Talk:Race and intelligence/Archive 79

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I tried to verify a new paragraph that Captain Occam had added about IQ scores in Africa, but was unable to. Editors of a book written in 1988 were described as authors and it was claimed that they "disagreed with Lynn" in a specific way. I couldn't verify that at all - had he even written anything about African IQ scores in the 1980s? In that case this seems to be a very misleading way of writing. I couldn't verify statements about "a large body of research" either. No source was provided for that statement. Mathsci (talk) 07:30, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

1: As far as I know, the source I used from 1988 doesn't discuss Lynn directly; it just says the difference in average IQ is the result of cultural and environmental differences, which is obviously difference from Lynn's position. If you think there's a better way to word this, make a suggestion.

2: I linked to three papers about the correlation between national and state IQs and the social factors described there. All three of them regard this relationship as being well-established; this is something Bryan Pesta and I discussed above.

If the only complaints you have are over these minor issues of wording, that isn't a valid reason for reverting the entire section, particularly when I'm still in the process of making other revisions. I'll see if I can come up with a better way to describe the opinions of the authors of the 1988 book, but other than that you'll need to make some more specific suggestions about what's wrong with what I've said here if you're going to revert it again. --Captain Occam (talk) 07:38, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

Here is the paragraph which I find is problematically written. I can't see how this material can be included at the moment. I have not been able to verify most of the statements, as written. In its original context it referred to IQ scores in sub-Saharan Africa.

A large body of research has shown that average IQ scores of states and nations correlates significantly with a number of other factors including average health, average income, infant mortality and crime. This correlation is in fact stronger among developing countries in Sub-Saharan Africa than it is in Western countries. In a 1988 literature review, S. H. Irvine, John W. Berry have also reported that individual IQ scores in Southern Africa have the same predictive validity regardless of race, so that an African white with a score of 70 would tend to have the same occupational and educational performance as an African black of the same score, and the same would be true of African blacks and whites with IQs of 100. However, these authors disagree with Lynn about the low average IQ of African blacks being due partially to genetic differences, concluding instead that they are primarily the result of cultural and environmental factors.

References

Mathsci (talk) 07:41, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

I don't understand what the problem is. Have you actually read any of these sources? Other than the fact that Irvine and Berry don’t directly discuss Lynn in their book, which I’ve now clarified in the article, this paragraph is supported by the sources I’m using. --Captain Occam (talk) 07:58, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not your private blog. The above is just WP:OR and WP:SYNTH - I can't see anything that can be salvaged at the moment. The first two references are about the US. It seems to be you telling us that these form a "large body of research". I did find this review [10] which again questions the methodology and poor database underlying Lynn's findings. And yes I have looked at the sources. That's why I was puzzled by you describing Irvine and Berry as authors when they were in fact editors. Mathsci (talk) 08:13, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

Accusing me of OR and Synth isn’t helpful if you can’t provide specific examples. The two studies involving state IQs in the United States are citations for this sentence: “A large body of research has shown that average IQ scores of states and nations correlates significantly with a number of other factors including average health, average income, infant mortality and crime.” Since this sentence is discussing correlations both between states and between nations, the citation is relevant. This material was added mostly at Bryan Pesta’s suggestion, so if you have a problem with it, he’s the main person whom you should be discussing this with.

I also don’t understand the relevance of the review of Lynn’s book that you’re linking me to. Are you saying you think that should be added to the article? The article already contains enough criticisms of Lynn to show how controversial his conclusions are; I don’t think we need to include every criticism of Lynn that we’re able to find just because of the fact it exists. --Captain Occam (talk) 08:23, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

Incidentally, it looks like maybe what you have a problem with is just the phrase “A large body of research”. I don’t consider the wording of this phrase all that important, so I’ve changed it just in case that’ll get rid of the problem you have with this paragraph.

If you aren’t satisfied with that either, I really don’t have any idea what other problem you think there is with this. --Captain Occam (talk) 08:32, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

All right, we’re in another situation where Mathsci is continuing to revert my edits while no longer making any attempts to justify it in this discussion. I find this incredibly ironic, considering Mathsci has told us several times within the past week that he’s not going to participate in this article anymore.

After how many times this has happened in the History of the race and intelligence controversy, I’ve pretty much given up on trying to get Mathsci to justify his reverts with something other than threats or name-calling. (Although I’d certainly appreciate it if he did.) I would appreciate if else who’s reading this pays attention to whether Mathsci provides any justification for removing the material I’ve added, and restores it again if he doesn’t provide this while continuing to remove it. --Captain Occam (talk) 12:30, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

<- Captain Occam's content still does not match the sources. The sources I have looked at make it quite clear that the assessment of tests applied to primitive communities has severe limitations. This is discussed at length in various reliable secondary sources. Captain Occam is POV-pushing by attempting to remove any reference to these statements. He seems to be trying to make some point of his own which is not reflected in any sources. I don't know why he is removing the sourced statements about Alexander Luria from the textbook of Nicholas Mackintosh. Perhaps he could explain this more carefully here. At the moment what he writes reads like original research to make a WP:POINT, unsupported by secondary sources. The fact that Lynn records the average of African nations for which there have been no measurements is reported in one of the book reviews cited; Lynn invented his own figures by extrapolation. More importantly, is it now being suggested that the interpretation of IQ tests in Africa and elsewhere are not subject to the caveats mentioned in multiple secondary sources? This seems like a fundamental point that should be included in the article, just because the secondary sources say just that. Mathsci (talk) 14:06, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

First of all, thanks for finally making an effort to justify your edits here.

What I’m trying to do here is not specifically to exclude criticism of Lynn; obviously if Lynn is criticized in the source material he should be criticized here also. The point here, which I’ve made below, is that general criticisms of the IQ testing in Sub-Saharan Africa are a lot more important than criticisms of Lynn, because very little of the actual IQ test data is from him. Compared to some of the other researchers discussed in the article, Lynn also is not all that important in this field—the article certainly shouldn’t be devoting more space to him than it does to Arthur Jensen, as it does in the version you’re reverting to. So because of space limitations, some of the criticism of Lynn that you keep adding needs to be left out.

If there are any specific criticisms of either Lynn or the Sub-Saharan IQ test data that you think it’s essential for the article to include, please mention them here, and I’ll edit the article in order to incorporate them, space allowing. Otherwise, I’ll try to figure them out for myself and edit the article accordingly. This would be my third revert today, while you’ve already reverted the article three times within the past few hours. Since you won’t be able to revert me again without violating 3RR, I recommend that you let me know specifically what material you think needs to be included in this section, in order to maximize the chance that my next revision will satisfy you. --Captain Occam (talk) 14:46, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

IQ testing on primitive communities has an extensive literature, including the 1988 CUP volume of articles and the book of Mackintosh. The letter in Nature by one of the editors of the CUP volume summarises the caveats. The reviews of the much later post-2000 books of Lynn and collaborators seem to be restatements of those caveats as well as specific criticisms of Lynn - his selective use of data, extrapolation of data and scientific methodology. Lynn's findings are cited by Rushton and Jensen. If there have been doubts about the quality of Lynn's scholarship, that has to be said. At the moment I would suggest that as far as testing primitive communities is concerned, some version of my summary of the three present sources is required. I think that the caveats and limitations can be explained in slightly more detail than I've done so far. That probably involves reading material in the book edited by Berry and Irvine. The hardback version can be read on amazon.co.uk. I don't understand what justification there is for saying that Jensen is more important than Lynn in this article. Indeed it would be normal to assume that he appears as second author in the 2005 article with Rushton because he is playing a less active role now. But again that seems off-topic. Incidentally I have been adding sourced material, so I'm not sure why you mention 3RR. I'm not at all happy with what you've written because it doesn't match the sources and still seems to be original research. It's still quite unclear why two papers on US test scores have anything to do with the issues of testing primitive communities. Mathsci (talk) 15:48, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

Even if he’s taking a less active role in this area than he used to, Jensen has published more research on race and intelligence than any other researcher, and most of the established premises of it (IQ’s predictive validity; IQ heritability within groups and how this affects heritability between groups; what it means for the hereditarian hypothesis to be the “default hypothesis”), is based primarily on his research. How Jensen is to race and intelligence research is similar to how Charles Darwin is to the theory of evolution, so the fact that he’s less active in this area nowadays doesn’t make all that much of a difference in how much space he deserves compared to people like Lynn.

It sounds like what you’re saying is that what matters to you is that the article continue using the same sources that it currently does. This material will have to be condensed, and the information about IQ’s predictive validity will need to be included also. But if you just want to make sure all of the same sources used by your revision are preserved, I think I can do that. Would that satisfy you? --Captain Occam (talk) 17:07, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

I have toi say, I think mathSci is right that there were examples of fundamental violations of NOR, one of our core content policies, in Captain Occam's recent revision. Captain Occam adminst that he linked articles that had not been linked by another source, and used an article that did not refer directly to the topic. This all too easily leads to SYNTH which is absolutely forbidden in articles. What I like about MathSci's improvements is that he uses different aqrticles by others to provide contxt, without synthesizing arguments. I think it is a big step in the right direction! Slrubenstein | Talk 17:27, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

Here's my suggested revision to this section. I've gotten rid of the part discussing state IQs, since the opinion here seems to be that those are Synth, and I've also kept almost all of the material that Mathsci added, albeit in condensed form.

Due to cultural differences, the limitations in assessment of primitive communities by intelligence tests have long been acknowledged by researchers. In the mid-1970s the Soviet psychologist Alexander Luria discovered that it was impossible to devise an IQ test to assess peasant communities in Russia because taxonomy was alien to their way of reasoning. The very low IQ scores reported for sub-Saharan African populations (average of 70) are particularly controversial. According to anthropologist Mark Cohen, using Western standards this would mean that African countries should be largely dysfunctional. Given that individuals in these countries lead "vibrant artistic, symbolic and spiritual lives", according to Cohen these scores are not likely to be accurate.

A review by Nicholas Mackintosh of Lynn's book Race Differences in Intelligence (2006), where some of these findings are presented, has also criticized Lynn's occasional manipulation of data, some of it originally collected by the reviewer. He has also questioned Lynn's inference elsewhere that Kalahari bushmen, with an allegedly average measured IQ of 54, have a mental age equivalent to an average European 8-year-old; and that an 8 year old European child would have no difficulty learning the skills required for surviving in the same desert environment.

Studies have found that average IQ scores of nations correlates significantly with a number of other factors including average health, average income, infant mortality and crime, and that this correlation is actually stronger among developing countries in Sub-Saharan Africa than it is in Western countries. In a 1988 literature review, S. H. Irvine, John W. Berry have also reported that individual IQ scores in Southern Africa have the same predictive validity regardless of race, so that an African white with a score of 70 would tend to have the same occupational and educational performance as an African black of the same score, and the same would be true of African blacks and whites with IQs of 100. However, they take a position different from Lynn’s about whether genetic differences contribute to the low average IQ of African blacks, concluding that they are primarily the result of cultural and environmental factors instead.

References

Things to keep in mind are that the criticisms of Lynn are already mentioned in the previous section of the article (the end of the “test scores” part), as well as what I mentioned before about how presenting criticism of sub-Saharan African IQ scores is a lot more important than presenting criticism of Lynn specifically, since most of the data about this isn’t from him. I also reworded the part that refers to Lynn considering Kalahari bushmen to be “mentally retarded”, since Lynn does not actually use that term, and a lot of researchers in this area consider mental retardation as involving more than just low IQ. Slrubenstein, how does this revision look to you?

--Captain Occam (talk) 17:57, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

Captain Occam, I appreciate3 your willingness to compromise. Honestly, I thought the extended quotations in mathSci's version were informative, and I miss them — but I do understand your concern for conciseness and I unerstand why you removed it. my main concern is the last paragraph in your proposed next revision - it seems to me that it belongs in the preceeding section, not this section. Slrubenstein | Talk 18:17, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

There are two reasons why I have this paragraph in the section that I do. One is that it’s discussing differences around the world, and in Sub-Saharan Africa in particular, and the section it’s in is specifically about differences outside the U.S. And the other reason is because IQ’s predictive validity between African countries, as well as between individuals in southern Africa, can be considered an argument against the IQ results from these countries being invalid. The proposal I’m making devotes two paragraphs to criticism of these results, so in the interest of complying with NPOV policy I think we ought to present the other side of this controversy in the same section.

Paragraphs can be moved around fairly easily, though, so if that’s your only objection to this revision I think I can probably go ahead and add it to the article. Is that all right with you? --Captain Occam (talk) 18:27, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

NPOV applies to the article as a whole. I am not suggesting deleting the material, just putting it earlier, at the end of the preceeding section. We could retitle the subsection "Questions about the reliability of comparative data from the third world" to make clear that the subsection is raising questions about elements of the entire section. I think that makes sense, structurally. And there can't be any NPOV concerns since nothing is being deleted. But the last paragraph seems to fit in with the general section, not the subsection. Other than that I do not have any major concerns. however, I think it is worth finding out what other people thing - AProck, Muntuwandi, Varoon Arya ... Unless you just want to invite them to make additional edits ...Slrubenstein | Talk 19:38, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

Now that David.Kane has brought up the possibility of reverting some of my edits, it matters to me that I get the changes I made to a stable state as quickly as possible, so we can have a better idea what this section will look like while deciding which of my changes should and shouldn’t be kept. I’m going to implement the compromise I suggested for now, and we can discuss where the last paragraph should go (or anything else) as other users express their opinions about this section. Depending on the conclusion we reach in response to David.Kane’s proposal, it’s also possible that this section will end up being reorganized such that the question of where this paragraph should go won’t be relevant anymore. --Captain Occam (talk) 20:17, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

Recent revisions

I guess I’m finished working on this for now. There are a lot more revisions that I think the article would benefit from, but I don’t think I should be making more revisions than what we’ve discussed here, since anything else wouldn’t have consensus.

Here are the main things that I’ve changed:

1. As we’ve discussed previously, I combined the “African IQ” section with the criticism of Lynn, since there’s obviously a lot of overlap between these two. One thing that this results in is more of an emphasis on criticism of the general idea that 70 is an accurate average IQ score for Sub-saharan Africans, and less of an emphasis on criticism of Lynn specifically, but I think that’s reasonable in general. One thing that’s apparent from looking through the bibliographies of Lynn’s books is that less than 10% of his IQ data is data that he collected himself; the rest is from studies published by other researchers. Therefore, we can’t equate criticisms of Lynn with criticisms of these studies in general, and the latter are probably more important.
2. I’ve changed the titles of the sections to make them more consistent with what we agreed on during mediation. One of Muntuwandi’s complaints about the article was that the section titles were too similar to the section titles used by Jensen and Rushton, and I think there was a consensus for the section titles we agreed on in mediation, so using the titles we agreed on in mediation seemed like the most sensible solution.
3. I’ve added back discussions about a few influences on IQ from the pre-mediation version: education, stereotype threat, genetics, and caste-like minorities. I’ve also added two lines of data that hadn’t been part of the article previously. One of them is racial admixture studies in the “geographic ancestry” section, which is something we’d discussed here previously, and other users approved of adding this line of data. The other is the Abecedarian Early Intervention Project in the “education” section, which was not discussed here before, but I’m hoping this addition won’t be contentious since it’s the most significant example available of how education can reduce the difference in average IQ between races.

Things that still need to be done:

1. Revising the discussion of transracial adoption studies in the “rearing conditions” section. (David.Kane has said that he intends to do this.)
2. Providing better references for the discussion of reaction time in the “processing efficiency” section. (Since this section was written primarily by Bpesta22, I think it would be best if he can do this. If he doesn’t know how to handle Wikipedia’s citation format, he could also just provide the journal links to us, and one of us can add the citations to the article.)
3. Drafting and adding the “significance” section. (I’m intending to do this myself eventually, unless someone else volunteers.)

As a side note, I really hope that my recent revisions will reduce other people’s tendency to accuse me of only being involved in this article for the purpose of promoting a hereditarian point of view. I consider the article to be less pro-hereditarian now than it was before I revised it, because it now discusses several environmental influences on IQ (education, stereotype threat and caste-like minorities) that it hadn’t discussed earlier. What matters to me is just that the article be made more informative, and I think I’ve accomplished that. --Captain Occam (talk) 09:22, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

Could you clarify the new structure? It is confusing to me. Before, under debate overview, we have the 12 (or whatever) main sub-parts of the debate over race and intelligence. One might reasonably question whether 12 was too many or too few. One might reasonably question how much material we devoted to each topic. One might argue that some of these subparts should be substantially expanded, with subparts of their own. But, at least, the organization was clear. Now, I can't make sense of the organization. Why is Debate overview at the same level as Variables potentially affecting intelligence in groups? Why are Processing efficiency and Spearman's Hypothesis in separate sections? I view this as a key point. Overall structure, if well-designed, makes it easier for all of is to work together. It would have been polite of you to seek comments on this restructuring before diving in willy-nilly. David.Kane (talk) 15:20, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

I was trying to do two things when I restructured the article. One was to address as many of Muntuwandi’s complaints as possible, and the other was to bring the article a little closer to what we agreed on in mediation. If you look at the outline that’s posted at Wikipedia_talk:Mediation_Cabal/Cases/2009-11-12/Race_and_Intelligence#Proposed_outline, you’ll see that a lot of what I’ve changed (both the section titles and the new sections I’ve added) were part of what we agreed on there.

As for the way I’ve divided the article, the information I’ve put in the “debate overview” section is about general data that relates to the study of this topic; Spearman’s Hypothesis and the Flynn Effect both fall into this category. “Variables affecting intelligence in groups” is for specific environmental or biological factors that can affect IQ. Describing these lines of data in terms of specific influences on IQ, and naming them accordingly, was something else we agreed on in mediation.

I’m not at all devoted to the structure I came up with, so you’re welcome to improve on it if you’d like to. This can involve restoring certain parts of the article to the way they were yesterday if you like, but I would like you to not revert every recent change I’ve made. It seems like at least some of the material I’ve added must be worthwhile to you, even if you don’t like the overall structure. --Captain Occam (talk) 16:46, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

I appreciate Captain Occam's work, and, as he anticipated, mathSci's improvements. I think the current version (with MathSci's improvements) has a better (more inclusive, and also, I think a problem-oriented rather than place-oriented communicates the real issue more clearly) title to the section on comparative data, and I also think his improvement is to provide more context, it really shows the global dimensions and provides more information. With MathSci's improvements to Captain Occam's work, I think we are making real progress. Captain Occam, thanks for inviting people to improve on your work. That is exemplary editing. Slrubenstein | Talk 17:23, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

Wanting To Revert Occam's Changes

I find myself wanting to revert all of Occam's recent changes. But, if I am the only one that feels that way, then obviously I shouldn't. It just seems that, in aggregate, they represent everything that is wrong with this article, and much of Wikipedia in general. (Much of this opinion is based on my recent education by MathSci.)

• This is an encyclopedia article not your personal take on the academic research. Use secondary sources as much as possible. Consider a representative change:

A 2009 meta-analysis by Jelte Wicherts found evidence of significant publication bias in 55 studies of stereotype threat and its effect on IQ, in which those that found a strong effect were more likely to be published than those which did not. Reviewing both the published and unpublished studies, Wicherts found that stereotype threat did not have an effect on all test-taking settings in which a difference in average scores is observed between races, and therefore was not an adequate explanation for the racial IQ gap.[101]

What is this sentence doing here? I am not denying that we have a reliable source nor that this is a fair summary of Wicherts' views. But this is an unpublished working paper that has, at best, a tangential relationship to the topic of Race and Intelligence. I understand that it may be, at times, important to use and cite a primary source. But are there no limits?

• We need to pay attention to WP:SIZE and Occam's recent additions come close, depending on the exact measure used, to violating it. Consider another specific change:

The comparison of Jews and Arabs, for example, is based on a news report that, in 1992, 26% of Jewish high school students passed their matriculation exam, as opposed to 15% of Arab students.[115]

Again, I am not denying that this is a true statement from a reliable source. But what is it doing in this article? And, moreover, if such a statement does belong here, then I don't understand what grounds we could possibly use for excluding any other similarly well-sourced statement. Soon, we will be make where we started, with a 25 page article that includes 300 references (each correct and well-sourced) but which, taken as a whole, is absolutely useless to any reader.

So, if it were me, I would just revert all these changes and then have a detailed discussion about them on the talk page. Some are reasonable, but the entire pile just has too much junk relative to what is reasonable and needed. But if I am the only one who feels that way . . . David.Kane (talk) 19:27, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

As I said before, if there’s specific material that you want to remove or change, please go ahead. I made the best decisions that I could, based on both what other users were requesting and what we agreed on during mediation, but I’m sure they weren’t perfect. However, I would hope that you don’t regard all of the changes I made as useless. I also tightened the wording of several sections, and added some data (particularly racial admixture studies and data about education) whose addition seems hard to argue with. --Captain Occam (talk) 19:50, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

This structure is closer to the mediation plan, using VA's idea of sectioning variables. I think it will be more stable this way. This structure seems clear and adaptable.

I agree it can be narrowed down. For example 'Reliability of Test Scores'. The test scores are generally considered reliable for any population by the psychometric community. Reading that section, imagining you know nothing of the topic, what does it make you think about the reliability? It's synth. As David said: This is an encyclopedia article not your personal take on the academic research. mikemikev (talk) 20:08, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

@Mikemikev - well, that is a non-sequitor. The section contains significant views from reliable sources. NPOV requires us to include different views, including minority views. You are just arguing that only one view (that of psychometricians) be included in the article. That simply won't fly. You can't ask us to violate a core policy. Slrubenstein | Talk 20:16, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

@ David Kane: I certainly agree that in all cases we need to adhere to WP:RS. As for length, I do not agree with David Kane. Just as individual IQs can be much lower or higher than the group average, some Wikipedia articles will be much smaller or larger than the average - this is a necessary and positive consequence of having an encyclopedia that is not paper, and that is able to have articles on topics not included in other encyclopedias. I think the length of an article should reflect the amount of literature (in this case scholarly literature, but I mean "reliable source" containing "significant views") out there, which is often an index of how controversial a topic is. This is not the article on string beans, and we should not be surprised that an article on racial differences and intelligence scores will be a lot longer than the article on string beans. What is important is that it represent all significant views, and explain complex issues clearly. For example, the Israeli-Arab quote is just one example - but it makes it very clear how diverse the data is that people are relying on. We can't just deal with abstractions, some readers need concrete examples and I understand that. In the past David and Captain Occam have asked Muntuwandi to raise specific problems on the talk page for discussion. If that is fair of Muntuwandi (or mathSci) it is fair to ask this of me or David Kane. I am not saying Captain occam's version is perfect; I really would like Aprock and Varoon Arya to weigh in. But I think we will make more progress by discussing the overall structure, and individual sections, separately, than be constant reverting. But if Three other editors who were active in the mediation agree with David Kane, I'll shut up. Slrubenstein | Talk 20:16, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

@Slrubenstein: A 'non-sequitor'? Don't be ridiculous. I think you'll find the synth violation is achieved by cherry picking from psychometricians, so what you say is absurd; just the usual meaningless spiel. mikemikev (talk) 20:23, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

@Slrubenstein: My mistake! I was looking at Mathsci's version. Occam's is fine. I apologise. mikemikev (talk) 21:04, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

Apology accepted! Slrubenstein | Talk 21:40, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

@David.Kane: I too am very concerned about size. There is a great deal to recommend a smaller article that samples the range of opinions more so than one that comprehensively covers everything written on the topic. An encyclopedia reader wants to be introduced to the topic, not overwhelmed by it. The consideration of WP:UNDUE helps motivate this all the more. --DJ (talk) 07:12, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

Richard Lynn?

Captain Occam appears to be adding improperly sourced statements that directly contradict previous and subsequent statements in the article concerning the research of Richard Lynn. Could he please explain why he is doing so? Mathsci (talk) 01:25, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

The paper by Heiner Rindermann seems to be accurately described: [11] --DJ (talk) 01:39, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

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

Captain Occam, please put talk concerning the article History of the race and intelligence controversy on the talk page of that article, not this one. Also, when you want to refer to an edit dif, please provide a link to the actual edit dif and not to the page history, it is unclear what you are talking about (which edit, specifically). Slrubenstein | Talk 16:42, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

At the moment, the second paragraph of the "Comparative data outside of the USA" section is a mess. There's no apparent organization, other than to just list a collection of criticisms of international IQ comparisons, while excluding all information about their predictive validity. It's a perfect example of this. Since Mathsci is the only user here who's pressing for the information he doesn't like to be excluded from this section, and he isn't making any effort to justify his claims that this information is original research, there's no reason for this part of the article to stay in this state. DJ, David.Kane, Mikemikev: let's fix this. --Captain Occam (talk) 12:09, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

I certainly think the second paragraph is critically important to the article. If you think that the section (and we should look at the whole section, not just one paragraph) can be better organized, well, that is certainly a reasonable concern. If it can be improved, well, sure, why not try? But I would strongly object to removing any of the content. If you want to propose a more effective way to organize all of this information, I'd love to see it, but none of the information, certainly nothing from the secon paragraph, should be removed. Slrubenstein | Talk 16:35, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

This isn’t about the history article, it’s about this one. Mathsci has now reverted it five times in the past day and a half: [12] [13] [14] [15] [16]. Each time, he’s removed the same paragraph describing predictive validity of IQ in Sub-Saharan Africa, and each time he’s been unwilling to explain why except to claim that it’s original research. When other users have asked him what there is in this paragraph that isn’t in the source material, he hasn’t responded.

I have tried to improve this section, according to the compromise you and I came up with about it, and when I do Mathsci just reverts it while refusing to participate in any of the discussion about it. Multihussain is doing this also, although unlike Mathsci he doesn’t appear to have violated 3RR over this yet. The paragraph they keep removing is one that you and I discussed when we came up with the outline for this section, and you seemed to agree that NPOV policy required that the article include it, although you disagreed with me about which section of the article it should be in. I’m not trying to remove any content here; I just want to add back the paragraph that Mathsci keeps removing. If you think I ought to try improving this section again, what do you think I should do if Mathsci just continues to revert my edits while refusing to participate in any discussion about them? --Captain Occam (talk) 18:51, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

Captain Occam, you cannot criticize MathSci for edit warring at the History of the race and intelligence controversy article, provide a link to that page, and then tell us that you are not talking about the "History of the race and intelligence controversy" article. And yes, you DID accuse mathsci of edit warring there. You did it in this sentence: "Mathsci, you've made this removal four times within the space of less than 24 hours, which is a violation of 3RR." which I have simply cut and pasted from your 12:09 edit, above. You wrote it. What are you trying to say? What do you mean, "This isn't about the history article?" If it is not about the history article, then why did you write an entire paragraph referring to the history article? Are you not capable of following your own link? Slrubenstein | Talk 18:59, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

captain o, excuse me but are you blind? i added a line or two + a reference to baumert & co. this was reverted by your friend mikemikev for no reason at all. i reverted back and added another line + a reference to flynn. this was also reverted by your friend mikemikev. at the end i didn't revert, i just added baumert and flynn (again!!). and now dj has removed almost everything! this is preposterous! mustihussain 19:11, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

The level of detail in this section is WP:UNDUE for this article. It could be easily reduced to a few sentences and still achieve the same effect because there are appropriate pages to link out to. Thoughts? --DJ (talk) 18:18, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

As an interim step I replaced the controversial text with what I hope is a non-controversial quote. We can subsequently replace that with a neutral summary when one is written. --DJ (talk) 18:49, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

I think this is a good starting point. I hope Mathsci can agree with this also, and not continue edit warring over it. --Captain Occam (talk) 19:05, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

no! this is not a good starting point! i find it quite disturbing that a spa like you have hijacked the article. and do you really think that you're the only one who can play the spa game?

now, do you? mustihussain 19:19, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

I agree that the section can be shortened. I think DJ did a fair job in summarizing much of the material. However, i think that it is essential that three things DJ left out be put back in. First and second, the parts about Luria and Reuning - they are critical because they explain why many researchers think that data collected would be inappropriate for comparison. Third, there are several negative reviews of Lynn's book, including two extended quotes from Mackintosh. Again, I think the reasons for the negative reviews, including the fact that several researchers question Lynn's credibility, should go in. I think there is a way to do this without taking up all the space Mathsci's version took up. I suggest a sentence saying several reviewers have criticized Lynn's book, and then pick just one of the two Mackintosh quotes. I think that would be a reasonable compromise. (When it comes to defensing the validity of cross-cultural comparisons, I think this already is covered in the article. If lynn ever defended himself against the specific accusations levelev by Mackintosh I am sure we could include a one or two line summary of his defense ... although it gos without saying that he disagrees with his critics.

Also, DJ, while I agree, the "alas" is editorializing and should go. Slrubenstein | Talk 19:20, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

• Let's try to rewrite this section on the talk page. I think it will produce a better product. Rapid, unorganized editing creates an unorganized product.
• What I added to the article was not my own text but rather a quote from Wicherts, who is perhaps the most cogent and recent critic of Lynn, writing in what appears to be a good NPOV fashion.
• Let's be sure to keep Wicherts' main points in what we re-write, while adding additional points if needed. Here are those 4 points with references removed for clarity:

1. It is important to note that an observed IQ score does not necessarily equal a particular level of general intelligence or g, as it is necessary to consider the issue of validity in interpreting an observed score as an indication of the position on a latent variable such as g.
2. Several authors have questioned whether the IQ scores of Africans are valid and comparable to scores in western samples in terms of g.
3. Some reject the very possibility of obtaining a valid measure of g in Africa with western IQ tests, while others consider it relatively unproblematic.
4. The psychometric issue of measurement invariance is crucial to the comparability of test scores across cultural groups in terms of latent variables, such as g. ... the number of studies addressing measurement invariance is small.

--DJ (talk) 19:45, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

@Slrubenstein - (1) You would include the details from Luria and Reuning to provide examples of why "Some reject the very possibility of obtaining a valid measure of g in [non-industrial cultures] with western IQ tests", correct? I didn't see the need for the examples when we can just point the generality. The key reason for not using them is that they seem to trivialize the general nature of the problem by pointing to small populations when the key concern is about the whole of sub-Saharan Africa. (2) You would add the review from Mackintosh? It's a perfectly valid source, but I would suggest going with the 2010 Wicherts papers because they have the value of being peer reviewed and offer a coherent alternative hypothesis to Lynn rather than just a few criticisms. Lynn has a follow-up comment to Wicherts which can be cited for his counter-argument. That could close out the section. --DJ (talk) 20:24, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

Sources to draw from:

• Wicherts, J. M.; Dolan, C. V.; Van Der Maas, H. L. J. (2010). "A systematic literature review of the average IQ of sub-Saharan Africans☆". Intelligence. 38: 1. doi:10.1016/j.intell.2009.05.002.
• Lynn, R.; Meisenberg, G. (2010). "The average IQ of sub-Saharan Africans: Comments on Wicherts, Dolan, and van der Maas". Intelligence. 38: 21. doi:10.1016/j.intell.2009.09.009.
• Wicherts, J. M.; Dolan, C. V.; Van Der Maas, H. L. J. (2010). "The dangers of unsystematic selection methods and the representativeness of 46 samples of African test-takers". Intelligence. 38: 30. doi:10.1016/j.intell.2009.11.003.
• Wicherts, J. M.; Dolan, C. V.; Carlson, J. S.; Van Der Maas, H. L. J. (2009). "Raven's test performance of sub-Saharan Africans: Average performance, psychometric properties, and the Flynn Effect". Learning and Individual Differences. 20 (3): 135. doi:10.1016/j.lindif.2009.12.001.

--DJ (talk) 20:35, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

Mikemike's reverting me

I changed the sentence in the section on IQ outside of the US to "Richard Lynn and others" because the sentence's sources - those footnotes at the end - mention Lynn. Now Mikemikev accuses me of changign it to sneak in some "fringe" claim? You are accusing me of making the edit to push a point of view? I consider this a personal attack. How dare you accuse me of sneaking in some claim about Fringey whatever. Revert me using an attack my integrity again you little turd and I will take it to AN/I. You don't like my edit? Take it to this talk page before you screw around with things you do not understand.

NPOV states that we should attribute views, especially when controversial. I am not claiming that any view is fringe, but the section of the article itself says that this is a controversial area. So policy requires us to attribute views when possible. I attributed this view to lynn because he wrote the book cited in the same sentence. You want to add a line saying that "All psychometricians think this" Mikemikev? Well, go find a reliable source from a significant author or professional organization that says so. The add the source and then you can add the attribution.

But stop trying to violate Wikipedia policy. Wikipedia presents views, not truths. And the views we present have to be verifiable. This particular view is verified by reference to a book by Lynn. All that I am doing here is what I did in the History of the R&I controversy article. Go ask Mathsci and Captain Occam. I partially reverted an edit Mathsci made, and restored an attribution Captain Occan had placed in there. That is all I am doing here. And you have the audacity to accuse me of POV pushing, when you are just an NPOV-pushing SPA? Slrubenstein | Talk 15:54, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

NPOV-pushing? mikemikev (talk) 16:41, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

The central problem is that, by allowing/encouraging extensive edits without pre-discussion in Talk, we are headed down the road to madness. Am I the only one that sees that? You, I, mikemev, others were able to thrash out our differences in the History and Assumptions section in Talk, resulting in, at least a few days, of stability for those sections. We should go back to doing things that way. With regard to this specific point, I don't agree with Mikemikev's accusation, but I see no reason to delete the reference to Mackintosh. If an excellent secondary source asserts that "X is true," and no other secondary source denies that "X is true", then you do not need to write: "Richard Lynn believes X." David.Kane (talk) 16:12, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

The reason I deleted the other reference was because it was referring to IQ differences discussed in the previous section, not this section. It is also important not to take quotes out of context. Mackintosh has a view, and it is accurately represented in this section. Lynn has a view, and it is accurately represented in this section. Nothing in the section says that Wikipedia takes Lynn's side, or mackintosh's side - which is how it should be. Slrubenstein | Talk 16:46, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Please correct me if I am wrong, but I thought that standard Wikipedia practice in the use of secondary sources (like Mackintosh) is that, if a secondary source says "X is true" --- and no secondary source disputes that X is true --- then we should write the article like "X is true." We should not write "Author of secondary source and others claim that X is true." David.Kane (talk) 16:49, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Not quite. It may just be that no one has had time or bothered to challenge a way-out claim. Slrubenstein is probably more of an expert on NPOV than anyone else here, so it's worth asking him though. Stephen B Streater (talk) 17:00, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

(ec) Buddy (meaning David, although Stephen can be my buddy too!), I am afraid you are wrong. Wikipedia is most defintiely not about "truth," ever. it is about verifiable views, not truth. But perhaps you misread what i wrote above. mackintosh is referring to IQ differences between Blacks and Whites in the US. Mathsci reverted Captain Occam several times because of SYNTH violations, and Captain Occam protested that Mathsci did not esxplain the SYNTH error. But I just explained it. Mackintosh makes a claim about IQ differences between whites and blacks in the US. Then this reference is put next to a reference to a book about IQ differences in other countries, and suddenly you think Mackintosh is a secondary source describing some "truth" that there are IQ differences between races worldwide. That is SYNTH!!!!!!!!!!! You cannot combine two sources that say different things and then present YOUR (or Captain Occam's, or Mikemikev's) conclusions as if they are "truth." This is a violation of each of Wikipedia's core content policies: NPOV because you are presenting a view as truth; V because although you provide the citation you are not attributing the view to the person whose view it is, and NOR, because of SYNTH. You've hit the trifecta. Congratulations, but I am undoing your re-revert.

And I repeat: the section presents Lynn's views, and they present Mackintosh's views, on the subject of IQ scores outside of the US, and that is just as it should be.Slrubenstein | Talk 17:06, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

I think we need to re-read Mackintosh because I think the source probably doesn't support the text (in that section). If so, this is a much simpler problem of checking the source. OTOH, we should probably try to read further to see if anyone else has made any generalizations about this question. --DJ (talk) 17:11, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

"Mackintosh makes a claim about IQ differences between whites and blacks in the US." No. That is wrong. I am holding a copy of Mackintosh in my hands and pages 148 to 150 are not restricted to the US. He provided a table of similar results for Britain, for starters, and makes reference to "North American blacks" as well as "European prejudice." He notes, correctly, that the vast majority of the work has been done in the US, but that the result is not limited to one country. David.Kane (talk) 17:35, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Without commenting on the content aspect of this, I'd like to point out that I think Slrubenstein seriously needs to make more of an effort to avoid personal attacks against other users. Referring to another editor as "you little turd" is a pretty obvious violation of WP:NPA. I brought up this problem from Slrubenstein at AN/I a few weeks ago, and several other editors there agreed that administrators should hold themselves to a higher standard of behavior than this. Slrubenstein, the fact that you think Mikemikev's edits were erroneous isn't an excuse for this sort of name-calling. --Captain Occam (talk) 17:14, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

It is clear that Mackintosh is not talking about third world countries or Africa which is the main focus of this section (which at one point was called "IQ in Africa"). The arguments that IQ data normally used in these studies would not apply to third world countries makes it pretty clear that we are not talking about England. So as far as I am concerned my point stands. Mackintosh 150 is not referring to the Lynn book that is refered to in that sentence, or to the data from the lynn book used in that paragraph. SYNTH, SYNTH, SYNTH. I am not the first person to raise these concerns, of presenting one POV as if (to use David Kane's words) it is the "truth." In addition to Mathsci, Mustaffa and Muntuwandi have raised NPOV concerns. NPOV is non-negotiable and I will defend it without compromise until I either get tired of Wikipedia, or am banned. Slrubenstein | Talk 18:09, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

There is a third option - that you help educate editors so that they understand the policy ie they spread the word themselves and you can work on other aspects of articles. IMO, it's one of the hardest to internalise, though SYNTH is also a natural inclination. And please don't be rude to people - we're all on the same side, ultimately. Stephen B Streater (talk) 19:41, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

The current revision states "Racial differences in IQ scores are observed around the world. A commonly-cited review by Richard Lynn lists IQ scores for East Asians (105), Europeans (99), Inuit (91), Southeast Asians and Amerindians (87 each), Pacific Islanders (85), South Asians/North Africans (84), Non-Bushmen sub-Saharan Africans (67), Australian Aborigines (62) and Bushmen (54)". This statement implies that these test scores are reliable and uncontroversial for all groups. Furthermore, are some of these groups referred to as "races". Are Southeast Asians, North Africans and Bushmen referred to as races.

I believe Lynn's publication is cited frequently, not because it is accurate, but because it is possibly the only study that has attempted to compile global IQ data. There are likely to be others, but they are probably less well known. Unless Lynn's data is replicated multiple times by independent studies, and secondary sources attest to this, Lynn's data should not be considered factual and should be attributed to Lynn as suggested by Slrubenstein.Unsigned comments by Muntuwandi

I agree that many these "global IQ scores" of Lynn are not accepted in the academic world; in fact the contrary seems to be the case, according to the book reviews, at the moment one of the only ways to gauge academic reaction. (Side comment: his coauthor Tatu Vanhanen, father of the current Finnish prime minister Matti Vanhanen, has got into trouble in Finland over some of this material.)

Returning to Mackintosh. David.Kane seems to be quoting quite selectively. Mackintosh fairly and squarely addresses the problems of measurement of intelligence in underdeveloped countries and communities untouched by industrialisation. As he says on pages 180-181:

Finally, it is important to remember that most of the discussion of ethnic group differences in IQ has concerned different groups living in Britain or the USA. Even these comparisons are fraught with problems: as numerous commentators have argued, many of these groups have probably created different sub-cultures, and probably differ in their access to the culture of the white majority. Differences in their test scores may, therefore, reflect differences in their values, attitudes, and beliefs. When we turn to comparisons between different nationalities, North American whites against Australian aborigines or illiterate peasants in sub-Saharan Africa, these problems surely become insuperable. It is not just that, as I have argued, we do not properly know how to translate a vocabulary or information test into a foreign language. We have no grounds for assuming that the modes of thought or reasoning, that we take for granted as evidence of intelligence in Western industrial societies, will be the same as those to be found in an illiterate peasant society. The concept of intelligence is, in part, a social or cultural construct, as Sternberg amongst others has insisted. Mary Smith may be more intelligent than her brother John, but the way in which this difference manifests itself would probably be quite different if they lived in the Kalahari desert as hunter-gatherers, or were Amazonian Indians, rather than middle class Americans.

He then goes on to amplify this for another page. Thes statements do not support what David.Kane is claiming. The same points of view are expressed in the CUP book edited by Berry et al. Lynn was going out on a limb it seems. Mathsci (talk) 15:13, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

That belongs under debate assumptions. Nobody questions Lynn's IQ data. You're setting up a straw man: A) These are Lynn's IQ figures. B) Lynn is unreliable because of X, Y, Z. But the IQ data is solid. There may be some small nitpicks and errors, but it's collated from many independent studies, agreeing with each other with a 0.95 correlation. Do you really think that if it was possible to prove these figures wrong it wouldn't have been done by now? Face it, these are the IQ scores for the nations. Whether or not those IQ scores are appropriate is a different question. Mathsci's Mackintosh quote above is irrelevant. mikemikev (talk) 16:31, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

That's not correct. At least two book reviews have queried these figures. The review of Mackintosh and the review of Thomas Volken [17]. What evidence do you have that any serious academic has accepted these figures? Has somebody written that somewhere or is it something you imagine to be true, despite the negative book reviews and the articles of Wichert et al? The books mostly seem to be cited by a small circle of hereditarians or the occasional critic. Do you have other sources showing that they have been widely accepted? Mathsci (talk) 01:04, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

As I understand it, very little to none of the IQ data is Lynn's. In that sense it's correct to say that no one questions the data. However, there are lots of questions about Lynn's apparent cherry picking of IQ data. Thus when Lynn presents data, it's perfectly reasonable to question where he got it, why included some, but not other data, and how he "normalized" it. Refer to the work of Wicherts for more detail. A.Prock (talk) 06:08, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

That is perfectly correct. All of the data was compiled from previous studies. The reviews make it clear that some of the data was chosen selectively. Some countries in Africa had no data available, so an estimate was made based on neighbouring countries, Sometimes the samples were small - I vaguely remember isolated villages in Kenya - possibly too small and unrepresentative to compute a meaningful average. Since Wicherts et al did an exhaustive literature survey for sub-Saharan African countries fairly recently, I agree that that's the place to look for at least one informed view. Mathsci (talk) 07:49, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

It seems like we have a consensus - Mathsci and AProck, can you review the section and make sure that it reflects this consensus? Length is an issue, but I deleted some material Mathsci originallyput in. I thought ti was redundant but please make sure I did not cut anything really important. Thanks, Slrubenstein | Talk 15:46, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

A lot of this drama could have been posted on user talk pages instead of the article talk page. --120 Volt monkey (talk) 17:26, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Reviewing that section, The section is full of internal contradictions, and places Lynn's flawed analysis as the main content. Reading some of the reviews of Lynn's work makes it clear that there are enough methodological problems to make the conclusions very tenuous at best, and racist at worst. I would suggest replacing it with a discussion of some of the main problems with comparing IQ scores across cultures. It's important to remember that this is article is about Race and IQ, not culture and IQ. When comparing the IQ performance of Blacks in Africa vs Whites in the US, the performance difference may be much more due to radical cultural differences, not racial difference. A.Prock (talk) 18:28, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

The national IQs are estimates based on educational achievement within countries (standardized test scores, mostly). In most cases, the IQs were estimated directly (test scores were available for the country). In fewer cases, Lynn estimated them based on IQs for neighboring countries. The indirect estimates are indeed sloppier (contain more error) but are not invalid in the psychometric sense (I'd argue that have predictive and construct validity).

At least one recent paper, for example, shows that national IQ estimates predict religious beliefs and certain outcomes related to health:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6W4M-4WNWW6F-1&_user=10&_coverDate=10%2F31%2F2009&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1315537588&_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=f9569544dda093d92fb7cdb03b5e4bc2

It might be more proper to call these values educational achievement and not IQ, but one could also argue these are basically the same thing at the aggregate level. -Bpesta22 (talk) 02:55, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

@Aprock - A refactoring might be possible. The US data on European, African, East Asian, Latino and Native Americans (including Alaska Natives) can be covered in the US context. That leaves one small and one big debate. The small debate is global IQ variation in industrial countries. The big debate is sub-Saharan African IQ scores. --DJ (talk) 04:59, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

There seems to be an agreement here that this section needs to be improved, but nobody’s making an effort at actually improving it. DJ, would you like to take a shot at this yourself? --Captain Occam (talk) 10:13, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Well, the section is in something of a local NPOV maxima, and improving it would require considerable effort to get it to a new maxima. I'd like to see more discussion first. --DJ (talk) 16:37, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Eyferth study

One of the things that we agreed on during mediation was that when we discuss the Eyferth study in this article, we ought to mention the most common criticism of it, which is that the parents of the children in this study weren’t a representative sample of IQ distribution among blacks and whites because they were selected for IQ when they joined the army. (During World War II, the army wouldn’t accept people with an IQs below a certain level because they were too difficult to train; I think their cutoff line was at 85.) Now that the article is providing more information about the Eyferth study, I think it ought to mention this criticism of it also. Does anyone mind if I edit the article to add this? --Captain Occam (talk) 12:32, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

I suggest creating a separate article for the study, but the title "Leistungern verscheidener Gruppen von Besatzungskindern in Hamburg-Wechsler Intelligenztest für Kinder (HAWIK)" doesnt lend itself to being an article now. Probably Eyferth study is enough. The citation for that criticism is Loehein et al (1975), which is reiterated by Hunt and Carlson (2007): "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.". --DJ (talk) 16:16, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

I was intending to cite the criticism to Jensen 1998, since in that book he specifically mentions the fact that the soldiers had been selected for IQ. (Perhaps Loehlin mentions this also; if he does then I guess it would be fine to cite this to him rather than to Jensen.)

I'm not sure if I agree that the Eyferth study is notable enough to deserve its own article here, but as long as it's part of this article, do you agree that this criticism of it ought to be included? --Captain Occam (talk) 17:12, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

I recommend editing the entire section in talk space first. If you're going to add interpretation of Eyferth, add it for the other studies as well. If consensus is reached on the talk page, only then commit the changes to the main article. This will permit a bold re-edit in the face of the existing local NPOV maxima :) --DJ (talk) 17:41, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

I know very little about how the Moore and Tizard studies. What other interpretations of them would you suggest adding? --Captain Occam (talk) 18:06, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

It looks like ImperfectlyInformed added the information about criticism of the Eyferth study himself. Thanks for adding this, II. What would you think of adding some additional information about the the Moore and Tizard studies also? --Captain Occam (talk) 01:40, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Debate assumptions and methodology

The proposed experiments described by Rowe 2005 (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15641922) may be more appropriate to present in the "Debate assumptions and methodology" section than what is currently given. Any objections? --DJ (talk) 08:44, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

What makes it more appropriate? Slrubenstein | Talk 10:18, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

I can't find any supporting citations for the material in the paragraph beginning with "In theory". It may be WP:OR. --DJ (talk) 17:36, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

I say dump it, as it's awkward and not very realistic. Instead:

As with many variables in social science (e.g., sex, age, marital status, etc), race cannot be randomly assigned to research subjects. All race and IQ data are therefore correlational in nature and do not permit causal inferences. Researchers instead use statistical techniques and other types of control to infer whether or not a third variable (e.g., income or education) can "explain" the race gap on IQ scores. -Bpesta22 (talk) 22:31, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

No worries on deleting the "In theory" section. But can't cite Loehlin for something that is not there. So, I just deleted whole thing. The more that we can edit out extraneous material, especially material not correctly cited to a specific source, the better. No objection if someone wants to use Rowe (2005). David.Kane (talk) 23:17, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

The IQ distribution curve for American Whites and for US-resident Blacks can be approximated by these normal distribution functions:

WIQ = exp{−(x−103)²/537.92} / √(2π)

BIQ = exp{−(x−85)²/307.52} / √(2π)

The averages (103 for American Whites, 85 for US-resident Blacks) are from "Thirty Years of Research on Race Differences in Cognitive Ability," by J. Philippe Rushton and Arthur R. Jensen, published in Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 2005, Vol. 11, No. 2, pp. 235-294. The standard deviations in IQ, which are 16.4 for Whites and 12.4 for Blacks, are from a 1963 study by Kennedy, Van De Riet, and White.

The fraction of each race that has an IQ above a specified minimum can be found by integrating the appropriate function from the minimum IQ to about IQ 300, after where, for all practical purposes, there is no further accumulation of area under the curve. It's interesting to notice how the ratio, of the fraction of Whites to the fraction of Blacks exceeding various minimum IQs, changes as the minimum is increased.

Minimum IQ	Whites passing	Blacks passing	W/B ratio
100	0.57257228	0.11320135	5.1
110	0.33475184	0.02189324	15.3
120	0.14996457	0.00238194	63.0
130	0.04984674	0.00014224	350.4
140	0.01203226	0.00000459	2619.5

Only one US-resident Black in nine has an IQ above 100, whereas about 57.3% of American Whites do. In the United States, Whites outnumber Blacks by a ratio of slightly more than six, so, on the average, there will be about 30 qualified Whites for each qualified Black for jobs having a required minimum IQ of 100.

For intellectually demanding jobs requiring a minimum IQ of 140 for satisfactory performance, there will be 2620 qualified Whites for each qualified Black, if the populations of Whites and Blacks in the pool of persons available to be hired are equal. There will be about 16000 qualified Whites for each qualified Black, on the average in the United States, for jobs having a required minimum IQ of 140.

On the very low end of the IQ distribution, the higher standard deviation for American Whites causes a leftward catch-up. There is no significant gap between these two races for the per capita rates of idiocy. The racial gaps in IQ appear toward the middle of the distributions and become ever-larger in proportion as higher IQ ranges are considered. Jenab6 (talk) 18:35, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

tags

The article tags were added by Hipocrite (talk · contribs). Are they still appropriate? If so, what are neutrality and/or accuracy issues? --DJ (talk) 18:12, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

I think they can go. mikemikev (talk) 18:58, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

If I recall correctly the tags were placed because of concerns the article was biased in favour of the hereditarian viewpoint, and the factual accuracy concerns have to do with the article accepting the assumptions of the hereditarian position (that race and IQ has a biological basis) without question. I don't think those issues have been resolved yet, although we did come a bit of way towards it.·Maunus·ƛ· 03:37, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Okay. On the latter point, my understanding is that the Nisbett and Flynn (to point to two examples) each believe that race and IQ are individually related to biology but that as an empirical matter genetic differences are not the cause of racial differences in IQ. Thus, the distinction should be at two levels of analysis. There's the position exemplified by Rose vs Ceci at one level of analysis, and then for example Ceci vs Jensen at the other level of analysis. Most of the article is about the Ceci vs Jensen analysis, which makes sense because the Rose vs Ceci debate doesn't go very deep. --DJ (talk) 03:47, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

I Can see that some of the problem stems from the fact that those who reject the validity of even looking for a correlation between the two categories already on the level of assuptions - this makes the arguments "not go very deep". Those who engage in "deep" discussion are those who acknowledge some of the points e.g. validity of race or some degree of heredibilioty of iq. But the other positions also exist and should be included. There are also those who argue that the research should be entirely avoided because it is inherently unethical. I wrote a section trying to include those points of view as well as some of the historical context (eugenics generally lost its appeal post wwII )that makes a lot of people uneasy about the research. David Kane then rewrote it - removing a lot of the material I found to be important, and now even David Kane's version (it had great quotes by Rose and Sternberg) which to me was acompromise that could be accepted (although reluctantly) is gone from the article. That leaves me with the concerns I had in the first place. Here[18] is a dif showing what I wrote. David Kane's version is at his talk opage I think.·Maunus·ƛ· 04:06, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm too tired to analyze the details, but in the broad outline I think your content should be added back. Let me attempt to summarize the distinction one more time to be sure we're thinking similarly. First, there's the question of whether this investigation is ethical or not. Second, if you consider the question "how much do genetic factors contribute to race differences in intelligence?" there's a view that that's not a well formed question. Then, third, there's are those that accept that the topic is ethical to study and well formed, but which disagree on the empirical answer to the question "how much do genetic factors contribute to race differences in intelligence?". Does that sound right? --DJ (talk) 04:11, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I think that it would help very much if those three main types of exceptions to the hereditarian viewpoint were at least represented in the article - the weighting can be discussed.·Maunus·ƛ· 04:17, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Useful quote from Hunt and Carlson (2007):

The investigation of racial differences in intelligence is probably the most controversial topic in the study of individual differences. Contemporary proponents can be found for each of the following positions:

a. There are differences in intelligence between races that are due in substantial part to genetically determined differences in brain structure and/or function (Rushton, 1995; Rushton &Jensen, 2005a).

b. Differences in cognitive competencies between races exist and are of social origin (Ogbu, 2002; Sowell, 2005).

c. Differences in test scores that are used to argue for differences in intelligence between races represent the inappropriate use of tests in different groups (Ogbu, 2002; Sternberg, Grigorenko, & Kidd, 2005).

d. There is no such thing as race; it is a term motivated by social concerns and not a scientific concept (Fish, 2004; Smedley &Smedley, 2005).

--DJ (talk) 04:27, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

That looks very good to me. Now, ideally, each of those viewpoints should receive due weight in the article, but for now merely including them would be a step in the right direction.·Maunus·ƛ· 04:30, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Not that we need to discuss it now, but it's my understanding that the (a) vs (b) debate is getting what would otherwise be undue-relative-to-head-count coverage here is largely because there are other articles where (c) and (d) are covered in detail. To the immediate fix, do we want to explicitly use that formulation from H&C(2007)? Race_and_intelligence#Debate_assumptions_and_methodology touches on this but in a less direct fashion, which tends to diffuse the point. --DJ (talk) 04:35, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Other minor POVs

• Charles Murray, author of The Bell Curve, says that the BW IQ difference is "intractable" regardless of its etiology (Murray 2005).
• Peter Singer (1993), author Practical Ethics, says that it is irrelevant whether BW IQ differences have a partly genetic etiology in regard to our ethical obligation to one another: "what would be the implications of genetically based differences in IQ between different races? I believe that the implications of this supposition are less drastic than they are often supposed to be and give no comfort to genuine racists"; "Equal status does not depend on intelligence"; "the genetic hypothesis does not imply that we should reduce our efforts to overcome other causes of inequality between people". --DJ (talk) 04:51, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

The "significance" section

I think it’s time for us to begin discussing the last major change to this article that we agreed on during mediation, but haven’t actually made to it yet. We agreed during mediation that the article should have a section discussing the social and economic effects associated with the difference in average IQ between races, but weren’t able to work out any of the details regarding its actual structure. Ludwigs2 (the mediator) intended for us to resolve its structure as part of the mediation after we’d finished the first draft of the article, but the mediation case ended up closing before we got a chance to do this. We’ve definitely finished more than just a first draft of the article, though, so I think at this point it’s time for us to figure out what structure the significance section should have.

Here’s my proposal. This is heavily based on this section from January’s version of the article, but I’ve gotten rid of the large tables and some of the text, both in order to prevent it from overwhelming the rest of the article and also in order to avoid some content that looks like WP:SYNTH to me. Some of the content from January’s version is cited to sources that only discuss the differing representation of racial groups in certain professions, without specifically discussing the relationship between that and IQ, but I think I’ve mostly gotten rid of these problems.

See also: Practical importance of IQ

Within societies

File:Two Curve Bell with Jobs.jpg

These are idealized normal curves comparing the IQs of Blacks and Whites in the US in 1981. Source: Social Consequences by Gottfredson. Labels show Gottefredson's expectations for job and life potential for people of different races.

The appearance of a large practical importance for intelligence makes some scholars claim that the source and meaning of the IQ gap is a pressing social concern. The IQ gap is reflected by gaps in the academic, economic, and social factors correlated with IQ. However, some dispute the general importance of the role of IQ for real-world outcomes, especially for differences in accumulated wealth and general economic inequality in a nation. (See "Practical importance of IQ".)

The effects of differences in mean IQ between groups (regardless if the cause is social or biological) are amplified by two statistical characteristics of IQ. First, there seem to be minimum statistical thresholds of IQ for many socially valued outcomes (for example, high school graduation and college admission). Second, because of the shape of the normal distribution, only about 16% of the population is at least one standard deviation above the mean. Thus, although the IQ distributions for Blacks and Whites are largely overlapping, different IQ thresholds can have a significant impact on the proportion of Blacks and Whites above and below a particular cut-off.

In The Bell Curve, Murray and Herrnstein conclude that when Blacks and Whites are compared while adjusting for IQ, the difference in many social and economic variables shrinks or disappears. For example, controlling for IQ shrinks the income gap from thousands to a few hundred dollars, cuts differential poverty by about three-quarters and unemployment differences by half. At a given IQ level, the odds of having a college degree and working in a high-level occupation are higher for blacks than for whites. Studies outside of The Bell Curve that have produced similar results are Nyborg and Jensen (2001) and Kanazawa (2005). Another study by Bowles and Gintis concluded that wealth, race and schooling are important to the inheritance of economic status, but IQ is not a major contributor. Since race, schooling and IQ are all correlated, the exact causal relationship between them is difficult to determine.

Between nations

Several studies have found that average IQ scores of nations correlates significantly with a number of other factors including average health, average income, infant mortality and crime. In Richard Lynn’s IQ and the Wealth of Nations, Lynn proposes that differences in the intelligence of their populations is the primary cause of these differences in societal factors. Lynn’s book has been sharply criticized by other researchers who recognize the correlation between these factors and IQ, but disagree with Lynn as to the causal relationship between them.

Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel argues that historical differences in economic and technological development for different areas can be explained by differences in geography (which affects factors like population density and spread of new technology) and differences in available crops and domesticatable animals. It is also possible that these environmental differences may operate in part by selecting for higher levels of IQ. Voight et al. (2006) state that "a number of recent studies have detected more signals of adaptation in non-African populations than in Africans, and some of those studies have conjectured that non-Africans might have experienced greater pressures to adapt to new environments than Africans have."

For high-achieving minorities

The book World on Fire notes the existence in many nations of minorities that have created and control a disproportionate share of the economy, a market-dominant minority. Examples include Chinese in Southeast Asia; Whites, Indians, Lebanese and Igbo people of Western Africa; Whites in Latin America; and Jews in pre-World War II Europe, modern America, and modern Russia. These minorities are often resented and sometimes persecuted by the less successful majority. Examining the over-representation of certain minority groups in high-paying professions in the United States, Nathanial Wehl has concluded that this is a consequence of their above-average IQ. Cochran and Harpending have reached the same conclusion about Ashkenazi Jews, which make up on 3% of the United States population but have won 27% of its Nobel prizes, which these authors attribute to them having an average IQ somewhere between one-half and one standard deviation above the White average. (See "Ashkenazi intelligence".)

Some studies have shown significant variation in IQ subtest profiles between groups. In one analysis of IQ studies on Ashkenazi Jews, for example, high verbal and mathematical scores, but average or below average visuospatial scores were found. In a separate study, East Asians demonstrated high visuospatial scores, but average or slightly below average verbal scores. The professions in which these populations tend to be over-represented differ, and some believe the difference is directly related to IQ subtest score patterns asserted to exist. The high visiuospatial/average to below average verbal pattern of subtest scores has also been asserted to exist in fully assimilated third-generation Asian Americans, as well as in the Inuit and Native Americans (both of Asian origin).

References

Any suggestions about how to improve this section are welcome. Since the only specific thing we agreed on during mediation was that the article should have a section about this, without agreeing on anything about its structure, I’m not at all particular about how this section is worded or what sources should be used. --Captain Occam (talk) 09:45, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

I think it’s time for us to begin discussing the last major change to this article that we agreed on during mediation. This was not agreed to in mediation. The content you present here appears to be mostly OR and SYNTH. As mentioned before during meditation, you seem to be applying the logical fallacy that correlation implies correlation as the basis for most of this SYNTH. A.Prock (talk) 12:28, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

That looks pretty good Occam. I don't have time to look at it thoroughly right now, but will later.

Aprock: Assuming you mean correlation implies causation, specifically where/how is this the case (in an OR sense)? I'm not saying you're wrong, but an example would be a good place to start discussion. mikemikev (talk) 12:43, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Aprock: during the mediation, you were the only user who had a problem with this section, but you were never very specific about what your problems with it were. When you were pressed you to go into more detail about them, you often just changed the subject. This was discussed here and here. The significance section was on the outline that we came up with during mediation, but we also agreed that we needed to discuss your objections to it in greater depth. That’s why we need to have this discussion now: we don’t want to just overrule you about this, but in order for us to make this section something that’s satisfactory to you, you need to be specific about what should be changed about it.

The version of this section from January’s version of the article had some WP:SYNTH issues, but I don’t think this version does. The sources being cited here specifically discuss the relationship between these societal factors and IQ, and it isn’t synth if the connection between two things is being made by the source material. Likewise, if the source material states that differences in IQ is causing some of these societal differences, it isn’t our place to second-guess what the sources say. (Although we can provide other sources to balance it, as my proposal does.)

If there’s something specific in this section that you think is drawing conclusions that aren’t supported by the source material, could you please explain what it is? General complaints such as “this looks like it involves synth” aren’t helpful here. --Captain Occam (talk) 12:58, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Firstly I think this is the section th<at should highlight prominently the ethical concenrs expressed by many scholars. The section does not do so at all now. Secondly it features prominently an image that lends credit to a far from consensual interpretation of the possible consequences of the race iq gap. The image is from a non-peerreviewed paper by a single (pioneer funded) controversial author. If the section needs and image the information it should include should be fairly consensual I think or undue weight is bound to be a concern.·Maunus·ƛ· 16:11, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

I included the image because I was looking for something to replace the big tables that are in the earlier version of this section. You can look here if you want to see what it is that I’m modifying. My impression is that this data ought to be presented visually in some format or other, and the image I included was the best way I could think of to do that. Do you think this section would be better off without a visual representation of the data at all?

I’d also like it if you could clarify what you mean by ethical concerns. Are you talking about the question of whether or not it’s ethical to research race and intelligence in general? If that’s what you mean, I would not have any problem with the article covering this, but I don’t see how it would belong in this particular section. This section is about the social and economic effects associated with the IQ gap; ethical concerns probably ought to go in the “policy relevance” section or a new section of their own. You’re welcome to make a separate proposal about the information you want to add about ethical concerns associated with research in this area, but if you want it to be covered by the same section that’s discussing the practical effects associated with the IQ gap, I think you need to explain why these two topics belong in the same section. --Captain Occam (talk) 16:30, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

I think you may be right that the policy relevance section is better for the ethical concerns. Anyway this topic is one about which I know there is a lot of debate and that is not reflected in the section. What I don't want is a section that presents it as if social inequality can be unproblematically seen as stemming from IQ inequality - when in fact a reasonably widespread viewpoint is that it is the other way round.·Maunus·ƛ· 08:08, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

The issue here is that in order to find sources that consider IQ an effect and not a cause of factors like income and educational achievement, we have to venture outside of mainstream psychometrics. As a representative example, the APA’s report Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns regards IQ as causing these things, rather than just correlating with them. One of the things we agreed during mediation is that the APA report is the most “mainstream” statement that exists on this topic, and that the article should take the same overall perspective that it does.

However, I wouldn’t have a problem with adding a few sentences to point out that not everyone agrees with the APA’s position about this. What sources would you recommend using to show alternative viewpoints? --Captain Occam (talk) 09:33, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

I don't read the APA report as stating that "IQ differences cause social differences" but rather that:

• "If the skills measured by psychometric tests actually matter for those accomplishments, intelligence is affecting SES rather than the other way around. We do not know the magnitude of these various effects in various populations, but it is clear that no model in which “SES” directly determines “IQ” will do."
• And that: "One further factor should not be overlooked. Only a single generation has passed since the Civil Bights movement opened new doors for African Americans, and many forms of discrimination are still all too familiar in their experience today. Hard enough to bear in its own right, discrimination is also a sharp reminder of a still more intolerable past. It would be rash indeed to assume that those experiences, and that historical legacy, have no impact on intellectual development." ::::::::::::*And that: "Moreover, the environmental contributions to those differences are almost equally mysterious. We know that both biological and social aspects of the environment are important for intelligence, but we are a long way from understanding how they exert their effects."
• And that: "Because ethnic differences in intelligence reflect complex patterns, no overall generalization about them is appropriate." and that "Several culturally-based explanations of the Black/White IQ differential have been proposed; some are plausible, but so far none has been conclusively supported. There is even less empirical support for a genetic interpretation. In short, no adequate explanation of the differential between the IQ means of Blacks and Whites is presently available."
• And that: "In a field where so many issues are unresolved and so many questions unanswered, the confident tone that has characterized most of the debate on these topics is clearly out of place. The study of intelligence does not need politicized assertions and recriminations; it needs self-restraint, reflection, and a great deal more research."
• And: "Distinctions of caste are not always linked to perceptions of race. In some countries lower and upper caste groups differ by appearance and are assumed to be racially distinct; in others they are not. The social and educational consequences are the same in both cases. All over the world, the children of caste-like minorities do less well in school than upper-caste children and drop out sooner. Where there are data, they have usually been found to have lower test scores as well."
• "The result of this cultural conflict, in Boykin’s view, is that many Black children become alienated from both the process and the products of the education to which they are exposed. One aspect of that process, now an intrinsic aspect of the culture of most American schools, is the psychometric enterprise itself. He argues (Boykin, 1994) that the successful education of African American children will require an approach that is less concerned with talent sorting and assessment, more concerned with talent development." Also interestingly and significantly the report specifcally mentions that it does not use the term "race" about the groups "african american" or "white" but that these are ratrher defined as "groups" characterised by being:

"groups (we avoid the term “race”) are defined and selfdefined by social conventions based on ethnic origin as well as on observable physical characteristics such as skin color. None of them are internally homogeneous." ·Maunus·ƛ· 11:41, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

First of all, I wasn’t asserting that the APA statement regarded the cause of the IQ difference as having been identified, which is what most of the portions of it that you quoted are about. This section isn’t about the cause of differences in IQ (either between individuals or between races), it’s about their effects. Here are a couple of relevant quotes from the APA statement about this:

“This implies that, across a wide range of occupations, intelligence test performance accounts for some 29% of the variance in job performance.”

“In general, intelligence tests measure only some of the many personal characteristics that are relevant to life in contemporary America. Those characteristics are never the only influence on outcomes, though in the case of school performance they may well be the strongest.”

Stating that IQ “accounts for” variation in job performance and “influences” school performance is saying more than just that the two are correlated; it’s saying that one is directly affecting the other. This is the view that I’m saying the article ought to be consistent with, although as I said before, I’m willing to try and make it clear that there are dissenting viewpoints about this. --Captain Occam (talk) 16:11, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

it "accounts" for some 29% of job performance" - the image makes it look as if it is the most significant (or maybe even the only) factor determining job succes. The second statement is not aptly reflected in the texts as it is - notice that it says that iq influence is only strongest in schooling. Your interpretation of the Apa report leads to circular reasoning the report states that the socioeconomic explanations of the gap are better supported than the genetic explanation - this shows that seeing it as at least a part of the cause is well founded. To then sugest that you can somehow interpret the fact that the report says that some 29% of job performance is accounted for by IQ equals saying that the lower social status of the low IQ group is caused by their low IQ is completely circular. Rereading the APA report I have a clearer idea about what the significance section should contain. It should show that the significance ascribed to the IQ gap depends on what one thinks is the cause of the IQ gap. If one believes in socioeconomic explanations then the significance is that one should remedy those factors to achieve better performance, if one believes in a genetic explanation the significance is that it requires eugenics of some sort to remedy them. ·Maunus·ƛ· 16:53, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

I don’t understand your point about circular reasoning—socio-economic status is one of the possible causes of the IQ gap that the APA considers to have the least empirical support, more than anything because when races are compared at the same socio-economic level, the IQ difference only shrinks from 15 points to 12. I guess whether you think I’ve been engaging in circular reasoning isn’t important here, though: what’s relevant is what should actually go in this section. Are there any sources that you recommend using about how the significance of the gap differs depending on what’s causing it? (We obviously can’t just include our own conclusions about this in the article, since that would be original research.) And also, are you sure that information about how to best remedy the gap shouldn’t go in the “policy implications” section rather than this one? --Captain Occam (talk) 17:17, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

I don't know which APA report you have read but the one I've read and quoted at large says: If the skills measured by Psychometric tests actually matter for those accomplisments [then] intelligence is affecting SES rather than the other way round. If. It then says that a model with SES determining solely the IQ does not work, but they certainly don't state that SES is the factor with least empirical support, in fact in they conclusion they say that "Several culturally-based explanations of the Black/White IQ differential have been proposed; some are plausible, but so far none has been conclusively supported. There is even less empirical support for a genetic interpretation." Which can opnly be understood as saying that the different socio-cultural explanations (of which SES is one) has better empirical support than the genetic hypothesis. (Also the report mentions the Flynn effect as a possible sociocultural explanation)·Maunus·ƛ· 17:55, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Oh, and adressing your other point - currently I don't really see the relevance of a separate section on "significance" - why don't we just write it together with the policy relevance section. Anyway I think its very diffuclt to say something about significance without inadvertently assuming that one explanation is behind it. We'd avoid that by writing together the two sections.·Maunus·ƛ· 18:00, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Maunus: That figure by Gottfredson has been published many times in many of her articles, even ones that passed peer review. She is also one of the leading scholars in the field, independent of any money she got from the Pioneer Fund. Further, if one accepts that a 15 point black / white difference exists (independent of its cause-- nature, nurture or both) then the graph is a mathematically precise summary of expectations based on how well IQ correlates with life success factors. In other words, assuming a 15 point gap (and no one here seems to dispute that the gap exists), the graph is fact. -Bpesta22 (talk) 00:00, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

It would have to be sourced to one of the peerreviewed publications. And I don't know enough about this, but it is not my impression that there is an academic consensus about exactly how IQ correlates with possible job functions and life succes factors. I think the main problem with the image is that it lends a lot of authority to a view that I am sure is not universally acceoted. Basically a question of whether it gives due weight to all viewpoints.·Maunus·ƛ· 08:08, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

@Captain Occam. Until your status as an editor is resolved one way or another, I don't see much point in getting into a protracted discussion. When you're prepared to open a discussion with untrue claims like I think it’s time for us to begin discussing the last major change to this article that we agreed on during mediation , it only makes it clear that getting anywhere with you is going to take a lot more time and effort than I'm interested in investing. A.Prock (talk) 01:52, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

So let me get this straight: because of your personal issues with me, you’re refusing to explain any of your problems with this section other than WP:IDONTLIKEIT? That’s basically what you’re saying here.

Look at the article outline that mediation produced. This section is part of it, whether you’re willing to acknowledge that or not. The outline that we agreed on during mediation also said that discussion about the scope and structure of this section is still pending, which is why we need to have the current discussion. Whether or not you want to participate in that discussion is up to you, but it seems like refusing to participate in it is only going to work against you. You’ve made it pretty clear that there are certain ways you think this section needs to be improved, and I’m definitely willing to make an effort to ensure that what ends up going on the article takes your criticisms into account, but in order for that to be possible you’ll have to tell us specifically what they are. --Captain Occam (talk) 03:19, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

I was very clear in what I said above. As you are currently demonstrating, your willingness to twist facts makes it very difficult to make forward progress. Until your status as an editor is resolved one way or another, debating you is not a productive use of editing time. A.Prock (talk) 16:44, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

I don't know what you mean with "status as an editor". As far as I know there is one single status of editor and that is an editor with whom one needs to discuss. If you want to participate in improving this article there is no alternative to discussing with each and all the other editors who are working on the page.·Maunus·ƛ· 16:57, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

Certainly. And as I said above, debating Captain Occam is not productive, especially given his combative, tendentious, and fact twisting editing style. I've been around the block several times with Captain Occam, and I really am not interested in going around the block again until ANI decides one way or another about whether/how to deal with his behaviour. I'm happy to discuss the article, but I'm not going to spend extrodinary effort dealing with Captain Occam's shenanigans. A.Prock (talk) 17:26, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

Maunus has been bending over backwards to explain the problems with this section, and AProck'ssummary is concise and clear. The request for specific examples is a little puzzling when the whole thing is the example. At most, perhaps some people have argued that economic inequalities are the result of IQ differences -this is the argument of The bell Curve and I have no objection to including it in the article as a specific point of view. There are several published criticisms of The Bell Curve and those views must be added too or else we lose NPOV. We have to make sure not to suggest that correlation is the same thing as causality. Arguments that economic inequality or minority group status may cause the IQ gap is "significant" in a different way, as it would provide a justification of affirmative action. In fact, this was the conclusion reached by the US government, so Captain Occam's version lacks the most significant consequence of the reported gap in th country from which most of the research comes. Now, I could go ith a significance section, or notw - I think most of the Jensen/Rushton/Lynn research is politically motivated, so whether or not this research has had any policy or political consequences might be worth discussing. But I do not think I signed on to some agreement that we should definitely have a "significance" section, and I really do not know where Captain Occam gets this idea that his view = consensus. I wish he could provide an adult response to Aprock and Maunus's concerns, and I can understand why AProck is getting weary of unconstructive and uncollaborative talk. In any event, a write-up that violates NPOV by presenting views as facts and by ignoring alternate (and mainstream) views, and that violates NOR by drawing inferences from separately published works, is just a no-starter and not worth discussing. Slrubenstein | Talk 18:21, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

SLR, I recommend that you read the discussion about this on Maunus’s user page. Although he obviously has a lot of changes he wants to suggest for this section, he also agreed that it’s reasonable to assume that there’s a consensus for including it in some form, as well as that Aprock’s personal comments that don’t address content can be disregarded.

If you think this section violates NPOV, then that’s definitely worth discussing, because it means I should modify the section in order to fix these problems. That’s why I posted this here, rather than just adding it to the article: so problems like these could be pointed out and fixed. In response to the concerns that both you and Maunus have suggested, I think I should re-draft this section, making the following changes:

• Combine the “significance” and “policy relevance” sections (drawing some material from here, which discusses efforts to address the IQ gap as well as programs such as affirmative action.)
• Get rid of the image from Gottfredson’s paper. (Perhaps at some point in the future, a new image can be created for this section that people won’t have a problem with.)
• Add more of an emphasis on dissenting views about IQ influencing income and scholastic/job performance.

Do these changes sound like a good idea to everyone? If they do, I’ll begin working on the next draft of this section sometime within the next few days. --Captain Occam (talk) 22:02, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

That certainly sounds like three steps forward to me. Thanks Cap Occam.·Maunus·ƛ· 04:36, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

All right, great. I’d prefer to get Slrubenstein’s opinion also, but if I don’t hear back from him soon I’ll start working on the next draft of this section. --Captain Occam (talk) 05:17, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, I consider it a step forward as well. I really did try to provide constructive suggestions. I do hope I was sufficiently precise and concrete about my objections. I would also like to see Aprock weigh in, and perhaps MathSci. But my main concerns I think will always take three forms:

• we can provide multiple citations for the same view, but we cannot generalize or draw connections among different sources
• we must identify a view as a view in the section
• we must provide opposing and alternate views, and really, they are not at all hard to find.

Captain Occam, perhaps based on my comments and Maunus's you could redraft a proposed section? Thanks, Slrubenstein | Talk 09:59, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

As was discussed the last time this came around, social correlations with IQ are a general topic not related to race, and best handled by referring to the appropriate article, for example [19]. A.Prock (talk) 11:37, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

SLR: I definitely intend to redraft it, although because of how much of my time is being taken up by the AN/I thread, that may take a little longer than it would otherwise. If the meantime, if you can provide specific sources for alternative views that you want to make sure are included, that would be helpful.

Aprock: I think we’ve been over this before. The source material that’s being cited for this section is not only discussing social correlations with IQ, it’s discussing social correlations with IQ specifically in the context of race. If this connection is being made by the source material, it isn’t synth for us to represent what the source material says about this in the article. --Captain Occam (talk) 13:15, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Yes, this is exactly where you are making the correlation implies causation fallacy. But by all means, produce a scientific article which demonstrates significant support for the hypothesis that it is the group differences in IQ testing which are the cause. Quoting The Bell Curve isn't sufficient. A.Prock (talk) 16:50, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

How about the several books and papers cited by the section I’ve proposed? Have you even looked at them? There are 27 citations, and only one of them is to The Bell Curve. There are two citations to Lynn, and one apiece to Jensen and Gottfredson. The other 22 are to researchers that I don’t think you have a problem with. --Captain Occam (talk) 17:14, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

How about them? Which one should I read first? And where will I find indications that it is the racial IQ difference which is responsible for the performance difference? A.Prock (talk) 17:29, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

So in other words, you haven’t read any of them. You’re just assuming that the sources don’t support what’s in this section, without having looked to see whether they do or not.

It isn’t my job to spoon-feed you this information. Both Maunus and Slrubenstein have made specific, actionable suggestions that I’ll be taking into account when I re-draft this section, and you’re welcome to do the same if you like. But if you’re going to make these general accusations about what you think the sources don’t support, while refusing to put forth any effort into finding specific statements that aren’t properly sourced, that isn’t something I need to waste my time on. As multiple users have pointed out to you since we began discussing this section in January, if you have problems with it you need to be specific about them. --Captain Occam (talk) 17:55, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

It is certainly your job to support your edits with references. I'm more than prepared to read any source which supports what you've said. I've read several from your list of 27 before, and not one of them makes the claim that racial IQ differences are the cause. Could you please narrow down the list from 27 source to one or two, so I don't have to spend a month trying to find this information which supports your edits? A.Prock (talk) 18:04, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Look, I’ll try to make this easy for you. There are two parts of this article that discuss the relationship between the racial IQ gap and social factors like income; the first section (“within societies”) which is mostly about the B-W gap, and the last section (“for high-achieving minorities”) which is mostly about the ways that Asians and Ashkenazim outperform whites. The first section has seven citations, one of which (the first) is just describing the importance of this issue, one of which (the fourth) is to The Bell Curve, and one of which (the seventh) is to a paper criticizing the idea that the IQ gap causes these other differences, in order to provide an alternative perspective about this topic. The other four should all be examples of what you’re looking for; it’s five if you include the Bell Curve one also. In the “high-achieving minorities” section, all three of the citations in the first paragraph are to sources that attribute differences between races in these social factors to differences in average IQ. The last citation, #27, makes this point also.

That’s a total of nine different sources that make this point. One is The Bell Curve, and there’s also a paper from Gottfredson (she’s actually written several papers about this, but the article only cites one of them), a paper from Gordon, a paper from Kanazawa, a paper from Nyborg and Jensen, two papers from Wehl, a paper from Cochran and Harpending, and a paper from Lynn. Around half of these citations are to authors that you probably dislike, but the other half aren’t. And either way, even if you don’t like this idea and some of the authors who write about it, an idea that’s covered in this amount of depth by the source material ought to be covered in the article also. --Captain Occam (talk) 18:28, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Citations 2,3,5 and 6 are not about racial intelligence, and are examples of sources which might be used in other wikipedia articles about intelligence. I think it's clear from reading various critiques that Lynn's methods are flawed, but if you can point to specific passages in citation 27 (broken link), I'll be happy to review them. As I said, this section is almost entirely about the effects of intelligence on social outcomes, and as such it is perfectly reasonable to summarize and link to the relevant articles. With respect to the "high-achieving minorities" section, I don't think any of the scientific sources provide evidence that it is the racial IQ difference which is responsible for the performance gaps. A.Prock (talk) 18:52, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

“Citations 2,3,5 and 6 are not about racial intelligence”

That isn’t the only thing these sources are about, but they definitely talk about it. Have you actually read them?

“I don't think any of the scientific sources provide evidence that it is the racial IQ difference which is responsible for the performance gaps.”

It doesn’t matter whether you personally agree with the authors’ conclusions about this or not. Since this is what the source material says, it isn’t our job to second-guess it. The section makes it clear that these are the views of the authors, which may or may not be correct. --Captain Occam (talk) 20:36, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Incidentally, looking through the bibiolographies of these papers, I’ve found a couple other papers they cite which also attribute differences in these social factors to the racial IQ gap. One is Cognitive skill, skill demands of jobs, and earnings among European American, African American, and Mexican American workers by Farkas et. al. (1997), and the other is The Role of Human Capital in Earnings Differences Between Black and White Men by June O'Neill (1990). If you aren’t satisfied with the sources that this section currently uses, perhaps we could add those papers as sources also. --Captain Occam (talk) 21:04, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

I've read some of the sources, but if the sources are not about race and intelligence, it sounds very much like you're going into OR and SYNTH. It's not about whether I agree with the authors. It's about what's in the article. It sounds very much to me like you are making conclusions of your own. A.Prock (talk) 07:47, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

If a source is not explicitly saying something about the significance of IQ differences among races, then I do not see how we can use it without violating policy. Slrubenstein | Talk 09:10, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Most of the sources are about how differences in IQ affect these social factors in general, and the effects of differences in average IQ between races are one of several topics that they discuss. In some cases, such as the paper from Nyborg and Jensen, the effects of the racial IQ gap are actually their main focus. Even for papers where this topic is only one part of them, though, it isn’t original research or synth for this section of the article to focus on just one of a paper’s several topics.

Can both of you please just read the papers, and see for yourselves that what I’m saying is accurate? It’s completely pointless for me to have to keep reassuring you about this when you can just look for yourselves. --Captain Occam (talk) 12:02, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

This sounds like a very good argument for simply summarizing [20]. That said, could you provide the quote(s) from Nyborg and Jensen which support this? The abstract only suggests that the IQ gap is correlated with discrimination. With respect to the papers, by all means suggest the one which make the best case and I'll read it. I'm just not going to slog through all 27 sources to make the case for you. If there is no paper which makes a strong case for racial IQ gaps being a significant factor in outcomes, and it really is necessary for one to read all the sources to get the whole picture, then it sounds like we are dealing with a clear case of WP:SYNTH. A.Prock (talk) 14:04, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Even if the abstract of that paper is the only thing you’ve read, if you read it carefully it’s obvious that it’s talking about more than just discrimination. It’s saying that because the correlation between IQ and job status is the same for blacks as for whites, there’s no need to invoke discrimination as an explanation for why blacks have lower average job status.

I don’t think your demands here are reasonable, but if it’ll satisfy you for me to link to and quote one of the papers that talks about this, I guess I’ll do that just so I don’t have to spend any more time on this. Since you’re probably going to have an attitude against anything written by Jensen, Lynn or Gottfredson, here’s the paper by Kanazawa: [21] The title of this paper refers to the gap in earnings between genders, but if you read it you’ll see that it discusses the gap between races also. Here’s one part of it that talks about this:

“Incidentally, Equation (1) also replicates with the GSS data the findings of earlier analyses of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth data (Farkas, England, Vicknair, & Kilbourne, 1997; Herrnstein & Murray, 1994, Chapter 14; O’Neill, 1990) that black-nonblack difference in earnings completely disappears or even reverses once cognitive abilities are controlled.”

That’s relevant to the topic of the article, and it isn’t synth. It would probably be a sufficient source about this on its own, but the other eight sources that also discuss the relationship between the IQ gap and these social variables are still useful in order to provide some additional perspective about this topic. Can you please leave this alone now, so I can get on with my revised draft incorporating Maunus’s and Slrubenstein’s suggestions? --Captain Occam (talk) 22:36, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

So the most convincing paper isn't about race, but sex. And your most relevant quote starts with "Incidentally..." and is a pointer to The Bell Curve. I'll read the paper, but if this is the best support you have for the section, it seems better to just summarize and link to the appropriate articles. A.Prock (talk) 22:53, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

It isn’t “the best support”. I linked to that one because it’s available online for free, and because it’s by an author that you probably don’t have a personal attitude against.

As I’ve said several times, you aren’t in a position to pass judgment about the level of support for this idea until you’ve read all of the sources that are being used for it. That doesn’t have to involve reading all 27 of them; I mentioned before that there are only nine of them that specifically discuss how the racial IQ gap affects the gap in these other social factors, one of which is The Bell Curve which you’re probably familiar with already. You can read eight papers, can’t you?

If you can’t, then I recommend that you just let this go. I’m getting plenty of criticism from Maunus and Slrubenstein about things I ought to change in this section, but nobody other than you seems to have this specific issue about whether the sources support it. --Captain Occam (talk) 23:44, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

If you would like more constructive feedback, it would help if you could refactor all of the personal attacks out of your comment. I asked for the paper which gives the most general support for the claim that the racial IQ gap is significant beyond the actual IQ measure. If the one you mentioned isn't the best, then please suggest another. A.Prock (talk) 23:54, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

I guess I would say that the overall best paper that demonstrates this is the one from Nyborg and Jensen. If you’re going to comment on whether that paper supports this idea, though, you need to comment on the paper itself, not just the abstract. --Captain Occam (talk) 01:19, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

I'll take a look at that one as well. A.Prock (talk) 13:49, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Intelligence is cultural/social not racial

Asians and Europeans are intelligent because they base their beliefs on Confucianism and Greek philosophy Africans aren't or because they never had a culture as intelligent as Ancient Greece and/or they never had a figure like Confucius. An Asian living in Africa would be less intelligent then an Asian living in Asia and an African in Europe would be more intelligent then an African in Africa. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.106.122.58 (talk) 13:44, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

thanks for sharing.·Maunus·ƛ· 14:57, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

Not really tenable because it would assume Asians and Europeans were less intelligent before the time of Confucius and the ancient Greek philosophers. And there are many modern Asians and Europeans who have never heard of Confucius or the ancient Greeks before they took an IQ test. 86.180.53.230 (talk) 22:54, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Now that it is known that Asians and Europeans, but not Black Africans, are a hybrid of early modern humans and neanderthals

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8660940.stm

it may partly explain why Asians and Europeans have a slightly higher IQ profile than Black Africans. Neanderthals had a larger brain than modern humans. This with hybrid vigor could result in modern humans (hybridized with neanderthals) having a slightly higher intelligence than Africans (descendants of early moderns without hybridization with neanderthals). 86.180.53.230 (talk) 22:50, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

You should write an article to Science about that.·Maunus·ƛ· 04:34, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Bruce Lahn beat him to it: [22].--Victor Chmara (talk) 11:53, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

This does not address the original research point, which Maunus was making. Slrubenstein | Talk 12:30, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Well actuall then at least we could source the suggestion to that blog...not that I argue we should.·Maunus·ƛ· 12:35, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

The idea about basing our society on the teachings of those two is at best a shot in the dark. Many tests are done on people who although are of African descent, have grown up inside western society where they would have endured the same education system as everyone else which would be responsible for imparting any teachings of Greek Philosophy or Confucius that might (as you propose) heighten our population's intelligence. It seems a vague and desperate leap to try to convince others and yourself that it must be cultural.

That Neanderthals had bigger brains is not a certain argument either. What if they were physically bigger overall? You need to examine EQ statistics and consider that there are very limited specimens to go on. There are a great many factors to consider. Even if they had smaller brains, their DNA may have made improvements to ours, and vice versa. The brain also has some features that are more difficult to quantify than intelligence, these would be instead instincts, Neanderthals could have contributed to behavioural changes that could be argued to contribute to Africa's problem [edit: describing as our advantage might be better] with adopting civilisation (even if there are known factors against this now, beyond the Northern Reaches Africa has been behind on civilisation nearly continuously for millennia despite being the birth place of H. Sapiens). It could be put forward that social and territorial instincts (ie genetic social-behavioural adaptations for cave dwelling versus more open landscape) could enhance ability to function in a modernised environment as we see it now that could be regarded as a series of artificial caves that we are very territorial about. Such neurological tendencies that may affect intelligence of perception of intelligence base on observation appear to have been largely overlooked. This is important because if African's are in fact inherently less intelligent on average, a second line needs to be drawn between that difference and various possible detrimental effects as the two sit very closely together. Although both reside in the brain and instinct can be almost labelled a kind of intelligence their manifestation is typically somewhat different. For example, social instinct of Africans may not favour intelligence as much as other attributes consequently resulting in less of a motivation to breed with intelligent individuals causing a secondary genetic factor or to engage in activities that may improve intelligence. To complicate things further, while cultures may appear arbitrary, they may in fact some what fit instinct or have aspects that are "selected" over time based on subtle differences in instinct between races for example making cultural adoption somewhat difficult. Nevertheless (do end my digression), this is entirely speculation at the most resolving mere possibilities, and for anything meaningful, it's best to wait until exactly which genes that we share with Neanderthals are revealed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.194.35.228 (talk) 22:45, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Significance and policy relevance (revised)

I think it's time for me to post the new draft of my proposal for this section, incorporating the revisions to it that Maunus and Slrubenstein suggested. This would replace the "policy relevance" section in the existing article; I think the quote from Gottfredson that's in my proposal is a more concise explanation of the same thing that's explained by the current article's quote from Jensen and Rushton.

See also: Practical importance of IQ

Within societies

Whatever the cause of the racial IQ gap, its effects are also a cause of concern to some. Reviewing the literature on the effects of intelligence, the American Psychological Association has concluded that the characteristics measured by IQ tests predict many socially important outcomes, including educational performance, job performance, law abidingness and income, and they conclude that those characteristics are one of several factors influencing social outcomes, and that for school performance it may even be the strongest. On the basis of this relationship, several scholars have concluded that the racial disparities in these areas are partly the result of the IQ gap. Some have also argued that the causal relationship between these variables and IQ points in the opposite direction, meaning that high income and social status cause high IQ rather than the reverse.

In The Bell Curve, Murray and Herrnstein conclude that when Blacks and Whites are compared while adjusting for IQ, the difference in many social and economic variables shrinks or disappears. For example, controlling for IQ shrinks the income gap from thousands to a few hundred dollars, cuts differential poverty by about three-quarters and unemployment differences by half. At a given IQ level, the odds of having a college degree and working in a high-level occupation are higher for blacks than for whites. Studies outside of The Bell Curve that have produced similar results are Nyborg and Jensen (2001) and Kanazawa (2005). Another study by Bowles and Gintis concluded that wealth, race and schooling are important to the inheritance of economic status, but IQ is not a major contributor. Since race, schooling and IQ are all correlated, the exact causal relationship between them is difficult to determine.

Between nations

Several studies have found that average IQ scores of nations correlates significantly with a number of other factors including average health, average income, infant mortality and crime. In Richard Lynn’s IQ and the Wealth of Nations, Lynn proposes that differences in the intelligence of their populations is the primary cause of these differences in societal factors. Lynn’s book has been sharply criticized by other researchers who recognize the correlation between these factors and IQ, but disagree with Lynn as to the causal relationship between them.

Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel argues that historical differences in economic and technological development for different areas can be explained by differences in geography (which affects factors like population density and spread of new technology) and differences in available crops and domesticatable animals. It is also possible that these environmental differences may operate in part by selecting for higher levels of IQ. Voight et al. (2006) state that "a number of recent studies have detected more signals of adaptation in non-African populations than in Africans, and some of those studies have conjectured that non-Africans might have experienced greater pressures to adapt to new environments than Africans have."

For high-achieving minorities

The book World on Fire notes the existence in many nations of minorities that have created and control a disproportionate share of the economy, a market-dominant minority. Examples include Chinese in Southeast Asia; Whites, Indians, Lebanese and Igbo people of Western Africa; Whites in Latin America; and Jews in pre-World War II Europe, modern America, and modern Russia. These minorities are often resented and sometimes persecuted by the less successful majority. Examining the over-representation of certain minority groups in high-paying professions in the United States, Nathanial Wehl has concluded that this is a consequence of their above-average IQ. Cochran and Harpending have made this proposal about Ashkenazi Jews, which make up on 3% of the United States population but have won 27% of its Nobel prizes, which these authors attribute to them having an average IQ somewhere between one-half and one standard deviation above the White average. (See "Ashkenazi intelligence".)

Some studies have shown significant variation in IQ subtest profiles between groups. In one analysis of IQ studies on Ashkenazi Jews, for example, high verbal and mathematical scores, but average or below average visuospatial scores were found. In a separate study, East Asians demonstrated high visuospatial scores, but average or slightly below average verbal scores. The professions in which these populations tend to be over-represented differ, and some believe the difference is directly related to IQ subtest score patterns asserted to exist. The high visiuospatial/average to below average verbal pattern of subtest scores has also been asserted to exist in fully assimilated third-generation Asian Americans, as well as in the Inuit and Native Americans (both of Asian origin).

Addressing the IQ gap

Main article: Intelligence and public policy

Because of the real-world effects associated with IQ, some scholars believe that addressing the racial IQ gap is a pressing social concern. One effort to address the IQ gap often advocated by educators is more equitable funding for education. Arthur Jensen has argued that in order to adequately address differences in educational outcomes, both between individuals and between races, it is necessary to provide educational services that are tailored to each person's ability.

Critics of research in this area have asserted that research in race and intelligence can never escape its association with the eugenics movement and scientific racism of the early 20th century, as well as that even modern research in this area is likely to be ideologically motivated. In response to this and similar criticisms, Linda Gottfredson has argued that a genetic contribution to the IQ gap does not in itself demand any particular policy response: while a conservative/libertarian commentator may feel the results justify, for example, reductions in affirmative action, a liberal commentator may argue from a Rawlsian point of view (that genetic advantages are undeserved and unjust) for substantial affirmative action. She has also asserted that accepting the conclusions of research in this area is actually necessary in pursuit of racial harmony:

Lying about race differences in achievement is harmful because it foments mutual recrimination. Because the untruth insists that differences cannot be natural, they must be artificial, manmade, manufactured. Someone must be at fault. Someone must be refusing to do the right thing. It therefore sustains unwarranted, divisive, and ever-escalating mutual accusations of moral culpability, such as Whites are racist and Blacks are lazy.

The APA concludes their 1995 report Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns with a statement that further research in this area is necessary because of its social and scientific importance, as well as a warning against anyone who would consider the debate over this topic fully resolved:

In a field where so many issues are unresolved and so many questions unanswered, the confident tone that has characterized most of the debate on these topics is clearly out of place. The study of intelligence does not need politicized assertions and recriminations; it needs self-restraint, reflection, and a great deal more research. The questions that remain are socially as well as scientifically important. There is no reason to think them unanswerable, but finding the answers will require a shared and sustained effort as well as the commitment of substantial scientific resources. Just such a commitment is what we strongly recommend.

This section isn't necessarily finished, but I don't think there's anything else I can know that I should change about it without receiving more feedback. Are other people satisfied with this section, or are is there anything else that I should change about it? --Captain Occam (talk) 20:02, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Something's wrong with the reference list for this section. Even though the references I'm using here aren't all the same as the references I used in the previous version of my proposal, it's displaying the reference list from the previous version rather than the current one. I'll see if I can figure out how to fix this, but if I can't, I guess other people might have to just edit this section and look at the source text to see what sources are being cited by this version. --Captain Occam (talk) 20:08, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Well, it looks like I’m not going to be able to figure out how to get the sources to display here properly. If anyone else can tell me how to fix this, or fix it themselves, I’d appreciate that.

It’s now been around a day since I posted this, and nobody has offered any further suggestions about it. I consider this a good sign, since I was specifically requesting critiques, and when I posted the previous draft of this section I received several critiques within a few hours. Obviously lack of comments doesn’t in itself constitute consensus, but it’s important to remember the level of support that this section has received already, and that it was part of the article outline that we decided on during mediation. The question here isn’t whether or not to include this section at all, but what other people think this section should or shouldn’t include. I’ve received several suggestions about this, and modified my draft based on all of them, but if nobody has any more then I think it’s ready to be added to the article.

I’ll wait a little longer before I add it, though, just to make sure nobody has any other changes to suggest. --Captain Occam (talk) 18:58, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Not so fast. This section is still undeservedly bloated in size, still tries to present all viewpoints as if they had equal validity, and still misrepresents the conclusions of the APA report. And that's just for starters.--Ramdrake (talk) 20:38, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Oh, you’re back online. If you’re going to resume participating here, the first thing I recommend that you do is familiarizing yourself with the outcome of the mediation case, since I recall you having been offline during the end of it. When we agreed during mediation to include this section in the article, the general content we were agreeing on was the content that’s in this section of January’s version of the article. Obviously it can be tweaked, but we shouldn’t be making any fundamental changes to it, since that would be turning it into something different from what was agreed on.

I’m also not sure what you mean by misrepresenting the conclusions of the APA report. If you look at the sourcing for this part of the draft, it’s quoting this paragraph:

In summary, intelligence test scores predict a wide range of social outcomes with varying degrees of success. Correlations are highest for school achievement, where they account for about a quarter of the variance. They are somewhat lower for job performance, and very low for negatively valued outcomes such as criminality. In general, intelligence tests measure only some of the many personal characteristics that are relevant to life in contemporary America. Those characteristics are never the only influence on outcomes, though in the case of school performance they may well be the strongest.

As far as I can tell, stating that the APA has concluded that “the characteristics measured by IQ tests influence many socially important outcomes” is an accurate summary of this paragraph. If you disagree, you need to be more specific about how this paragraph can be summarized more accurately. --Captain Occam (talk) 22:47, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Inclusion of this section was explicitly not agreed to in mediation. "Significance of group IQ differences The scope and depth of this section is yet to be finalized. It's inclusion is pending review of a proposed outline describing it's content and scope." A.Prock (talk) 00:11, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Aprock, both Maunus and I have explained this to you already. We agreed to include this section. What we did not agree on was its exact structure (that is, its scope and depth), which is what was still pending as of when mediation concluded. If you keep claiming this while not acknowleding what either Maunus or I have explained about it, it’s going to be difficult for me to continue assuming good faith about you with regard to this. --Captain Occam (talk) 00:39, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

No, we did not. I posted the relevant quote from the mediation page: "... it's inclusion is pending ..." Regardless, it's probably more constructive to focus on content and sourcing instead of trying to argue for false consensus. A.Prock (talk) 00:45, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

When Maunus explained this to you, you didn’t respond to him at all. As far as he and I could tell, you had no counter-argument to what he had to say about it. Are you now intending to just keep repeating the exact same thing you were saying to him that he already answered?

Content and sourcing is what I’ve been trying to focus on here, and my revision incorporates every suggestion that’s been made about this section. If you have more revisions to suggest, you’re welcome to go ahead, but I’ve answered all of your questions as far as sourcing is concerned. --Captain Occam (talk) 00:53, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

I am in fact going through two papers that you think are central to this entire section. I'll let you know when I'm done doing that. With respect to the false consensus that you keep trying to push, I don't think that really qualifies as content. A.Prock (talk) 03:29, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Nice job Occam. This article is crying out for more discussion of socio-political context, and this a very well written, comprehensive and neutral discussion. I fixed the refs too. mikemikev (talk) 05:23, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

I have made a few corrections which I hope are not very controversial. The most controversial is that I have changed the "Arthur Jensen is known for" sentence. He really is not known for arguing individual differentiation in education although he clearly has - Howard Gardner is known for making that argument, not Jensen. What Jensen is known for is the other part of his argument namely for racially based differentiation. In Jensen on Jensenism he even tacitly acknowledges that he is mostly (in)fanous for that part of his conclusion. I am still not sure that this section is what we are looking for - especially the first two paragraphs seem weirdly uninformative and besides the point. I am also not comfortable with the sole quote being from Gottfredsson. Even balanced with another view there would satill be the question about which view comes first and which gets the last word. I think avoiding quotes other than the APA one might be a good idea. I also think it would be a good idea to mention as Slrubenstein has suggested the fact that affirmative action policies have been implemented partly with the iq gap as motivation - the government tacitly acknowledging an environmental explanation of it. Also I would suggest to both Aprock and Occam to stop bickering about whether there is previous consensus to include this section - it doesn't matter. If we are to include it we will have to do so by forming a new consensus anyway. So build consensus please, work forward not backwards. Oh, and I am undecided about whether this section would improve the article so don't count me as weighing towards a consensus either way. ·Maunus·ƛ· 06:41, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

I disagree with a couple of these changes. First, if you read the portion of the APA report that I quoted, they’re saying more than just that IQ correlates with these social factors—they’re saying that the characteristics measured by IQ tests influence them. (And they use that word for it, along with “account for”.) I’m not sure what it is that’s difficult about this, but please read the part of their report that I quoted above. Unless you’re deliberately reading it in a very weird way, it’s clear that they’re asserting a causal relationship in that paragraph.

I also disagree with this sentence: “While Arthur Jensen is best known for arguing in favour for racially based differentiation in educational methods and expectations”. Jensen has never actually advocated treating people differently on the basis of race. If you read the 1970 article from him that’s being cited here, or his one from 1969 that first made him controversial, he makes it very clear that he thinks educational methods should be based on individual ability, and the reason this will result in unequal results between races is because (due to either genetic or environmental factors) mental ability is distributed unequally between races. If we’re going to describe Jensen’s position in a single sentence, I think it’s important that we describe what Jensen actually said, rather than what some others claimed that he said.

Unless you have a counter-argument to these points, I think I should change the wording of these sections back to something like what it was before. You’re welcome to suggest any other changes, though. --Captain Occam (talk) 06:59, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Then I think the Jensen sentence and quote should be left out all together reading your version anyone with a cursory knowledge are going to giggle when they read the sentence explaining that Jensen is known for making the opposite argument than the one he is known for. It reads like a hilarious attempt at whitewashing Jensen by turning him into Howard Gardner. He clearly does argue that blacks learn best by rote memory for example and that race should be taken into account when devising educational strategies.·Maunus·ƛ· 07:08, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

I think it's more important to put what Jensen said than what he is known for. After all, wikipedia is here to inform. mikemikev (talk) 07:25, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

It was Occam's choice to make the phrase about what Jensen is known for. ·Maunus·ƛ· 07:27, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Well, good job for spotting it. It should be changed. mikemikev (talk) 07:29, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

All right, I got rid of “is known for” and changed it to just “Jensen has argued”. Maunus, is that satisfactory to you? --Captain Occam (talk) 07:32, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Well, admittedly I haven't read that much Jensen yet, but I am uncertain whether that quote adequately reflects the sum of his opinions about what kinds of educational strategies should be used to remedy the iq gap. Apparently Tucker (and several others) analyses his general drift to be a little more controversial than merely saying that "education shouled be differentiated to the individual". If that really was what he was saying all those studies in race and Iq would be redundant, and he certainly wouldn't have attracted the negative attention that he has. My intuition tells me there is more to the issue and that he has made other proposals as well. If you could find a secondary source that summarises Jensen's ideas on educational policies in relation to the race/IQ gap I would be less concerned with cherry picking of quotes.

The source I’m using for this actually is secondary. (Perhaps I ought to make that clear in the citation.) Jensen’s 1970 article about this is being quoted by Hans Eysenck in his 1971 book The IQ Argument in order to provide a concise explanation of Jensen’s position. I’m not sure whether Eysenck is neutral enough for you; if he isn’t, let me know what kind of source you’re looking for and I’ll see if I can find something better.

I guess I’ll also try to provide a concise summary of how Jensen came to be the center of this controversy, if you’re confused about this. Throughout the 1960s, school districts across the U.S. were trying to remedy the racial IQ gap through compensatory education, and in 1967 the United States Commission on Civil Rights released a report saying that these programs had not produced any lasting gains for the children they were intended to help. Since Jensen was a fairly well-respected educational psychologist (although not known for his views on race), Harvard Educational Review requested that he write a paper describing his views on this issue, including his views on the cause of the racial IQ gap. In his paper, Jensen proposed that the reason why compensatory education programs weren’t working was because differences in IQ had a partially genetic basis, including the difference in average IQ between races. And for that reason, he said that trying to close it by providing the same educational resources to everyone was unlikely to work; instead education should be tailored to each person’s individual ability.

His proposal that genetics were contributing to the racial IQ gap was what made him so controversial. I think you know how the wider academic community reacted to that idea, but Jensen didn’t back down about it. And according to him, the main reason why he didn’t was because he felt that the idea of IQ being environmentally determined was being used as the basis for educational policies that were ineffective. Since this included policies intended to close the racial IQ gap, studying the cause of this gap was something that he considered necessary also. One specific example of this that’s described in his article quoted by Eysenck is that since the low average IQ of blacks was regarded as only the result of discrimination, low-IQ black students were being excluded from the remedial classes that were designed to help low-IQ whites, and which Jensen thought would be able to help low-IQ blacks also.

I’ve tried to describe this as neutrally as possible, but anybody who thinks I’ve left out something important is welcome to add it. Something else that I think it’s important to keep in mind here is that within the actual debate over this topic that exists in psychometrics, Jensen’s most prominent opponents such as Flynn, Nisbett and Neisser generally don’t think of him as a racist or a political advocate—they just think he’s interpreting the data incorrectly. Flynn in particular is striking for the amount of respect that he shows Jensen while writing about him, despite disagreeing with his conclusions. The point of mentioning this is that I think the people who have the most accurate impression of Jensen are usually going to be the people who’ve devoted the largest portions of their careers to debating against him (and this is true of Flynn more than anyone else), and these also tend to be the people who don’t view him nearly as negatively as people like Tucker do.

If you’re going to offer your advice about how to describe Jensen’s opinions in this article, I think it would be worthwhile if you could familiarize yourself a little with the ways he’s described them. Eysenck’s 1971 book about this is out of print, but Jensen’s original 1969 HER article is famous enough that it shouldn’t be hard to find. He also provides a fairly good overview of his opinions in his interview by Frank Miele in Intelligence, Race and Genetics: Conversations with Arthur R. Jensen. --Captain Occam (talk) 08:59, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Thank you very much for that well written summary. I shall happily defer to Flynn, Nesbitt and Neisser to characterize Jensen's opinions. However it stands to reason that there is nothing controversial about saying that educators should differentiate their teaching to best suit the individual. And that ascribing him this viewpoint isn't really informative (other than perhaps to make readers question their preconceived opinions about him) The controversial part of Jensens ideas on education is that he ascribes a significant part (I don't know how significant, but surely more than many others) of the differences between individuals to their racial background. In your wording the reader will simply be forced to agree with Jensen and wonder why everybody seems to think he is wrong. I will of course familiarize myself with Jensen eventually, but at the moment I am more invested in finding out how secondary sources describe his work. And I am invested in finding the places in the article where I find the APA reports conclusions to be misrepresented. And I am even more invested in finding sources for the anti-hereditarian and race and iq sceptic viewpoints which I still find to be underrepresented in the article. ·Maunus·ƛ· 11:12, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

“The controversial part of Jensens ideas on education is that he ascribes a significant part (I don't know how significant, but surely more than many others) of the differences between individuals to their racial background. In your wording the reader will simply be forced to agree with Jensen and wonder why everybody seems to think he is wrong.”

I agree that the controversial part of Jensen’s opinion is his view on the cause of the racial IQ gap, but isn’t his view about this sufficiently explained by other parts of the article? This particular paragraph is just describing the differing views about how education should be handled. If other parts of the article already make it clear what the most controversial part of his ideas are, I don’t think it’s necessary to emphasize this every time we present Jensen’s viewpoint about anything else. --Captain Occam (talk) 16:43, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Lynn wrote IQ and the Wealth of Nations with Tatu Vanhanen.

In World on Fire, Amy Chua does not argue that the phenomenon of "market-dominant minorities" is caused by IQ differences. While it's possible and in some cases, I think, probable that the phenomenon is due to IQ differences, it's original research to suggest that that is the case. Nathaniel Weyl's (not Wehl) arguments were not made in connection with Chua's book.

I don't think Jensen has ever argued for racially segregated education. Rather, he may have said that desegregation did not reduce the black-white school achievement gap as indicated also by the Coleman Report (in fact, I remember reading that Jensen conducted research on just this topic in the late 1960, until his project was terminated by his funders when the initial negative results came in). He may also have stated that low-IQ individuals benefit more from rote learning, but that applies to all races. Furthermore, I don't think we should quote something Jensen wrote in 1970, as his views may have changed. For example, back in 1970 his conception of intelligence was not based on g.

The section is also too long.--Victor Chmara (talk) 00:24, 16 May 2010 (UTC)