Talk:Race and intelligence/Archive 75

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References regarding some earlier points of debate

I've found this very interesting paper on what could be construed as "races" within the human species: [1] Here's an interesting quote which I think goes to the heart of the debate we previously had on the biological significance of the classical concept of human races:

So while the amount and distribution of genetic variation is largely irrelevant to the question of whether a species is divided into biologically significant races generally, it is relevant to the question of whether ‘‘ordinary’’ conceptions of folk racial categories in humans have any biological support, and to this question there is a broad consensus that the answer is ‘‘no.’’ Biology, it has been rightly noted many times, cannot underwrite the sort of racial concepts that have usually been applied to humans.

Hope it helps better situate the current situation on the existence of human races.--Ramdrake (talk) 16:00, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Two specific issues here. (1) The backtracking argument from folk taxonomies to natural kinds isn't the one that's relevant to this article (but would be to other articles). That just answers the question of whether racial groups exactly match natural kinds, which of course they don't. The more relevant formulation is just an empirical question of how different groups (however identified) actually are. (2) What specifically matters to this article related in this area is the evolvability of group differences in intellectual abilities. This is what actually addresses the a priori probability of a genetic explanation. Were I authoring an intro to the hypotheses section, I would lead with that question and examples of a few opinions on that topic. Nisbett (2009) addresses this pretty clearly. --DJ (talk) 19:48, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Then why are we getting bogged down in papers which use folk taxonomies as a starting point for their research, and with some editors trying to bridge folk taxonomies with genetic clusters within humans?--Ramdrake (talk) 19:55, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

From my POV, what I see is standard social science use of "race" -- the same as you see in elsewhere in psychology and sociology, with all its faults and benefits. Not sure what you mean by bridging to clusters. --DJ (talk) 20:10, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

He means there's a disconnect between folk races and genetic groupings. The clearest example of this is the idea of a 'black race', whereas sub-Saharan Africa probably has more genetic diversity than the rest of the world put together. Fences&Windows 22:14, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

PS: I also found these very interesting articles which seem to disucss exactly the kind of issues we've been debating lately: [2][3][4] [5]. I was partly surprised to find out that many of those very interesting articles come from the domain of philosophy of the sciences. Go figure. :)

But very honestly, these 4-5 papers I've just mentioned are highly recommended reading to all editors in this discussion.--Ramdrake (talk) 16:09, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Block's (1995) summary ("exegesis") of Jensen's (1969; 1973) argument is wrong and Sesardic's (2000) is right. I find that Flynn (1980) does an excellent job of explaining it clearly while synthesizing the various responses from Lewontin and others. Flynn's more recent book (2007) continues that excellent work. There's a long history of people making contributions to this literature for the first (and usually only) time. The net misunderstanding from all of those contributions would make this an incomprehensible topic if they were all taken at face value. --DJ (talk) 20:10, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

I second DJ's view. Having read Flynn's earlier work, I have to say he exhibits exemplary treatment of the material in a scholarly manner without devolving into personal attacks or indulging in the misrepresentation of findings in order to make a point. --Aryaman (talk) 20:16, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I think that Flynn's writings are consistently close to the aims of a Neutral presentation when he aims to present a summary. I would turn to him first as a secondary source to summarize others' views fairly. --DJ (talk) 20:50, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Some more interesting refs: [6][7][8]. This last one is more specific to Pioneer Fund-related research: [9].--Ramdrake (talk) 17:05, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

This editorial piece: [10] is also of keen interest. It highlights the fact that opposition to the hereditarian position comes mostly from geneticists. --Ramdrake (talk) 18:36, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Note, a lot of these references capture rather old debates, which is certainly valuable. The problem with much of the older writing is that it is biased towards opinions that were more common or developing at the time but which have since been recalibrated towards a more nuanced position. Here's a citation, used in the current article, that does mention a lot of the contemporary issues (published in 2007): doi:10.1111/j.1745-6916.2007.00037.x. I can't say with certainty that it does so neutrally. The fact that it doesn't present simple yes/no answers is a good indicator that it's capturing something of contemporary opinion. --DJ (talk) 23:40, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

The study DJ links to looks interesting, and it's had some responses that also look interesting, though I've not got access to most of them. Here's a couple by Linda Gottfredson, a Pioneer Fund researcher:[11][12]

There's a new systematic review of IQ in sub-Saharan Africans by Wicherts et al. that concludes with an estimate of an average of 81/82: "The average IQ level of 81 for Africans in terms of western norms may appear to be low, but from a historical perspective it is not. For instance, due to the Flynn Effect, the average IQ of the Dutch population in the 1950s, compared to contemporary norms, would also be around 80 (Flynn, 1987, 2007). Note that in terms of societal development, contemporary African countries are more similar to developed countries in the first half of the twentieth century than to present-day developed countries."[13] This is in contrast to Richard Lynn's earlier work that said that IQs in sub-Saharan Africa were under 70, which they say is untenable. They use publication bias tests to show that selection of studies by Lynn was biased. Can we deemphasise his findings in Race and intelligence#Worldwide? It might also help to refer to his views on eugenics and racial separation:[14]. Fences&Windows 21:34, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Here's another study by Wichert et al. that criticises evolutionary conclusions drawn from national IQ studies by Lynn, Templer and Kanazawa:[15]. Fences&Windows 21:48, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

We discussed the Wicherts report a few days back. I'm certainly in favor of mentioning its findings, but I wouldn't do so in an unqualified manner. Wicherts is largely a criticism directed at Lynn, and Jensen, Rushton and Lynn have equally criticized the Wicherts group and their handling of the data. It's a valid point of contention, and I think we should report it that way. If I remember correctly, Lynn puts the African mean at 68, Jensen and Rushton, after reviewing Lynn and several other studies settle at 70, and the Wicherts report bumps it up to 82. The bone of contention is whether Wicherts is relying too heavily upon college scores (which, as Jensen and Rushton report, can go up to the low 90s) and how representative that number actually is. Either way, we're talking about a point spread of about 10 points. Personally, I think people are disturbed by the 70 mark because of its associations with mental retardation in the West, but that's a topic with only tangential relevance. As I've said before on several occasions, I see no problem in mentioning that the experts put the average between 70 and 82. --Aryaman (talk) 22:04, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

However, a lot more scientists have criticized Lynn on his numbers than those who have criticized Wicherts. That should tell us something of the value of these respective criticisms.--Ramdrake (talk) 22:12, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Given that the Wicherts report came out in 2009, I think it's too early to draw a conclusion like that. --Aryaman (talk) 22:14, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, if there were significant flaws in Wicherts' methodologo, somebody else than Rushton and Lynn would have pointed it out by now. You seem intent on ignoring the widespread criticism of Lynn's methodology. It needs to weigh in.--Ramdrake (talk) 22:23, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Not at all. As I've said before, if Lynn has consciously manipulated the data, of course he needs to be called on it. And a whole gaggle of people have done just that. But, interestingly, this is not the kind of error which, once pointed out, the one in error excuses him- or herself for committing it, and everyone gets back to work. (For example, Jensen's role in the Bouchard debacle.) On the contrary, this is arguably a matter of interpretation, and Lynn is justified in defending himself from such attacks, as he has done on numerous occasions. I'm not trying to "cover up" the controversy surrounding Lynn's findings in the least. But if we're going to discuss it at all, then I think we need to discuss it in a evenhanded manner, i.e. without assuming which party is in the right. Let the facts speak for themselves, that's all. --Aryaman (talk) 22:38, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict)But what do non-Pioneer Fund researchers have to say? Of course Lynn and Rushton criticise Wiechert et al.; it'd be more interesting to see what independent scholars say. Fences&Windows 22:26, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Basically my point, too.--Ramdrake (talk) 22:30, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

I wasn't aware that we need to index researchers based upon where they receive their funding. And does the fact that a researcher has once received funding from the notorious Pioneer Fund nullify all the findings of that researcher? Even those which were published prior to any such involvement? Please, enlighten us. --Aryaman (talk) 22:38, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Of course funding source is important, see for instance work in the BMJ showing the funder bias in medical research:[16]. And Lynn being a racial separatist might be expected to have a bearing on his research findings. Fences&Windows 22:45, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm not exactly sure how to go about digging into people's backgrounds. Did Satoshi Kanazawa ever receiving funding from some "spooky racist think tank" operating under the guise of a benign non-profit organization? --Aryaman (talk) 22:56, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Look at the papers they published. Divulging the source of funding for a particular paper (or the research associated with it) is pretty much a standard in most countries, and a requirement in some.--Ramdrake (talk) 22:59, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

This is not about 'digging into people's backgrounds' or unacceptable ad hominem. You may wish to belittle concerns that virtually all those advocating a genetic cause of IQ differences between human populations are connected to the Pioneer Fund, but the Pioneer Fund has been a proponent of eugenics and racial segregation for decades,[17][18] which makes taking money from or heading such an organisation - as do Lynn and Rushton - a central competing interest. Has the Pioneer Fund ever funded anyone who was African-American, or who didn't believe that racial differences in IQ are due to genetics? Many of those who self-describe themselves as "race realists" are anti-immigration and have otherwise made discriminatory comments about non-whites,[19] including writing a foreword for a David Duke book. Choosing to ignore this is equivalent to ignoring that Intelligent design research all emanates from Creationists connected to the Discovery Institute. Fences&Windows 15:47, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

p.s. Judging by Kanazawa's shoddy stats on his evo-psych beauty studies,[20] I'd be surprised if the rest of his work was sound. Fences&Windows 16:07, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Sternberg's case study

I just looked at the article by Robert Sternberg et al on the case study in Ugingo Village, Bondo District, Nyanza Province in Western Kenya. [21] According to the article Sternberg et al tested 43 boys and 42 girls between the ages of 12 and 15 in this rural village. The aim was to compare and correlate practical and academic intelligence skills in various ways. I could find no statement about the mean IQ of these 85 children in the article. Does anybody know what is going on here? Mathsci (talk) 00:44, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

I haven't read the study, but it seems Sternberg used the Raven CPM and Mill Hill tests and tried to correlate these with tests they created intended to measure indigenous tacit knowledge. Their main objective was to report upon potential correlations, so I could see how they might view the particular results as being of secondary importance. But did they not give the actual scores in their report? --Aryaman (talk) 01:10, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

The raw scores are in table 1, but you need to have the test manuals to convert those numbers to "IQ" scale. --DJ (talk) 06:59, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

The statement in the article is misleading. This was clearly not a controlled measure of the average intelligence in West Kenya. It was a case study for exactly the purpose I mentioned. There is no statement or discussion about average intelligence in the article, so I will remove the sentence. This was hopeless editing. I wonder how much else in the article is like this. Mathsci (talk) 07:28, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Apparently, this study was quoted from Performance on Raven’s Advanced Progressive Matrices by African, East Indian, and White Engineering Students in South Africa (Fridjhon, Skuy & Rushton; 2003), where it says: "In Kenya, Sternberg et al. (2001) administered the Colored Progressive Matrices to 85 12–15-year-olds who scored 23.5 out of 36, an IQ equivalent of about 70." I don't have access to a Raven's manual, but if someone does, they could probably check the accuracy of the tabulation. --Aryaman (talk) 09:07, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

The case study wasn't a controlled attempt to measure average intelligence in West Kenya and the citation was indeed to this particular article. A poor rural village was selected: there is even a list of diseases/parasites that the children had. Rushton's secondary citing of this out of context means it cannot be used at all. This is not the way to write wikipedia articles, unless people are trying to get topic-banned. Mathsci (talk) 10:32, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

← There is also this article "Case for Non-Biased Intelligence Testing Against Black Africans Has Not Been Made: A Comment on Rushton, Skuy, and Bons (2004)" Steven F. Cronshaw, Leah K. Hamilton, Betty R. Onyura and Andrew S. Winston.

This reply reviews the conceptual, methodological, and statistical foundations of Rushton, Skuy and Bons' article in this journal that compared Black Africans, Whites and East Indians on the Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices, and concluded that the Raven's is an unbiased test. Through a technical re-analysis of both the internal and external validity criteria for test bias using data reported in the Rushton et al. paper, we demonstrate that the Raven's Matrices test is in fact biased against Black Africans. We take issue with several additional elements of Rushton et al.'s study, including the use of non-equivalent groups in test samples. We briefly review Rushton's racial-realist research agenda and show that the assumption of test bias is central to advancing that agenda. Industrial/organizational and occupational psychologists should critically analyze and re-evaluate the science employed in Rushton's racial-realist research and also should better understand the ethical and social implications of accepting his reports of research findings on test bias and White–Black IQ differences as established scientific facts.

Mathsci (talk) 10:57, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

This seems to be a lot of effort put into mostly details instead of summarizing the big picture. (Of course, the authors of these papers are certainly not helping to make their work accessible to outsiders.) There's no disagreement that test scores in sub-Saharan Africa are low, no matter who does the testing or performs the analysis. The key point of contention between these sources is construct validity. Wicherts is an expert on construct validity, so it would be worthwhile revisiting his 2009 paper for further details on that. --DJ (talk) 11:31, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't think it's accurate to say that there is "big picture". I objected to the inaccurate sourcing of one misleading sentence in the article. Varoon Arya attempted to defend the sentence by using a source that I pointed out was not reliable. There is a paucity of data in Africa and a lot of shoddy scholarship with findings that cannot be included in the article without careful qualification. Academics like Wichert and others have explained the problems with all such studies and it would completely reasonable to summarise these problems in the article.

Rushton has been criticized for jumping to conclusions and presenting them as established fact. Editors should bear this in mind when pushing to have any of his "findings" included in the article without qualification. Mathsci (talk) 05:28, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

If you are referring to the discussion in which you brought up Lynn, I think you need to go back and read that discussion carefully, Mathsci. --Aryaman (talk) 14:01, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Method of editing

Varoon Arya (talk · contribs) has written on his talk page [22] in response to Captain Occam : "Despite Fences & Windows' objection, I really do think it would be a good idea to work on individual sections as a group in a userspace without Ramdrake/Mathsci/T34CH/Slrubenstein interfering." This seems contrary to wikipedia editing policies. Both Captain Occam and Varoon Arya seem intent on representing the ideas of Rushton and Lynn with WP:UNDUE weight. Varoon Arya has indeed been personally questioning the academic credentials of those who have criticized either Lynn or Rushton. Is my understanding correct? Mathsci (talk) 07:22, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

I can’t speak for VA, but my main problem here is that there is certain information which is important to this topic yet isn’t presented anywhere in the article. I’ve pointed this out several times before. For example, despite its name, the section titled “evidence for genetic factors” contains almost none of the evidence that proponents of the hereditarian view present in favor of this theory. I’m not interested in making this section any longer, which is what would be a potential violation of WP:UNDUE; the changes I’d like to make may actually involve making it shorter. I just want it to be more informative.

I also don’t know why you and some of the other editors here keep harping on Lynn and Rushton, since I don’t attach any more importance to them than I do to anyone else who favors the hereditarian view. If you’re looking to name specific people whose theories I want to include, I consider the most important proponents of this view to be Eysenck, Jensen, and Gottfredson. (If your assertion that I want to give excessive space to Rushton specifically is based on my wanting to mention the debate over brain size, keep in mind that Jensen also talks about this in The g Factor, and that the data he cites about it is from Ho et al. 1980 rather than anything written by Rushton.) --Captain Occam (talk) 08:40, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Hmmm, I don't see an "evidence for genetic factors" section anymore...?--Ramdrake (talk) 21:01, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

The short answer to your "question": No. But good job on the selective quoting and general misrepresentation. If you want to question my motives, please take it to my talk page. --Aryaman (talk) 13:15, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

(ec) It wouldn't be a good idea to edit a version of the article in user space. As for "harping on" (CO) or "parroting" (VA), there are not many authors pushing the particular point of view you both seem to want to represent, so it is hard to avoid mentioning certain names. The hereditarian point of view was defended in 2005 by Jensen and Rushton. Richard Nisbett in Intelligence and How to Get It: Why Schools and Cultures Count (2009) devotes an appendix to examining their arguments, including comments on brain size. He, Flynn, Lynn and Rushton featured in the Channel 4 program mentioned by Fences & Windows. I think Jensen must have refused to give an interview (part of the program was shot in UC Berkeley, but there was no sign of the Psychology/Life Sciences building). You should both look at the book by Nisbett.

This page is where edits to the article are discussed, not users' talk pages. Mathsci (talk) 13:37, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

VA, how is Mathsci selectively quoting you or misrepresenting you above when you say you intend to work on the article without the input from some of us?--Ramdrake (talk) 21:01, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

He's selectively quoting when he leaves out the next sentence, which contradicts what he's implying: "When we have sections we agree on, and which can stand up to extended scrutiny, we can take them to the talk page, give other editors time to comment on the proposal, make adjustments if/where necessary, and then make the change to the mainspace." My suggestion was to create a space where we could work together constructively on sections of this article with less disruptions in an atmosphere of collegiality. It was - obviously, I'd think - not to violate policy or circumvent consensus. For some reason, I can work well and discuss calmly with editors such as Occam, David Kane, and DJ. We don't necessarily agree on everything, but we also don't make inflammatory accusations based on intentionally faulty interpretations. If all the editors involved here would make more constructive criticism and fewer personal attacks, then my suggestion would be entirely superfluous. --Aryaman (talk) 23:57, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

I see your point that your intentions were not to circumvent standard consensus practices. However, please note that editing articles in such a walled garden situation is not optimal, and while I must agree that the atmosphere on this talk page is fraught with suspicion, your very own reply "good job on the selective quoting and general misrepresentation" is not conducive to collegial editing either.--Ramdrake (talk) 00:11, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. My behavior of late has been less than exemplary, though it has not stooped to the level of some of the personal attacks/ad hominem arguments I've faced. I'd be more than happy to go back to editing in a normal fashion, working constructively with other editors. We all need a healthy shot of WP:AGF here. But we also need a common agreement about where the expert community stands on this issue, as well as about how to deal fairly with views which are dissimilar or in opposition to our own. Without that, this article certainly won't improve, and will most likely continue to worsen. --Aryaman (talk) 00:54, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

"This page is where edits to the article are discussed." Yet, the subject of your first comment in this thread is essentially what you've assumed to be true regarding the intent of other editors. "Varoon Arya has indeed been personally questioning the academic credentials of those who have criticized either Lynn or Rushton." Entirely false, as you should know if you had bothered to read what I've written. Or maybe you did read it, but don't care much for representing it accurately. Frankly, I don't care to find out which it is anymore. Like I said, if you want clarification of this sort, take it to my talk page. I'll be happy to answer any such questions there. --Aryaman (talk) 13:53, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

(unindent) Varoon Arya: since you have written that you are neutral and unbiased and since this article seems to be one of your favourites on WP, could you please take a few days to read Richard Nisbett's book and prepare a summary for this article? That should be quite easy since, according to your own statements, you don't have any particular allegiance with the hereditarian stance. Many thanks, Mathsci (talk) 02:08, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

That volume is currently in order at my library, so I can't say I'll be able to read it as soon as you'd like. But sure, I'll check it out when it arrives. In the meantime, why don't you read Miele's 2002 interview with Jensen (Intelligence, Race, and Genetics)? It is a fairly accessible presentation of Jensen's views which covers both the scientific and the social components of so-called "Jensenism". --Aryaman (talk) 02:28, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Outstanding Performers: Created, Not Born?

http://www.psychol.ucl.ac.uk/david.shanks/shanks_expertise.html This is an interesting article on multiple subjects: chorionicity as a better determiniant of intellect than concordance studies among twins, it explores the ten thousand hour rule and its correlation with talent and the nurture of ability (through the study of adopted children from low to high SES families). The general thesis of this argument is that nurture within and outside the womb are the major determinants of ability, adoptive changes in environment constituting 11 of 16points of IQ difference between low and high SES parents and the majority of the remaining 5 points being constituted by the relationships between chorionicity and intellect. [I would suspect that the remaining impacts include x factors in school life, environment etc. as well as possible genetic differences between low SES and high SES (though I have some doubts about genetic differences in intellect between those of low and high SES)]

oh, I'm new to editing, so forgive me if I made mistakes. —Preceding unsigned comment added by MarkRunyan (talk • contribs) 17:19, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Mediation

Just so everybody following this page is aware, I've initiated a MEDCAB request for this article, here.--Ramdrake (talk) 16:30, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Ramdrake, you and T34CH have misrepresented several aspects of this dispute in your MEDCAB request. The FTN thread was about whether the entire topic of Race and intelligence is "fringe", not about any specific hypothesis about this, as can be seen from the question that was originally asked there as well as the answers to it. Now let's take a look at this sentence:

"Some editors want more weight to the environmental hypothesis and the hereditarian hypothesis clearly labeled as that of a small minority (with due weight) while some other editors would like an article presenting both hypotheses as pretty much equivalent."

As far as I know, none of us have a problem with representing the hereditarian hypothesis as a minority viewpoint. My problem is that at the moment, certain information (such as the evidence cited by proponents of the hereditarian view) is excluded from the article entirely, and you've said that you wish for the article to remain in its current state in this regard. Remaining in its current state means presenting the hereditarian perspective as necessarily false, and excluding most of the relevant information about it. The current dispute here is over whether representing a minority viewpoint in this manner is appropriate.

Unless you're intending to deliberately skew the results of the mediation request by misrepresenting this dispute, the mediators need to be made aware of this. --Captain Occam (talk) 23:59, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

While the FTN question was indeed whether the entire topic was fringe, the consensus was emerged was that the hereditarian position was in fact fringe. Also, you claim to want to portray the hereditarian position as a minority one, but your thrust on this talk page comes across as wanting to portray the hereditarian position as roughly of equal validity to the environmental position, which it isn't.--Ramdrake (talk) 00:16, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

1: I see two editors who agree with you there: Itsmejudith and Sizzle Flambé, while Dab, Varoon Arya and DistributeJustice didn’t, and most the arguments from the latter three weren’t addressed. If you consider this a consensus, then my own proposed changes to this article (which are supported by four currently active editors, and opposed by three, also without most of our arguments being addressed) are certainly supported by consensus. Unless you’re trying to use two standards of consensus depending on whether you agree with something, you can’t have this both ways. Which is it?

2: This is what you consistently claim about my motives, but in each case the change I’m pressing for doesn’t remotely support what you’re claiming. The most recent example of this was when you claimed I wanted to give “equal footing” to Rushton’s theory about brain size, because I was wanting to mention his theory in a single sentence followed by a paragraph debunking it. You shouldn’t be making assumptions about my motives to begin with, but it’s even worse when this sort of thing is the only thing you can find to support your accusations. --Captain Occam (talk) 00:55, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

One of the problems which has plagued this article for a long time is the split between the "environmentalist" and "hereditarian" camps. 100% hereditarianism is, indeed, a "fringe" position (held by only 1% of the expert community in the Snyderman and Rothman study). But that's not the position held by so-called "hereditarians" such as Jensen and Rushton. They argue for a roughly 50/50 split in the contributing factors to the IQ differences between groups, with Jensen granting that roughly 7 points of the 15 point Black/White difference is very likely due to environmental factors. As should be obvious, this is not "hereditarianism", though it is often called as such by those opponents who wish to polarize the debate. According to the only study conducted on this, ca. 45% of the expert community hold something other than the 100% hereditarian or 100% environmentalist positions, which puts them a lot closer to Jensen and Rushton (as unpopular as that may be) than it does to the 15% who hold the environmentalist position. DJ's recent edits have done a great deal to alleviate part of this problem, as it has removed the false dichotomy. I hope future edits help to clarify this aspect instead of confusing it. --Aryaman (talk) 01:07, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Please note that I have taken the case as its mediator. Please signify your acceptance to proceed to mediation on my talk page AND on the case page. Cheers! Reubzz (talk) 14:36, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Attempt to explain the hereditarian perspective

I've just tried to rewrite the article's section on heritability, explaining some of the arguments that Jensen uses in favor of this view. Ramdrake reverted my edit per WP:BRD, asking that I take this to the talk page.

In the thread about my proposal to re-use material from 2006, I made the point that in its current state the article does not explain anywhere what arguments are used by proponents of the hereditarian perspective in favor of this theory. I made this point several times, several other editors agreed that it was a problem, and none of the editors who disagreed with my proposal in general raised any problem with this particular aspect of it. Since I'm not making this section of the article significantly longer, WP:UNDUE isn't an issue here, and the fact that the article completely fails to describe the viewpoint of one of the two sides of this debate is a rather glaring omission.

Because several other editors have expressed agreement with me about this, and no editors have expressed disagreement with it (although they have disagreed with other aspects of my proposal), I consider this edit to be supported by consensus. Ramdrake, if you wish to keep this information out of the article, you'll need to justify the idea that the evidence presented in favor of the hereditarian view needs to be omitted entirely. --Captain Occam (talk) 03:06, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

I reverted because your edit made a mess of the side-by-side view which made it impossible to compare the revisions, thereby making it impossible to judge what had been added, changed or removed. If you'd like to reintroduce, please try to keep it to a single paragraph and don't jumble the order of the other paragraphs needlessly.--Ramdrake (talk) 03:11, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

That isn't a good reason for reverting. This section of the article in its current state is a jumbled mess, which jumps back and forth between topics within the same paragraph, and around one and a half paragraphs in it are completely unsourced. Someone will definitely need to reorganize this section, and because of the nature of its current problems, reorganizing it will have to involve more than just adding one paragraph at a time. If you insist on reverting any edit that isn't easy to compare to this section's previous version, it will be impossible to ever improve this section. --Captain Occam (talk) 03:20, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

How about making your edits so that they can be followed in the side-by-side view? Like first adding your paragraph, then collating whatever paragrphs you wish to collate, then rephrasing what you feel needs to be rephrased, etc? Over the last few weeks, DJ, T34CH and myself at least have used this strategy to make our edits easier to follow. Why do you feel you can't follow this simple process?--Ramdrake (talk) 03:25, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Because this inherently isn't that sort of edit. Part of what I'm doing is breaking down the existing paragraphs, and reorganizing the sentences in them so that each paragraph pertains to a certain topic, rather than the haphazard manner in which this section is currently organized. There's no way to go about this change in the manner you're asking me to.

We really shouldn't be needing to discuss this. As I said before, there's no Wikipedia policy that gives difficulty of comparison to previous versions as a valid reason to reject someone's edit to an article. Other users can't be expected to structure their editing methods for your personal convenience, particularly when they're trying to fix a problem with the article for which doing what you're requesting is probably impossible. --Captain Occam (talk) 03:36, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, we need to discuss it, and you need to get consensus, especially if your edits cannot be followed on a step-by-step basis. That's basic collegial editing.--Ramdrake (talk) 03:41, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

As I said before, this edit has already been discussed as part of my earlier proposal. Several users agreed with me that it's a problem that the article doesn't include this information, and although you and T34CH had problems with other aspects of my proposal (such as describing the brain size debate), none of you disputed this particular aspect of it.

If you want to discuss the content of my edit here, then you're welcome to do so. But for the moment at least, it's supported by consensus, and difficulty of comparison to previous versions isn't a valid reason to reject it. --Captain Occam (talk) 03:47, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

I would organize this differently, but it would take some time to work that out. --DJ (talk) 04:34, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

You're welcome to change how this content is organized, as long as you don't remove any of it. (You've done a pretty good job with this so far, so I trust your judgment as far as organization is concerned.)

Something else that will need to be fixed at some point is that since this section involves some content from the 2006 version of the article, several of its references still point to the Race and intelligence: references article, which no longer exists. At some point, someone will need to copy the citations from the past versions of that article into this one. I was intending to do this myself fairly soon, but you can work on it also if you like. --Captain Occam (talk) 05:07, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

"Too many changes, please discuss on talk page" is what most similar reverts have for an edit summary. Please break it down or gagther consensus on talk page. Don't assume you have such consensus because nobody objected the first time; I don't remember anybody approving overtly either... --Ramdrake (talk) 05:10, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

In addition to me, four users here said they approved of reverting the whole article, and if not reverting, using as much material from 2006 as possible. We didn’t do that for most of the 2006 content because several pieces of it were too contentious, such as the summary of the brain size debate. But this particular piece of content from the 2006 version, which I'd mentioned in my original proposal, was never contentious. When five users have stated that they approved of either reverting the whole article to an earlier version or adding as much material from it as possible, and no problems are ever raised with certain aspects of that content, it can’t very well be argued that adding one such non-contentious piece of content isn’t an application of this consensus.

In your request at the mediation cabal, you’ve claimed that you only want to depict the hereditarian hypothesis as a minority view rather than excluding it entirely, but excluding the arguments that exist for this viewpoint is what you’re trying to do by repeatedly removing this information. You’re also going against the consensus that exists for this (which I just described), and you’re very close to violating 3RR. You’ve reverted three edits to this article within the space three hours; one from DJ and two from me. I recommend that you not continue with this, as you’re pretty clearly in the wrong here. --Captain Occam (talk) 05:35, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Ramdrake: I would agree that these are very good changes and that you should allow them to go in. It may be, once the mediation process is complete, that these additions are too much (in terms of words added). If so, we can trim them then. For now, you should stop reverting them. David.Kane (talk) 13:33, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

(Outdent)Occam often puts consensus into other peoples mouths. I disagree with the changes made by Occam. I believe that the strongly hereditarian view is a minority perspective that at present is largely restricted to the pioneer fund crew. Unless or until the situation changes, the hereditarian hypothesis should be treated as a minority viewpoint, and should not be given WP:UNDUE weight here. However, there is an article The g Factor by Arthur Jensen, which at present is a one-line stub. Since the g-Factor has been Occam's main source for the hereditarian hypothesis, information can be included in that article, and wikilinked from this article.

Another issue, I believe the hereditarian and genetic hypothesis are related but not necessarily equivalent. The strongly hereditarian hypothesis would posit that the IQ of an individual would be the exact average of the individual's parents with no deviation. The strictly genetic hypothesis argues that genes alone contribute to intelligence, but an individual's IQ can still deviate significantly from the average of his/her parents IQ. This is because a child may harbor new mutations, and because of recombination, the order or combination of a child's genes may differ significantly from his/her parents. The differential interaction of genes, or epistasis could mean that a child's phenotype could deviate significantly from his/her parents despite having the exact same genes as the parents. In short the contribution of genes to intelligence may be 100%, but intelligence could be far less than 100% heritable. A quote about William Shockley and the Genius Sperm Bank

A story was recounted of Nobel Laureate William Shockley (he who co-invented the transistor). Shockley known for outrageous antics allegedly wanted to start a sperm bank of Nobel Prize winners, offering would-be clients prodigy progeny. As he went from fellow Nobel colleague to colleague, one of them said, “Shockley, you’ve got it all wrong. I’m a Nobel Prize winner and both my sons play guitar. What you want is the poor illiterate immigrant tailors like my parents were!”

Wapondaponda (talk) 14:59, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

The mid-parent:child correlation is the narrow-sense heritability. No one thinks that's 100% -- not an issue. --DJ (talk) 18:44, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

My point was, and still is, regarding Occam's edit, that it should have been broken down into steps. Right now, it's about imposssible looking at it to see what has been added, what has been moved around, and what remains the same.--Ramdrake (talk) 20:38, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Can't you simply read Occam's new version and evaluate it on its own merits? This is the first time I've ever heard someone say that they can't determine the quality of an edit because it doesn't compare well in the side-by-side view with the previous version. --Aryaman (talk) 23:16, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Mediation Cabal Case

Hello Editors! This is to inform you that the mediation case involving this article is now open. All parties who have been listed there will be individually contacted to confirm their participation in the case. All parties must agree to medation before it can move forward. If you are a party that feels you are involved but were not listed to the dispute on the case page linked above, please contact me on my talk page.

I am the mediator who has taken the case, and I assure you I will do everything in my power to resolve this ASAP. Cheers! Reubzz (talk) 14:21, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Editors, the case is now OPEN -- please post your Opening Statements. Reubzz (talk) 20:48, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

- Clarification: you do mean for us to post them on the mediation page rather than here, correct (just so everyone is clear)?--Ramdrake (talk) 20:51, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes. Please post them on the mediation case talk page. This will centralize all discussion.

Also, I ask that all active editors of this page consider a halting of all major edits (grammatical, reverting vandalism, is excluded of course) to allow the process of mediation to go forward smoothly. Reubzz (talk) 20:53, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Socio-economic factors

I edited a piece of this section where it states "Second, excluding extreme conditions, nutritional and biological factors that may vary with SES, SES has little or no effect on IQ" to "Second, excluding extreme conditions, nutritional and biological factors that may vary with SES, SES has little effect on IQ." This is because the report discussed never varified the claim that it had no effect on IQ. If you happened to notice a place where it did, please discuss it. MarkRunyan (talk) 18:20, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Fixed it --DJ (talk) 18:42, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Appendix to 2009 book of Richard Nisbett

Richard Nisbett is one of the most distinguished academic psychologists to have contributed to the R&I debate. (He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences.) His book "Intelligence and How to Get It", which has been received with great acclaim, has an appendix which provides a detailed and lengthy criticism of the 2005 article of Rushton and Jensen that defends the hereditarian viewpoint of The Bell Curve. A section in the article should be devoted to a summary of the points made in this appendix. Rushton and Jensen have recently issued a rebuttal, made available as a working paper on the website White America here. This website, run by Ian Jobling (according to WP an American racialist writer), seems to have links with white supremacist organisations; it's also not quite clear why Rushton and Jensen have allowed their working paper to be posted there. However, despite these problems, it might be possible that their provisional rebuttal could be reported on in the namespace article. Mathsci (talk) 22:35, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

The working paper you refer to is widely available on the internet (for example, from the University of Western Ontario), and anyone can upload it to his or her website. How long did you have to dig before you came up with the Ian Jobling link? --Aryaman (talk) 23:00, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

I read Nisbett's book when it first came out and have incorporated pieces of his work in parts of the article -- usually citing others who earlier summarized the work. I wouldn't recommend having a section specifically about his views, although that's not out of the question if there were comparable sections for other scholars' views -- a major refactoring. (Note that his expertise is in personality not IQ, but he's certainly very distinguished.) On the topic of within group differences in IQ, he's outside of the mainstream. On group differences, he has a stronger grounding in his criticisms, but does forget to mention several points that severely weaken many of his claims to having positive evidence for an environmental cause. (I would equally say that Rushton and Jensen forget to mention several points that severely weaken many of their claims to having positive evidence for a genetic cause.) --DJ (talk) 23:08, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Requests from the Mediator

In order to achieve a resolution in the dispute surrounding this article, and to find it through a good-faith effort of all parties, I must ask that the following be done to help this process:

1) No edits concerning the disputed material be done until the process is completed (per signed 'Groundrules' on case page)

2) End of all discussion on this page of dispute. Why? If the conflict is still being heatly debated on this talk page (which is out of my control), the editors involved will not be able to cool down and listen to reason. This is not a requirement, but it will make the situation easier to resolve. Would you rather the process fail because of intense arguing behind the scenes, or a series of guidelines that make this article stable and hopefully eligible for Good Article status in the future as it has been nominated in the past?

Reubzz (talk) 04:29, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Intervention

I note the tags at the top. After reading the relevant comments here (and wouldn't it help if issues tags could link directly to specific discussion sections?), does anyone mind if I just jump in take a shot at fixing things? I am not on Medcom anymore (retired), but I understand the process. -Stevertigo (w | t | e) 15:04, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

A "fresh" pair of eyes is always welcome in my opinion. As I see it, the template at the top is directed at those editors involved in the mediation process. I don't think it was intended to scare off any other well-intending editors (maybe I'm wrong, though; it might be best to contact the mediator for clarification first). I'm assuming in good faith that you want to improve the article, and that your approach to editing this article has changed significantly since 2003. As long as that's the case, I don't see any harm in taking a stab at it. --Aryaman

(talk) 15:33, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Stevertigo, I would strongly recommend that you clear your suggestion with Reubzz first, as my understanding of the warning above (with due respect owed to Varoon Arya) is that the warning against editing the article during mediation is valid for the entire Wikipedia community. So, I think it's better to clarify this point first. I of course have no objections if the mediator doesn't either.--Ramdrake (talk) 17:00, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

The notice on the top of the page applies to the general community. Any proposed changes may be discussed here or on the mediation case page. This is because the dispute needs to be fully resolved otherwise a firery edit conflict could emerg or a debate could explode. Until consensus is reached by the main editors of the article, any change will irk some editor the wrong way. Cheers! --Reubzz (talk) 19:17, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Fair enough. I will put some energy here then. People, how difficult would be to move the discussion toward generating a prioritized or weighted list of specific proposed changes? Regards, -Stevertigo (w | t | e) 23:37, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Stevertigo, I don't mean to be rude, but there are already three MEDCAB mediators working on this mediation. I'm rather of the idea we don't need another one for now.--Ramdrake (talk) 23:40, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

The opening sentence

I'm not involved here, but I happened on this article and noticed that the opening sentence is a bit of a mess: The race and intelligence debate is a controversial issue, occurring mostly in the United States, and where considerations on both the nature of race and the meaning and measurement of intelligence have the potential to pre-empt the entire debate, according to many scholars. The debate isn't an issue; the debate is about the issue, the inclusion of "where" right after United States makes it sound like it refers to the states. I won't go and be bold at the moment (due to the current status of this article), but I'd recommend: The relationship between race and intelligence is a matter of heated debate, primarly in the United States. Many scholars feel that changing interpretations both of the nature of race and of the meaning and measurement of intelligence have the potential to pre-empt the entire debate. (And that's assuming that you want to keep the United States portion, with its content flag. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 03:12, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

socioeconomic factors

How do wealthy black adults compare to poor white adults? There are studies on black and white children regarding wealth but I haven't seen one on adults. It would be nice if someone could find one. YVNP (talk) 17:21, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

That is irrelevant to the question of race and intelligence. Suppose rich blacks are smarter than poor whites (which I imagine they are). So what? It implies only that smart people make more money. That's not what this article is about.--TechnoFaye Kane 17:43, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't know of any particularly recent studies on this, but one interesting finding (as well as one of the factors which makes comparison difficult) is that, even when corrected for income, there are large differences between Whites and Blacks in terms of total wealth. Apparently, the average Black family invests less of its income into appreciating commodities, and thus fail to prosper in terms of net worth. Whether this should be taken into consideration in factoring SES in adults, however, is not clear. I'll see if I can find the sources on that. --Aryaman (talk) 17:38, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

To understand the possible causal relationship between race and intellect proposed by the Hereditarian (50/50, 40/60) view is propaedeutic to the recognition of the multiple causes of intelligence, it is thus necessary that socio-economic factors are recognized so as to develop a more perfect understand of the issue in a broader context.--MarkRunyan (talk) 20:47, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Note on Mediation

Please note the mediation page has been protected for the time being. This time will allow me to evaulate the issues at hand and render an agenda of items to discuss. This should last no longer than 2-3 days. Please use this as a time to cool off yourselves. That means, I'm giving a doctor's recommendation (hehe) of staying away from this article page (barring extreme circumstances) and taking a dose of reading a book (why not?) one time a day. Cheers and Happy Weekend! Reubzz (talk) 00:11, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

New Intro?

I have copied and pasted DJ's version of the intro here for discussion:

Race and intelligence is a controversial and even taboo topic, which has received considerable attention in the United States and elsewhere. At the heart of the issue is the observation that the members of racial and ethnic groups tend to cluster around different averages on tests of cognitive ability. Some scholars regard the topic as scientifically meaningless based on a consideration of the meanings and significance of race and intelligence.[1] Some likewise question whether it is possible to scientifically address the question in a way that is ethical.[2] Others reject both of these positions, arguing that the social implications are too important to forego research.[3]

It is generally agreed that there are significant differences in the average test scores of different population groups (with particular focus on self-identified US Blacks and Whites).[4] The distribution of test scores for each group are largely overlapping, but groups differ in where individuals tend to cluster along the test score continuum. For this reason, racial or ethnic identity does little to predict the IQ of any particular individual. Statistics for group differences, however, are well established in the United States, with black Americans performing poorly on average compared to whites, Americans of Chinese, Japanese and Jewish ancestry performing better on average than gentile whites, and Latino Americans performing intermediately to blacks and whites. It is also agreed that these test score differences are not simply a reflection of biased tests, and thus they they have important social implications, especially in the areas of academic and social achievement.[4] Yet the existence and importance of test score differences says nothing about their causes.

Although research and debate on race and intelligence encompasses a variety of topics, the nature versus nurture question attracts the most public attention. Some scholars argue that it is impossible for genetic differences to cause test score difference between racial and ethnic groups,[1] but others reject this position, arguing that evidence is needed to decide the question.[5] Public statements from several groups of psychologists indicate that no definitive answer exists on what causes test score differences between groups.[4][6] Numerous interpretations have been proposed, but none are generally considered to be well-supported by research. While genetic factors are agreed to contribute to IQ differences among people of the same race, it is incorrect to conclude in the absence of other evidence that genetic factors cause differences between groups. Many psychologists believe that environmental factors could contribute have been suggested as explanations, such as self-discipline and a culture that emphasizes engagement with learning[7][8], but no specific environmental factor has been identified as a definitive cause.[4] These psychologists also consider the available evidence for a genetic contribution to be inconclusive. Nonetheless, intense debate continues on that topic.

Some criticisms: it tends to make a long enumeration of racial/ethnic groups when the heart of the matter is the B-W IQ gap; while there is consensus that the results are due to simple form of bias in the content or the administration of the test, it doesn't rule out other forms of bias. Finally, it lists the different alternative hypotheses as seeming to have equal footing, which they don't. Lastly, there's a jumbled sentence in the last paragraph I'm having a hard time making sense of: Many psychologists believe that environmental factors could contribute have been suggested as explanations, such as self-discipline and a culture that emphasizes engagement with learning[7][8], but no specific environmental factor has been identified as a definitive cause.--Ramdrake (talk) 02:11, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, that should have read: Many psychologists believe that environmental factors could contribute, and many factors have been suggested as explanations, such as self-discipline and a culture that emphasizes engagement with learning[7][8], but no specific environmental factor has been identified as a definitive cause. I have a couple thoughts in reply, but I'd be curious to hear from everyone so we can get a full range of views to consider. (But I will quote Neisser et al for clarity on test bias: "The differential between the mean intelligence test scores of Blacks and Whites (about one standard deviation, although it may be diminishing) does not result from any obvious biases in test construction and administration, nor does it simply reflect differences in socio-economic status.") --DJ (talk) 04:32, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

DJ, I think your version is definitely an improvement over the current one. It’s better-organized, and more clearly supported by the cited material. I can only think of one suggestion about it, which is this sentence:

“While genetic factors are agreed to contribute to IQ differences among people of the same race, it is incorrect to conclude in the absence of other evidence that genetic factors cause differences between groups.”

I would be very careful stating something like this as fact, because I think some proponents of the hereditarian viewpoint disagree with this assertion. One of the points that Arthur Jensen makes in The g Factor is that it isn’t good science to attribute the IQ difference to an unknown environmental factor that varies between races but not within races, when no such environmental factor has yet been identified, and that in the absence of evidence for such a factor which affects between-group heritability but not within-group heritability, the “default hypothesis” needs to be that the environmental influences on IQ are similar both within and between groups. (Which means the degree of heritability both within groups and between groups would be similar also.) That’s pretty close to the opposite of what the sentence I quoted says. I’m not looking to debate here about which perspective is correct, but I don’t think it’s consistent with NPOV policy for the article to state outright that Jensen’s opinion about this is wrong.

Also, at the very least, if you’re going to claim something like this you need to provide a source for it. --Captain Occam (talk) 04:54, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

I agree that DJ's version is a big step in the right direction. As for the statement Occam refers to above: I have also wondered for several days now whether Jensen's "Default Hypothesis" needs to be mentioned explicitly, as statements such as the one above are really in response to that particular hypothesis. In essence, this hypothesis states that those factors which are the underlying causes of variation within groups are the same factors which underlie variation between groups. It is the hypothesis which - if we were discussing anything other than race - most scientists would naturally assume to be true, which is why Jensen calls it the "default" hypothesis. In short, if we were to ignore race, we would expect people to vary for the same reasons and in roughly the same proportions. The amazing thing - to me, at least - is that Jensen's critics almost always overlook the fact that he starts from the position dictated by the equality thesis, i.e. that people of different races are fundamentally equal. In other words: If people of different races are fundamentally the same, and if we can adequately control for environmental factors (such as SES), then it is natural to assume that variation between all people, regardless of race, is for the same reason. That's the Default Hypothesis in a nutshell, and that is what is being referred to (though indirectly) in the Mainstream article. I recently summarized this as follows:

Regarding the differences in average IQ between racial or ethnic groups, the statement admits that there is no definitive answer. It warns against assuming that the reasons for differences between individuals of the same racial or ethnic group also account for the differences between racial or ethnic groups. According to the report, most experts view environmental factors as important contributors to the differences between racial or ethnic groups, though they do not rule out the possibility that there could also be genetic causes. When controlled for socioeconomic status, racial differences in IQ can be diminished, but do not disappear as would be expected if the causes were purely environmental.

As should be clear to anyone who has read both, this is essentially the same thing as what the APA report is saying. I think the discussion needs to put this hypothesis up front, because this is what people are bound to assume, and this is what a great deal of the subsequent literature is either supporting or refuting. In other words, a large portion of the entire discussion derives from the examination of the assumptions inherent in the Default Hypothesis. --Aryaman (talk) 17:05, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

You're correct that the Mainstream article is the source of that sentence. We should discuss organization of the "hypotheses" section at some point. --DJ (talk) 18:47, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

(reset indent)For the record, with the missing half sentence back in, the intro doesn't look bad. However, I'll let the others chime in and abide by consensus.--Ramdrake (talk) 20:36, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Opening sentence of the recommendation is awkward; Race and intelligence is not a topic, it's two topics. The relationship between race and intelligence" is a topic. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 04:06, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

For what it's worth, here's the version I worked out sometime back in October.

The potential correlation between race and intelligence is the subject of oftentimes controversial research and ongoing debate. Intelligence quotient (IQ) tests regularly demonstrate statistically significant differences in the average scores of various racial and ethnic groups, though no consensus exists regarding the meaning and/or relevance of these differences, and numerous interpretations have been proposed to clarify them. At the heart of the debate is the relative degree to which the development of intelligence is affected by genetic factors on the one hand and environmental factors on the other. Important related questions include whether intelligence can be accurately described by a single number, and whether the nature of intelligence is the same across cultures.

This was changed - on the same day - to more or less what we have now. --Aryaman (talk) 04:37, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Do any of the users who’ve recently become involved in this article have an opinion about this proposed edit to the lead section? So far, everyone who’s expressed an opinion about this edit appears to either approve of it or not have a problem with it, so I’d like this discussion to be resolved before it’s pushed back into the page archives, which will probably happen fairly soon. --Captain Occam (talk) 17:49, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Please do NOT start this discussion here. The text of the intro is extremely related to the current mediation. Any discussion of the issues related to mediation have the possibility of disrupting the mediation process. (remember? we went there because we were going in circles here...) Any editors who would like to give their thoughts on the issues can read through the mediation and leave their comments with Reubuzz (either as "outside opinions", or for those with significant history with this article, using some other descriptor). T34CH (talk) 18:03, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Reubzz isn’t doing anything now, and it’s already past the deadline of when he said he would re-open the mediation case. What you’re suggesting is unreasonable, in my opinion. It’s one thing to ask people to avoid discussing topics on the article talk page while a mediation case is currently underway, but this can’t be kept up indefinitely while the mediation case is halted for an indeterminate amount of time. This could go on for weeks.

Let’s see what consensus determines about whether this can be determined here and now. I’m willing to bet that most of the new users who’ve become involved in the article recently will agree with me. --Captain Occam (talk) 18:13, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

If you can't wait until after the holiday (which I suggest you do because it will make the next week less stressful for you), then you can discuss on User talk pages how you think mediation has gone so far. Start with: What common ground have you noticed so far? This is an area that has been discussed for centuries, so I'm sure you can wait a few days. This area should be for changes to the article not included in the mediation. T34CH (talk) 02:29, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

I don’t see why that’s necessary for this particular edit. As far as I can tell, users’ approval of it was common ground even before the mediation. In addition to DJ who originally made this edit, VA and I have both said we mostly approve of it, and Ramdrake has said that he doesn’t have a problem with it. The only reason I haven’t added it to the article already is because I want to wait a little while longer to see if anyone else has a problem with this edit, although this discussion has already been here for over a week without anyone expressing a serious one.

Also, user talk pages aren’t the appropriate place for building consensus to edit an article. Even if I were to obtain a consensus among other users on their talk pages, I’d still need to bring it up here also. --Captain Occam (talk) 03:30, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Please do wait until the mediation restarts.--Ramdrake (talk) 03:33, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

How long do you think we need to wait? Reubzz told us that he’d restart the mediation in “no longer than 2-3 days”, and it’s now been four.

Suppose he’s decided to give up on mediating this article. I hope you wouldn’t expect everyone to avoid making substantial changes to the article for months or a year after this, because we’re all still waiting for Reubzz to reopen the mediation case. At some point, we’ll need to decide that it’s not reasonable to wait any longer, and that we should resume trying to improve the article without him. I’ve been ready to do that ever since his 2-3 days deadline went past, but if you think it hasn’t been enough time yet, how much more time do you think is necessary? --Captain Occam (talk) 04:38, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm quite sure he'll contact us soon. In any case, this is US Thanksgiving week, which is bound to slow down things a bit. Let's not fret because he's a day late. And even if he were to drop out of the mediation, there are two more mediators willing and able to pick it up.--Ramdrake (talk) 05:06, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

I am sure mediation will resume when this guy has had the time to read over archives and mull over our many ideas. Look, we are many, we have all written long statements and proposals for mediation and we all have different views. it is going to take some time for this guy to digest it all, and hopefully he will NOT be working on it during Thanksgiving! Part of the reason for asking people not to edit ws to provide for a cool-down period. The idea is that all of us - and the article would benefit if we took a break from the whole business, relaxed, focused on other things, and are able to come back to it with some distance from our previous emotions, more relaxed, and hopefully with a new perspective. This is a very valuable suggestion. But the point is not a "ban against editing" it is a question, can we let three or four days go by without thinking about this article this conflict? That is the point of a cool-down period. The suggestion is completely wasted if someone does not edit the article but 'does spend three or four days obsessively stewing over the conflict. But why would this happen? Doesn't any normal person have lots of other things to occupy their minds with, other than this article, for a few days, even a week, even two weeks? What is the big deal? i have so many other things to do I am quite content cooling down for a week! Slrubenstein | Talk 13:29, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

As Ramdrake can attest from some of his prior interactions with me, patience is not one of my strong points when it comes to Wikipeda articles. There are a few reasons for this, but the biggest one is that articles here are probably being used as a reference every day by people all over the world. This is particularly the case for articles about controversial subjects that are frequently covered in the popular media, and race and intelligence is definitely an example of that. I imagine that every day we have to go without making significant improvements to the article is a day that people will be looking at it to try and learn more about this topic, and coming away from the article more confused than they were before they’d looked at it.

In any case, I’ll agree to wait until Monday to hear back from Reubzz. By that point both Thanksgiving and Thanksgiving weekend will be over, and it will have been ten days since he told us to wait for him to read everyone’s comments, which is more than three times the maximum amount of time he said he would need. I hope the rest of you would agree it shouldn’t be necessary to wait longer than that. --Captain Occam (talk) 09:48, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

CTT and IRT

On a completely different topic -- I started looking through everyone's comments and then going to the literature to see if I've missed anything. Several dozen papers later I'm fairly familiar with the dispute between criterion-related validity and classical test theory on one hand and measurement invariance and item response theory on the other hand. It seems that for some questions, you can get slightly different answer depending on which theory you apply. I'm not sure the difference is enough to warrant pointing out in the article which theory is being applied in every case, but it's worth keeping in mind. --DJ (talk) 04:52, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Comments on editing, mediation, and page protection

The article race and intelligence is a mess. There's no note on the page itself that mediation is in progress. From the talk page, there is no link to the mediation page (the old link was autoarchived). The page is not protected. It is apparently open for editing, which it desperately needs. Despite that, there seem to be a couple of people acting as if this page is protected by Mediation) (example Mathsci revert). This doesn't make sense, it's misleading, and it violates the fundamental principles of Wikipedia, where pages are open for editing. A notice at the top does warn against major changes, but minor changes and improvements (my edit was simply adding a regularly cited source and a comment from Nisbett) should be fine. If minor improvements are not OK, then the page needs to be protected. However, I think this position (that protection is necessary) would need be supported by a reasonable portion of the group - and you can count me as one vote against.

On a related note, I'm not impressed by the mediation process I read through at Wikipedia:Mediation_Cabal/Cases/2009-11-12/Race_and_Intelligence. There's a lot of people waxing at long length on the topic. There needs to be edits, which are comprised of sentences with references at the end. Proposed paragraphs can be written in the talk page if they're too big and controversial for the article page(they should not be written off the record in a mediation page). These can then be critically evaluated and subjected to straw polls. In that page there seems to be alot of energy being spent on Wikipedian opinions; what matters are the opinions expressed in reliable sources. II | (t - c) 02:04, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

The problem is that the mediator has requested that nobody edit either this article or its discussion page. If we don’t obey that, then that’ll mean we’re failing to comply with the mediator. Since most of us care about the mediation being successful, we’ve been following that request.

I’m breaking this rule right now by replying to you, but that’s because I agree with you that this is getting kind of unreasonable. It would be one thing if the mediation discussion were currently underway, but the mediator halted the mediation process four days ago, and it’s not clear how long it’s going to be before they reopen it. I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect the entire Wikipedia community to avoid editing the article or its discussion page indefinitely because of a mediation case that isn’t currently in progress. --Captain Occam (talk) 07:29, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Occam, I don't think there's a ban on us talking. The point was to stop us from discussing here what we went there to discuss.

ImpInf, as you can see this talk page got blasted with arguments that just went in circles the past few months. We all decided it would be better to try to mediate our way out of the mess. What we're working on is what direction to take the development of this article, and an attempt to reach consensus on wp:UNDUE issues. If you'd like to jump in once the discussion starts up again, drop a note to Reubuzz (though I'm sure you'll be welcomed). I wouldn't feel shy making non-controversial edits until there's a consensus that says every one should stop. Just know that there are some of us asking for a fairly different article so superficial changes might be short lived. T34CH (talk) 08:31, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Part of the reason for asking people not to edit ws to provide for a cool-down period. The idea is that all of us - and the article would benefit if we took a break from the whole business, relaxed, focused on other things, and are able to come back to it with some distance from our previous emotions, more relaxed, and hopefully with a new perspective. This is a very valuable suggestion. But the point is not a "ban against editing" it is a question, can we let three or four days go by without thinking about this article this conflict? That is the point of a cool-down period. The suggestion is completely wasted if someone does not edit the article but 'does spend three or four days obsessively stewing over the conflict. But why would this happen? Doesn't any normal person have lots of other things to occupy their minds with, other than this article, for a few days, even a week, even two weeks? What is the big deal? i have so many other things to do I am quite content cooling down for a week! Slrubenstein | Talk 13:29, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't mean this like it sounds (disrespectful) and I try hard to be polite, but I don't know how else to phrase it:

> Doesn't any normal person have lots of other things to occupy their minds with?

You know, that's really none of your business. I care about a particular Wikipedia article. If that makes you think I'm not "normal", I couldn't possibly care less. --TechnoFaye Kane 12:37, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Why would I consider it disrespectful if you do not care what I think of you? Since you took the time to bring it up: I do not. Slrubenstein | Talk 18:09, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Major omission

A key omission that I note, just coming to the page, is a discussion of what exactly IQ measures? Despite a very brief mention of these issues in an initial paragraph, the assumption seems to be accepted early on that IQ tests measure "intelligence", whatever that is, and the article proceeds from there to assume that IQ test results and "intelligence" are interchangeable. There needs to be a far more detailed early section reflecting the viewpoints that a) Intelligence has not been defined or isolated as a single concept, and b) that IQ tests actually measure nothing more significant than the skill (learned or otherwise) of solving the puzzles set by IQ test setters. Both of these issues are kley to the discussion, yet are woefully under-represented at the moment. Xandar 04:04, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, a discussion of what IQ measures is best done at the IQ article, no? I think the mediation discussion will come to this. You should join if interested. --DJ (talk) 04:36, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

I agree that this article shouldn't rehash the IQ-vs.-intelligence debate completely, but it should restate what is discussed in the relevant literature. Perhaps we should make sure that passages referring to IQ not use the word intelligence. Also, if you're not able to join the mediation, you may do as I suggested above and offer an "uninvolved editor's" perspective either at Reubuzz's talk page or the mediation page once it reopens. T34CH (talk) 04:50, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

I do think, since the article is headlined "Race and Intelligence", but goes on consistently about IQ, that we need a strong passage defining/separating the terms and what each consists of, and indeed a lot more very tightly focussed terminology, as suggested. At the moment the article tends to assume the direct correllation of intelligence and IQ score in a way that makes the assumption read like a firmly established fact. On the mediation, I haven't really been involved, so don't think I can really be a full participant, but might be able to give an "uninvolved" viewpoint. Xandar 15:34, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

I'd suggest that the article just give a brief summary of the issues of IQ measurement vs intelligence, and then an account of the consequences thereof on the "race and intelligence" issue (mostly pre-emptive, AFAIK).--Ramdrake (talk) 19:27, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

I concur with the points Xandar raises clearly and concisely. As written, this article presumes a correlation between whatever IQ measures and intelligence and builds on that contested basis. Further, it is not made clear that the contention that there is a correlation between race and intelligence is the view of a small minority. Skywriter (talk) 05:02, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Skywriter, I recommend that you read Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns. This is the position taken by the American Psychological Association, which is not a "minority" by any stretch of the imagination. Among the points made in their report:

IQ scores are a fairly accurate predictor success in a wide range of functionally and socially significant areas. Whether it's accurate to say that IQ tests measure "intelligence" depends on how the word "intelligence" can be defined (since "intelligence" is a layman's term, it doesn't have a precise scientific definition), but IQ tests are definitely measuring a real mental ability, and one that affects many other aspects of a person's life.

IQ tests predict these outcomes equally well for all ethnic groups, so they aren't biased against minorities.

Variation in IQ between individuals is determined in a large part by genetics, although this may or may not also be true of differences in average IQ between ethnic groups.

The average IQ of Blacks is approximately 15 points below that of whites. This difference in average IQ cannot be explained by any easily observable external factors, such as test bias or differences in socio-economic status.

The one idea related to this which can accurately be considered a "minority" viewpoint is the theory that genetics contribute not only to differences IQ between individuals, but also to the differences in average IQ between ethnic groups. This is something for which the APA does not acknowledge there's any evidence; their view is that (as of 1995) the cause of this difference in average IQ has yet to be determined.

I think most of us are agreed that the article should portray the viewpoint that genetics contribute to this difference as being less popular than the viewpoint that the it's caused entirely by environmental factors; the question being debated is exactly how much space in the article it should be given. However, portraying the position of the American Psychological Association as a "minority" viewpoint is not reasonable. --Captain Occam (talk) 08:52, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Cap'n, I could be wrong, but I think Skywriter meant "race" in the biological sense. She may not have meant "race" in the sociological sense. I think virtually everyone recognizes an IQ gap in the US between people who self-identify as White and who self-identify as Black. A great many academics understand "White" and "Black" to refer to a particular kind of social group. Skywriter, if I am misrepresenting you, I apologize. Slrubenstein | Talk 11:41, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for recommending that I read Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns. My reply is that I certainly have read it. May I remind you that I searched for and found the UConn link and applied it to this article to replace the earlier one linking to the openly racialist Stalking the Wild Taboo www.lrainc.com/swtaboo/index.html white supremacist web site that had been present in this article for several years. The wild taboo web site deliberately distorted even the psych association findings by selectively highlighting phrases in that document and adding headings that do not exist in the original. All this is documented in earlier threads of this talk page.

I continue to find it confounding that Audrey Smedley's Race In North America: Origin And Evolution Of A Worldview ( http://isbn.nu/9780813343570 ) is both on point and flat out ignored in this unbalanced Wikipedia article. It is not that Smedley's work in its current and earlier edition had not been previously referenced in this article. It is that the viewpoint has been suppressed by editors who discount it in favor of theories popularized by proponents of white supremacy. This article, titled Race and Intelligence in Wikipedia is unbalanced in that it gives disproportionate coverage to the minority views of those who claim that 1. there is a correlation between IQ and intelligence; and 2. that IQ tests test anything beyond one's ability to take tests for which one has had preparation in the subject matter. As numerous authors establish, from different academic perspectives, in the overview volume by the late Ashley Montagu, race is indeed a social construct linked closely to the apologists for whatever is the dominant economic order. For example, it was beneficial to slave owners in the plantation south for academics of that time to construct theories about the childishness of black people with the idea of causing white people who were slave owners to feel better about themselves and what they touted as their own benevolence and benign ownership of other people. Today, we see gross inequalities in school systems. We find that where children have equal access to quality education, children of every ethnicity do better on standard testing than those who lack the same access.

Finally, there is a direct conflict between the views of the American Psychological Association and the main academic body of anthropologists on these issues; that explicit disagreement is nowhere highlighted in this article. What exists are clear and sharp differences of viewpoint by two academic branches of social scientists. This Wikipedia article tends to take the side of the psychologists over the anthropologists and allows extensive verbiage (much more ink) to the most controversial fringe psychologists than to others with either temperate or opposing views. That is the other blatant imbalance in this long troublesome article.

And to those who reject the entry of the views of biologists (except Wilson) in this article, I recommend Nobel Laureate Salvador Luria's essay in the volume edited by Ashley Montagu.

Skywriter (talk) 18:53, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

The debate over race and intelligence is primarily a debate within psychology (and more specifically, psychometrics). During the recent mediation discussion about this article, several users expressed the opinion that as an application of WP:MNA, this article’s scope should be primarily limited to the field of psychology. When the mediation process stopped, I think we were close to agreeing about that.

The discussion of this article’s scope was previously something that we were keeping to the mediation cabal, since it went against our mediator’s plans for the cabal case to have discussion going back and forth between there and here. I guess we can discuss it here now if that’s what you want, but first we should make sure the other editors involved in this article don’t have a problem with us making this decision. Moving one of the mediation’s main topics back to the article’s discussion page basically means we’re giving up on trying to resolve it there rather than here; are other users ready to do that? --Captain Occam (talk) 22:21, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

I have just read the cabal page. If there is a link to an open mediation page, I would like to see that. I believe the differences between anthropologists and psychologists ought to be treated in a balanced way in this article. To artificially exclude one discipline or to restrict the article to one discipline only makes no sense to me. Skywriter (talk) 22:59, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

[Resetting indent 'cause when I indent to the next level, half the screen is bank]

You just said: "Skywriter meant 'race' in the biological sense, not in the sociological sense."

Pray, tell us: what's the difference? Are you trying to lead us down the merry road to "Race doesn't really exist, it's a completely social construct"?

The above two sentences are an unsigned comment. The writer ought to self-identify so the page threads are understandable and properly sourced.Skywriter (talk) 22:59, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

I am confused by your statement. If race is a social construct, it exists. If race doesn't exist, then it ... doesn't exist, it can't be anything. Slrubenstein | Talk 15:27, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Also, you say: "most of us are agreed that the article should portray the viewpoint that genetics contribute[s] to this difference as being less popular".

"Most of us agree?" Don't say that unless we take a poll.

And how "popular" a scientific topic is this week does not belong in an encyclopaedia entry for that topic. It's like in the entry for "magenta", adding that "not many people's favorite color is magenta". It's completely irrelevant.

And as far as whether IQ actually measures intelligence, that argument needs to be taken to some other venue. IQ is the method that scientists in many different fields use to measure intelligence. For example, IQ is used to decide who gets to live in the free home for retards (or whatever they call it). It's also used to decide who gets into the "gifted" high school where they don't yell at you as much.

Because IQ is the standard metric that science uses, we have no business pumping political sewage into this article by second-guessing the methods of people who understand psychometrics FAR better than either you or I.

Furthermore, until you start talking about race, IQ is generally taken by everyone as a metric for intelligence. If I say that Feynman's IQ was 160, but the average IQ in subsaharan Africa is 70, virtually everyone would accept that as evidence that Feynman is far more intelligent than most Africans.

The entry here on "Evolution" doesn't suggest that the creationists might be right and badmouth C14 dating (another standard metric). Instead, they say: "the modern evolutionary understanding is widely accepted by scientists. However, evolution remains a contentious concept for some theists."

A single statement like THAT is the extent to which you can legitimately force your counterfactual opinions into this article.

But if you want to Bowdlerize it, changing it from "race and intelligence" to an article about "why IQ doesn't correlate with intelligence" (as one of you said earlier), I think that any unbiased person would see that as improper manipulation blatantly pushing a POV.

All the stubborn Believers have left are silly, very disingenuous, manifestly absurd explainations like "There are no races biologically; it's only an arbitrary social construct" and "IQ doesn't correlate with intelligence".

It is unclear who wrote the above screed. It is not only misguided, it is unsigned.Skywriter (talk) 18:53, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

I must have missed it where anyone said race is "only an arbitrary social construct." Can you provide the dit diff. so I can see who said this, and when? Or is this another example of your talking about something that doesn't exist? Slrubenstein | Talk 15:27, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

HEY: That's seriously Orwellian, and I'm equally seriously trying to keep it out of my beloved Wikipedia. --TechnoFaye Kane 13:41, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

The issue of what is a race is of course INCREDIBLY important to the whole discussion. We are dealing with two very different things that are getting confused.

Race as an American social construct, humanity divided into "white", "black" and "asian", more as a means of social control than anything else. These divisions utterly fail to correspond with actual genetic or other sub-groups of humanity. "Black" covers totally unrelated peoples from West Africa, South Africa, East Africa, Hottentots, Bushmen, Australian Aboriginals, Pacific Melanesians and many Ethiopians and North Africans. "White" covers Slavs, teutons, some Latins, Greeks, Turks? Israelis???, perhaps some Arabs-Iranians??? Definitely not other Arabs and Indians... "Asian"? Don't even start!
Race as a genetic/population reality is completely different, and we would have to work in population groups such as Amharics or Tutkics or Nordics. Of course measuring "intelligence" differences between such actual scientific ethnic groups would not help the agendas of the "race-scientists", so they use the unscientific social groups above. Xandar 21:49, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Mediation

When do you want that page unprotected? Xavexgoem (talk) 05:07, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

(How this got posted here I do not know) Xavexgoem (talk) 07:22, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Contradiction in sentence

The following sentence should be corrected: However, these improvements may have stalled for people before after the early 1970s. --Kevin Murray (talk) 13:18, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Fixed --DJ (talk) 17:51, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Eyfreth Study

The references to the Eyfreth Study in the 'Black and biracial children raised by white parents' should be removed or a discussion of it's unrepresentativeness should be made. The Eyfreth Study used the children of black and white soldiers with German mothers. The soldiers were pre-selected for IQ as an army entry test. It seems likely that the higher intelliegence soldiers were selected by the German mothers. Intelligence is known to be passed disproportionately on the X chromosome. For any of these reasons this study is inadmissable, yet it continues to be cited as it represents the only support for the non-hereditarian position. Every other study (since 1961) has not produced results anything like this, it is clearly an outlying anomaly. I think the citation should be removed, or a note of its unrepresentativeness made. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.83.172.121 (talk) 11:22, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

The bar has been raised oddly high to discuss criticisms of Jensen etc., so I imagine it should be at least as high if we are to discuss criticisms of Klaus Eyferth (not Eyfreth). Can you provide a link to a RS which discusses the problems with the study (no blogs or self-published sites please)? T34CH (talk) 19:00, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

In my opinion, this section would overall be better written if the 3-4 relevant studies were discussed as a group (my original formulation) rather than individually critiquing each one. The key point is that all of the studies have been regarded as flawed for similar reasons by various scholars. But if we insist on breaking this down into individual studies, see Jensen (1998) pp. 482-483 for a criticism of the Eyferth study:

"We saw in the Minnesota Transracial Adoption Study that the interracial (BW) adoptees, whose biological fathers were black and whose biological mothers were white, averaged lower in IQ than the adoptees who had two white parents (WW). This finding appears to be at odds with the study conducted by Eyferth in Germany following World War II, which found no difference between offspring of BW and WW matings who were reared by their biological mothers. All of the fathers (black or white) were members of the U.S. occupation forces stationed in Germany. The mothers were unmarried German women, mostly of low SES. There were about ninety-eight interracial (BW) children and about eighty-three white children (WW). The mothers of the BW and WW children were approximately matched for SES. The children averaged about 10 years of age, ranging between ages 5 and 13 years. They all were tested with the German version of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC). The results are shown in Table 12.6. The overall WW-BW difference is only one IQ point. As there is no basis for expecting a difference between boys and girls (whose average IQs are equal in the WISC standardization sample), the eight-point difference between the WW boys and WW girls in this study is most likely due to sampling error. But sampling error does not only result in sample differences that are larger than the corresponding population difference; it can also result in sample differences that are smaller than the population difference, and this could be the case for the overall mean WW-BW difference. ... This study, although consistent with a purely environmental hypothesis of the racial difference in test scores, is not conclusive, however, because the IQs of the probands’ mothers and fathers’ were unknown and the white and black fathers were not equally representative of their respective populations, since about 30 percent of blacks, as compared with about 3 percent of whites, failed the preinduction mental test and were not admitted into the armed services. Further, nothing was known about the Army rank of the black or white fathers of the illegitimate offspring; they could have been more similar in IQ than the average black or white in the occupation forces because of selective preferences on the part of the German women with whom they had sexual relations. Then, too, nearly all of the children were tested before adolescence, which is before the genotypic aspect of IQ has become fully manifested. Generally in adoption studies, the correlation of IQ and genotype increases between childhood and late adolescence, while the correlation between IQ and environment decreases markedly. Finally, heterosis (the outbreeding effect; see Chapter 7, p. 196) probably enhanced the IQ level of the interracial children, thereby diminishing the IQ difference between the interracial children and the white children born to German women. A heterotic effect equivalent to about +4 IQ points was reported for European-Asian interracial offspring in Hawaii." --DJ (talk) 22:56, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

So Jensen argues there is some selection bias (and some other issues which seem much less conclusive to me even if accurate). It is understandable that he would find fault with a study which claims (and is claimed) to contradict his beliefs. Any other sources?

As for the structure of the article, I agree that there are many problems... but let's leave that for the mediation for now. T34CH (talk) 23:19, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Many sources have discussed the limitations of the Eyferth study (Loehlin et al 1975, Flynn 1980, etc.). From Hunt and Carlson (2007):

"Example of Appropriate Consideration of the Limits of a Sample... In their excellent review of ﬁndings on racial/ethnic differences up to the mid 1970s, Loehlin, Lindzey, and Spuhler (1975, p. 126) describe a study by Eyferth (1961) of the IQs of German children who had been born to German women and either African American, French African, or White U.S. soldiers. The Black and White children had equivalent IQs. Loehlin et al. point out that in order for the study to be interpretable we would have to know the IQs of Black and White soldiers who consorted with German women during the post-World War II occupation. These scores would not necessarily have been the same as the IQ scores of all Black and White soldiers serving at the time. "

However, I don't see that we can evaluate the inclusion-worthiness of a interpretation of a study by whether it comports with a scholars expressed opinion on the subject. For example, how do we distinguish between holding an opinion because of the interpretation and holding the interpretation because of the opinion? --DJ (talk) 23:38, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

The inclusion-worthiness (or lack thereof) is based on the clear sample bias of the study. It's not something to interpret, it's just wrong. --Mikemikev (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 13:54, 8 December 2009 (UTC).

The problem is that it keeps being cited in RS literature, so we can't just disappear it. You and me saying it's wrong is just wp:OR. DJ cites a study that points out problems with the research, but it also points out problems with many other researchers in the field. I have no problem with discussing it as it is discussed in the academic literature, but simply excluding it because one or some of us disagree with it's findings is called censorship. T34CH (talk) 21:50, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't suggest excluding it, but I think it's unfair to place the Minnesota and Eyferth study side by side as if they are of equal value, and then say "children and parents in these studies are not representative", as if that statement applies equally to both of them. This is misleading and wrong. Parental IQ was not measured in Eyferth, so the study is of literally no value. It's like Mendel conducting his experiments without bothering to note the traits of antecedents. Something should be said about this. --Mikemikev (talk)

Why don't you edit the article to fix this problem, then? As long as you don't actually remove the discussion of the Eyferth study, clarifying this point doesn't sound particularly contentious. --Captain Occam (talk) 19:56, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

"the study is of literally no value": That's the contentious part. It seems to be you're personal evaluation rather than the consensus of academic literature. If it keeps being referenced, there is some reason. Should we assume that all the studies listed in Hunt and Carlson are literally of no value? Should we remove all research based on twins research because of the literature which criticizes twins studies in general? I agree with Occam. Make an edit, and we'll see if what you envision conforms with the literature. T34CH (talk) 01:04, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Mikemikev, just expand the discussion in that section until the necessary distinctions are clear. Be sure to follow WP:NPOV and WP:NOR policies. --DJ (talk) 04:02, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm thinking that all that needs to be done is changing the sentence "Central to criticisms of these studies..." so that the Minnesota study is not included. I'm not aware of any criticism of the selection for this study. --Mikemikev (talk) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.194.101.43 (talk) 21:06, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

DJ's new intro

The discussion about the new intro that DJ added a month ago has recently been archived, so it can no longer be edited. However, during the approximately a month since this edit was proposed, all of the people who expressed an opinion about it either thought it was an improvement or at least didn’t mind it.

Since everyone who expressed an opinion about this edit approved of it, I don’t think it’s particularly contentious. And if I wait much longer before making this edit to the article, it’s likely to never be made at all due to simply becoming lost in the article and talk page archives, which would be really unfortunate for one of the few proposed changes to this article that almost everyone agreed with. We can change the intro again if mediation determines that the scope of the article should be changed, but for the time being I don’t think there’s any good reason not to add DJ’s new intro to the article. --Captain Occam (talk) 13:21, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

You've been asked to drop this until we finish mediation. Don't play these games please. T34CH (talk) 15:45, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I’ve been asked to drop it by you, because you apparently don’t like this edit, but also apparently can’t find any problems to point out with it in terms of content. You aren’t even trying to address my point about this. If nobody else has anything against the content of this edit—and they don’t—then mediation isn’t enough of a reason to avoid making it. In terms of the number of people who disagree with the content of this edit, it’s considerably less contentious than several other edits that have been made to the article during the time since the mediation started.

If you want to keep this edit out of the article, you’ll have to do better than rehashing your earlier demand and making a personal attack. --Captain Occam (talk) 16:07, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

There's a notice on the top of this page. Maybe you've seen it. It says "Informal mediation is occuring at the mediation cabal, please do not make major changes to the article until this process is complete - see Wikipedia:Mediation_Cabal/Cases/2009-11-12/Race_and_Intelligence for the case." Have a good weekend. T34CH (talk) 16:32, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

This isn’t a major change. We’ve already reached consensus about it, and I find it strange that it hasn’t been made to the article already. If we wait until the mediation is finished before making it, it will have been so long since it was first proposed that it’ll be impossible to bring it back.

There’s something else you need to keep in mind about this request that we avoid making changes to the article: this was requested by Reubzz, because he felt that it would interfere with his personal style of mediation. Mediation cases don’t always require this; this request was just the result of a personal preference on Reubzz’s part. But now that Reubzz has disappeared, his preferences regarding his personal mediation style aren’t relevant anymore. That notice should probably be removed now that Reubzz is no longer our mediator, unless The Wordsmith has a similar preference. (Which we can’t assume, unless he tells us that he does.) --Captain Occam (talk) 16:39, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

The new intro is very well-written and is much more informative than the current one. And I agree with Captain Occam that there is nothing contentious about it. Liztanp (talk) 17:18, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

DJ's intro is an improvement. I don't see what the fuss is about. --Aryaman (talk) 17:23, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

I know some of you might not believe me, but I read the introduction and liked it. I assumed it was DJ's and was quite prepared to agree that his version was an improvement. Then I checked the edit history and figured out that Captain Occanm had put in DJ's intro and T3 had taken it out. It turned out that the version I liked so much was the one T3 put back in. Honest. I don't care who wrote it, I think it is better. One change I would make though: population groups should be changed to social groups. As far as I can tell the only major difference between the two versions is that the earlier version was more inclusive i.e. listed a set of controversies, the one over different averages for Blacks and Whites being only one. This makes sense to me and it reads well. Are we in conflict about this? Maybe we are. If so, I suggest this be made an issue at mediation. Slrubenstein | Talk 17:33, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Making this an issue at mediation should only be necessary if it isn’t possible to obtain consensus about it the normal way. In this case, we already obtained consensus about it around a month ago. The only reason the new intro wasn’t added to the article back then was because the mediation process started before we had the chance to do that, and when Reubzz was in charge of the mediation, we had to abide by his wishes for us to not edit the article.

My adding this intro back to the article is basically just acting on the existing consensus, in a somewhat delayed manner. --Captain Occam (talk) 17:57, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

I think many people who have been active on this page would oppose this. The fact that in the past weeks they have focused more on mediation than on this talk page does not mean that their views should count for less! Slrubenstein | Talk 22:54, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

We were discussing this change to the intro for several days before the mediation started, and nobody opposed it then, either.

If you look at the earlier discussion about this edit, you’ll see that one of the people who approved of it was Ramdrake. That’s pretty unusual, because most of the time Ramdrake disagrees with the changes that VA, DJ, David.Kane and I want to make to this article. The fact that in this case Ramdrake agreed with us indicates to me that this was an edit other people could approve of regardless of their viewpoint about this topic. --Captain Occam (talk) 00:31, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

I remember that Ramdrake liked the lede I have just restored. Why is Captain Occam saying the opposite now? (Ramdrake has not edited WP since November 26.) Reubzz (talk · contribs) was a fake mediator, as I pointed out almost as soon as he presented himself. It was generally agreed that large scale and controversial edits to the article would stop during mediation. Captain Occam cannot now argue that those decisions can now be reversed because Reubzz was a fake mediator. It's not surprising that he is opportunistically insisting on a lede in which almost every sentence is phrased so that the views of various groups of scholars are unduly placed in doubt and in which there is an inadequate discussion of the problems involved with the terms "race" and "intelligance". Captain Occam should stop gaming the system, using absurd excuses to justify himself. Mathsci (talk) 05:28, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

I’m going to quote what Ramdrake said about DJ’s new version of the intro: “For the record, with the missing half sentence back in, the intro doesn't look bad. However, I'll let the others chime in and abide by consensus.” The diff is here. I have no idea why you’re claiming he didn’t like it, but if you’re hoping to keep changes out of the article by misrepresenting the opinions of other editors, it’s not going to work.

My point about Reubzz is incredibly simple: the reason we agreed to not edit the article during mediation was because he didn’t want us to. There was no other reason, as this isn’t a standard requirement for mediation. We listened to him about this at the time because we didn’t know he was going to disappear the way he did. But now that he’s no longer our mediator, the only reason we had for not editing the article is gone now also.

Do you understand this? If you’re just pretending that you don’t in order to have an excuse to revert my edits, I doubt other editors are going to support you about this. --Captain Occam (talk) 08:20, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Do we really need a mediator to ask us to refrain from making major edits during mediation? This to me seems to be a matter of common sense - but maybe i just come from a low IQ population ;-) - if we are asking for mediation because of a conflict over the nature of this article, then the conflict must be pretty deep. And if the conflict is over the nature of the article, how can we make any changes to the introduction, which by definition orients the reader to the nature of the article. How could a major edit not be contentious? I mean, if we were capable of making non-contentious major edits, then, we would not need mediation, right? Isn't the fact that we need mediation an indicator that we are not able to make major edits, without contention? It seems quite obvious to me that when a group of editors are involved in mediation over an article, it is simply practical that none of them engage in any major edits. Captain Occam, does this rankle you? Does it bother you that I say this? That I would revert the edit in question? If so I have a simple and fairly obvious solution for you: request mediation. Oops! I forgot for a moment, we are already in mediation! Doh!

Perhaps Ramdrake and I disagree over the proposed new introduction, but at least two editors, T3 and myself, object. And perhaps Mathsci too. True, I was not active here a few weeks ago, and I have reasons for that which are not your business. But I am part of the mediation because I have been an active editor of this article for the past three or four years. Captain Occam, I am sorry that you did not know that I object to this new introduction three or four or whatever weeks ago. I am not blaming you, it is not your fault. The point is simply that I object. No one knew until yesterday. But now you all know. That is what matters. Slrubenstein | Talk 19:43, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Slrubenstein that we should avoid major edits while mediation is underway. David.Kane (talk) 21:54, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't understand the rush to make edits in the middle of mediation. I have not been active here for a year-- but I'm hopeful that maybe *this* time this article will reach a more stable and balanced version. futurebird (talk) 04:46, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Personally I hadn't gotten involved in the discussion about the lead because of the mediation. Ramdrake and Slrubenstien had both asked you not to continue bringing this up here. There was also another editor (Nat Gertler) that didn't like it. I just don't see how you could make such a huge mistake and call your edit uncontroversial. If this is what you truly believed, please start asking other editors (such as Dave or Araya) if your planned edits really are uncontroversial before you carry them out. Since we're discussing the scope of the article in the mediation, I echo the sentiment that this shouldn't be the forum for discussing this (for now at least). T34CH (talk) 19:56, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Boldness, per mediation

There were proposals made in the mediation, with some pretty good support, aimed at fixing the issues with scope in this article. I've moved all the text to existing articles. There remains work to do following these moves, but let's try to make it work. T34CH (talk) 01:17, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

I haven't been following the mediation debate, but the changes you made are, frankly, awful. You seem to have thrown all the work done on the article over the years down the memory hole. Why is there an article called Between-Group Differences in IQ? Shouldn't it be called "Race and IQ" or something like that? It is NOT about between-group differences in IQ in general, because there's a separate article on Sex and intelligence. What's the point in having an article about between-group differences in IQ where heritability is not discussed? The real meat of the race IQ debate is now located in the Heritability of IQ article, with the result that that article is now almost entirely about racial issues. The net effect of your edits is that someone who is interested in learning about research on race and IQ better look somewhere else than Wikipedia.--Victor Chmara (talk) 19:20, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Agree that Between-Group Differences in IQ is awful. I didn't do that. Nothing is "down the memory hole". It's been moved. Feel free to help the process... and as I indicated in all my edit summaries, it's a process that you should feel free to help in.

Have a look at the mediation, suggest some further steps, be bold, and don't blame me for things I didn't do. T34CH (talk) 19:46, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

yeah, it looks like this article has turned into disambiguation page. was that the intent, and if so can I go ahead and add the disambig template?

I can see pros and cons to that move: pros are that the original article really was trying to deal with a number of different issues simultaneously, cons that the article might lose some of its specific focus. what do people think? --Ludwigs2 19:29, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, the intent was to make a disambig page. The biggest issue we were having in mediation was agreeing on what this article was about. We had fairly broad agreement on making this page a DAB or hub of some sort because the phrase "race and intelligence" is just too ambiguous to stay stable. The mediator asked that someone do something ("anything" even), so I'm getting the ball rolling. Please do help out and give feedback. T34CH (talk) 19:46, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

(afterthought) Actually, now that I look at the change, I think this was a bad move. I think those four links actually belong together in a single article. can we get some consensus on that before we proceed with further editing? --Ludwigs2 19:41, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

(after ec) We had consensus on the mediation page to do something like this, moving info out of this space to avoid the ambiguity of the title. Please join us in the mediation to discuss. T34CH (talk) 19:46, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

I'll take a look at it, but I don't really have a stake in this and I don't see myself as party to the mediation. I'm just trying to help sort things out as they come down the pipe. I'll go ahead and make this a formal disambig (since that seems to be the consensus), and then I'll check out the mediation. --Ludwigs2 20:21, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I didn't mean to ask you to be party to the mediation. But you should feel free to comment as much as possible, as we've kind of moved past mediation and into action. T34CH (talk) 20:24, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Heritability of IQ and Between-Group Differences in IQ are largely POV forks of race and Iintelligence. I believe Between-Group Differences in IQ is just as problematic as race and intelligence. Human populations consist of several groups. As there is an almost complete absence of other groupo differences, this article is inadequate. Not only are there racial groups, There are religious groups, regional groups, blood groups, countries, haplogroups etc etc. An example of this bias is found where Francis Galton is quoted as saying.

"Galton claimed from his field observations in Africa that the African people were significantly below Anglo-Saxons' position in the normal frequency distribution of general mental ability".

While this quote may be true, it completely ignores the fact that the bulk of Galton's psychometric studies were not about race but about the variation in test scores within the general population. Galton who used genealogical information on British pedigrees to create his theory. IOW Galton was worried about IQ in Britain. Wapondaponda (talk) 00:59, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

T34CH has started a process of bold editing. Why not let it run for a few days? I deleted the sentence you found suspect Between-Group Differences in IQ. I think that this article is a mess right now, but I hope to devote a great deal of effort to it over the next week or so. I think that other editors will be working hard to re-integrate all the other material from the original article in various places. Why not wait a week and see how things look? David.Kane (talk) 01:14, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Anatomical Basis for Intelligence

Rushton and Jensen, 2005, find a correlation between IQ and brain size differences between races.By adulthood, Asians average 1 cubic inch more brain mass than Whites and Whites average 5 cubic inches more brain mass than Blacks. Brain size differences are present at birth. They hypothesize that larger brains contain more neurons and synapses and process information faster and that race differences in average IQ are largely genetic.^[1]. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Paul2081 (talk • contribs) 06:46, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

If you want this information included in the article, I recommend bringing up the reasons why you want it included on the mediation cabal page. Ramdrake and I debated pretty recently about whether the brain size issue is significant enough to discuss in it—I think it is, and he thinks it isn’t. We weren’t able to resolve this disagreement on the article talk page, but the purpose of the mediation is to have someone else’s help resolving disputes like this. So if you have an opinion on why you think this information ought to be included, that’s the place to express it. --Captain Occam (talk) 11:42, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

My recollection is that truely scientific investigation did not find that brain size is determined at birth, so that the paper is inappropriate here. With Dmcq's edits, it's now marginally suitable for intelligence. With further edits, it might be suitable for a new subtopic here, but the wording needs to be changed, and the source needs to be identified. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 15:01, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Ralph Holloway has spent much of his career arguing gisnt this view ... and h is one of the world's real experts on the evolution of human intelligence. Slrubenstein | Talk 22:10, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

See also the recent papers in Personality and Individual Differences by Wicherts et al (in press), Rushton (in press), and others discussing this. --DJ (talk) 00:26, 30 November 2009 (UT

I will state from published, mainstream research, that "brain size IS detectible at birth".

I will summarize the test results from "30 Years of Research on Race Differences in Cognitive Ability",2005,as published in Psychology, Public Policy and Law: Vol. 11 NO.2, P. 254-255 by Rushton and Jensen and reiterate that there IS a correlation between IQ test scores and brain size amongst different race's. Rushton reanalyzed a set of anthropometric data originally published by Melville Herskovits (who concluded there were no race differences in cranial capacity) and found White's averaged a cranial capacity of 1,421 cm3 and Blacks, 1295 cm3. Rushton's results were based on calculating average cranial capacity from external head size measures, join those from dozens of other studies from the 1840's to the present on different samples usng 3 different methods (endocranial volume from empty skulls, wet brain weight at autopsy, and high-tech MRI). Each of these methods consistantly exhibits a strong pattern of East Asians averaging larger and heavier brains than Whites who average larger and heavier brains than Blacks. In 2000, Rushton,pp. 126-132, Table 6.6) (Rushton and Ankney, 1996) summarized the world database using the 3 methods on which there are a sufficient number of studies(autopsies, endocranial volume, and head measurements), as well as head measurements corrected for Body size. The overall mean for East Asians is 17 cm3 more than that for Whites and 97 cm3 more than that for Blacks. They state "Because 1 cubic inch of Brain matter contains millions of Bran cells and hundreds of millions of synapses, these group differences in Brain size may explain group differences in average IQ. Mean IQ differences are associated with Mean Brain Size differences" (Section 16). Furthermore, "MRI studies show that brain size is related to IQ differences in average brain size and this is DETECTIBLE AT BIRTH". By adulthood, East Asians average 1 cubic inch more cranial capacity than Whites, and White's average 5 cubic inches more cranial capacity than Blacks. These findings were acknowledged by Ulric Neissen, Chair of American Psychological Association's Task Force on intelligence, who noted "There is a small overall trend" (Neisser, 1997, p.80). Thanks, I will bring up this topic on the Mediation Cabal Page, paul2081

Paul2081

Absolute brain size, or brain size relative to body size? Slrubenstein | Talk 11:42, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

I seem to recall that brain size at birth is highly correlated with brain size as an adult, but the correlation between brain size and intelligence is weak, and so the correlation between "brain size at birth" and intelligence as an adult may be insignificant. Similarly, the correlation between race and brain size, and between brain size and intelligence, may be notable, without there being a notable correlation between race and intelligence. (For "notable", read "significant", "noticable", or any other qualitative measure.) The study could still provide a correlation between race and intelligence, but it doesn't follow from the quoted material. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 15:50, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

This is a reply to Slrubenstein: As I stated above, brain size Is relative to body size and the comparison between races matched height and weight before publishing their results: Asians have an average of 1 cubic inch more brain size than Whites and Whites have an average of 5 cubic inches more brain tissue than Blacks. I also am not happy to see that my reference to Rushton and Jensens brain size studies and its relationship to intelligence listed my reference as "poor reference" Paul M. Kell paul2081 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Paul2081 (talk • contribs) 10:54, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Sounds pretty unconvincing to me. Just headline figures constantly repeated without context. Who was defined as "Asians", who was defined as "whites" and who was defined as "blacks". These are non-scientific terms for a start and correllate to nothing of worth genetically. Xandar 21:37, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

PMID 19283594 ([23]): "Ankney (1992) suggested that the large sex difference in brain size went unnoticed for so long because earlier studies used improper statistical techniques to correct for sex differences in body size and thus incorrectly made a large difference “disappear.” The serious methodological error was the use of brain mass/body size ratios instead of analysis of covariance (see Packard & Boardman, 1988). Ankney (1992) illustrated why this is erroneous by showing that, in both men and women, the ratio of brain mass to body size declines as body size increases. Thus, as can be seen in Figure 2, larger women have a lower ratio than smaller women, and the same holds for larger men compared with smaller men. Therefore, because the average-sized man is larger than the average-sized woman, their brain mass to body size ratios are similar. Consequently, the only meaningful comparison is that of brain mass to body size ratios of men and women of equal size. Such comparisons show that at any given size, the ratio of brain mass to body size is much higher in men than in women (Figure 2)."
"For example, among Whites 168 cm (5′7″) tall (the approximate overall mean height for men and women combined), brain mass of men averages about 100 g heavier than that of women (Figure 3Figure 3), whereas the average difference in brain mass, uncorrected for body size, is 140 g. Thus, only about 30% of the sex difference in brain size is due to differences in body size."
So, brain size/body size is not a reliable predictor, but average brain size of a group (by age) might be. ([24] and ), with East Asians Americans first, European Americans second and African Americans last, although the differences aren't THAT big.
Finally, in the reviews conclusion: "Brain size, of course, is also environmentally sensitive. For example, rats raised in complex environments have thicker cortices and larger brains than rats reared in impoverished environments (Diamond, 1988). This suggests that the direction of causality is bidirectional and complicated by gene–environment correlations and interactions. Genes for GMA likely cause individuals to experience more stimulating and complex environmental situations, thereby increasing their brain size and creating a “benign circle” between brain size and intellectual performance." MichaelExe (talk) 22:12, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

On another note, a lot of the sources cited in this article are waaaaayyyy to old and should not be used as scientific fact or even speculation, but for historical purposes (but even then, there's A LOT we could cut back on). MichaelExe (talk) 22:23, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

If you'll forgive my pointing it out, absolute brain size is somewhat irrelevant. The active portion of the brain for the purposes of human intelligence consists of a thin layer of cells over the surface of the frontal cortex, so the relevant measure would be the surface area of the frontal cortex, which is dependent more on the convolutions of the surface than on the volume of the material (to use an analogy, you can fold a piece of paper into a much smaller size without reducing its inherent capacity for storing information). --Ludwigs2 22:55, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

No need to ask for forgiveness. If you have a source discussing this issue, we can use it somewhere, starting with the intelligence article. T34CH (talk) 00:25, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

it's not really my field (I'm not *that* kind of psychologist) but it seems to be a standard understanding among more biologically-oriented academic psychologists. I'll poke around, though, and see what I can find. --Ludwigs2 00:31, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. It does make some amount of sense, but without a source such discussion is liable to be accused of wp:SYN. T34CH (talk) 00:40, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

The assertion that disparities between brain size at birth between races implies genetic differencesbetween races is flawed (the essential flaw being that brain size is partially determined by nutrition and other environmental factors in development prior to birth). In fact:

"Christiane Capron and Michel Duyme from the Université Paris V, France, searched adoption agency records for children given up for adoption at birth and who were from either high or low SES families and who were adopted by either high or low SES families. They found overall that adoption into a high-SES family compared to a low-SES one increased average intelligence, as measured by intelligence quotient (IQ), by over 11 IQ points. Thus a relatively extreme change of environment can have a significant impact on "intelligence."

However, Capron and Duyme also found that regardless of the SES of the adoptive family, children whose biological parents were of high SES had IQs some 16 points higher than ones whose biological parents were of low SES. Since the children were separated at birth from their biological parents, it seems that the only way the biological parents could influence the intelligence of their children is through genes. Surely this indicates that intelligence is partly inherited? And if that is the case, then might there not also be genetic factors in memory, musical ability, and so on?

Some of the most compelling evidence for this suggestion comes from studies of identical and non-identical twins. Identical twins (who are called monozygotic, MZ) share 100 percent of their genes whereas non-identical twins (called dizygotic, DZ) share only 50 percent of their genes. If we measure memory, intelligence, or other abilities in pairs of twins and if genes contribute to these abilities, then we would expect the correlation between identical twins to be greater than the correlation between non-identical twins. Since identical twins are genetically identical, they should appear more similar in abilities that have genetic components than non-identical twins. There is now abundant evidence that this is true: in the case of memory span, for instance, correlations are greater than 0.60 for monozygotic twins compared to only about 0.20 for dizygotic twins.

But are such findings really evidence for innate talents? It must be borne in mind that the MZ-DZ difference is evidence for a genetic contribution to ability only if it can be convincingly argued that the environment is as similar for a pair of DZ twins as it is for a pair of MZ twins. Certainly, this will be the case with respect to important factors such as the amount of intellectual stimulation the parents provide: regardless of whether twins are MZ or DZ, the mental stimulation they receive from their parents will be highly similar. Moreover, it is known that the IQ correlation of same-sex and different-sex DZ twins is virtually identical. The environment should differ more for different-sex twins than for same-sex twins, but this seems to make little difference in terms of the observed IQ correlation.

Thus it is unlikely that differences in the post-natal environment of MZ and DZ twins can explain the fact that MZ twins tend to be more similar in ability. But what about the pre-natal environment? One important question is whether or not the twins shared a chorion in the womb. The chorion is part of the placenta and constitutes an important ingredient of the pre-natal environment. A shared chorion implies a shared blood supply and a higher probability of infections passing between the twins.

Dizygotic twins are always dichorionic: each twin has his or her own chorion. However, about 60 percent of MZ twins are monochorionic, sharing a single chorion. This means that on average the pre-natal environment is more similar for MZ than for DZ twins. Is it possible that the greater similarity of MZ compared to DZ twins in terms of mental ability is due to this? The critical test comes from comparisons of dichorionic MZ and DZ twins. Such twins have roughly comparable pre-natal environments, so if the MZ twins still show a higher IQ correlation than the DZ twins, that would bolster the case for a genetic contribution to ability. On the other hand, if such twins are equally similar intellectually, that would suggest that the standard MZ-DZ difference is largely due to the fact that some of the MZ twins share a chorion, which makes them especially similar.

Unfortunately, chorionicity is rarely measured in twin studies, and researchers tend to lump together mono- and dichorionic MZ twins. But in the one study to date which has compared IQ similarity in twins as a function of their chorionicity, conducted in 1978 by Michael Melnick and his colleagues at the National Institutes of Health in Maryland, there was no difference in the correlation between white dichorionic MZ and DZ twins. For these twins, environmental factors should be highly comparable, and the only remaining difference is that the MZ twins are more genetically similar than the DZ ones. The results of this study suggest that genetic factors play only a minimal role in mental ability, and that the inheritance of intelligence is very much in doubt.

One problem with this study is that chorionicity is in fact very hard to determine post-natally. However, James Davis and his colleagues from the Southwest Missouri State University have recently developed a technique for determining chorionicity in adult twins which holds enormous promise for future research on the mental abilities of twins. Davis' technique relies on the fact that fingerprints are more similar in mono- than in dichorionic twins. Although fingerprints are under fairly strong genetic control, they are also influenced to a considerable extent by environmental factors such as nutrition, infection, and the mother's health. When twins share a chorion in the womb, they are about equally affected by these environmental factors and thus their fingerprints look similar. Dichorionic twins, on the other hand, experience more distinct pre-natal environments and hence their fingerprints tend to differ more." - Outstanding Performers: Created Not Born? http://www.psychol.ucl.ac.uk/david.shanks/shanks_expertise.html

If one is to accept the cited study as legitimate then it can be concluded that IQ disparities between races possess little to no relationship the genetic differences between races. --MarkRunyan (talk) 22:41, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

JP Rushton published articles in American Renaissance?

In the "Source For Funding" subsection of the article, it is claimed that JP Rushton has published articles in American Renaissance magazine. The source cited is a (Fall 2003) Southern Poverty Law Center article, which indeed makes that claim. However, looking through the [http://amren.com/ar/index.html archives] of the American Renaissance website which contain every article ever published with exception to those from recent issues (all issues from Fall 2003 and earlier are available), I cannot find any articles published by JP Rushton.--XO^10 (talk) 09:36, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

comment and suggestion

I posted this over on the mediation page, but got no responses whatsoever, so I'm posting it again here. sorry for the duplication.

I don't think turning this into a disambig page is the correct approach, since all of the topics listed (with the possible exception of #2) seem to be variations on teh same theme anyway. I suggest going back to the original form, restructuring it as follows (section outline):

whether actual differences in intelligence between social groups exist
- historical confusions between "race" and competence, e.g. "White Man's Burden" type arguments
- difficulty of determining the meaning of intelligence without importing cultural preconceptions
- actual statistical evidence for such differences (e.g., the statistical model which suggests that women are smarter than men on average, but with a smaller standard deviation)
whether any such differences (given they exist) are due to genetic/biophysical factors or whether they are transmitted culturally/socially
- heredity research and arguments
- socialization research and arguments
what public policies can/might/should be implemented to account for any such differences
- historical efforts, generally horrendous: oppression, apartheid, eugenics, exploitation, etc.
- what various scholars think is the proper way of responding to any such differences that exist

This seems fairly clear to me, and If we can keep it to this outline, I think it would resolve some of the issues that the article has suffered to date. comments? --Ludwigs2 07:26, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Broadly speaking, I agree with you. Turning "Race and intelligence" into a disambiguation page won't solve any problems, nor does the attempt to reshuffle the contents of the article into several already existing articles, and the latter creates new problems. David Kane seems to be in the process of rewriting the old article under a new title, and I expect that all the old criticisms will be levelled against the new article, too.--Victor Chmara (talk) 13:57, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Interestingly, several of the editors involved in the mediation would agree with both of you. I, for one, think that the subject clearly deserves its own article, and that the best way to resolve the dispute is to simply limit the scope and the literature to only those sources which discuss "race and intelligence" in conjunction with one another. It sounds ridiculously obvious, but you'd be surprised how many editors don't want this to happen. This latest batch of changes - which does not, by any stretch of the imagination, enjoy anything resembling consensus - is almost entirely the result of a very small group of editors who wish to see the whole subject swept under the Wikipedia rug. --Aryaman (talk) 14:09, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

I am no longer surprised by anything on wikipedia.

however, I think we need to reach a little broader than articles which only talk about race and intelligence in conjunction, if only because the roots of the problem reach back before the modern uses of the words. The issue began in the early colonial era (maybe 16th century) when the technological gap between European civilization and the rest of the world started to widen. Europeans at that time would have used the word race (if they used it at all) in the biblical 'races of Ishmael' sense, and wouldn't have seen them as less intelligent, but as primitive or bestial. Race in the modern genetic sense didn't really appear until the mid 19th century, and the idea of intelligence as a measurable phenomenon was early 20th century, I think.

I haven't gone through the page history (and probably won't unless I need to), so why would anyone want to talk about race or intelligence separately on this article? I can't quite see it, though I can imagine there might be a reason for it. --Ludwigs2 19:13, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

I think I know what is happening here. You bury the Race and Intelligence article under a disambiguation page, rename it "Heritability of IQ" and slowly remove all of the sections referring to race (most of them). Race and Intelligence is a real issue, an important issue, and it deserves a separate article. mikemikev (talk) 15:18, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

why would anyone want to do that? Granted, R&I is (I imagine) a troll magnet both for people who want to show (for reasons of prejudice) that there is a relationship and for people who find the first group offensive, but it seems to me to be a well-defined topic that has an obvious presence in the scientific literature.

I think you answered your own question about why someone might want to do that. But, as you say, it's a well-defined topic that has an obvious presence in the scientific literature, therefore it should have a page. mikemikev (talk) 21:25, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

ah, yeah, I wasn't clear. I was really curious about why someone would want to hide the page (since it seems to me that trollers on both sides would want to use it as a platform). but it's no nevermind - just idle curiosity. let me go look at the revision page and see if I can help out. we can move it back over here later, once we've debated the point. --Ludwigs2 00:52, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, this revision is going nowhere and it will have to be reverted. I think this was done without mediation consensus, some of the mediators are on holiday so two wikipedians took the opportunity to hijack the page. Just wait a while, it will have to go back. mikemikev (talk) 18:55, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

hmmm... I'm not seeing a whole lot of work being done on this split, except for some on Between-group_differences_in_IQ. should we start a discussion about moving things back to this page? --Ludwigs2 21:35, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

I'll revert it in a few days. Any objections? mikemikev (talk) 11:42, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

^ June 2005,Psychology, Public Policy, A Journal of the American Psychological Association "30 Years of Research on Race Differences in Cognitive Ability" M. Rushton, A. Jensen

[1] June 2005,Psychology, Public Policy, A Journal of the American Psychological Association "30 Years of Research on Race Differences in Cognitive Ability" M. Rushton, A. Jensen

[1]