that's really relevant, but ok... I am pretty comfortable with how this article is phrased, and that both sides of nature/nurture have plausible arguments that need to be addressed in like fashion. I agree that race is a tenuous construct and not how I personally would try to look at grouping humanity to see if there are any populations with aggregate genetic advantages over other populations in one regard or another. Personally, I would be more interested in ethnic groups for starters, and in specific genes or phenotypical features that may be responsible for increased or diminished intelligence. It's all speculation until you can point to a gene and say it's clearly associated with higher intelligence and that it's also associated with a particular population. This article contains a lot of quasi-scientific speculation on both sides. I don't see any way to say that a sociologist's wild speculation is any more credible than a psychologist's wild speculation. I'm primarily annoyed at the tag noise on the top of the article. I'd like to see the article fixed, and either way, the tags removed, or reduced in number. 4 tags seems excessive. Fixentries (talk) 00:04, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
I also think that whether social darwinism has any validity is a very important political and social question, and one that can be answered scientifically. It's worthwhile to try to put it to the final test and either fully discredit it, or accept the implications. Fixentries (talk) 00:09, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
Can you poin to the "sociologist's wild speculation" to which you refer? Slrubenstein | Talk 00:11, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
Well, for one there's a huge table (with no clear implications or meaning) from a sociological book, Inequality_by_Design:_Cracking_the_Bell_Curve_Myth. By its very nature, it's all speculation. It's just a plausible-yet-not-proven theory. I noticed some other sociologists cited, a historian, probably other people well outside the fields of psychology and genetics. Fixentries (talk) 00:32, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
Well, now I am really confused. What do you mean by "unproven theory?" You sound like a creationist (they say evolution is an "unproven theory"). The word "proof" has meaning within mathematics (e.g. geomery) and logic; it is not used in empirical science. And scintific theories are never "proven" or "disproven." A scientific theory is a model of the world or some portion of the world that produces statements or propositions with observational consequences. It is those propositions (hypotheses) which may be falsified. They can never be proven for reasons that are obvious to anyone who has ever studied science. So I just don't know what you mean by unproven theory. Now, Inequality By Design has within it a host of propositions. perhaps some are personal opinion, but many are the results of a good deal of research. Which propositions in the book do you consider speculation, unsupported by actual research? Slrubenstein | Talk 00:42, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
Ok, if you want to stick to scientific terms the sociological assertions from that book are "untested hypotheses." There is no experimental evidence given and no such experiment or observation really seems possible. It's an essentially unfalsifiable assertion. Fixentries (talk) 00:52, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
What makes you think that sociological hypotheses are untestable? T34CH (talk) 01:02, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
There's no practical way to construct an experiment that isolates the known variables. Twin and adoptee studies come close but still have flaws (and seem to support genetic causes anyway). Fixentries (talk) 01:07, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
(ec)
If you believe that a book written by the majority of the senior sociological faculty at UC Berkeley (home of Jenson, so no cracks about it being liberal!) is "wild speculation", then I'm at a loss for words. Sociological research is very real, and these are people who have spent their lives to become the best in the world at explaining why society has certain traits. The book they are refuting raises questions in a sociological frame, and so there is no question that these questions should be answered in a sociological frame. T34CH (talk) 00:46, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
I think the book should be in there. It has a "plausible theory". I just don't see it as any more credible than the opposing theories. Neither have incontrovertible evidence. In fact they have little evidence at all. Fixentries (talk) 00:52, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

In science no evidence is incontrovertible. Fixentry, you seem to have a highly distorted view of science - you think it is either the truth, or speculation. I am afraid you are sounding more like a theologican than a scientist. For scientists, nothing is incontroverable, but that does NOT make things equally speculative. Scientists make arguments, supported by evidence. Which scientists has the most evidence, analyzed appropriately, determines who, at any given time, is winning a debate. Of course the winner can always change - if someone marshalls more evidence analyzed more appropriately, but this does not mean that what came before was just speculation!

Fixentry makes another profound mistake - she seems to think that the methods of one science should be applied by other sciences. Wow! imagine if biologists relied on the methods of geologists! This is just bizarre! Appropriate methods depend on the object of study. The kinds of problems sociologists investigate should not be studied through controlled experiments. But sociologists collect vast amounts of data, and have rigorous statistical means for determining sufficient sample size, the reliability of the means for collecting data (e.g. a questionnaire) and the significance of the resulte. These matters - sample size, validity and reliability, and significance, are neither arbitrary nor subjective, they are based on the fundamentals of statistics, which is the basis for all modern science. ad sociology is as possible as bad chemistry. It will just be bad for different reasons. With chemistry, the lab equipment may be broken, or the devices for measurement may be poorly calibrated. In sociology one may have an inadequate sample size, an unreliable instrument, or insignificant results. But precisely because bad sociology is possible, good sociology is possible too. Now, again, please tell me which of the studies in this volume do you consider bad sociology, and why? Slrubenstein | Talk 01:17, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Your tone seems extraordinarily confrontational, even abusive. Gödel would be shocked to find out that thorough proof is possible even in mathematics. If you want to pick at how people phrase things as a way to bully them on wikipedia, by all means, use the tactics at your disposal. Anyway, the table and claims from the book in question do not seem to offer any evidence at all. Fixentries (talk) 01:34, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Fringe?

I’ve been following this discussion on and off since 2007, I have a fairly good understanding of the issues involved in it. The main issue here is that the proportions of views on this topic as explained/expressed in popular sources (such as newspapers and magazines) is not the same as the proportion represented in professional literature. Since I read both, I’m able to compare them.

In popular literature, this is regarded as a fringe theory, so some editors seem to want to base this theory’s coverage on that. But if you look at the professional literature, you’ll see something quite different. As an example, the June 2005 issue of the peer-reviewed journal Psychology, Public Policy and Law is devoted to this debate. And they regard it as a real scientific debate, not like the “controversy” over creationism vs. evolution. The six papers in this issue of the journal are available here. While not all of them agree with the hereditarian hypothesis, all of them take it seriously as a scientific theory, and the issue’s features article (Thirty years of research on race differences in cognitive ability by Jensen and Rushton) views this theory favorably.

Comparing this to a true fringe theory such as creationism, we can see what the difference is. One would never see an issue of a biology journal devoted to the creation/evolution controversy containing papers arguing both sides, and with their feature article written by a creationist in defense of the creationist viewpoint.

NPOV#Undue_weight explains the difference between a fringe view and a significant-minority view. Quoting that page: “If a viewpoint is held by a significant minority, then it should be easy to name prominent adherents”. Arthur Jensen, E. O. Wilson, Linda Gottfredson, James Watson, and Hans Eysenck are all examples of that in this case. As a result, the hereditarian hypothesis about race and intelligence does not meet Wikipedia’s criteria for a fringe theory. That doesn’t mean the article can’t be improved—if Rushton specifically is being given too much coverage, then more of the information about the herediterian hypothesis ought to be cited to other more prominent scientists who support it. But the actual scope of the article's coverage of this theory was established by consensus quite some time ago, while considering points such as the ones I made above. --Captain Occam (talk) 00:19, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure how pointing to controversial authors writing in a policy journal proves your point. If you were to go to any faculty meeting at any major education research school in the country and ask "aren't whites just smarter than blacks?" you would find very quickly that this is beyond being simply a minority viewpoint. Official policy, research, and classroom practice simply do not operate under this assumption. Whether we call it "fringe" or "extreme minority" is simply semantics. T34CH (talk) 00:34, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
Nobody is disputing that whites have higher IQs than blacks. Not in a university and not here. So I don't get what you're saying. The question is not if whites are smarter than blacks, but why. Fixentries (talk) 00:39, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
What is being disputed is that IQ even means anything useful. It does correlate with certain other tests, as well as with later happiness, health and wealth, but so does the zip code you're born in, the food you're fed as a child, and the money in your parents' bank account. There are many questions that remain unanswered before we can even start to suggest that whites are smarter than blacks. T34CH (talk) 00:52, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
You don't believe that something like the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale measures what you would call intelligence? What do you consider intelligence then? I think it's safe to say that most people understand intelligence to mean what the WAIS measures. It does seem to reflect reasoning and problem-solving ability. Fixentries (talk) 01:05, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
The introduction to Ch.1 of Assessing Adolescent and Adult Intelligence (2nd edition) speaks of the validity of the WAIS and other tests strictly in terms of correlation with academic achievement, occupation, and job performance, not in terms of correlation with intelligence. They do not even attempt to define what intelligence is, only what IQ tests measure: "The intelligent(sic) testing philosophy, which considers the clinician's expertise and training to be more important an aspect of the assessment process than the specific instruments administered or the scores obtained, embodies the following principles: (1) IQ tasks measure what the individual has learned; (2)IQ tasks are samples of behavior and are not exhaustive; (3)IQ tests like the WAIS-III, KAIT, and WJ III assess mental functioning under fixed experimental conditions; (4)IQ tests are optimally useful when they are interpreted from and information-processing model; and (5) hypotheses generated from IQ test profiles should be supported with data from multiple sources." (p.23)
As you can see, they feel that the IQ number is not useful unless you are also considering the clinician's complete evaluation, and furthermore IQ is a description of actions and can be learned (the measures are not of inborn qualities or properties of the brain), and any conclusions one assumes from an IQ test should be backed up by some other methods (such as ... dun dun dunnnnn: Sociological research). T34CH (talk) 01:40, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
Asking “Aren’t whites smarter than blacks” just describes an IQ difference, which could exist for genetic or environmental reasons. If you’re asking whether educational facilities are aware that a racial achievement gap exists in IQ and other areas, the answer is yes, although for obvious reasons they don’t describe it in the terms you used for it.
The hereditarian theory is not an "extreme minority" view. As I just stated, Wikipedia has a term for theories like this, which is “significant minority”. There is a specific set of criteria for a theory being considered a significant-minority view (which this theory clearly meets), and a specific policy for how significant-minority views should be described in articles. None of this is a matter of opinion. --Captain Occam (talk) 00:44, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
That there is a hereditary component of "intelligence" is not in question. The question in this article is whether there is a real difference between groups which we call race in their average intelligence. Unfortunately, we don't have a good working definition of race or intelligence. I suggest that there is an extreme minority of academics that believe that we do have good working definitions of both of these constructs and that there is a significant/meaningful difference in the measure of "intelligence" between these so-called "races". T34CH (talk) 00:56, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
I suggest that there is an extreme minority of academics that believe that we do have good working definitions of both of these constructs and that there is a significant/meaningful difference in the measure of "intelligence" between these so-called "races".
As I have pointed out twice now, according to the standards of Wikipedia's policies this is not an "extreme minority" view. Wikipedia's policies are the only standards that matter here, so whether or not you disagree with them is irrelevant. --Captain Occam (talk) 01:13, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Captain Occam, I agree that psychologists are experts in intelligence testing. Do you agree with me that geneticists are experts in heredity? If so can you tell me how many geneticists (Phd.s and active research in genetics) would agree that the main or principle explanation for differences in IQ scores between diferent races is inheritance, i.e. some genetic factor? Slrubenstein | Talk 01:21, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

I can’t list them all, no, but I can name a few notable ones who are proponents of this theory. Three that come to mind are Gregory Cochran, Henry Harpending, and (of course) James Watson.
I’m not sure why this matters, though. Since this topic involves both psychology and genetics, prominent experts in either area who support this theory would be enough to meet Wikipedia’s standards for being a significant-minority view rather than a fringe view. --Captain Occam (talk) 01:29, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Watson actually did research on the genetics of intelligence? That is news to me! You seem to be misunderstandin me. When I ask what geneticists have to say, I mean of course geneticists specifically researching differences in IQ. To take my point any other way seems to lead to arguing from authority, which we should avoid at Wikipedia. I do not care whether someone got the nobel prize - if they have not conducted actual research on the inheritance of IQ, their opinions do not matter. You wonder what my point is, and this is it: when we want to know what mainstream science is, we look at what is mainstream among active researchers and expertes in the field. The article on Evolution does not consider the views of astronomers, even astronomers or astrophysicists who may have wom the nobel prize. It considers the views of evolutionary biologists, i.e. the real experts on the topic. If we want to know what is the mainstream science on the genetic basis for intelligence, we should look at geneticists who are actively researching genetics and intelligence. So I ask again, how many of these people believe that genetics is a major component of the reason for between-group differences in IQ? Slrubenstein | Talk 01:41, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

I’m not sure about Watson, but Cochran and Harpending have both researched this topic and published on it. For example, they’re the authors of this paper , interpreting the above-average IQ of Ashkenazi Jews as being the result of genetic factors caused by natural selection. Since I don’t follow genetics as closely as I follow psychology, though, I’m not able to come up with examples of geneticists as easily as I can for psychologists.
You seem to be discounting the opinions of psychologists without a good reason. Everything related to the nature vs. nurture debate has been part of the psychology for over a century, and the race and intelligence controversy is definitely a part of that debate. And there are other aspects of this topic about which psychologists would definitely be the greatest authorities, such as whether (and in what way) cultural factors can influence IQ. --Captain Occam (talk) 02:00, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
Slrubenstein seems to want to restrict the argument to whether genetics is a "major component" of group differences. Isn't the question whether it is a component? I'm not sure how he's defining "major" there but it seems to skirt the real issue. Fixentries (talk) 10:01, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
In theory, yes, genetics could account for almost any size portion of the IQ difference. If you look at what theories are actually held by researchers in this area, though, almost all researchers seem to fall into two groups: those who believe that genetics make no or almost no contribution to the IQ difference, and those who believe that the heritability of IQ differences between groups is similar to the heritability of IQ differences between individuals.
The article lists 15 researchers who support the hereditarian perspective (although it seems to be restricted to psychologists, since it doesn’t mention Cochran or Harpending) and eight who oppose it. But the only person listed there who occupies a middle-ground position, believing that genetics make a difference but a small one, is Reynolds. I’m not aware of any researchers other than him who hold this view. And since Wikipedia’s coverage of the various viewpoints on this topic is based on the amount of coverage they’ve received elsewhere, this middle-ground position probably hasn’t received enough attention to be worth describing in much detail. --Captain Occam (talk) 13:50, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Again, Fixentries seems not to understand the science. No scholar - whether in social science or life science - will deny that inheritance has a great deal to do with human intelligence. The structure of the human brain and its functioning are the results of over two million years of evolution. Human intelligence is different from Chimpanzee or Gorilla (our nearest relatives) intelligence - in degree or kind, depending on your view of evolutionary theory - precisely because of human evolution, which involves a complex interplay of physical environment, social environment, and genetics, and everyone who believes in the theory of speciation through natural selection understands that environment (which selects) and genes (which generate variation) play a roughly equal role. Certainly genetics has a great deal to do with human intelligence.

I'm not sure you even read what I said. I'm pretty sure you didn't, because you didn't respond to it in any way. Fixentries (talk) 13:54, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
I replied precisely to what you wrote. Read the two sentences below. It is a direct answer to your question. But if it does not satisfy you I will asdd this: I do not want to restrict the discussion to whether it is a "major" component of inter-group variation, I want to "restrict" the discussion to what geneticists researching intelligence actually are debating and concluding. Slrubenstein | Talk 14:00, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
Seems to be some kind of severe logical or reading comprehension error going on here. I apologize if it's me. Fixentries (talk) 14:08, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

The question is what role genetics plays in explaining variation in intelligence between groups of humans. This is a different and very specific question and the mainstream answer is, not much.

Captain Occam, I think it is entirely reasonable to expect people with PhDs in evolutionary biology or genetics to understand genetics much better than people not trained in evolutionary biology and genetics. I have some training in genetics, enough to know that most psychologists who use the term "heritability" misuse it. I prefer to think it is because they misunderstand it, and are not willfully trying to distort science. And I think it is reasonable to say that they might misunderstand it because they were not trained in genetics. Surely there are things pyschologists are trained in, and spend their lives researching, that they therefore have expertise in. When I learn of a psychologist who claims to be researching genetics and intelligence, I usually learn that while they may have a great deal of training in intelligence, they actualy have little or no training in genetics. I am skeptical of their claims about genetics precisely for the same reasons I respect their claims about intelligence. Slrubenstein | Talk 13:46, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Slrubenstein, by outdenting whenever you reply to anyone you’re making it very difficult to tell whom you’re replying to. The way I can tell this reply is directed at me is just because you addressed me by name.
Anyway, we’ve gotten pretty far off-track here. As someone who’s studied genetics, you say that only geneticists can properly understand heritability; as someone who’s studied psychology, I say that only psychologists can properly understand the factors that influence IQ, and how to determine what they are under various circumstances. You say that there aren’t many geneticists who think that genetics contributes a substantial amount to inter-group IQ differences, and although I can name a few who do, I don’t know enough about genetics to be able to determine for certain whether or not what you’re saying is correct.
But in any case, the only question that really needs to be answered here is whether the hereditarian hypothesis about this should be regarded as a “fringe” view. Perhaps it is among geneticists—as I said, I don’t know enough to say either way—but for our article to present this topic only the way geneticists view it would be an NPOV violation. Since this topic is studied by both geneticists and psychologists (in fact, probably the second more than the first), we need to present both perspectives. And if we consider the views of psychologists in addition to geneticists, then the hereditarian perspective clearly fits Wikipedia’s definition of a significant-minority view.
As such, I think it currently receives about as much coverage in the article as is appropriate. If you think we should present this as a “fringe” view, you need to support the assertion that the article should present the views of geneticists and not psychologists, when the article covers a topic studied by both of them. --Captain Occam (talk) 07:09, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Occam, sorry about the outdenting thing - there are different conventions at WP but, if people keep indenting, things end up being harder to read. I agree with most of what you say. I resist talking about the hereditarian hypothesis in the abstract. There is a fair amount of evidence that Rushton's arguments are considered by many researchers to be fringe. I am not sure I would make the same claim about Jensen although the two are often lumped together. And please note, I am not saying that a psychologist cannot make authoritative claims about genetics, only that they would be authoritative only if the psychologist has training in genetics. This is certainly possible through post-docs, it is not uncommon for a scholar who received PhD training in one field to receive supplemental training in another. Please do not interpret what I wrote as a categorical ban on psychologists speaking with authority on this matter. All I am saying is they need to have some training, or something that gives them credentials of some sort, in genetics. Slrubenstein | Talk 09:43, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

The article is not ostensibly about genetics. It seems to specifically reference elements of the fields of psychology and to a lesser extent anthropology. Genetics is a tangent. Fixentries (talk) 10:39, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
Whether or not Rushton’s views in particular are considered fringe should affect how we portray ideas that are specific to him, such as his r/K life history theory (which our article barely mentions). But how we portray the hereditarian hypothesis in general doesn’t depend on how Rushton is viewed. It depends on Jensen, Eysenck, Gottfredson, and the rest of this theory’s more prominent supporters. If they aren’t considered fringe, then the hereditarian hypothesis in general shouldn’t be portrayed this way.
If you agree that our article should portray the hereditarian hypothesis as a significant-minority view, then that means it should be given about as much space in the article as it currently has. So in that case, the NPOV and unbalanced tags can be removed. If you don’t have any objections to this, I’ll be removing them shortly. --Captain Occam (talk) 15:30, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
Actually, I strongly disagree on both points (that the hereditarian hypothesis is a significant-minority view rather than a fringe view), and of course on the removal of the tags. If you will peruse the talk archives, you will see that the fringe label (or something very similar) has been applied to most researchers who've been funded by the Pioneer Fund (this includes Gottfredson and many others in the "hereditarian" group). The specific sources include a nice review by Lieberman and two historical analyses of the Pioneer Fund (there are others). Gee, I go away for just over a day and there's something like 60 new additions to the talk page!!--Ramdrake (talk) 18:45, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
I’ve been reading this talk page since 2007, so I’m aware that this claim has been made in the past. However, it hasn’t (that I have seen) been supported with regard to Wikipedia’s policies. Wikipedia has a specific definition of what constitutes a fringe viewpoint:
  • If a viewpoint is in the majority, then it should be easy to substantiate it with reference to commonly accepted reference texts;
  • If a viewpoint is held by a significant minority, then it should be easy to name prominent adherents;
  • If a viewpoint is held by an extremely small (or vastly limited) minority, it does not belong in Wikipedia regardless of whether it is true or not and regardless of whether you can prove it or not, except perhaps in some ancillary article.
Keep in mind that, in determining proper weight, we consider a viewpoint's prevalence in reliable sources, not its prevalence among Wikipedia editors.
Regardless of what Wikipedia’s editors think of Jensen, there’s no denying his prominence. If you need a source for this, Haggblom et al. lists him as the 47th most eminent psychologist of the 20th century. Therefore, it is possible to name prominent adherents of the hereditarian hypothesis, and this viewpoint thus fits Wikipedia’s definition of a significant-minority view.
As can be seen from the NPOV explanation, the labels that anyone attaches to a viewpoint are not what make it fringe or not fringe. If you wish for the article to regard Jensen’s views as fringe, rather than a significant-minority view, you will need to demonstrate how they do not fit Wikipedia’s definition of a significant-minority view which I quoted. If you cannot do this, then as per Wikipedia’s policy this is not a fringe view, regardless of how you or anyone else feels about it. --Captain Occam (talk) 19:41, 7 October 2009 (UTC)


I'm a little confused by this statement by Captain Occam

  • "In theory, yes, genetics could account for almost any size portion of the IQ difference. If you look at what theories are actually held by researchers in this area, though, almost all researchers seem to fall into two groups: those who believe that genetics make no or almost no contribution to the IQ difference, and those who believe that the heritability of IQ differences between groups is similar to the heritability of IQ differences between individuals."

Occam seems to be arguing here that heritability is a measure of genetic contribution to phenotype. The argument that "some of the variation in the IQ of a group is caused by genes" is not the opposite of the argument "there is no genetic causation to the IQ differences between the groups". But of course it's not. Heritability is an estimate of genetic contribution to variance within a group. In fact something can be 100% heritable and have no genetic causation whatsoever. See Ned Block's essay here. In fact if we want to state the two points of view, they are more like: "there is no sound evidence that genetics causes the observed difference in IQ between different populations" and "because we can estimate that some of the variation in IQ within groups has some genetic causation, then we can assume that between group differences in IQ have some genetic causation". Neither of these positions are easy to understand or explain, but many reputable geneticists and statisticians (in the end this is about statistics) have written about the fallacy of the second proposition.Alun (talk) 18:26, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Genetics and Intelligence

The big problem here is that the major research by geneticists concerning intelligence is not about "race." Genetic arguments about race are virtually always fringe, because they misrepresent actual research by geneticists.

What is at stake here is not which side of an argument on race and IQ any editor falls on. What is at stake is how we wite articles. If we want an article to represent research by geneticists, what we should do is find the major articles first and then report what they say. So far, peope have been looking for those articles specifically on genetics and race. This of course is a circular method - if you start out looking for race and IQ you will of course end up finding race and IQ. But what if we took another method and just started out with, research on intelligence by geneticists. Do they use the concept "race?" Or do they do something else? lt us stat out by being agnostic and just ask: what do geneticists studyingintelligence talk about?

Study on the biology of IQ hinges on twin studies. Here is a fair sample of the major sources. To start us off, I propose we look at these articles:

  • Bouchard, Arvey, Keller, Segal, 1992, Genetic Influences on Job Satisfaction: A Reply to Cropanzano and James,” Journal of Applied Psychology 77(1): 89-93
  • Devlin, Daniels, Roeder 1997 “The heritability of IQ” Nature 388: 468-471
  • Jacobs, Van Gestel, Derom, Thiery, Vernon, Derom, and Vlietinck, 2001, “Heritability Estimates of Intelligence in Twins: Effect of Chorion Type,” Behavior Genetics 31(2): 209-217
  • McCartney, Harris, and Bernieri, 1990, “Growing Up and Growing Apart: A Developmental Metanalysis of Twin Studies” Psychological Bulletin 107(2) 226-237
  • Phelps, Davis, Schwartz, 1997, “Nature, Nurture and Twin research Strategies” in Current Directions in Psychological Science 6(6): 117-121
  • Plomin and Loehlin, 1989, “Direct and Indirect IQ Heritability Estimates: a Puzzle” Behavior Genetics 19(3): 33-342
  • Race, Townswend, Hughes, 285-291, “Chorion Type, Birthweight Discordance, and tooth-Size Variability in Australian Monozygotic Twins” Twin Research and Human Genetics 9(2) 285-291 (no, not about IQ – but as it is about other clear phenotypic traits it provides a good benchmark for assessing the value of twin studies and the various factors one must also take into account)
  • Reed, Carmelli, Rosenman, 1991, “Effects of Placentation in Selected Type A Behaviors in Adult males in the national Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute Twin Study,” Behavior Genetics 21(1) 1-19
  • Segal, 19999, Entwined Lives: Twins and What They Tell us About Human Behavior
  • Sokol, Moore, Rose, Williams, reed, and Christian, 1995, “Intrapair Differences in Personality and Cognitive Ability Among Mynozygotic Twins Distinguished by Chorion Type,” Behavior Genetics 25(5) 456-466
  • Stromswold, 2006, “Why Aren’t Identical Twins Linguistically Identical?” Cognition 101(2): 333-383

I repeat, the point is not to cherry-pick quotes that we agree or disagree with. The point is to examine reliable sources to find out - yes, find out, as if e may actually learn something new - what the notable views are. I just looked for the major research by geneticists on intelligence, that is all. So, are they arguing about race? Or something else?

It turns out, the answer is "something else." I swear, I did not start out looking for this "something else." I just started out looking for top articles on intelligence and genetics. From what I gather from this literature, most of the current scholarship - mainstream scholarship - on IQ scores is not even concerned with the debate "is it environmental or is it genetic."

Virtually all scientific research on the genetic determinants of variation in IQ scores is based on twin studies and above (perhaps now in archived talk) I provided a bibliography of major (i.e. from major peer-reviewed journal journals, and which are frequently cited) articles. These studies indicate an ongoing debate between scientists who measure the heritability of intelligence at .40, and others who measure it at between .60 and .70.

In addition to these contrasting calculations, there is a debate over the effects of of the shared prenatal environment - some argue that identical blood supply should lead to greater similarities between monochoriatic twins than dichorionic twins; others argue that competition for blood supply should lead to greater differences between monochorionic twins than dichorionic twins. This, it turns out, is the big debate among geneticists studying intelligence. What is important, in explaining variance within a population (genetically related people) is the prenatal environment. These geneticists are not looking at genetic explanations for differences in IQ between diferent groups because of the principle of heritability (you cannot compare variance in intelligence between groups, only within groups.

There is, it turns out, a body of literature on genetics and IQ, and I provided many citations above, and obviously an article on this research must be organized around the most notable and mainstream views on the matter - it should include all notable views ... but I think that the major notable views should be the principle factor in the organization and presentation of the article. I think we need to have a good article that provides a clear account of this research and these controversies. Slrubenstein | Talk 01:07, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

I think you might be confusing this topic with the Heritability of IQ. We already have another article on the research you're describing. Although Race and intelligence is certainly a related topic, this article doesn't need to be focused on the heritability of IQ between individuals when that topic already has its own separate article. --Captain Occam (talk) 01:23, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Okay, if you want to distinguish between heritability of IQ and race and IQ, I'd say: heritability of IQ is what is studied by geneticists, race and IQ is what it studied by sociologists, as "race" in this context is a social rather than genetic category. But my point was more about the method for researching an article: if you want to know what geneticists think, start by looking for the main research by geneticists, and then see what they are debating, what their questions and conclusions are ... people working on this article seem to be going the opposite way around, starting with the answers they like and just looking for sources. Slrubenstein | Talk 01:35, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

So basically we're saying the correlation between intelligence and genetics is between .40 and .70? In other words, the scientific debate is that it is somewhere between a strong correlation and a very strong correlation? And the argument that maybe these characteristics vary between populations is supposed to be fringe and unscientific? Let's see, other genetic traits seem to vary between populations (pretty markedly). I must be missing something here. Maybe I was mistaken to say the sociological theories are "equally plausible" - they are starting to sound like "fringe nonsense". Fixentries (talk) 01:50, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
There is the IQ QTL project [3]. Wapondaponda (talk) 02:06, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
The problem is that even when variation in a trait between individuals is primarily genetic, that does not necessarily mean variation between groups is genetic also. (Although as Jensen points out in The g Factor, in the absence of evidence that between-group differences are caused by different factors than within-group differences, them both having the same degree of heritability is the null hypothesis.)
As for whether race should be presented as a social or genetic category, the reality is that it’s both, so that’s how our article should depict it. This chart from the Race and genetics article is a demonstration of this. Americans who self-identify as “black” have an average of 80% Sub-Saharan African ancestry, and as can be seen on the chart, Sub-Saharan Africans are a well-defined genetic group that have more genetically in common with each other than they have with any other group. Since some black Americans have more or less than 80% Sub-Saharan African ancestry, race can only be defined genetically in a statistical sense, but differences in average IQ can still be discussed for statistically defined races. --Captain Occam (talk) 02:25, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
Oh, I agree, the case for individual genetic heritability of intellectual advantage doesn't necessarily apply to groups. I personally think both sociological and genetic explanations must be true to some extent or another. I'm just saying: it's certainly plausible and reasonable to apply that knowledge about individual genetics to groups. If one trait can be associated with groups (skin color, facial structure, muscle type, whatever), it's certainly not a wild postulation to say that perhaps another genetic feature may be associated with groups. I also agree that these observations are going to rely heavily on statistical generalizations rather than absolutely discrete differences.
I think one problem here is the perception that sociology or psychology or even genetics are vaguely unbiased fields, or that a researcher in such a field is really free to pursue any possibility. Sociology in particular seems to be largely premised on environmental explanations for behavior and social differences. The way it is taught, the precepts and the body of research in it are all heavily in favor of (or exclusively in favor of) that sort of interpretation. There is a good deal of pressure against even postulating that there may be genetic differences in intelligence in groups. Whether it's true or not, it is essentially racism. So when we say, "the majority thinks so-and-so," we're really just observing very strong social and political pressures. In many places, this kind of research would quickly put you out of a job (or worse). Fixentries (talk) 07:44, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
Fixentries, this page is for discussions of how to improve the article. Perhaps you are acting in good faith but I am sorry to say that what you write simply reveals your ignorance of the topic. Your claim "I'm just saying: it's certainly plausible and reasonable to apply that knowledge about individual genetics to groups" is dead wrong and if you went to college and studied evolution and genetics, you would learn that this is wrong and why it is wrong your first semester. The way geneticists model within-group variation is fundamentally different from how they model between-group variation, for reasons having to do with the laws of population genetics. If you sincerely wish to improve this article, I respectfully suggest you do some research rather than argue misinformed personal opinions. Above I provided sictations for eleven articles by geneticists researching differences in intelligence. Why don't you read those articles and see what information from them you believe should go into this article. That way you would have reliable sources to back up your claims, and not - I am sorry to say this but it is the only appropriate word - ignorant opinion. Slrubenstein | Talk 13:54, 6 October 2009 (UTC)Slrubenstein | Talk 13:51, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
It sounds to me like you basically have no idea what these purported details of population genetics are, and just repeat some assertions you learned from someone else (I'm guessing not in genetics class). The things you've submitted to this discussion have ranged from obviously irrelevant, to illogical, to abusive, to plain wrong. I gather this is a habit with you. Fixentries (talk) 14:01, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
I listed eleven articles that might be good sources for this article. Please tell me which one is - or in what way this might be - "obviously irrelevant, to illogical, to abusive, to plain wrong?" What is the source for your claims? Or do you think it is "abusive" for me to ask you to rely on reliable sources?Slrubenstein | Talk 14:04, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
I'm still feeling like you have no clear concept of what you think are the models used in population genetics. Ignoring that, all the citations you listed seem to be irrelevant to the topic of this article, or at best tangental. Should I spend my time reading a list of citations you provided on your say-so that they are relevant when the titles appear irrelevant or tangental? And yes, you are extremely rude. I think you know you're rude. I think you're being rude on purpose. Fixentries (talk) 14:14, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
Also, I have no intent of offering further citations for this article. It's already extensively cited. I'm not trying to insert my personal opinions here, I'm just flabbergasted by the patently worthless logic you're applying, the ignorance you seem to have of the topics, your tendency to lecture on obvious and simple topics that you have an apparently cursory understanding of, and so on. Your condescending tone when you don't appear to be a scientist in this field, or have a good understanding of the scientific method even. I'm just... amazed at everything about you here. I'm not trying to insert any text in the article, so your claiming to ask for "reliable sources" is just another irrational assault. Fixentries (talk) 14:20, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
I mean, you yourself claim the article is about a sociological quesiton. Then you offer citations of geneticists. Which is it? Is this just an accidental inconsistency or are you intentionally bringing up material you believe is irrelevant to the topic of the article? You preface the material with the fact that it is not about race. You know it's irrelevant or tangental. Fixentries (talk) 14:38, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
Yes, there is a robust argument that the relationship between race and intelligence is largely or almost entirely sociological. But you and Captain Occam were asking about genetics. I responded by citing some of the leading research in genetics and IQ and explained why it is not about race but about something else. But this was in response to your own questions. As for having no intent to provide any sources to support your view, I leave it to others to judge: I offer sources, you do not. You are right that the article has many citations, but if all you know about the topic is what you learned from reading the wikipedia article, um, I do not think that puts you in a strong position to work on the content of the article. of course, if you have editorial comments about ways to improve the style, that would be welcome. Slrubenstein | Talk 16:27, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Slrubenstein: You have not provided citations for all your claims about genetics. You offered some thoroughly tangential citations from twin's studies. Do you have any citations to support your claims about population genetics? Specifically your claim that, if I may try to paraphrase, a trait being heritable in individuals has no possible bearing on population genetics? Fixentries (talk) 10:52, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Why paraphrase? Why not quote me on heritability (since your paraphrase is not even close to what I wrote): "you cannot compare variance in intelligence between groups, only within groups." To spell it out for you with a few more words to help you: heritability is a measure of variance within groups. It is not a measure of the variance between groups. And please explain to me in what way the Devlin and the Plomin articles are in any way tangential to the question of the heritability of IQ? Given the way that you distort what I wrote, and given the way you ignore sources that are directly relevant to the question of the heritability of IQ, at this point I can conclude only that you are trolling. Slrubenstein | Talk 18:11, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
So you don't have a source for your claims, you're just going to "spell it out for me"? This article is not about the heritability of IQ, it's about whether there are racial differences in IQ. One of us is sure trolling. Fixentries (talk) 18:15, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
Fixentries. If you look back at the discussion you've started and the evolution of your comments, I think you'll see why the article has the tags it does, and why resolving the basic tagging issue has been difficult. It has very much to do with people coming in with preformed ideas about the subject, and who are unwilling to read the underlying research. To fix the article, it's going to take more than just editing what is there. It *will* take actual reviewing of published research in scientific journals. No one is going to make you do that, but if you don't no one is going to think you're very serious about improving the article. Aprock (talk) 18:26, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
I'm not trying to change the article, it looks good to me. I want to remove the tags because nobody is trying to fix what the tags are complaining about. And the NPOV tag seems completely spurious - the complaint is that the article is neutrally written, so the complaint can't be about NPOV. I have familiarity with published works in this topic, in genetics, in sociology (unfortunately), in anthropology. I have before offered citations in another similar article from The Lancet, which I assume is the kind of source you're talking about. Right now I'm just asking Rubenstein for a source on his claim about population genetics for which he seems happy to keep repeating his personal opinions on rather than offering a source. Fixentries (talk) 18:50, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
Changing the tags is changing the article. The article is not neutral. In particular, it gives undue weight to the untested hypothesis that variations in "racial" population genetics play a significant role in variations in population IQ. Aprock (talk) 19:29, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
So by using the qualifier "significant" are you saying that genetics may play some role? Fixentries (talk) 19:48, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
(ec)
I'm not sure what you're confused about... within group comparisons (ie intelligence of middle class white male 11 year olds from normal families) will give you somewhat useful data on relative test scores (IQ, SAT etc). Similar between group comparisons ("blacks" vs "whites") are extraordinarily difficult to control when you're trying to get useful predictive data or form a causative hypothesis because there are too many variables. That's where sociologists and anthropologists become important to the research.
P.S. You need to read about wp:undue, because you have spuriously claimed that the NPOV tag is uncalled for while obviously not even understanding the argument for it's presence. Since this is at least the 3rd time you've been pointed in that direction, I don't have much hope for you to come to understand this point. Feel free to request assistance if you would like to understand what's going on around here. Otherwise I'll have to agree that you are acting very troll like and are not actually here to engage in productive discussion. T34CH (talk) 19:41, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
WP:NPOV is not WP:UNDUE. As far as comparisons between black and white, again I am not asking for your or slrubenstein's opinions on this. Do you have a citation to back up what you're saying? If we just want to shoot from the cuff, you'll agree that blacks all have dark skin right? And that that's a genetic trait? If they all have that genetic trait, why do you suppose that it's impossible to have another genetic trait in common, or that such a trait would be all that difficult to find or analyze if the genes were known? Again, citation please. Your say-so is not really important. Fixentries (talk) 19:48, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

I see Fixentries has trolled before:

  • requesting a reference for the n-word being offensive[4]
  • berating an editor who was only asking for advise and had already gotten good helpful advise[5]
  • editwarring and then calling a user colorblind instead of participating in a useful discussion [6][7]
  • just above here when he claims that NPOV and UNDUE are different... funny, they look like the same page to me
  • also seems to have a beef with sociology [8]

I suggest not responding to this user until they become productive on this talk page. T34CH (talk) 20:00, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

  • I don't understand "nigger" to be "extremely offensive" or whatever the article mentioned. It was the wording that seemed a little over-stated to me. It's common for black people to call each other that without any negative connotation and I have heard it used (perhaps as "nigga") as a perfectly friendly label between persons of other ethnic backgrounds. Is it wrong to ask for a fact check on something that doesn't appear to be true to you?
  • The editor had tried to destroy a quote of Mohamed Ali. I had no idea why someone would want to do that. I don't see any "berating" in that but you may be right.
  • You should look at the picture in question. It did appear to be a case of colorblindness. She was red in the picture.
  • Sorry, I didn't realize UNDUE was considered a subtopic of NPOV. It looks like they were separate at one time, or are referenced separately.
  • I was confused by the wording, and yeah I probably do think sociology does not use a scientific approach, which is my impression after taking college sociology.
Perhaps I haven't taken wikipedia as seriously as I should have. I apologize if that's the impression, I would like to learn the customs and policies. Fixentries (talk) 21:37, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Arbitrary break

As someone who’s familiar with the reason why the tags are present, I’ve explained here why I think they should be removed. It seems fairly clear that the hereditarian hypothesis fits Wikipedia’s definition of a significant-minority view, and Wikipedia has a specific policy on how such views should be presented:
If your viewpoint is held by a significant scientific minority, then it should be easy to name prominent adherents, and the article should certainly address the controversy without taking sides.
Addressing the controversy without taking sides is what the article currently does, so if this is a significant-minority view, then the article is presenting it the way that it should and the tags aren’t appropriate. If you wish for the tags to remain, you will need to explain why this viewpoint does not fit Wikipedia’s definition of a significant-minority view, as I’ve quoted here and in my other comment. --Captain Occam (talk) 20:29, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
It would seem that you are confusing addressing the controversy without taking sides with giving equal weight to the mainstream theory and the minority (or fringe) theory. WP:UNDUE warns against this as well.--Ramdrake (talk) 22:47, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
If the only prominent adherent you can name who isn't especially controversial is Jensen, I must point out that Jensen is also known for writing on topics other than the hereditarian hypothesis. If all the editors speaking up here still haven't convinced you, however, that the hereditarian hypothesis is indeed fringe, then we can certainly have an RFC on whether this hypothesis is fringe or not. Althouhg, last time we had one, if you'll remember, the verdict was overwhelmingly that it was indeed fringe.--Ramdrake (talk) 20:39, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
I mentioned Jensen because he is probably the most prominent, but Gottfredson and Eysenck are two other examples. According to Eysenck's article, at the time of his death he was the living psychologist most frequently cited in science journals--this includes psychologists in all areas of psychology--and Gottfredson's numerous credentials are listed in her own article.
As I quoted from the policy page, Wikipedia's policy states quite explicitly that the prevalence of a viewpoint among Wikipedia's editors has nothing to do with whether or not it's fringe. The only things that matter are the criteria mentioned there. So if you wish for the tags to remain, this is what you'll need to address. --Captain Occam (talk) 20:49, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
Both Gottfredson and Eysenck were funded by and involved in the Pioneer Fund, a known racist organisation. Not really good references. I'm afraid we're still in fringe territory. If you still disagree, I suggest you follow the WP:DR dispute resolution process, and I believe the next step in this case is either RFC or mediation. Your pick. Please consider your objections addressed.--Ramdrake (talk) 20:57, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
Linda Gottfredson and Hans Eysenck are/were both tenured professors widely published in the peer-reviewed literature. What aspect of their Wikipedia entries allows you to describe them as "fringe?" How were they able to fool so many journal reviewers and editors into publishing their fringe theories? David.Kane (talk) 21:11, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
Ramdrake: okay, so here I’m arguing from Wikipedia’s policy and their definition of what qualifies as “prominent”, and you’re countering this with an argument based on guilt by association, and also based on the assumption that the Pioneer Fund is racist. The first of these is a pretty basic fallacy, which is explained in the article about it, and I know that even people like you are able to recognize what’s wrong with this fallacy when it’s applied to things such as Obama’s association with Jeremiah Wright.
Guilt by association would be a fallacy even if all sources were in agreement that the Pioneer Fund is racist. That it’s racist is one point of view, which you obviously support, but one that is not by any means considered the only perspective about this.
So basically, what you’re saying is that the point of view which you prefer, coupled with a guilt by association fallacy, should overrule Wikipedia’s policy about this, which does not mention any exceptions for the kind of argument you’re using. If you can’t understand why your argument here is faulty, I guess requesting help from other editors is our only remaining option, but I’ll give you one more chance. --Captain Occam (talk) 21:24, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
OK, if you want to discuss fringe, maybe we should start with Eysenck's extensive work on astrology?[9] It's not because a particular scientist has published extensively that all their work has been in mainstream areas. I still say this should become an RFC. Your interpretation of Wiki-policy would mean that if there's even one proponent of an idea who passes the notability test, then his/her opinion automatically becomes a "significant minority viewpoint". This would make most fringe theories into "significant minority viewpoints". Another possibility would be to bring up the subject on WP:FTN and see the feedback.--Ramdrake (talk) 21:49, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
BTW, I took the ;liberty of already asking the question at the FTN.--Ramdrake (talk) 22:08, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
Eysenk was the most cited because of his work in personality and psychotherapy, not psychometrics or intelligence. Linda Gottfredson made her career on job aptitude and Spearman's g in the 80s, but you'll have a hard time finding anyone calling that mainstream today. T34CH (talk) 22:41, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
According to his Wikipedia article, Eysenck studied all aspects of psychometrics, including IQ. You can see that by looking at the “selected works” section of his article. And in Gottfredson’s case, you’re still falling back on the same argument “if people say it’s fringe, then it is”. That isn’t what Wikipedia’s policy says.
You need to look objectively at the argument that you and Ramdrake are using here, and see how absurd it is. You’re saying that if the largest focus of Eysenck’s psychometric work was on personality rather than IQ, that makes his prominence as irrelevant to his IQ work as it is to his views on astrology. Can’t you see what’s nonsensical about that? It’s based on the assumption that Eysenck’s psychometric work has no more relevance to IQ than it does to astrology, when intelligence testing is actually considered an area of psychometrics.
Incidentally, I’ve also brought up this issue with an administrator who’s helped me with this sort of thing in the past, so hopefully he’ll be of assistance also. --Captain Occam (talk) 23:02, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

(outdent)Captian Occam, I believe you've misquoted WP:UNDUE.

If your viewpoint is held by a significant scientific minority, then it should be easy to name prominent adherents, and the article should certainly address the controversy without taking sides.

The italicized portion is an addition not in the actual policy. It's part of a comment Jimbo made in 2003, the base of which the policy was written upon, but not policy itself. The Undue Weight clause, which is policy, has evolved over time and taken on more definition and clarity beyond what Jimbo started with as principle. For example, it has been expanded to instruct editors to clearly describe minority viewpoints as minority, and majority as majority, and to not mislead readers as to the shape of the dispute by giving minority views greater weight or proportion than they've earned. Although the spirit was there, none of that was in Jimbo's earlier statement from 2003. --Nealparr (talk to me) 22:51, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

All right, thanks for pointing this out.
What is your opinion on whether this particular view (the hereditarian perspective) qualifies as a signficant-minority view? It does seem to meet Wikipedia's definition of one, at least as far as I can tell. --Captain Occam (talk) 23:04, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
Even if it were a minority view, it would still need to be clearly labeled as such, and given less prominence than nthe mainstream view, as per WP:UNDUE:
Wikipedia should not present a dispute as if a view held by a small minority deserved as much attention overall as the majority view. Views that are held by a tiny minority should not be represented except in articles devoted to those views. To give undue weight to the view of a significant minority, or to include that of a tiny minority, might be misleading as to the shape of the dispute. Wikipedia aims to present competing views in proportion to their representation in reliable sources on the subject. This applies not only to article text, but to images, wikilinks, external links, categories, and all other material as well.
The Wikipedia neutrality policy does not state, or imply, that we must "give equal validity" to minority views such as pseudoscience, the claim that the Earth is flat, or the claim that the Apollo moon landings never occurred. If that were the case, the result would be to legitimize and even promote such claims. Policy states that we must not take a stand on these issues as encyclopedia writers; but that does not stop us from describing the majority views as such; from fairly explaining the strong arguments against the pseudoscientific theory; from describing the strong moral repugnance that many people feel toward some morally repugnant views; and so forth.
This is the actualwording of the policy.--Ramdrake (talk) 23:51, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
Which mainstream psychologists believe there are not racial differences in IQ? Fixentries (talk) 23:53, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
Which mainstream psychometricians confuse IQ and intelligence? (Yeah, I know: I broke my own rule in answering Fixentries here... but the remark was SO trolly I couldn't let it slide) T34CH (talk) 00:06, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
Ramdrake: I think the way it's currently portrayed is consistent with what would be appropriate for a significant-minority view. Most of the article’s coverage of the hereditarian hypothesis is only to explain what it is, as well as criticism of it; there are only two (fairly short) paragraphs summarizing the evidence for it. Compare this to the areas of evidence that are cited in support for the environmental interpretation of this data, many of which have entire sections of the article devoted to them.
Also, my comment was directed at Nealparr rather than you. I already know your opinion about this, but the point of requesting comment is to obtain input from other people. --Captain Occam (talk) 00:08, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
The difference between WP:UNDUE and WP:FRINGE is really just a matter of degree of minority, as both give the same advice in terms of how to present views: Represent them in proportion to their prominence among reliable sources. The question of whether this particular view is a signficant minority view, or a tiny fringe view, is really besides the point, because the rules are the same for both. Don't make a view appear more prominent than it actually is. How many proponents are there, really? If one can only think up a handful of notable proponents, that's probably a clue as to how prominent the view actually is, especially when compared to how many intelligence researchers there are as a whole. I'd say (athough it's not necessarily policy) that if you can "eas[ily] name prominent adherents", and name most or all of them, then it's likely not a very widespread view, because if it were it'd be much harder to name them all off. That's just my opinion though. The part that is policy is that we shouldn't make the view appear more prominent than it actually is. If there's only a small number of proponents, the article should clearly state that. --Nealparr (talk to me) 01:17, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
I mentioned Jensen, Gottfredson and Eysenck because it’s very hard to argue with the prominence of any of those three, but it has considerably more proponents than that. The article lists 15 of them that are fairly well-known.
It’s hard to judge exactly what the proportions are, because the only study I’m aware of about this specific question (by Snyderman and Rothman) is from 20 years ago, and there’s a good chance the proportions have changed since then. I can think of two somewhat effective ways of judging this. One is Mainstrean science on intelligence, an editorial with the signatures of 52 experts in intelligence and related fields, which states that all of these researchers view the hereditarian perspective as a valid scientific hypothesis, although the article does not make a statement as to whether or not it’s correct. Its phrasing is, “Most experts believe that environment is important in pushing the bell curves apart, but that genetics could be involved too.” (Emphasis mine.)
The other way is the June 2005 issue of the professional journal Psychology, Public Policy and Law, which was devoted to the controversy over whether or not the IQ difference is genetic. All of the papers published in this issue took the hereditarian hypothesis seriously as a scientific theory, and although not all of them viewed it favorably, the issue’s featured paper (Thirty years of research on race differences in cognitive ability by Jensen and Rushton) was supportive of this viewpoint. If Wikipedia is to portray this topic in the same way that it’s portrayed in professional literature, this issue useful as a point of reference.
I think that based on these measurements of how prominent the theory is, the amount of coverage it currently received here is more or less appropriate. Do you agree? --Captain Occam (talk) 02:36, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
It's important that you don't read more into your sources than what is there. I read the Mainstrean science on intelligence paper, and that source indicates that the genetic stance is fringe. Reread your quote: "There is no definitive answer to why IQ bell curves differ across racial-ethnic groups... Most experts believe that environment is important in pushing the bell curves apart, but that genetics could be involved too." Simply said: environment important, genetics maybe. Aprock (talk) 18:35, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
Looking at the 2005 publication, it looks like the only articles arguing that intelligence is influenced by race are written by Rushton and Jensen. Again indicating that the hypothesis is fringe. Aprock (talk) 18:45, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
Actually, if you look carefully at the 2005 publication, you’ll see that the only papers there specifically arguing against Jensen and Rushton’s conclusions are Nisbett’s and Sternberg’s. Gottfredson’s paper mostly agrees with Jensen and Rusthon, and Suzuki and Aronson examinine the criticism of Jensen and Rushton’s and come to the conclusion that their view is partially correct.
This issue of Psychology, Public Policy and Law contains papers by seven authors. Three of them argue for the hereditarian hypothesis, two of them argue against it, and two of them offer a combination of criticism and qualified support. While this is obviously a pretty small sample, I maintain that the fact that a well-respected peer-reviewed journal chose to frame the issue in this manner is an argument that the psychology community views this as a valid hypothesis.
Also, see my reply to Slrubenstein below. --Captain Occam (talk) 20:53, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
I looked at the publication. It contains review articles and commentary, primarily about Rushton's work. There is no indication in the publication about how the psychology community views Rushton's hypothesis. Aprock (talk) 21:04, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
You’re missing my point. The indication is just the fact that a well-known, well-respected psychology journal chose to present the issue in this particular way. For something like creationism or the flat-earth view, which is regarded as truly fringe, you would never see a professional journal attempting to present the controversy about it in a balanced manner like this. How difficult is this to understand?
And I’d like you to answer my question about why you’re calling this “Rushton’s hypothesis”. The person responsible for this hypothesis is Arthur Jensen, and Rushton is no more important a supporter of it than any of its other proponents. --Captain Occam (talk) 21:11, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
Actually, yes he is, for publishing about 60+ papers on this and similar subjects. He is also the most well-known of the proponents, having had press coverage many times (not always for commendable reasons).--Ramdrake (talk) 21:15, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
OK, I know Rushton has published on this topic more than most, but he hasn't published as much on it as Jensen has. Jensen can also be considered the theory's creator. If we're going to attribute this hypothesis to a specific person, Jensen deserves the credit for it more than Rushton does. --Captain Occam (talk) 21:22, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
"For something like creationism or the flat-earth view, which is regarded as truly fringe, you would never see a professional journal attempting to present the controversy about it in a balanced manner like this." This is not obvious to me. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me to find any number of citations from reliable sources which did exactly that. Aprock (talk) 21:15, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
I'm quite certain of this. I've been involved in the creation/evolution controversy for 10 years, and am currently writing a book about it. While evolutionary biologists occasionally put out popular books about this topic, the existence of creationism is barely even acknowledged in the professional literature. If you don't believe me about this, I can probably find a reference that mentions this. --Captain Occam (talk) 21:20, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
"I'm quite certain of this." Allow me to suggest that you do a literature survey of reliable sources from the 1920s. Aprock (talk) 21:30, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
I'm not talking about the way it was 80 years ago, I'm talking about the way it is currently. Whether creationism was taken seriously as science 80 years ago isn't relevant to the current topic. --Captain Occam (talk) 21:35, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Well let's look at a list of how many psychologists explicitly support the heredity position and how many explicitly oppose it. Fixentries (talk) 01:29, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

By all means, do the legwork and let us know what you find out. Aprock (talk) 15:30, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
I'm not the one trying to change the article. If you want to say Rushton and others offer a fringe or a minority view, provide evidence that more psychologists are explicitly opposed to the heredity theory than accept as possible, plausible or likely. Fixentries (talk) 15:46, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
You're the one suggesting that the tags don't belong. Aprock (talk) 16:27, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
Ok. At this point I'm comfortable leaving the article as it is, tags and all. I understand better why they are in place. Fixentries (talk) 16:50, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Captain Occam, while I don't want to speak for Ramdrake, I do not think you are doing justice to his general point. I emphasize the "general" because i know you know what my position is and I am not trying to continue an argument where we may just disagree. But there is an important point that we need to be clear about. NPOV is all about views, not viewers. The issue is whether a particular view is mainstream, majority, minority, or fringe. An individual may be world-famous yet hold fringe views. A perrson may hold a view about one thing that is mainstream, and a view about another thing that is fringe. One scholar may publish an article that continues to be cited by everyone in her field (or sub-discipline), and may then publish another article that no one cites, or cites only to attack. This is indeed not that rare in academia. We should not be arguing over whether x is or is not a notable person - this only matters when we debate whether Wikipedia ought to have an article on that person, or whether their bio should be deleted. The question here, is, is this particular view mainstream or fringe. What makes it fringe or mainstream is not the credentials or position of the person holding the views. Even a patent clerk is can write an article that becomes mainstream science! Similarly, someone holding a prestigious chair can publish an article espousing a fringe view. What makes it mainstream or fringe is the degree to which it is accepted by other experts in the field. We can argue over this question. But it is the view that we are discussing. We can't have a clear discussion unless we can look at the view apart from the individual expressing the view. The view has to be considered valid or plausible by a significant number of experts in the field to cross the threshold of a minority view, or needs to be accepted by the vast majority of experts in the field to be considered majority or mainstream. Slrubenstein | Talk 15:44, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Another example may help illustrate this point. Isaac Newton is arguably one of the greatest scientists of his age if not all time. Yet he still toiled for years on alchemy, a field of study which turned out to be very unscientific. Just because Newton did extensive research into alchemy does not mean that it is a science. Aprock (talk) 16:32, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
So the mainstream view is that racial differences in intelligence is explained by environmental and genetic factors that vary in importance for each group; therefore, environment may play a bigger role in the IQ of certain groups relatively to others, and that the higher IQ of East Asians is due to cultural factors, although the environment in which they develop is of lesser quality than for White? This explanation do not fully account for certain scientific data. While Rushton's work may suffer from certain substantial flaws, I do not believe we can dismiss all of it. It is certainly not very wise to do so. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.29.243.36 (talk) 17:05, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
“The view has to be considered valid or plausible by a significant number of experts in the field to cross the threshold of a minority view, or needs to be accepted by the vast majority of experts in the field to be considered majority or mainstream.”
I’m certainly not arguing that the hereditarian perspective is actually a majority view. Rushton himself has said in an interview on NPR that researchers who hold this view are in the minority—he refers to it as a “significant minority”. However, if you’re looking for a demonstration that a large number of experts consider this a valid hypothesis (even if they don’t agree with it), this is a lot easier to demonstrate. The “Maintream science” paper and the 2005 publication both demonstrate that most researchers at least take this hypothesis seriously, even if they don’t necessarily support it. In fact, even the number of peer-reviewed publications that cite papers arguing for the hereditarian hypothesis, for the purpose of criticizing this theory, is an argument that this hypothesis is at least taken seriously as a scientific theory. If you compare this to something truly fringe, such as creationism, most scientists feel like creationism is so obviously false (even though around 50% of Americans believe it) that there’s no point in taking the time to explain what’s wrong with it in peer-reviewed literature. --Captain Occam (talk) 20:39, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
There is a wide gap between the language "genetics could be involved too" and Rushton's hypothesis. Don't overstate your sources. Aprock (talk) 20:49, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
I think I've made it clear that I'm not claiming the authors of the "Mainstream science" paper believed this hypothesis was necessarily correct. What the paper states is just that in the view of most psychologists, this hypothesis is enough of a possibility to be worthy of consideration.
By the way, why are people calling the hereditarian view "Rushton's hypothesis" in this context? The "Mainstream science" paper was mostly a commentary on The Bell Curve, which was by Murray and Herrnstein, not Rushton. And as for the person responsible for this hypothesis in its modern form, that was Jensen in 1969. As far as I can tell, Rushton has nothing to do with this. --Captain Occam (talk) 21:00, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
I call it Rushton's hypothesis because I have to call it something. IIRC, Rushton's hypothesis is essentially the same as that of the authors of the Bell Curve. That is, genetic race plays a primary role in shaping the bell curves of IQ test results of racial populations. If you have a better name for it, by all means use it. Regardless, there is a wide gap between that hypothesis and "genetics could be involved too". Aprock (talk) 21:08, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
Man, did you even read my whole comment? I know there’s a gap, but it doesn’t matter for the point I’m making. All I’m trying to demonstrate is that this viewpoint is viewed as a valid theory by psychologists, which is what Slrubenstein was asking me about.
I would suggest that if we have to attribute this hypothesis to a specific person, rather than just calling it the “hereditarian hypothesis”, we should call it Jensen’s hypothesis. Since he’s the primary person responsible for it, it’s better to refer to this hypothesis as “his” than it is to do this in Rushton’s case. --Captain Occam (talk) 21:17, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
No, as this is how it's called in the literature, usually. We cannot invent new terms.--Ramdrake (talk) 21:20, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
Where in the literature has it been called Rushton's hypothesis when referring to the hereditarian hypothesis in general, rather than just a specific paper or book by Rushton? --Captain Occam (talk) 21:24, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
  1. ^ Lynn, Richard (2003). The Intelligence of American Jews. Elsevier Ltd. doi:10.1016/S0191-8869(03)00079-5.
  2. ^ Cochran, Gregory & Hardy, Jason & Harpending, Henry. Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence. Journal of Biosocial Science, Vol. 38, No. 05. (2005), pp. 659-693.
  3. ^ On the peculiarities of the Negro brain
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