Talk:Race and intelligence/Archive 83

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Race and intelligence#Heritability_within_and_between_groups

@ImperfectlyInformed, I agree that the treatment of the subject matter needs to be made much more approachable, in particular, including (IMO) in the opening paragraph that there is environmental impact on inheritable factors, as opposed to it coming out later in the section in a sort of techno-speak. (If anyone feels I'm misrepresenting the section, feel free to correct me. The section above was getting a bit long, hence the split.) PЄTЄRS J VЄСRUМВА ►TALK 04:02, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Source bloat and trimming unnecessary references

I've mentioned before in edit summaries and on the talk page that I find the number of sources used in this article tiring, and many of them are not accessible or even if somewhat accessible (abstract online), the accessibility isn't provided in the reference. Source bloat makes it harder to get a grasp for the page and inaccessible sources makes it very difficult for third-parties to verify synthesis or bad references (bad refs include ones that don't support their statements with references). For example, in the Debate Assumptions section of 18 June 2010 page, no less than twelve sources are just tossed out there without any clear need. Only 1 of the sources is necessary - the 1996 APA (American Psychologist) report is balanced, relatively authoritative, and completely accessible, and the others are generally redundant with it; many of these 12 sources are not used elsewhere, or are used duplicatively in other areas. I had previously removed some of these refs.

We need to focus on facts. There are tons of articles out there but most of them cite the same facts and make the same arguments. If you find a review that you don't necessarily need to back up a certain fact (because it's covered in a more accessible review article), but that you think provides more detail and is therefore important, you can cite it as additional support, but only if you include that reasoning inline so people understand why you're duplicatively supporting

I've been reviewing the editing history and I ran across where these refs were reintroduced by Captain Occam. I realize that there is a temptation to turn a Wikipedia article into a "citation database" where all citations are included covering an issue (for an example see ref 29 where someone added 17 (!) refs for James Watsons's comment), but Wikipedia is not designed for that. I realize that another motivation may be that something may be too controversial for "one citation", but this is also problematic - if the source should be attributed as an opinion (WP:ATTRIBUTEPOV), then doubling up on citations probably won't change that fact. In this area there are lot of things which which plain need to be attributed. II | (t - c) 05:41, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

They may not be accessible to you. But for someone who wishes to go beyond an encyclopedia article to do serious research, they will find these books and articles at any good library or through inter-library loan. Multiple sources are important for anyone who wishes to do further research, and that makes Wikipedia articles very valuable research tools. Moreover, this is a controversial topic and some people need to know ho wmuch research there was on any given strand.

There is an old saying around Wikipedia: never remove informative content. Please do not delete sources just because you do not find them useful, you are not the only one who uses Wikipedia. The only concern should be: does the source support what it says? i you have evidence that it does not, bring it to us. If you do not care to go to a library and find the journal or book and read it, well, it is a free country, you are under no obligation to do that. But do not delete informative content, including sources. Slrubenstein | Talk 17:04, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

(I do agree that 17 sources for one thing is excessive) Slrubenstein | Talk 17:05, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

"The only concern should be: does the source support what it says?" Indeed, and in order for me to review this article and see if these sources support the statements, I have to do literally 10 interlibrary loans? Do you understand how much of a load that puts on strained library funds? I don't think that's reasonable - it multiplies the amount of work people have to do severalfold. The additional references are not informative content since they are not being used to support any real content - if I wanted to find a list of references on the IQ gap, I'd run a quick search and Google Scholar/Books and have all that I needed. I could probably add hundreds of review articles/books to the article, hanging in addition to accessible articles. Is that helpful? As I said, if you find a source which is not necessary to support content but could help some library searcher (who are relatively few among Wikipedia's readers), then put it inline with a statement such as: "For an accessible introduction to [topic], see: [ref]." Otherwise you're just confusing the reader with extra information and wasting the reader's time by making them pull books which are in all likelihood redundant to the accessible articles.

I will wait for other comments who I hope will see that the citation bloat is truly harmful to readers. II | (t - c) 19:14, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

I strongly agree with you. This is a messy camel-as-horse-designed-by-committee article. It would be really useful if you could go through the sources and propose which ones are really good for the article (secondary sources that deal at sufficient length with the topic). What on earth has happened with footnote 29? What are all those bullet pointed references doing? Itsmejudith (talk) 21:54, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

I'm most familiar with Nisbett, who I think does a good job, and a little with Rushton and Jensen. I think with Nisbett's 2005 paper (freely accessible), Nisbett's 2009 appendix (also freely accessible), and Rushton and Jensen's response to Nisbett's 2009 book (also freely accessible), we should be able to cover the majority of the arguments using the most up-to-date evidence. The hereditarian researchers tend to be less clear writers in my experience. II | (t - c) 00:53, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

The he said she said polarized presentation does not help either. Any article needs to be written from a point of view, NPOV does not mean devoid of anything other than a summary of who said what when. PЄTЄRS J VЄСRUМВА ►TALK 22:50, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

P.S. An overabundance of references is usually symptomatic of an article locked in contentious editing. The atmosphere has to change before references can be pared down and narrative improved. PЄTЄRS J VЄСRUМВА ►TALK 22:57, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Something that I think needs to be considered here is what the statement with multiple sources actually is. In this case, the statement is “There is a consensus among intelligence researchers that IQ, like height, within the same population is significantly heritable.” This sentence currently has seven citations, to a wide sampling of secondary sources from various researchers about this topic, while ImperfectlyInformed’s proposed change removed all of the citations except the APA report.

The APA report demonstrates the position of the APA, which is a pretty large body of experts, but demonstrating that something is the position of the APA is not enough to demonstrate that it is supported by a consensus of intelligence researchers. Any other citation to a single researcher or group of researchers would not demonstrate this either. I think that in order to support the statement that there is a consensus among intelligence researchers about this, it’s necessary to provide citations to several different secondary sources that point it out, showing that they all generally agree with one another about it. In other words, in this case I think the multiple citations are probably necessary in order to support the sentence being cited. --Captain Occam (talk) 23:56, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Well, this is worse than I thought. The APA report does not seem to say that there is a consensus among the researchers that the intelligence is inherited (page 85 discusses IQ's heritability), so it will have to be removed as supporting this statement. I suspect that the others similarly do not use the word 'consensus'. Listing a few supporters (or reporters) of certain scientific findings does not create automatically create a consensus that these findings are valid. Per Wikipedia's original research policy, the source has to directly support what it is being said to say - we even have a policy page discussing this very issue (WP:RS/AC). The wording will have to be rephrased, although I'm not necessarily opposed to simply saying that IQ is significantly heritable without in-text attribution. If the other sources say consensus, please pull out the relevant passages and list them for our evaluation. We can then discuss whether they've adequately supported their use of the word consensus and whether we want to say there is consensus. First, however, we need a source which actually says there is consensus. I'll give you a week to support the use of these sources before I delete them and rephrase in accordance with the APA report's actual wording. Incidentlly, Race and intelligence#Heritability_within_and_between_groups needs a lot of work - it just drops a bunch of technical variables into a table without introducing them at all. II | (t - c) 00:51, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

I got rid of the table. If I remember correctly, it was added to the “molecular genetics” section by an anonymous IP, which kept adding it back every time anyone tried to remove it. Eventually I moved the table to the “heritability within and between groups” section because I figured if it had to be in the article, that was a better place for it. But I agree that the article doesn’t need it in general.

I’m not the one who originally added most of the references to the sentence about IQ’s within-group heritability, so I don’t have access to most of the sources used for it, and it’s unlikely that I’ll be able to get access to them within a week, especially while I’m currently involved in an arbitration case for this article. If you care about fixing this sentence ASAP, I’d encourage you to look through some of the other sources being used for it, and see if any of them use the word “consensus”. If they don’t, your suggestion of saying that IQ is significantly heritable without in-text attribution sounds like the best solution. --Captain Occam (talk) 02:30, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

I have made a suggestion about reducing the number of sources in the arbitration workshop. Feel free to comment there. David.Kane (talk) 15:31, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

ImperfectlyInformed, I notice you’ve now edited this sentence to remove the word “consensus” and to get rid of several of the references. I don’t specifically disagree with either of those changes (although I wonder why Deary 2009 is the only reference you kept other than the APA report), but something that I do think might be a problem is your replacing the words “within the same population” with “within families”.

This last change has is one that’s been made a few times in the past, and every other time it’s been made, several editors objected to it because heritability is specifically a measurement of the percentage of phenotypic variation in a given population that’s due to genetic factors. In other words, you can’t refer to something being “heritable within families”—within-family variation is inheritance, not heritability, and when a paper is discussing heritability one can’t infer conclusions about within-family inheritance from it without engaging in synthesis. I’m not one of the editors who’s objected especially strongly to the article referring to heritability within families, so I’m not especially interested in arguing this point myself, but I think it’s important for you to be aware that consensus has strongly opposed this wording every time it’s been suggested in the past.

Your using this wording probably runs the risk that one of the editors who feels especially strongly about this would revert your entire edit at some point in the future, including the parts of it that are justified such as your removing the word “consensus”. I know it shouldn’t be reasonable to undo an editor’s worthwhile changes along with the contentious ones, but I’m just telling you the way things tend to go in this article. --Captain Occam (talk) 04:12, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Deary 2009 is a freely-accessible genetics review article which specifically focuses on heritability of IQ and it is highly up-to-date, so it seems to be the best source for heritability available. Why not use the best sources? As far as using families rather than groups, 'groups' seemed a bit more ambiguous and the APA report discusses families in page 85, but I think you're right that 'groups' or 'populations' might be the correct term in the field. I was basing the edit on the fact that the APA report discusses 'families' and not groups, but looking back I notice page 86 where it says that the estimate of h^2 is a descriptive statistic for the population. I also worry that using the word 'populations' suggests a hereditarian POV, but that might be unavoidable. II | (t - c) 04:50, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for changing this; I approve of your new wording. I have an issue with this new sentence you’ve added, though: “Thus the debate is over whether the IQ test differences between the racial groups are caused by genetic differences which will not respond to environmental or cultural improvement.”

There are two problems with this sentence, and the first is that it implies that one side of this debate is arguing that the racial IQ gap caused entirely by genetics. I’m not aware of any researchers who hold this position. The “hereditarian hypothesis” advocated by Jensen and Rushton is that genetics and environment contribute to the differences in average IQ between races in about the same proportions that they contribute to IQ differences between individuals in the same population, which is 50-80% genetics and 20-50% environment. The wording used here needs to make it clear that the debate is over whether genetics cause a portion of the IQ gap. I realize this was unclear even before your edits, but as long as we’re editing this part of the article we should fix this problem with it also.

And the second problem is with the idea that if a portion of the IQ gap is due to genetics, that means it cannot respond to environmental or cultural improvement. Have any advocates of the hereditarian hypothesis ever stated this? Such a statement would be rather ignorant of genetics, since the effects of genes can change depending on environmental factors. Even if a portion of the racial IQ gap were caused by genetic differences, the gap still could potentially be eliminated in the presence of the right environmental triggers that change how these genes are expressed. I suspect that Jensen and Rushton are aware of this, and that as a result they would never claim that the portion of the IQ gap which they consider to have a genetic basis will never respond to environmental or cultural improvement. At the very least, if this wording is going to be used here, it needs a source that specifically supports it. --Captain Occam (talk) 08:47, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

ImperfectlyInformed, I hope you don’t have a problem with me trying to fix the problems I’ve described with this sentence. Since you haven’t replied to my last comment in which I pointed them out, I’m assuming you don’t object to my explanation of what needs to be changed about it.

If you do, I also hope that you’ll discuss your objections with me here rather than just reverting me, since I showed you the same courtesy when I disagreed with some of your own changes. --Captain Occam (talk) 23:00, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

I'm sorry for not responding to this promptly - I was planning to respond. I certainly don't mind if the wording is tweaked somewhat to reflect that a portion is debated, but I don't quite understand the "second problem". I get the impression that you're saying that if black people were exposed to a much more intellectually stimulating environment than white people, the gap could be eliminated, and further you're arguing that Rushton and Jensen would not deny such an argument. Perhaps the hereditarians would accept that - my impression is that they wouldn't, and that is why they don't really advocate working for a more intellectually stimulating environment for blacks (e.g., rote education, Head Start programs aren't worth it, affirmative action won't help, etc). Perhaps the most fair way to characterize their argument, however, is to imagine that blacks are exposed to basically the same cultural-environmental factors as whites. In that case, Rushton and Jensen would argue that the gap (say 15 points) would only decrease 20-50% (3-7.5 points). If you can reword to make this clear, I can accept that. Can you find a place where this issue is clarified by the hereditarians? II | (t - c) 23:27, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

I’ve gone ahead and changed this now. Hopefully you won’t have a problem with my new wording.

When I described how environmental factors can alter the expression of genes, I was referring to things that are much more specific than just a more intellectually stimulating environment. Identifying the environmental factors that will alter the expression of genes generally requires first identifying the genes themselves, since the environmental factors that change this can be different for each gene, and it’s often not easily predictable which environmental factors will have this effect. Since research on the specific genes that cause variance in IQ is still in its early stages, what I’m describing probably won’t be feasible until more of the genes that influence it have been identified. To give you an example of what I’m talking about for a different psychological trait, though, this article describes several genes that have been linked to aggression, but only in the presence or absence of specific environmental triggers. Identifying these genes, and the people who are at risk for delinquent behavior because of them, makes it possible to try and ensure that these people are exposed to the right environmental stimuli to prevent these genes from having a negative effect.

Perhaps because this isn’t possible yet for IQ, I’m not aware of any sources that discuss changing the expression of genes specifically in that context, rather than just discussing it with regard to psychological traits in general. So I’m not suggesting the article should actually talk about this possibility, since doing so would probably be synth. (Although sources that discuss this with regard to IQ specifically may exist—if someone can find one, I think the article should cover it.) My point is just that for the article to claim that this isn’t possible is definitely inaccurate, so I don’t think this claim should be included unless there’s a source that specifically supports it. --Captain Occam (talk) 00:10, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

"Edit moratorium"?

I came back after a week or so distraction by my day job and saw that the heavily discussed policy section update that I merged in was reverted. While I don't have any great attachment to this section, I don't quite agree with the reasoning which was given for the revert which was "there is a moratorium on major changes while Arbcom is in process". First, to my knowledge I am not a part of any arbcom proceeding on this article. Second, there is no formal notice anywhere about a "moratorium" on changes to the article. In fact, the whole reason I came here in the first place was because I saw an article that was deteriorating into chaos and POV pushing due to editorial conflict, and I think this is a topic which can be covered in a neutral manner by covering a similar scope but making changes to the way the material is presented. Thus I wholeheartedly reject the notion of a moratorium on fixing the problems with this article. Arbcom does not rule on content, and cannot be expected to fix the article. Arbcom can at best fix problems in the process, and it tends to do this very slowly. WE have to fix the article. WavePart (talk) 06:04, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

I will not revert the new policy section back in yet today, but after giving a chance for response I do intend to add it again unless someone can either show a formal moratorium on changes to the article, or can present specific content-based objections for things that need to be improved in that section. WavePart (talk) 06:04, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Sounds just like Captain Occam. You are right, Arbcom doesn't directly decide on content. However the dispute was taken to arbcom because of various editing problems. These editing problems haven't gone away. Continued editing, especially of major or controversial changes, will still take place in the environment that lead to this dispute being escalated to arbcom.

Wikipedia works on consensus. Because many editors involved this article are active in the arbitration, they are not active here. So you may make specific proposals, and assume that because they are no objections, there is a consensus for them. But such a "consensus" would not yet have support of the wider community. There is no official moratorium on editing, if there was one, the article would be fully protected. Indeed if there is edit warring during the arbitration, Georgewilliamherbert said he would fully protect the article for the duration of the arbitration. If this were to occur, you wouldn't even be able to make some of the minor uncontroversial edits to the page. So while there is no official moratorium on major edits, it is still advisable not to make major controversial changes while the arbitration is going on. Otherwise, when the other editors return, edit warring will resume. Wapondaponda (talk) 13:07, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Plugging my old ground rules thread and looking at the old article

In my old 12 April 2010 thread Talk:Race_and_intelligence/Archive_77#David_Kane.27s_flurry_of_edits.2C_problematic_removals.2C_and_ground_rules I suggested that edit summaries be used, and that the primary comment should be noting when references are added/removed. If many refs are removed, try to count/describe them and make a talk page section if you think it could be controversial (e.g. "removing 6 refs to journal articles; see talk [thread title]). A talk page is not always necessary. Referring to an already-established thread title is better for people going through the history. I would also prefer that citations be condensed rather than expanded so the editing screen isn't so unwieldly. David.Kane responded, but Captain Occam did quite a few edits around 24 April 2010 (start diff) where he did not take up the suggestion. Why not?

This article was basically entirely rewritten by David.Kane, starting 30 March 2010 and ending about a couple days later (diff with 211 intermediate revisions). Did anyone review these changes carefully? The relevant archive is 76, and there is almost no discussion of the changes which happened here. There were a couple threads raised (Talk:Race_and_intelligence/Archive_76#Neutrality by Mathsci and Talk:Race_and_intelligence/Archive_76#Massive_revert_-_why by Hipocrite). Hipocrite requested comments on editors reviewing the changes, but he received no real response, suggesting that there weren't many people examining the changes. There's something to be said for Hipocrite's request that the edits be done in a transparent manner.

I'm going to try to go through the changes, looking for things which can be salvaged but also as preparation for writing up some evidence for the Arbcom case - I'm looking for evidence of content misbehavior - citation misuse designed to push a POV and unjustified removal of sourced content to support the POV. The evidence presented at Arbcom looks pretty thin and rhetorical; if anyone has some edits that they think are illustrative I'm interested in seeing them. II | (t - c) 08:39, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Many editors were watching the mediation at that point. Other editors (not me!) suggested that someone rewrite the article from scratch. It was, for starters, ludicrously bloated. No one volunteered to do this but me. No one objected to me being the one to do it. No one objected to a radical decrease in size and clean up. (Several objected that this was done in article space rather than in Talk, but that is a process complaint. The mediator authorized it being done in article space.) My main goals were made . clear at the time. Please consult them closely. The single biggest objective was to meet WP:SIZE. (You may disagree that this was desirable, but that was the decision then.) Needless to say, massive amounts of cutting were necessary to do so. I tried to cut all sides fairly. (If you have an axe to grind (I hope not!), it will be easy for you to find 20 cuts from your side and ignore 20 cuts made against the other side.) At the end of the process, only one editor thought (or claimed to think, he provided no details to his position) that the article we ended with was worse than the one we started with. So, I declared success! The reason that "evidence presented at Arbcom looks pretty thin and rhetorical" is because, in my case at least, the process was done openly and in good faith. David.Kane (talk) 15:40, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

I skimmed through the mediation discussions and unfortunately haven't really reviewed the rewrite yet. Unfortunately, the mediation discussions were largely forumish and not all that specific, and tended to derail like the thread below. I did notice a few people say the size needed to be brought in-line, but no specific discussions about what should or should not be cut. So I'm guessing you just used your discretion. That's fine, but I think you had a responsibility to summarize what you cut and what you didn't cut, and why. I think you can still provide that summary. I know it sounds tough, but considering how much effort is spent in circular pointless discussions, I don't think it's really that much work when you consider the payoff. Could you do that? II | (t - c) 00:57, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

If you don't have time to read the mediation archives, no worries. Lots of people said lots of things. It is tough to summarize. The same applies to the extended discussions around the changes that I made, in two major pieces. (Note that after someone (you?) suggested it, I started adding much better edit summaries as I was doing it. Anyway, if you want the two sentence summary: I tried to focus the article down to the nub of the debate: There are measured differences in IQ among races. Environmentalist argue that genetics plays no role in the differences between group averages. Hereditarians argue that genetics plays a large (50%) role. I tried to cut everything that wasn't directly connected to this debate while, at the same time, maintaining the balance between the two sides which had already been present in the article. I organized things around Nisbett's summaries of the debate. Hope that helps. If you want more details, you should read the mediation archives. David.Kane (talk) 18:15, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

I may comment on this in more detail later today, but for now I just want to mention that since most of David.Kane’s changes were specifically an outcome of mediation, the place to find the discussions about them is in the mediation archives, not the article talk page archives.

I recall David.Kane stating that his revision to the article’s structure was based primarily on the debate overview provided by Richard Nisbett in his 2009 book Intelligence and How to Get It. Since Nisbett’s book doesn’t cover all of the relevant aspects of this debate, though, I later added some material on lines of data which Nisbett doesn’t mention, both those that are considered “pro-environmental” and “pro-hereditarian”. If you’d like me to link you to the threads where this was discussed, I’ll find them when I have the time. --Captain Occam (talk) 16:50, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Well, I don’t think I can easily point to one or a few specific threads where David.Kane’s changes were discussed, because these changes were the entire focus of the last few weeks of the mediation. If you read the last few pages of the mediation archives, though, you’ll be able to see what discussion these changes were based on. Everyone was agreed that someone needed to edit the article in order implement the changes that had been decided on during mediation, but David.Kane was the only person who volunteered to do this.

In my own case, the changes I made were discussed beforehand here, here, and here. Muntuwandi and Slrubenstein had a few complaints about the fact that material they considered important had been in the article prior to the mediation, but had been left out of David.Kane’s recent revisions. In response to this, I made a proposal to add back some of this material, as well as a few other lines of data we’d agreed during mediation should be covered but that David.Kane hadn’t added yet. We discussed this for around four days, after which Slrubenstein specifically encouraged me to go ahead and make my proposed changes as a way forward in the disputes over this.

Discussions about these changes continued after I had made them here, here, and here. Judging by his comments, Slrubenstein generally approved of the changes I’d made, as well as some adjustments that Mathsci made to them. Muntuwandi didn’t offer an opinion about my changes, but since a large part of them were specifically in response to his request that certain pieces of content from before the mediation be re-incorporated into the article, I would certainly hope that he approved of them also.

Even if you disagree with my edits in terms of content, I don’t think it can justifiably be argued that I wasn’t engaging in discussion about them or listening to other’s opinions. My edits were primarily in response to complaints from other editors, in an effort to find a middle ground that everyone involved in the article could be at least somewhat satisfied with. --Captain Occam (talk) 00:09, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

My primary complaint to you was that you did not, in those edits starting 24 April, use edit summaries, and you removed certain references and it wasn't clear why. This is a controversial, complicated article and it is imperative that people use edit summaries. Further, people should use descriptive edit summaries, not random comments (example from you). Another thing you should consider: if you worked on some content, and then some random guy came by and deleted it all without even a brief five word-explanation, how would you feel? It's a basic respect thing in a wiki to explain when you delete someone else's work. II | (t - c) 00:57, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

My feeling at the time was that because of how extensively I’d discussed my changes with other editors on the talk page before making them, everyone already had a pretty accurate understanding of what changes I was making as well as why, so explaining all of it again in my edit summaries would have been superfluous. If you think using descriptive editing summaries is important even in that type of situation, though, I’ll keep this in mind in the future.

If there’s any particular edit of group of edits that you’re wanting to know the reason for, I can explain it now if you like. I still think that my edits themselves were justified and consistent with what had been agreed on the article talk page, even if my edit summaries weren’t descriptive enough. --Captain Occam (talk) 22:01, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Recommended source

A 2005 special issue of the APA journal Psychology, Public Policy, and Law (volume 11, number 2) featured articles from top scholars on both sides of the debate. It's very much worth a look, if for no other reason than that it provides a context in which one can readily compare the quality of the arguments made by each side.--Anthon.Eff (talk) 13:28, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Some of the articles from that issue are cited in this article. All of the articles can be read here: [1].--Victor Chmara (talk) 14:35, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Online full-text of Jensen's 1969 article How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement?

Our article currently does not have a link for Jensen's 1969 article. Google Scholar's collection of links for this paper shows that it has been hosted online, and an adapted version is currently hosted on PSU's website. Can anyone confirm that this is indeed the paper? If so, I think we should add the link to the article. This paper was at one point hosted on ERIC; it might be worthwhile to contact them about putting it up again. II | (t - c) 06:39, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Inbreeding depression

There isn't a section about this in the article. Here's a paper about it [2]. Should we have a section? I guess it could be pretty short. mikemikev (talk) 10:53, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

No, not relevant to topic, and a primary source. Itsmejudith (talk) 17:04, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

It's hard to take the assertion that this is not relevant to the topic in good faith. This is not a primary source. Is this a primary source? Please answer that question. This seems to be a further example of the copy paste rhetoric used to censor wikipedia in the absence of a reasonable argument. mikemikev(talk) 11:49, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

Sorry but you'll have to take it in good faith per policy. Re the DNA article: I have no idea and there is no connection with my point above. The results relating to so-called "inbreeding depression" in the article you posted were entirely of Japanese subjects (within group rather than between group differences in the "hereditarian" jargon). Ergo, not relevant to this article. Has the question been discussed before whether "Intelligence" journal is an extremist source? Itsmejudith (talk) 13:20, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

It seems reasonable that if you are applying some kind of objective criteria to decide if this paper is a primary source you will also be able to decide about this one, and explain why. Otherwise people could be forgiven for thinking that you just label any source you don't like as "primary" as an excuse for censorship.

The argument the inbreeding depression paper is making is that IQ subtests which are most influenced by inbreeding are the subtests which are measuring more genetically influenced abilities. Then, if the racial IQ gap has a genetic component, there should be a correlation between the degree of genetic influence on each subtest and the black/white IQ gap for each corresponding subtest. Is that a flawed argument? mikemikev (talk) 16:19, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

I have argued consistently that the correct sources for this article are those in the history of knowledge. What you say concurs with my reading: that this paper is not actually about inbreeding depression but simply uses findings of research into inbreeding depression to propose a correlation in the variances of scores in test items with the variances found between "racial" groups. It does that to create another argument in favour of inherited intelligence. But is this an important argument in that case? Is this a landmark paper? We cannot judge that from the paper alone. So no, we have no reason to say anything in this article about inbreeding depression. Itsmejudith (talk) 17:10, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

Forgive my ignorance but I'm not familiar with how to find out whether a paper can be considered "in the history of knowledge". Perhaps you can explain. Papers don't need to be "landmark" to be mentioned in Wikipedia. [3] I'm just proposing a sentence or two. I think that's reasonable. mikemikev (talk) 18:52, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

Why don't you propose it here and where you'd like to put it and then we can decide. There's no point in debating something we might each envision differently. PЄTЄRS J VЄСRUМВА ►TALK 18:58, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

That's a constructive suggestion. I'll write a very short summary. The current article structure won't accommodate it though. We have a 'Molecular Genetics' section. Perhaps this should be changed to 'Genes'. We could then split it further between molecular analysis and gene inference techniques. mikemikev (talk) 19:15, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

How about "Rushton has observed that the magnitude of depression on IQ subtests caused by inbreeding (from a Japanese sample) correlates with the magnitude of the Black/White IQ gap for each subtest. [4]"? mikemikev (talk) 09:33, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

(outdent) If this work was in the scholarly mainstream when it was written - which I doubt - it definitely is not in line with recent scholarship. I will therefore take this to WP:FTN. Itsmejudith (talk) 09:49, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

OK, thanks. mikemikev (talk) 10:02, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

New study on health and intelligence

• Eppig; et al. (2010). "Parasite prevalence and the worldwide distribution of cognitive ability". The Royal Society. doi:10.1098/rspb.2010.0973. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help); Explicit use of et al. in: |last= (help)

The study takes no position on the genetic or hereditarian hypothesis, but does argue that reductions in the prevalence of disease vectors may be responsible for the Flynn effect. Wapondaponda (talk)

Thanks for the link. I learned about a critique of the study from a Facebook friend.

I don't think the critique is being fair, as the authors do not state that a complex behaviour arose through a single cause. They only argue that of all the hypothesized influences of national IQ, infectious diseases have the strongest correlation. Most of the other explanations are equally, if not more simplistic. Rushton and Jensen suggest temperature, others suggest distance from Africa, but still none of these theories have emerged to explain the Flynn effect as this recent study has done. Wapondaponda (talk) 13:37, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

I think Wikipedia ought to cover this paper. It’s definitely notable, and we currently don’t have much discussion about National IQ that isn’t just about Richard Lynn’s books. We should present more of the theories involving national IQ that have been proposed by researchers other than Lynn.

Does anyone have an opinion about the idea of creating National IQ as its own article? Right now this link just redirects to IQ and Global Inequality, but this topic is notable independently of Lynn’s writings about it. And it isn’t exactly the same topic as race and intelligence, either: although there’s some overlap between the two topics, national IQs are also discussed with regard to racially mixed countries such as the United States, so comparing the national IQ of the U.S. to that of other countries isn’t really a “racial” comparison. --Captain Occam (talk) 07:22, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Well, my opinion has been to hold on to major changes until the Arbitration process is complete. There is still a lot of useful information on intelligence that has not been added to wikipedia articles. However the trouble has been that any new information is at the risk of being politicized or manipulated to advocate a POV. Hopefully, arbcom can come up with a solution that addresses these problems associated with intelligence articles. This would free up discussion on other areas of intelligence.

The aforementioned study is also based on Lynn's data, but includes some adjustments due to the fact that Lynn's data has been criticized. So this study is not independent of Lynn's work, and consequently, I do not recommend an independent national IQ article. My reason for bringing it here is mainly as a possible explanation of the Flynn effect, which is mentioned in this article. I think the least controversial place for such material right now is Health and intelligence. Wapondaponda (talk) 10:39, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

You need to remember that the majority of data on this topic is not actually from Lynn. If you look through the bibliographies of Lynn’s books, you’ll see that more than 90% of the IQ data discussed in them was gathered by other researchers, and Lynn is just offering his own interpretation of it. Other authors such as Rindermann and Wicherts have analyzed the same data that Lynn has, and reached their own conclusions about it. (Which, in Wicherts’ case, is different from Lynn’s conclusions.)

The fact that analysis of these scores was initiated by Lynn doesn’t mean that the topic itself can’t be notable. Notability can only be determined by the degree of coverage that a topic has received in reliable sources, and in this case national IQs are now being discussed by mainstream news sources such as New Scientist, The Guardian, and The Economist. (For example see this chart from The Economist, comparing national IQs to disease rates.) If the fact that research on a topic was initiated by a single scientist meant that the topic can’t be notable on its own, regardless of how many researchers have subsequently written about it, then Wikipedia couldn’t have an article about evolution, because all of research about evolution over the past 150 years has been in some way based on the work of Charles Darwin.

I don’t have an especially strong opinion about whether the national IQ article should be created before or after the arbitration case is finished. I don’t think there’s any good reason to wait, but I guess I’m willing to if that’s what everyone else wants. I would like to hear opinions about this from some of the other users involved in this article. --Captain Occam (talk) 14:49, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

I think it would be more helpful to Wikipedia's development as an encyclopedia to ensure proper verifiability and neutral point of view based on reliable sources for the numerous articles that already treat intelligence and IQ testing issues rather than to produce yet more "Intelligence and X" or "X and intelligence" articles. Let's clean up and improve the existing articles (there are dozens) before creating new ones. As before, I offer the Intelligence Citations bibliography as a resource to all Wikipedians so that we can all look up reliable sources for future editing. I expect to expand that bibliography some more after the holiday weekend. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 15:00, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

I am always a fan of adding more reliable sourced material to Wikipedia, so I am in favor of an article on National IQ. I also like that title much better than something like National Intelligence. There are many academic articles that cover this topic, often with little if any connection to Lynn. A good overview article would be useful. David.Kane (talk) 16:06, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

WeijiBaikeBianji: there’s no reason why we can’t work on creating new articles and improving the existing ones at the same time. In fact, creating a new article on national IQ might be a useful step in the process of improving the race and intelligence article. The current section of this article that discusses national IQs is not very informative about the various theories which exist about what causes these scores to differ from one another, some of which are different from the theories about causes of within-country racial IQ gaps. But we also can’t expand this section very much without running into problems with WP:SYNTH and WP:UNDUE, since a lot of the research about national IQ isn’t specifically about race, and as a result the source literature about race and intelligence per se doesn’t cover the topic of national IQ very heavily. The obvious solution to this problem is to split off national IQ as its own article.

The question I have, for you and David.Kane, isn’t so much whether this article ought to be created at all. I’m pretty certain that even if national IQ wasn’t notable enough to have its own article prior to this new study, the press coverage that this study has been receiving is enough to raise the topic above the threshold of what warrants a Wikipedia article, so we definitely ought to have an article about it eventually. The question is just whether it would be better to create this article before or after the arbitration case is finished. Do either of you have an opinion about that? --Captain Occam (talk) 17:02, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Why are you ignoring the fact that some users have rejected the idea of a national IQ, is this WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT again. At present, Lynn's national IQs are handled adequately in articles such as IQ and the Wealth of Nations. To create another article would result in an unnecessary duplication of information and also the article would be a POV fork. If the CIA factbook included national IQs, then there would be enough independent notability to warrant an article independent of Lynn, but as AFAIK, the CIA factbook does not have national IQ data, and likewise, Wikipedia probably shouldn't as well. Wapondaponda (talk) 03:35, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Muntuwandi, I’m assuming this unsigned comment is from you.

There isn’t anything you’re saying here that we haven’t been over multiple times before, in some cases earlier in this thread, so I’m not sure if it’s necessary to explain any of this again. Remember what WP:MNA says: we can have an article about an idea that not everyone agrees is valid, as long as we make the disagreement over this idea clear in the article. Does the fact that most protestants (and all non-Christians) don’t believe in the Assumption of Mary mean that we can’t have an article about it?

When I suggested creating an article about national IQ, I was actually expecting you to disagree with this idea, but I wanted to see what arguments there are against it. Seeing this from the arguments you’ve presented here makes me more certain than ever that the article should be created. I don’t think anyone could be expected to do anything differently based on the arguments you’re making here, and these arguments certainly wouldn’t hold any water in an AFD. Remember, consensus isn’t necessary in order to create a new article—if there’s something inherently wrong with the article which can’t be fixed just by editing it, that’s what AFDs are for. --Captain Occam (talk) 21:43, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Captain, I must agree with Muntuwandi and those oposed to the idea that this is way close to an obvious POV fork to make it worthy of being a standalone article. Also, the fact that some editors are opposed to it shouldn't make you more eager to actually create the article. That smacks of WP:BATTLEGROUND attitude.--Ramdrake (talk) 22:11, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

This isn’t based on the fact that Muntuwandi disagrees with the idea of creating this article. It’s just based on the fact that no coherent arguments have been presented against this idea, even when he’s obviously trying to come up with one, which suggests that there aren’t any coherent arguments against this idea in general. (Since if there were, I assume Muntuwandi would be using them.)

It’s pretty audacious to claim that an article which hasn’t been created yet will be a POV fork if it’s ever created, regardless of how it will be worded and what sources it will use. Can you explain how you can be so certain of this, and what article would be the other side of the POV fork? I don’t see how it can be a POV fork of race and intelligence, since national IQs are a separate topic from racial IQs, as I’m pretty sure you’ve pointed out yourself in the past. And unlike the articles about Lynn’s books, this article would be about the work of a lot more researchers than just Lynn. --Captain Occam (talk) 22:45, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

I didn't say it would be a POV fork but the gist I get of how you envision this article suggests there is a great risk it could be one. I would say we should concentrate on making the "R&I-related" articles that we have now as good as they can get before writing up een more of them. This will further complicate the problem. And if you think that's not a valid argument then, yes, you're sounding like somebody with a WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT issue.--Ramdrake (talk) 23:27, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

The reason I don’t think this is a valid argument is because I already addressed it when WeijiBaikeBianji made it, and nobody has even acknowledged what I’ve said in response. There are something like 15 editors who are involved in these articles on and off, but at any time there are usually only three or four of them involved in a single article. Having one group of these users working on an article about national IQs is not going to interfere with the ability of others to work on the rest of the articles. There’s no reason both can’t happen at once.

There also hasn’t been any attempt to address my point about how this would be a way to fix the problems with this section of the race and intelligence article. When this section was discussed here, Mathsci, Aprock, Slrubenstein and DJ were able to come to a consensus about the problems with this section (and Slrubenstein pointed out that there was a consensus about this), but nobody could find a specific way to solve them, so they’ve never been fixed. Note Slrubenstein’s concerns about synth in this section—this problem is what we’ll need to find a way around if we’re hoping to cover national IQs adequately and neutrally. I’m proposing the creation of this sub-article partly as a way to fix a problem that’s existed in the race and intelligence article for the past two months, and that nobody has been able to fix before now.

If you’re going to keep claiming that the creation of this sub-article would interfere with improvement of the rest of the R&I-related articles, without making any attempt to respond to my own point about how if this has any effect at all of the improvement of the current article it would be to help with it, then you aren’t using a valid argument. I’m not sure if it’s WP:IDHT to keep making the same argument again and again without acknowledging another user’s rebuttal to it, but it certainly isn’t a reasonable way to debate. --Captain Occam (talk) 00:24, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

(ec) (a) Creating what's called a walled garden of articles is frowned upon on wikipedia. It's fairly typical of fringe topics and usually creates an unmanageable situation. (b) Constantly claiming something has already been discussed when that is not the case is not helpful. (c) Speculative papers which have so far not been assessed or commented upon by the scientific community at large are hardly suitable for inclusion in any kind of reference work. (d) Discussing these topics here as if this page were some kind of science forum is hardly what wikipedia is about. There are science forums or blogs out there where participants can let their imaginations run wild and offer their personal scientific opinions. But not on wikipedia. Mathsci (talk) 00:37, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

This reminds me of Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement?. It seems that Captain Occam and David Kane are just trolling, trying to cause an unnecessary ruckus. I'll stop feeding per WP:DNFTT. Wapondaponda (talk) 03:35, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

I guess the best way to resolve this would be to build the article in userspace, move it into article space, and then put it up for deletion. mikemikev (talk) 12:57, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Mike, that’s what I’ve been intending to do. However, it still leaves the question of whether I should move the article into article space before or after the arbitration case is finished.

What’s going on here is something I’ve seen a few times before, although I think this is the first time it’s happened since you became involved in this article, so you might not be familiar with it. Most of the time, when a user has a policy-based complaint about a piece of content (or an entire article), and another user explains how they think it isn’t actually a violation of that policy, the two will argue back and forth about this policy until either one of them concedes, or the discussion ends in a deadlock. But what’s happening here is that whenever a policy or other argument gets brought up as a reason for not creating this new article, and I explain why I think that argument isn’t logically sound, rather than trying to defend these arguments, the people who don’t want the article created are just trying to come up with additional unrelated arguments for this conclusion. If I refute these also, I expect that another round of unrelated arguments for this conclusion will be presented after that. In other words, the reason for not wanting this article created doesn’t seem to be based on any specific policy, since it apparently doesn’t really matter what reasons they give for this, as long as they can come up with some kind of reason.

One of the best past examples of this was in the race and genetics article last fall, when Muntuwandi wanted to remove an image that I’d added to it, and his reason for wanting to remove it was because of something I’d written outside of Wikipedia. (He actually admitted that this was his reason.) As is explained in this thread at AN/I, he removed the image from the article five different times, citing a different policy as justification each time. Whenever I (or other users) explained how this image wasn’t actually violating the policies that Muntuwandi was claiming it was, he didn’t try to argue about that; he just found a different policy to cite as a reason for removing it next time around.

What I’ve learned from this experience is that when there’s a user or group of users doing this, it isn’t worthwhile to try and argue with them. It won’t make a different how many times one explains how the content in question doesn’t violate whatever policy is currently being given as a reason to exclude it, because every time one does, this just results in the users who want to exclude this content finding a different policy to justify this instead. Wikipedia has a virtually limitless supply of policies that can potentially be cited as a reasons to exclude content, so as long as the users who want this aren’t particular about which policies they give as a justifications and in what order, there’s no way to end one of these arguments unless one of the two sides gets tired.

Fortunately, as I said before, this kind of argument isn’t likely to hold water in an AFD discussion, so it isn’t a reason to not create the article. However, it might be more prudent to wait until after the arbitration case is finished before doing this, since ArbCom might offer a ruling that makes this less likely to continue being a problem. This is what I’d appreciate getting your and David.Kane’s opinion about. --Captain Occam (talk) 17:07, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

I think you have the situation exactly. I'm guessing that 'POV-fork' is the excuse this time because it worked the last time in AfD. I agree it probably won't hold water for this article. In my opinion the Arbcom case is no reason to stop contributing, if anything it provides more evidence of unreasonable behaviour. But I'm not sure if the arbs would agree with me, maybe it would be best to clarify with them. mikemikev (talk) 17:27, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

• Mathsci and others have good reason to be concerned about creating a large number of race and IQ articles, including a national IQ article. That puts a bigger load on the unbiased volunteers who are trying to make sure that these things are being presented fairly. Lynn's research seems fairly speculative at this point. Since Lynn and Jensen seem to have basically done most of the research and not really pursued hypotheses like the one above, I don't think there's enough additional research to really justify the article - how much is not summarized already in the section on this page? However, one of the good things about a dedicated article is that it would allow us to delete IQ and the Wealth of Nations and the IQ and Global Inequality without much fuss; I think the latter should be deleted ASAP because it has no fleshed out critical commentary of a very controversial topic. In this case, editors like Victor Chmara (talk · contribs) have worked to remove the criticism, possibly based upon possibly technically interpretations of synth (example) while not reverting vandalism which removes criticism IP removes critism, with Victor editing the next day (diff). II | (t - c) 19:50, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

My opinion that there’s enough research in this area to justify its own article is partly based on the summary of the current state of research in the “introduction” section of the new study. I hadn’t previously been familiar with a lot of this research. In addition to Lynn, Vanhanen, Jensen and Rushton, National IQs have also been researched by Barber, Ceci, Templer & Arikawa, Kanizawa, Wicherts, Borsboom & Dolan, Sadat, and Woodley. (And, of course, there’s also the new study from Eppig, Fincher and Thornhill.) It seems kind of unbalanced that Wikipedia is providing extensive coverage of the research in this area from Lynn, but not from most of these others.

I think Lynn’s books are probably notable enough to have their own articles here, but I also think the articles on them are too long, and the one on IQ and the Wealth of Nations has some problems with synth, especially in this section. A lot of the studies described in that section are just about national IQs in general, not about Lynn’s book in particular. What I’d suggest is that if an article on national IQ gets created, the articles on Lynn’s books should be reduced to just brief explanations of the books themselves, as well as others’ reactions directly to these books, while all of the detailed discussion about data and related studies should get moved into the new article. What would you think of that idea? --Captain Occam (talk) 12:55, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Studies like the one about parasite load and IQ should not be discussed in this article, but rather in the articles about Lynn and Vanhanen's books. While plenty of interesting research based on Lynn and Vanhanen's data sets has been published, I don't think the field of international IQ comparisons is mature enough to warrant an article of its own.

As to II's accusations that I have tried to skew the article on IQ and Global Inequality, they're baseless and violate WP:AGF. Firstly, the revert of mine II links to was about an unambiguous case of WP:OR. Secondly, I have reverted vandalism on that article a number of times, but I have not been able to monitor every single edit. I have removed criticisms that are original research, unsourced or do not reflect their claimed sources, but naturally I welcome all sourced and relevant pieces of criticism.--Victor Chmara (talk) 17:12, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

If you don't think that a "national IQ" article is ready as you say below, surely you would be willing to vote delete on the two articles on Lynn's books that we have (IQ and the Wealth of Nations, IQ and Global Inequality), which have received even less attention than such a broad article? The lack of a broad article leaves us with instead POV-fork articles of Lynn's books, where you are very quick to delete criticism or alternative explanations. If we instead had a broad article, we could add more explanations and criticism to certain hypotheses without running into WP:SYNTH arguments. II | (t - c) 00:44, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

I would not support deleting those articles, because the books have been discussed widely enough, and their data have been used in many other studies. The research is very important even if still somewhat rudimentary.

Lynn and Vanhanen published IQ and the Wealth of Nations and IQ and Global Inequality in 2002 and 2006, respectively, and in 2008 Lynn alone published The Global Bell Curve. The three books make the same arguments, and the main difference between them is that the newer ones have more IQ data (admittedly, I have read only IQ and Global Inequality, but that is what I have gathered from reviews of the other two). Thus, ideally, we would have one article covering all three books.

However, I am opposed to an article called National IQ or anything like that, because it's a concept that doesn't really exist outside of those three books and the studies that draw on the data in them. There is no scholarly field that specializes in international IQ comparisons, and Wikipedia should not make it seem as if there was one.

I see no reason for adding to those articles random explanations and criticisms that have no direct connection to the books. There are other articles, such as this one, where they properly belong.--Victor Chmara (talk) 01:39, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Victor Chmara's point that field of international IQ comparisons is not yet mature enough to have a single dedicated article. It would be premature of Wikipedia to give validity to Lynn's national IQs when the scholarly community is still debating them. For example, according to Lynn's data the average African IQ is 70. But Witchert's analysis of the same data brings the figure up to 82, a shift of 12 points, almost a full SD. The point is Lynn's data has been criticized and is still being reviewed and investigated. It is therefore more appropriate that such data is attributed to Lynn, as opposed to giving the impression that the data has mainstream acceptance, especially by creating a dedicated article. According to WP:GREATWRONGS,

"Wikipedia is behind the ball - that is we don't lead, we follow". Wapondaponda (talk) 20:12, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Muntuwandi, the point of this topic having its own article is that it would be covering more than just Lynn’s views. With regard to specific IQ scores, we’d most likely have a table presenting the conclusions of each researcher about this, without favoring one or the other. In other words, for the Sub-Saharan scores we would present the scores from both Lynn and Wicherts, attributing both of them to their respective researchers and not making a statement either way about which is correct.

If there might not be enough research in this area to justify its own article, then that’s a reasonable concern. That’s the first valid argument against the creation of this article that’s been presented thus far, and I would be interested in hearing opinions about this from David.Kane and Mikemikev. (Not from you or Mathsci, since I know both of you are looking for any arguments you can find against the creation of this article.) But please don’t keep bringing up red herrings like you’re currently doing. --Captain Occam (talk) 20:43, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

I'd say that a few more monographs on the topic by other people than Lynn would have to be published before it might be considered an established field of study that would warrant the creation of a Wikipedia article.--Victor Chmara (talk) 20:49, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

"I'd say that a few more monographs on the topic by other people than Lynn would have to be published before it might be considered an established field of study that would warrant the creation of a Wikipedia article." Hear. Hear. The thing to remember is that Wikipedia is not a publisher of original thought, not a soapbox, not a blog, and not a scientific journal. Rather, we are here to build an encyclopedia (at least I am) and writing articles to be tertiary sources in relation to other (primary or secondary) sources and reporting what are established facts rather than speculating about hypotheses. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 00:33, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

Friendly Suggestion to All Here

You may find it helpful while reading or editing articles to look at a bibliography of Intelligence Citations, posted for the use of all Wikipedians who have occasion to edit articles on human intelligence and related issues. I happen to have circulating access to a huge academic research library at a university with an active research program in those issues (and to another library that is one of the ten largest public library systems in the United States) and have been researching these issues since 1989. You are welcome to use these citations for your own research. You can help other Wikipedians by suggesting new sources through comments on that page. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 23:09, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

On Naming Groups: Environmentalists and Hereditarians

A recurring issue on this article is what terms, if any, to apply to groups of researchers. Most editors seem to have accepted the term "hereditarians" to apply to those scientists who argue that genetics play a role in measured IQ differences among human races. Does anyone now object? More difficult has been a term that applies to those on the other side. Jensen and Rushton use "culture-only" to apply to this group, but editors have, I think, objected to allowing them to frame the debate in the past. Fortunately, we have two highly regarded secondary sources that use the term "environmentalist." See Loehlin, Lindzey and Spuhler (1975), pages 6 and 8. (Loehlin et al also use the term "hereditarian." See Mackintosh (1998), page 160. (Mackintosh, as best I can see does not use a term like hereditarian.) Now, of course, no two scientists have exactly the same opinion on any topic, so, by using a term like "hereditarian" we are simplifying the diversity of views that exists among folks like Jensen, Murray, Rushton and so on. But such simplification helps in writing an encyclopedia. The other option, as best I can see, is to list the names of specific scientists every time we make a point about X. Comments on this issue are welcome. David.Kane (talk) 13:45, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

The Intelligence Citations Bibliography we can all refer to as we edit this article should include enough recent (defined as "after 1996") sources to show whatever current usage is on this point. (I will be adding more sources to the citations list sometime in the next week--they are already piled all over my office. Of course any other Wikipedian is welcome to suggest other reliable sources, and I'll put those on the bibliography too.) Wikipedia, as an encyclopedia, relies on the terminology of standard sources in the relevant disciplines. Maybe this is an issue of "There are two kinds of people in the world: those who believe there are two kinds of people, and those who don't," but whatever the facts are, the sources will tell us the facts. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 13:53, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

Context is important. In some cases, researchers may explicitly be arguing against other researchers. In such cases, we should identify the nature of the split or debate however they do. But sometimes, a researcher is just trying to answer a question, and is not arguing "against" anyone. In such cases, to suggest that there is a conflict between two sides is to distort how scholarly research progresses. In short, let's not assume there are two sides because let's not assume this is about a conflict between two sides. Let's be open to the possibility that sometimes it is not. And sometimes it is. When a secondary source says there are two sides, I would like to know more about the conjtext - meaning, is the secondary sources saying that she is simply representing a well-known debate between two sides? Or maybe the secondary source is providing her own analysis of the state of research, and th enumber and names of the sides are very much this sources view? All these things are possible and as Weij says, we should just follow the sources. Slrubenstein | Talk 16:06, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

I agree. From my reading of the sources, the most common description is of two major positions, and the most commonly used terminology for describing those who hold, mostly, those positions are "hereditarian" and "environmentalist." I also agree that, within each major groups, there are disputes of various kinds and that, when discussing those disputes, we should make clear who holds which views. David.Kane (talk) 16:32, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

I also think Mathsci has a point inasmuch as "hereditarian" and "environmentalist" (or whatever terms one wants to use) are more appropriately used to describe viewpoints, and should not be used to describe researchers per se, unless they have described themselves in this fashion.--Ramdrake (talk) 20:22, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

I agree. Isn't that what the paragraph does now? It defines the hereditarian and environmentalist viewpoints. It them names leading proponents of each view. Do you think that the definitions in the paragraph could be improved? Do you think that some of the names don't belong or that we should replace them with other (more famous? more published?) scientists? I am flexible on both points. And, again, Mackintosh (1998), a source that I was introduced to by MathSci, has an extensive discussion about what "environmentalists" think around page 160. David.Kane (talk) 20:31, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

Mackintosh does not divide researchers up into two groups: there are not two viewpoints in this. That is simply not the case and David.Kane should try to stop repeating fallacious statements like that. The section in Mackintosh's book on ethnic groups (following social classes) from page 148 to 183 concludes that there is no evidence so far to support the hereditarian hypothesis: that does not seem to have registered with David.Kane.

Probably the whole section should be removed, since this division into hereditarian and emvironmentalist researchers does not seem be mentioned anywhere in any WP:RS.

As reported in the ArbCom case, the paragraph under discussion came from the pen of David.Kane. It was totally unsourced and a BLP violation against various living academics. Besides which, the whole section was neutrally rewritten with all the info that could possibly be salvaged from WP:RS. It now appears as the section "Current debate". I have yet to understand, beyond accepting every word that Rushton writes, why David.Kane restored this passage. Rushton (& Jensen) apparently was his only source for the "fact" that the world of research into race and intelligence is divided into 2 groups of researchers. I could not find that sentence in their article. [5] The word environmentalist appears only once in the article and not in that connection. Can David.kane possibly enlighten other wikipedians as to where he found that information? WP:V fails here.

Otherwise, beyond that still unsourced statement, everything else seems to come from the pen of David.Kane- no secondary source. (He added a ref from 1996, which had nothing whatsoever to do with the content.) I have no idea where the IP editor came from but of course that has been a fundamental problem with these articles. How does an IP suddenly appear from nowhere at an article like this? I have to say that I find that extremely worrying: it's been a recurring problem on this article and the associated history article.

Perhaps David.Kane could explain to us how he came to formulate these sentences. Certainly using Rushton (& Jensen) as an WP:RS is not really permissible, since the research of Rushton, the principal author whose present work this summarises, has been severely criticized in many places. Perhaps it might be appropriate to start a separate section on this talk page about Rushton. Mathsci (talk) 04:01, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

Allow me to repeat myself. There should be more READING going on among us while we wait for the ArbCom decision. Look up some new reliable sources you have never looked up before. Let's make sure that this contentious article is sourced with the best authoritative mainstream sources, especially when making statements about living persons. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 21:20, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

MathSci: Rushton and Jensen (2005) is a peer-reviewed, published academic article. It certainly meets the criteria for [WP:RS]. Why do you disagree? It divides race/intelligence research into two groups. If you would prefer that the distinction between models and researchers who argues for those models were more clear in the paragraph, I will rewrite it and put it back in the article. David.Kane (talk) 01:09, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Explanations

The section on explanations did not match the sources, i.e. it failed WP:V. The citations from Earl Hunt's article have been reproduced but do not make sense within this article. That is unhelpful. The correct thing to do is to spell out directly from the WP:RS of Hunt et al what they say, by a careful paraphrase of their words, adding no extra WP:OR. The same could be done with the paper of Thompson et al. The juxtaposition of unattributed statements by Sternberg and Nisbett is completely misleading: there is no evidence that Sternberg disagrees with Nisbett as the section implies. Cherrypicking statements of Nisbett out of context from a popular science book is not helpful. It would be correct to call Nisbett, like Sternberg, an academic psychologist: he has simply commented, as has Sternberg. Sternberg has written and edited countless books and articles on intelligence, indeed he is undisputedly one of the leading authorities on psychometrics: the statements in the article seemed to contradict that and, since no secondary source was cited, were misleading for the reader. Indeed Nisbett thanks Sternberg for commenting on his popular science book. Synthesizing the article in this way is misleading and also a serious BLP violation of Sternberg, Grigorenko, Kidd, Nisbett and others. Two 2009 OpEds in Nature requested by the editors of Nature as initial stances in a planned web debate on Nature's website are not the best WP:RS for an encyclopedia article. On his university home page Nisbett does not describe himself as an active researcher in race and intelligence; it is a side interest mentioned only at the end of a long list of his main interests. The book cited is in popular science. As Nisbett himself explains, the only technical academic part occurs at the end in Appendix B. That has already been used for writing "Current debate" as a WP:RS for summarising Rushton & Jensen.

The basic problem with the synthesis is its suggestion that there are two opposing points of view. That seems incorrect. The hereditarian researchers, principally Rushton now, have a very clear point of view. Other academics, active in educational psychology, psychometrics, anthropology, biology, genetics, statistics and other areas, have raised objections to various aspects of hereditarian research. From looking at almost all the available literature, that seems to be what has happened. To present a different point of view—that of diametrically opposed camps or points of view—is an inaccurate and misleading synthesis. The same words "some scientists" were used to describe both the American Association of Anthropologists and Sternberg, Grigorenko & Kidd. That is misleading and not helpful to the reader.

Material could be added to this section by properly paraphrasing Hunt et al (i.e. the secondary sources). Rushton (& Jensen) can't really be used as a commentary on others, unless the comments are attributed to Rushton (& Jensen), since Rushton is probably biased against those who disagree with his analysis. Mathsci (talk) 05:24, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

I deleted the section because it was unsourced, but in general I don't see the major problem. Logically, you can separate the researchers into 3 buckets: (1) hereditarians like Jensen, a bucket which you seem to acknowledge, (2) "environmentalists" or anti-hereditarians, who propose other hypotheses but generally reject the argument that the difference is unchangeable and genetic in origin; Nisbett explicitly places himself into this group - see the Appendix of his book, and (3) researchers who are undecided based on the evidence and don't favor one hypothesis or the other. Now, you can break down each bucket into more finely-grained buckets, but ultimately these discrete categories are undeniable. II | (t - c) 07:28, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

You would think that you would be able to divide the positions up like that, but Mathsci has been picking up a more complex picture from the literature - the literature that sets out the state of the debate, not the literature that constitutes the debate. I hope I'm not oversimplifying if I say that there is a clearly defined "hereditarian" camp, and then there are various positions critical of it, that do not coalesce as an opposing camp. Or don't wish to be seen as coalescing into an opposing camp, let alone an "environmentalist" one. If I were starting to write a literature review, I might start by seeking out "buckets" - pole positions - like you have done above. But that would be original research. Since for this article we have sources that spell out the debate for us, we should make sure we use them fully, and don't try and work it out for ourselves from first principles. Itsmejudith (talk) 08:13, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

That is precisely the issue. Eminent researchers like Sternberg, Mackintosh, Jencks, Flynn, Ogbu or Nisbett are perfectly capabl

Mathsci, you seem to be confusing two separate issues. Nisbett thinks race and intelligence research is valid, but supports an environmental explanation of the IQ gap. Rushton similarly thinks race and intelligence research is valid, but supports a partially genetic explanation. Sternberg thinks research is invalid. [T]here is no evidence that Sternberg disagrees with Nisbett as the section implies: the sources provided are the evidence. [6]. We don't need a 'secondary source' to confirm whether or not somebody wrote what they have written.

I understand that BLP is a good reason to blank content. The problem here is it's not valid. We have material from these researchers (not their critics) making clear their position, and no evidence their position has changed. I will now restore the content. mikemikev (talk) 09:29, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

You have restored synthesized WP:OR material that can cannot be verified with secondary sources and constitutes BLP violations of distinguished academics, like Nisbett and Sternberg. Perhaps you could explain carefully how you judge the content matches the sources. Where for example in the literature is there anything indication that Nisbett disagrees with Sternberg, which is what the present text says. That is a serious BLP violation in misprepresenting the current views and relations between living people. If either has said they disagree with the other, fine, but the contrary seems to be true, from the preface of Nisbett's book amongst other things. Perhaps you have some neutral WP:RS that you absent mindedly forgot to add which makes a statemnet like that. At present this just seems to be the opinion of David,Kane who wrote the material and cannot be found anywhere else. If content does not satisfy WP:V and breaks WP:BLP, it will be removed.

You could alternatively self-revert and provide a properly sourced version of this content if that is possible. I looked at the article of Hunt and Carlson and note that they mention ve tharious points of view mentioned here en passant and then go on to a general discussion before declaring there list of ethical requirements for research on grop differences in intelligence. So that source is not particularly useful. Mathsci (talk) 10:07, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

I've read Hunt and Carlson. They do not mention the points of view en passant, they mention them at the very outset of their paper to set the stage, from whence all other discussion follows. I'm gobsmacked you contend it's not a useful source. PЄTЄRS J VЄСRUМВА ►TALK 01:40, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Welcome to the world of dealing with MathSci. If he does not agree with a source then, by definition is "not a useful source." Hunt and Carlson treat the hereditarian position seriously and view it as worthy of study and debate. MathSci views the hereditarian position as fringe. So, of course, he would not view Hunt and Carlson as useful. David.Kane (talk) 01:47, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Hunt and Carlson's simple and insightful diagram of intelligence is worth its proverbial weight in gold. If anything, while they have their own views, they are also quite informatively agnostic (intentionally, stated) in characterizing sources and in discussing the most flammable aspects of the debate around intelligence. I was tempted to observe that perhaps Mathsci was reading the source for what he was looking for it to say rather than simply for what it says.

   It's been my experience that on contentious subjects, the best barometer for what source to read next is to choose one which someone dismisses or attempts to censor—regardless of which side of the argument is involved. PЄTЄRS J VЄСRUМВА ►TALK 02:12, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Peters wrote, "It's been my experience that on contentious subjects, the best barometer for what source to read next is to choose one which someone dismisses or attempts to censor—regardless of which side of the argument is involved." I agree that that is a pretty good heuristic principle for deciding what to read next while learning about a highly controversial subject. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 02:33, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Why is an I.P. editor editing Victor's comments here?

Just curious, I see diffs to Victor's comments attributed to an I.P. editor. Wouldn't he sign his own comments and edit them himself? -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 13:37, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

The IP editor is not me, and s/he does not seem have modified anything I have written.--Victor Chmara (talk) 21:38, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

What We All Know

Want to know the central source for conflict on this article? This opinion from Slrubenstein: "We all know that the claim that average differences in IQ are genetic in origin is fringe science. . . . I have merely pointed out that to claim that people of a certain race are on average innately less intelligent (meaning, g, general inelligence) is to make a racist claim. This to me is obvious on its face and needs no further evidence or justification." I would be curious know which other editors agree with Slrubenstein. I disagree. David.Kane (talk) 16:01, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

IMHO the article would be best served written from the perspective of we don't know what we don't know. Stating we know something (and those who disagree are racists) really does nothing to advance the topic. As I've already mentioned, the presentation of the subject matter is decidedly polarized. For example, Goddard (in History of...) is not mentioned as having recanted all his initial conclusions. Nor does the article here record that the much-pilloried Jensen has himself written: "Data that would permit firm conclusions about the genetic basis of differences among ethnic groups in measured intelligence do not exist," and, "the cause of the observed differences in IQ and scholastic performance among different racial groups is still an open question." Clearly, Jensen asserts a hypothesis, not a conclusion, regarding race and intelligence. That distinction appears lost on those who wish to credit him with a revival of eugenics, among many other sins.

   At least the alleged purveyors of moral turpitude at this article do not appear as certain of the innate unassailable correctness (and morality) of their position as those who denounce them. History has taught us that a priori moral certainty of one's position eliminates any possibility of negotiation or reconciliation, regardless of the venue. PЄTЄRS J VЄСRUМВА ►TALK 16:24, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Short answer, even if I agreed completely with Slrubenstein (i.e., genetics has nothing to do with it, 100% environmentalist), I would not stoop to claiming the moral high ground to advance my editorial position. PЄTЄRS J VЄСRUМВА ►TALK 16:30, 21 June 2010 (UTC) P.S. I must add it somewhat pains me to make this observation as I've rather liked Slrubenstein's work at Judaism where our interests have crossed prior. PЄTЄRS J VЄСRUМВА ►TALK 16:53, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Allow me to point out that there is a vast difference between the language games being played here. The assertion that there are real differences between the intelligence of different racial groups is only racist when it is made in the absence of evidence (or in the face of evidence to the contrary). A scientist asserting he has evidence to that effect is not inherently racist - he may be right or wrong, but he's not making claims in the moral universe, only in the physical one. prejudice is a moral claim that (a) these differences exist, and (b) the extant differences call for differential standards of treatment and behavior, and in most cases prejudiced people will shout out about B without every giving A an evidentiary thought. Not everything science does is pleasant - note that if everyone had rejected bread mold as harmful and disgusting, we'd never have discovered penicillin. Both the moral and scientific sides of this issue require attention, obviously, but everyone needs to make a better effort at keeping the two realms distinct. --Ludwigs2 17:19, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Given the uncertainties regarding the precise definitions of both intelligence and race, anyone wanting to prove a connection between them must already have what I would see as a racist view of the matter. To argue such a position, one must make assumptions about both matters, assumptions which, the article already states, are not fully supported by the science. HiLo48 (talk) 19:33, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

You appear to presume that people go in search of proof of superiority or inferiority. While this was certainly the case to begin with in U.S. testing, I do not think it is fair to tar anyone postulating a genetic link as being, by definition, a "racist." Racism requires prejudice. For example, consider that East Asians test, as a group, higher than mine. Whether it's environmental, genetic, or a combination, it doesn't change the score nor does the score say anything about superiority or inferiority. To take a scoring difference—regardless of its source—and to state it does say something about superiority or inferiority, that is what is "racist." PЄTЄRS J VЄСRUМВА ►TALK 20:21, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Of course, someone can simply counter that the most insidious racist is the racist who doesn't know they are a racist. I would suggest we not take the conversation there. PЄTЄRS J VЄСRUМВА ►TALK 20:28, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Which east Asians? Do we have clear definition? HiLo48 (talk) 21:08, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

• Per Flynn and Vanhanen's data, graph; which group specifically is scoring how in comparison to which other one is immaterial with regard to my example. PЄTЄRS J VЄСRUМВА ►TALK 00:01, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

@ HiLO48: actually, in my experience a lot of questions like this get raised because there is a popular prejudice that scientists are trying to verify or dispute empirically. For instance, a lot of the R&I research in the US focuses on racial ideas that go back to the days of slavery (one of the primary presumptions of the salve trade was that aboriginal peoples were 'primitives' who lacked the mental acuity to coexist properly in 'civilized' society). It's a bit more complex, of course, since I think Jensen et al were actually responding to liberal ideologies about equality which tended to paint racial inequities exclusively in terms of sociological factors (though these, in turn, were responses to the older idea that racial differences were innate). scientists don't live outside of the real world, and are just as influenced by the misconceptions of society as the rest of us are; but that is precisely why science puts so much emphasis on gathering empirical evidence to support claims.

in other words, if no one ever raised the question as an empirical, scientific question, then prejudice would be the status quo in many parts of the US and the world. Would you rather have a world where the uncomfortable questions never get raised and prejudice rules implicitly, or a world where they uncomfortable questions do get raised, and prejudice has to prove itself right or disappear? --Ludwigs2 22:25, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Labeling a hypothesis as "a racist claim" would seem to be a way to dismiss it, unexamined. Perhaps the topic of race and intelligence should be listed in our Politicized science article.

The claim that women (a) simply choose to stay out of the top academic levels in mathematics, as opposed to the claim that (b) women are discriminated against at the top academic levels, is likewise dismissed, unexamined, as "a sexist claim".

One would hope that Wikipedia contributors could rise above all this and simply present the arguments and evidence for and against each viewpoint. --Uncle Ed (talk) 22:31, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

• I don't think this is really a helpful discussion - how many times has the question been asked, and to what purpose? On the relevance to the article, if someone makes the argument that it is fringe, that argument and debate should be included, but it should be not characterized as such without attribution. My personal view: I don't think the research topic is fringe per se, although I do think the hereditarian perspective attracts racists who happen to have PhDs. I think a very strong argument could be made that Rushton & Jensen are indeed racists. I think they view their position not as a hypothesis but rather as a conclusion, and they have apparently done so long before the research has even progressed to its current (in my opinion meager) state of knowledge. People who think there are no PhD racists are fooling themselves. But this is beside the point, so let's get back to working on the article and deal with this issue when/if someone presents the sources on the fringeness. II | (t - c) 05:19, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Slrubenstein's claim that the hereditarian perspective is "fringe science" is unsupported. In reality, the hereditarian view is regularly discussed in scholarly publications, and there is evidence suggesting that hereditarianism is a vastly more common view among intelligence researchers than the extreme (100 %) environmental hypothesis. You could claim that it is "environmentalism" that is fringe science, but I wouldn't say that, either. As to the claim that Jensen and Rushton are racists who reached their conclusions without evidence, a similar claim could be made of their opponents, such as Richard Nisbett, who preposterously claims that he actually has evidence that conclusively proves that race differences have no genetic component. Some of the more honest people in the environmentalist camp at least admit that there is little evidence to support their position. In one interview, James Flynn said that he hopes that the differences are not genetic to any extent. He certainly would not claim that he can prove it.

However, this speculation about motives and prejudices is useless. The article should simply discuss the arguments and evidence put forth by the reseachers. This approach of course favors the hereditarian view, because it is a scientific theory with lots of evidence and predictive power, whereas the environmentalist position is more of a collection of criticisms of hereditarianism than a coherent theory. This can also be seen in the fact that hereditarianism is falsifiable, whereas I don't think any feasible experiment or observation could disprove environmentalism in the minds of its hardcore supporters.--Victor Chmara (talk) 09:25, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

"This can also be seen in the fact that hereditarianism is falsifiable ..." Well, I guess it has been, since no one has been able to demonstrate a genetic cause for racial differences in IQ. "...whereas I don't think any feasible experiment or observation could disprove environmentalism in the minds of its hardcore supporters." This is an absurd position, since the term "environmentalism" is a sloppy term promoted by the so-called hereditarians to refer to anyone who disagrees with them. Heredity has one cause: a gene or combination of genes. What does "environmentalistm" even mean? According to our own article it means at least a dozen different things. Why lump them all together? That is not a scientific, not an objective, way of going about things. It is a highly biased approach that makes sense only to a "hereditarian." Now, researchers who say there is an "environmental" cause are usually actually saying there is some kind of social cause. And the social sciences do not operate in the same way that some other sciences operate (note: not all life and physical sciences require hypotheses that are falsifiable; Durac, who some would say was the greatest scientist of the tqwentieth century and if not the greatest, number two or three, didn't feel that it applies to particla physics; Quine questions whether it really applies to any of the sciences); a great deal of sociological research is not experimental. Be that as it may, Moore's study provides compelling evidence that the difference is "environmental."

How nice to see my position misrepresented. The view that average differences in IQ between races are innate is fringe science not "because" they are racist, they are fringe science because they are rejected by most scientists. Victor Chmara claims I am wrong, but then slips in an important qualifier: "among intelligence researchers." This is a small segment of the scientific comunity and not the only - I repeat because others from David Kane to Victor Chmara always overlook this in arguing against me - not the only scientists whose research bears on the question. Who are the other scientists? Well, biologists and physical anthropologists who by the way are experts on genetics. None of the intelligence researchers I know of - certainly neither Jensen, Lynn nor Rushton - have any expertise whatsover in genetics. Biologists and physical anthropologists who are experts on genetics reject these claism, and researchers who are not experts on genetics make these claims. That is, experts do not make the claims, non-experts do - this is one reason we know it is fringe science. Sociologists and cultural anthropologists are experts on race. Intelligence researchers are not. Sociologists an cultural anthropologists reject these claims. Intelligence researchers, who do not have the required expertise, make these claims. That is more evidence that it is fringe science. If intelligence researchers made claims about biochemistry or particle physics, and those claims were rejected by partical physicists and biochemists, we would consider those claims to be fringe science too. Now, as for the claims being racist, this is a separate claim and the reason we must include it is not because I think racism is bad. We include it because significant views in reliable sources make these claims about Jensen, Rushton and Lynn. Racism is a social problem found in some societies, not all. Sociologists, social historians, and other scholars have researched the history of race and racism. One of the things they have discovered is that racist societies often rely on the language of biology, expounded by "scientists," to legitimize the status quo. This is not my idea. This is not my opinion. I am telling you about a certain body of scholarly research. And I do not care what your opinion is of this body of research. It is directly relevant to this article, and therefore should be represented in this article. Slrubenstein | Talk 13:30, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

I don't want to belabor this much more than I already have, regarding: "We include it because significant views in reliable sources make these [racist] claims about Jensen, Rushton and Lynn." As I've stated, these claims (as does the current article) completely ignore Jensen's own comments regarding his own conclusions. (I've mentioned the same problem regarding Goddard at "History of r&i controversy.") So, there does appear to have been, empirically speaking, a content choice by some editors to pigeon-hole various parties by evil vs. enlightened. Using the excuse that (reputable source) "X" calls "Y" a racist so therefore I am objective ("not my opinion") in calling "Y" a racist as part of my personal editorial perspective is no less morally offensive than calling someone a racist purely based on my own personal opinion. I don't see that editors discussing their personal perspectives of racist or not, no need to justify charges of racism or not, is helping anything here. I suggest that we focus on a less polarized presentation of the subject and issues (that some have been polarizing does not mean the article is doomed to be similarly polarized). PЄTЄRS J VЄСRUМВА ►TALK 15:38, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

First, can you point out any instance in which I have deleted or opposed the inclusion of a quote from Jensen in which he denies being a racist? Not to "belabor" the point, Ijust want to know what on earth you are talking abou. Second, our NOR policy states, "Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, published secondary sources and, to a lesser extent, on tertiary sources. Secondary or tertiary sources are needed to establish the topic's notability and to avoid novel interpretations of primary sources, though primary sources are permitted if used carefully. All interpretive claims, analyses, or synthetic claims about primary sources must be referenced to a secondary source, rather than original analysis of the primary-source material by Wikipedia editors." If you have a problem with it, you should take it up there, not here. Slrubenstein | Talk 15:39, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

By the way, what possible justification can there be for using what you consider "morally repulsive" as a criteria for content inclusion/exclusion in a Wikipedia article? Do you have no comprehension of all about what NPOV means? Slrubenstein | Talk 15:42, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

(ec) You are so completely missing the point. I haven't accused you of actively censoring anything. What I have said is that the a priori presumption of "racist by definition" polarizes the discussion and the article. My example of such polarization includes the controversy around Jensen: perhaps you or other editors had put in exculpatory, if you will, quotes from Jensen in the past (as presented in discussions of the subject in secondary/tertiary sources) and they were lost along the way; the point is that those quotes are not there currently. Your implication that you support including same is certainly a positive which I don't want to lose here.

   Sturm und drang over morality, including the article becoming some sort of morality play, does nothing to improve the article.

   Lastly, as I've stated elsewhere, let's please stop lecturing each other by invoking WP:ACRONYMS and extensive quotations of WP policy. That communicates nothing other than name-calling other editors as ignorant. We're not children. PЄTЄRS J VЄСRUМВА ►TALK 16:09, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

On the other, I'm stating that framing the conversation around content based on Jensen or others being explicitly or implicitly or by a priori definition "racists" is what I find morally repulsive. PЄTЄRS J VЄСRUМВА ►TALK 16:09, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Hopefully we can put this discussion to rest. PЄTЄRS J VЄСRUМВА ►TALK 16:18, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

I do not see where I have made any a priori claims. I am sorry that you reduced my quoting policy to my throwing around acronyms. I was making a substantive point about encyclopedic standards. There is a body of research on racist science. It complies with our policies. However "morally repulsive" it is to you, it will therefore go into our articles. Learn to love with it. Slrubenstein | Talk 17:30, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

By the way, I object to David Kane's suggesting that my view is the "central source for conflict" at this article. I did not air this view during the mediation, and I do not think anything I ever wrote amounted to some back-dore sneaking this view in, during the mediation. At that time I was trying to work in good faith towards a resolution of conflict. It would be more correct that it is certain racist statements by Jensen, Rushton, and Lynn that are the source of conflict at this article. That, I would agree, is true. That they (or at least, Jensen) deniy being a racist is what makes it a conflict, right? Slrubenstein | Talk 17:33, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

(ec) If I've misunderstood your statement that the contention there is any genetic basis for IQ differences is, by definition (a prior) racist, because it contends that there is something which can be described as biologically based superiority/inferiority, then please correct me. That is the focus of my comments, not what constitutes the basis for writing encyclopedia articles, I know how to do that, please spare the lectures and implications that I'm trying to somehow break the rules. It's not your business as an editor to label what is by definition racist and therefore, also by definition, what individuals based on any of their hypotheses or conclusions are therefore racists. We can certainly report that "X" called "Y" racist, but it is not our role as editors to bring that, our personal determination if it is that, to editing the article. I trust this is clear enough. PЄTЄRS J VЄСRUМВА ►TALK 17:46, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

And on "It would be more correct that it is certain [by definition] racist statements by Jensen, Rushton, and Lynn that are the source of conflict at this article." that would be "It would be more correct that it is certain statements by Jensen, Rushton, and Lynn which academia, other intelligence researchers, and the press have labeled "racist" which are the source of conflict at this article."

   Thank you for demonstrating the crux of the issue: you, as an editor, don't get to call anything racist, even if every editor (not just you) thinks it's racist. PЄTЄRS J VЄСRUМВА ►TALK 17:46, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Slrubenstein, no one is stopping you from adding to the article arguments from biologists, anthropologists, sociologists or whoever. The problem is that they are usually ignorant of psychometric research, and, lacking an operationalization of intelligence, have little to contribute to the topic. However, I have noticed that whenever they take the trouble of familiarizing themselves with IQ research, they will usually realize it's one of the most robust and useful bodies of theory and evidence in all of social science, and become much less likely to dismiss hereditarian arguments out of hand.

Social scientists are usually also completely ignorant of population genetics (aside from being able to parrot Lewontin's Fallacy), and their ideas about race and intelligence are accordingly misguided. As Jensen and others have pointed out, racial differences in IQ are compatible with our knowledge of genetics for two simple reasons:

• 1. Everybody except the lunatic fringe agrees that (a large number of) genes influence variation in IQ.

• 2. Different races, however defined, differ from each other in the distributions of numerous alleles.

When I mentioned the falsifiability of the hereditarian view of race and IQ, I was referring to a study design proposed by several scientists: African-Americans are a mixed-race population with various degrees of West African and European (and to a smaller extent, Native American) ancestry. Since there now exists technology to make excellent estimates of different ancestry components in an individual's DNA, and since the hereditarian view suggests that the amount of white ancestry be correlated with IQ in African Americans, the theory could be tested. As Charles Murray has said, the "results would be close to dispositive". A lack of such a correlation would mean that the hereditarian view is false.

Unfortunately, if the results of such a study supported the hereditarian view, I don't think the "environmentalist" camp would budge in their convictions -- they would instead come up with new hypotheses in support of their position, just like they did after SES differences, test bias, and other proposed "X factors" behind the black-white gap became untenable. Slrubenstein is of course correct in that "environmentalism" is a grab bag of very different, often mutually contradictory arguments. That is what I argued in my earlier comment.--Victor Chmara (talk) 23:42, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

• To mikemev, who reverted my collapsing of the above thread: how is this random bickering not treating the talk page like a forum? It might be on the same topic as the article, but it's not focused on anything and nobody in this thread has proposed a change to the article. This needs to stop because it is an enormous waste of time for the people who are working on this article to have to monitor these distractions. The group of editors here (both the hereditarian and anti-hereditarian side) has forced other people to read their random, ad-nauseam bickering for far too long, and I hope someone will revert mikemev. II | (t - c) 06:58, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

It seems to me that this discussion has raised some useful reference points, which will hopefully reduce future conflict. mikemikev (talk) 07:10, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Victor Chmara, where do you get your claims from? "Since there now exists technology to make excellent estimates of different ancestry components in an individual's DNA" - this is quite wrong, the estimates are not even close to "excellent." Saying that racial diferences in IQ are "compatable" with our knowledge of genetics is meaningless. "Compatability" is not a scientifically meaningful term. The exact same thing can be said about sociological factors, because a variety of social factors are distributed within races. So what you wrote is meaningless. In any event, why are you trying to argue? Arguments of Wikipedian editors, no matter how strong or as in your case weak, are just not relevant. As I said, experts in genetics discount the "hereditarian hypothesis" and experts in race discount it too. It is fringe science. Slrubenstein | Talk 09:02, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

The compatibility issue is important because it means that certain arguments used to dismiss hereditarisnism are invalidated. The common claim that social race distinctions in e.g. America do not correspond to systematic genetic differences is simply BS, so it cannot be used to disprove the arguments of Jensen and others. Ancestry estimates are regularly used by population geneticists, and they certainly regard them as valid. As you say, the arguments of Wikipedia editors are not relevant, so please stop repeating the claim that "experts" regard hereditarianism as "fringe science", and come up with sources to back it up.--Victor Chmara (talk) 11:52, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Slrubenstein, the hereditarian hypothesis, as far as I know, is compatible with what we know about genetics. "Compatible" is a word which can be used in a scientific argument as far as I know. I may be wrong, so please reference the experts who discount the hereditarian hypothesis. mikemikev (talk) 12:43, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Okay, so all you can do is repeat your claims without adding any information that supports them. "Compatible" means nothing since the data is equally compatibvle with claims involving the enviroment, and it is not a criteria genetic scientists themselves use for infering conclusions - please do not use your hocus-pocus as a substitute for actual science. Victor Chmara, where do you get your claims from? "Since there now exists technology to make excellent estimates of different ancestry components in an individual's DNA" - this is quite wrong, the estimates are not even close to "excellent." I am just repeating my question, because Victor ha ssimply repeated his assertion. I have fair knowledge of population genetics and have no idea what Victor is talking about. This does not make him a liar, I admit I may not know what he is atlking about. So it is fair to him that I ask him what he is talking about and I await an actual response. Slrubenstein | Talk 15:04, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

Slrubenstein, here's a recent study on the ancestry of African Americans [7]. They found that "The amount of European ancestry [in African Americans] shows considerable variation, with an average (± SD) of 21.9% ± 12.2%, and a range of 0 to 72%". This is in line with previous research, but what was new in this study was that they also studied the structure of African ancestry in African Americans: "The largest African ancestral contribution comes from the Yoruba, with an average of 47.1% ± 8.7% (range, 18% to 64%), followed by the Bantu at 14.8% ± 5.0% (range, 3% to 28%) and Mandenka at 13.8% ± 4.5% (range, 3% to 29%). The contributions from the other three African groups were quite modest, with an average of 1.7% from the Biaka, 0.5% from the Mbuti, and 0.3% from the San." So, contrary to your protestations, the methods of population genetics are capable of "fine characterization of genetic ancestry", as they put it in the abstract.--Victor Chmara (talk) 16:43, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

The fallacy here is that the genetic evidence about human ancestral lineages is generally considered equivalent to evidence of the existence of human "races" as a biological concept. Most do not, they consider homo sapiens a monotypic species. But not all. And frequently, those who do think the concept of "biological races" can be applied cite Cavalli-Sforza's pioneering work, whereas the "other side", which includes Cavalli-Sforza himself, concluded the opposite. Cherry picking primary sources won't settle this. Professor marginalia (talk) 17:30, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

There is no fallacy. Dimension reduction analysis of genetic markers shows that people with similar geographic ancestry bunch together. Thus, for example, people of European ancestry can be separated from those of West African descent. Here's an example: [8]. For the purposes of the study design I have described, it does not matter whether or not this genetic diversity of our species can be divided into races. Charles Murray put it this way: "To the extent that genes play a role, IQ will vary by racial admixture. In the past, studies that have attempted to test this hypothesis have had no accurate way to measure the degree of admixture, and the results have been accordingly muddy. The recent advances in using genetic markers solves that problem. Take a large sample of racially diverse people, give them a good IQ test, and then use genetic markers to create a variable that no longer classifies people as “white” or “black,” but along a continuum. Analyze the variation in IQ scores according to that continuum. The results would be close to dispositive."--Victor Chmara (talk) 18:39, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

When Murray writes "would be close to dispositive" in the subjunctive mood there, he shows that he is pointing to a hypothesis, not to data. There may or may not be data that show what he, the nongeneticist, believes likely. (When Herrnstein and Murray's book The Bell Curve was published in 1994, I was already active in online discussion of all the issues brought up in the book on Usenet. The geneticists there were amazed at how little Murray knew about genetics in those days, although it may be that he has learned a lot in the last sixteen years.) Now if someone has actual data on this issue, those would be of interest for updating the article. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 19:42, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

(ec) I'm talking about the fallacy here -- in the arguments here. I don't make judgments about the "fallacies" of the researchers themselves because it's irrelevant. The "fallacy" here is that data from any study like this can show us what the consensus of opinion is for genetic evidence of biological race. Those primary sources are outside the scope here because editors don't interpret scientific data. The argument is sidetracked into "how to interpret the data" and the focus should be "what is the consensus among scientists who have studied the issue." Editors who want to describe their own analysis and logic about Jensen, environmentalism, and the genetic data should start a blog. Editors content decisions here are based only on how secondary sources describe the most notable views and conclusions of experts working in these fields. Professor marginalia (talk) 19:44, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Victor Chmarra, please stop misrepresenting genetic research. You wrote "Since there now exists technology to make excellent estimates of different ancestry components in an individual's DNA" and I correctly pointed out that recent technology does not allow us to make "excellent" estimates. You then provide a link to an article from Genome Biology that you claim supports your view. Why not tell the truth, that the authors conclude that "These results ... cast doubt on the general utility of mtDNA or Y-chromosome markers alone to delineate the full African ancestry of African Americans." I have never cast doubt on the value of population genetics, which is well established. But when you used the word "there now exists" I assumed you were referring to recent developments in genetic research. Maybe you need to be more specific about what you mean by "now exists." The fact remains that while population genetics allows us to map variations in gene frequency, it does not yield precise or even "excellent" data on an individual's ancestry. The authors of the article from Genome Biology conclude that, why not pay attention to them? Slrubenstein | Talk 01:39, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Here is more from Genome Biology, cautioning against some lay conclusions about genetics research.

Slrubenstein, your problem is that you do not understand even the basics of population genetics. I suggest that you familiarize yourself with topics such as mtDNA, Y-DNA and autosomal DNA. When the researchers say that their results "cast doubt on the general utility of mtDNA or Y-chromosome markers alone to delineate the full African ancestry of African Americans", they simply mean that uniparental haplogroups are not reliable as indicators of ancestry. For this reason they studied the different ancestry components of African Americans using autosomal DNA, namely 450,000 SNPs, getting the exact results I reported above.--Victor Chmara (talk) 11:30, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Victor, you are confusing race with population genetics. aprock (talk) 13:40, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Nope. If two populations differ in the frequency distributions of alleles, it is possible and meaningful to study if differences in substantially heritable traits like IQ between the populations are due to genes. Racial categories based on self-identification, at least those used in the US (from where we have the best data on race and IQ), correspond to different genetic clusters[9] (i.e., the frequency distributions of alleles differ between races), so it's clear that from the point of view of population genetics the hereditarian theory of race and IQ is unproblematic. Whether or not racial categorization is a good way of characterizing the genetic diversity of the human species in general is immaterial in this respect.--Victor Chmara (talk) 14:29, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Nope. First, Victor, you continue to talk about populations, not race. Second, heritability studis are done using twins and we already have a pretty good understanding about the heritaility of intelligence, which, surprise surprise, is covered in an article just on that topic. As you say, race on IQ tests is self-identified and not the same thing as a population. But it doesn't matte, researchers are already certain that a significant amount of intelligence is heritabile. A good wikipedia article would present what kinds of issues genetisists are mostly concerned ith, but non-scientists keep hijacking these articles to deal with their own racist agenda, rather than tryint to present genetics research in a neutral way.

Virtually all scientific research on the genetic determinants of variation in IQ scores is based on twin studies and above (perhaps now in archived talk) I provided a bibliography of major (i.e. from major peer-reviewed journal journals, and which are frequently cited) articles. These studies indicate an ongoing debate between scientists who measure the heritability of intelligence at .40, and others who measure it at between .60 and .70. In addition to these contrasting calculations, there is a debate over the effects of of the shared prenatal environment - some argue that identical blood supply should lead to greater similarities between monochoriatic twins than dichorionic twins; others argue that competition for blood supply should lead to greater differences between monochorionic twins than dichorionic twins. I think we need to have a good article that provides a clear account of this research and these controversies. Slrubenstein | Talk 11:01, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

In the United States, for example, whites and blacks form populations that are genetically distinguishable from each other, although a small minority of blacks are more similar to whites than to the average black due to greater admixture[10]. Socially, these two populations are known as races. Whether one calls them races or populations is pure semantics--it does not affect the underlying reality of different distributions of allele frequencies. For the purposes of studying race-specific genetic contributions to IQ differences, the white admixture in blacks is useful, and, as I have demonstrated, it can now be accurately measured.

The (broad sense) heritability of IQ within a population is a different question from the heritability of IQ differences between populations. The first question should not be discussed at length in this article, as there's a separate article on that. However, contrary to what you claim, there is no academic debate where some say that the heritability of IQ (within a population) is 40%, while others claim it's higher. The heritability of IQ rises linearly with age. There's a recent paper[11] by Plomin et al. that proves this beyond any doubt:

"The heritability of general cognitive ability increases significantly and linearly from 41% in childhood (9 years) to 55% in adolescence (12 years) and to 66% in young adulthood (17 years) in a sample of 11 000 pairs of twins from four countries, a larger sample than all previous studies combined."

Thus 40% is the heritability of IQ in children, whereas it's much higher in adults (it continues to grow even after age 17).

By the way, your constant accusations that "racists" are hijacking articles and filling them with ideas not supported by geneticists are pretty funny considering that you don't know jack shit about population genetics, as you amply demonstrated above.--Victor Chmara (talk) 15:56, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Yes, you are still confusing race with population genetics. Genetically distinguishable means nothing with respect to race. I am genetically distinguishable from you, regardless of our race. That's not to say that population genetics isn't interesting. It's just not race. This is especially important in the context of this article because there are virtually no primary sources, let alone secondary sources, which discuss racial population genetics and intelligence. This whole discussion smacks of WP:FORUM, either suggest some reliable secondary sources from which content can be based, or let it alone. aprock (talk) 17:11, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

If we belong to the same race (as defined in e.g. the US), our genomes are, with high probability, more similar to each other than if we belong to different races. The article currently discusses the type of admixture study I have suggested by referring to Rowe & Rodgers 2005[12]: "Rowe & Rodgers (2005) and others have suggested using DNA-based methods to reproduce these studies with reliable estimates of ancestry. Such experiments have never been published, although the requirements for such a study have been discussed in the academic literature." Hunt & Carlson[13], Murray[14], and James J. Lee (Personality and Individual Differences 48 (2010) 247–255) are among those who have argued that such a study is feasible (although Hunt & Carlson advise against conducting such research).--Victor Chmara (talk) 17:49 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Yes, you're still doing a very good job of confusing population genetics and race. Regardless of feasibility of doing any sort of population genetic/IQ study, no such studies have been done yet. If a study were published tomorrow, it would probably take many months (or years) before it could be properly synthesized by reliable sources. Are we through here? aprock (talk) 20:00, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

As long as people who do not understand the difference between population genetics and race (yet who atack those who do as people ignorant of population genetics, how ironic), we will be in trouble, because these ediors will continue to put their own original research in (synthesizing statements from population genetics with bliefs about race) or by privileging fringe research (e.g. psychologists' claims about race, which have nothing to do with population genetics). Slrubenstein | Talk 22:23, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Slrubenstein - you are shifting the burden of proof. If psychologists, or landscapers, can make studies showing that controlling for environment races differ on IQ tests then they have proven that IQ differs by race due to nature. If it's published in a peer reviewed journal it's verifiable. It doesn't matter if geneticists have located the genes responsible or not. How did Mendel demonstrate heritability without identifying the individual genes responsible with the aid of geneticists? It's silly, heritability can exist without Geneticists identifying genes. The races, as defined by a dictionary or common definition, have been shown to have different intelligence scores on average. Some research suggests these differences are due to hereditary. End of story. Geneticists have little baring, given they cannot falsify the proposition of this research by showing that there are no genes responsible for intelligence that vary in frequency between the races(by their common definition) . That's the burden of proof geneticists rightly have if they are to be included in the argument at all.

"Environment" is not one variable. In fact, it is virtually impossible to control for the environment as a variable - this is one thing that makes natural selection such a powerful force in modern evolutionary theory. Yes, it is true that traits were inherited through genes long efore we knoew what genes were or had the technology to identify them. But even now that we know what genes are and how to identify them, evolutionary scientists still believe that evolution is driven primarily by natural selection and in unpredictable ways, which is indeed why new species evolve all the time. And you think one can control for "environment?" You can control for income of parents, or education - something concrete and specific. But "environment?" And you think a geneticist has to prove that "no genes" are responsible for average differfences in intelligence among races? Wow, some scientist you are! Slrubenstein | Talk 18:33, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

True environment isn't one variable, but researchers attempt to control for it and the results are usually that races still differ markedly in intelligence scores. It can also be shown that iq scores are heritable. If you want to argue that genetics are not responsible for these differences then you would have to map the genetics of intelligence and show they do not vary for races (as defined by the common definitions used in the research, not as defined by geneticists).

Obviously that's difficult (and most likely impossible because races do seem to differ in inate abilities). But saying geneticists can't or wont define the races as they are commonly defined, and haven't found the specific genes and demonstrated racial differences therefore the research is wrong is bogus. It's saying that psychology is a subsidiary science to genetics, and you can't make any statements about psychology until the genetics are understood. Mendel shouldn't have dared do any research without identifying the individual genes he was studying!

It all boils down to this, race has a common definition that's well known, and verifiable studies show that races consistently average different scores after controlling for the major variables of environment. Other studies can question them, but a science that would usually humbly acknowledges it's immaturity cannot supplant it simply because they haven't mapped all the genes being observed. It's a ridiculous argument that nobody could honestly believe. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.233.29.226 (talk) 10:33, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Hi, 220.233.29.226, you wrote, "race has a common definition that's well known," so I'm wondering if you could provide a citation to that definition from a reliable source to back up that statement in the article. You also write, "It can also be shown that iq scores are heritable," but that suggests that you have not learned the difference between heritability and malleability (also called controllability). I see the article still includes the sourced statement, "even highly heritable traits can be strongly manipulated by the environment, so heritability has little if anything to do with controllability," sourced to a recent publication by Thomas Bouchard and his colleagues, who are some of the leading researchers on human behavioral genetics. What human behavioral genetics sources do you have at hand? I will be adding some more human behavioral genetics sources to the Intelligence Citations Bibliography posted for all Wikipedians to use while editing articles. I invite you and everyone else here to look up reliable sources from that bibliography and to learn more about the subject matter of the article as we continue cooperatively to assume one another's good faith as we edit the article. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 14:56, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

WeijiBaikeBianji with your first question is dishonest. Try a dictionary ..... "negro", "caucasian", "Black African", "african american". This page is an embarrassing pissing contest. Discussions about the difference between malleability versus heritability warrant a line or two. I'm not interested in trying to sound smart talking about what I know, or you don't know. The statement is absolutely obvious (take height for instance). Even so other research (such as adoption studies) would provide stronger evidence against it in this context of course, and the burden of proof would be on "human behavioral genetics". Since they haven't discovered many genes linked to intelligence (not to mention inutero conditions) they have very little of worth to add to the article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.233.29.226 (talk) 09:52, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Use of {{who}}

I've removed the {{who}} tags regarding the four contemporary positions. We don't tag quotes from reputable sources as containing weasel words. PЄTЄRS J VЄСRUМВА ►TALK 00:48, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

I've removed the tags, again, which Mathsci restored without discussion here and with an edit summary ("restoring tags - these make no sense at all in the WP article and should be directly linked - please do so") which I can only describe as impenetrable. If this is a veiled reference to the current article content being so polarized that the four positions described are not represented as such in the article and therefore make no sense with regard to the article, well, then I'd say it's the article which rather needs some work. I posit it's rather overdue that we eradicate the reductio ad hereditarians environmentalistsque. PЄTЄRS J VЄСRUМВА ►TALK 17:31, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Obviously these references make no sense to the reader, who might not be able to access the article of Hunt and Carlson. I have added a Reference section, long missing, plus harvtxt links to the references. One of the references, Cooper 2005, was not in the original paper. Vecrumba broke 1rr and has been reported at WP:AN3. Mathsci (talk) 22:40, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

I'm sorry, you do not put {{who}} weasel-word tags in the middle of a contiguously quoted reputable source, and certainly not to merely request Wikifying citations in a quoted source. You can always add notes, but your edit disrupts the quote to where it is not clear where the citations come from, whether a WP editor or the original source. Furthermore, I had not checked the citations, this might have been an earlier version of the paper or an error in the original insertion, as "Sternberg, Grigorenko, & Kidd, 2005" is missing from the third position. Your repeated tagging with weasel-word tags in the middle of a soured quote, and with a frankly incomprehensible edit summary, as opposed to discussing here after I initially removed your tags and stated why, speaks more of your attitude toward this article than mine. I've defended my revert as undoing your vandalism repeatedly adding weasel-word tags in the middle of a contiguously quoted section from a reputable source. You chose how you wished to handle this by ignoring my initial talk page entry above and choosing to simply re-install your tags. I challenge any editor to read your associated edit summary, quoted above, and come away with "please Wikify the citation in the quoted original." And if it were that, why wouldn't you have just done that instead of repeatedly heaping on grossly inappropriate weasel-word tags in quadruplicate? PЄTЄRS J VЄСRUМВА ►TALK 01:57, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

This is why I've (as a response to an alternate proposal) suggested at arbitration that for 6 months all discussion of all article content be in plain, comprehensible English with no Wiki-terminology. PЄTЄRS J VЄСRUМВА ►TALK 02:01, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Lastly, Mathsci, I was not the one edit-warring. By reinserting your tags without responding to the dialog here in any manner, that would be you. Transference of your inappropriate editorial behavior on to others may work with others, but I will call you on it every time if that's how you prefer to work things here in lieu of a more collegial atmosphere. PЄTЄRS J VЄСRUМВА ►TALK 02:11, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

@Mathsci, you might consider that I'm not clueless and that in the future you should use appropriate tags and meaningful edit summaries which pea-brained editors such as myself can comprehend if your preference is to edit-war instead of responding on the talk page when editors discuss their actions at the article—which response would have immediately cleared up any misunderstanding. That is what talk pages are for, that is, dialog, not lecturing, preaching, or admonishing. Your expression of disparaging self-blamelessness (that would be your personal attack describing me as "clueless" and "disruptive") is disappointing. PЄTЄRS J VЄСRUМВА ►TALK 14:19, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

"Harvard" Style in References

To answer a question David raised in an edit summary, I'd be happy to see more use of the "Harvard" style of citation (so that article text includes references like "(Flynn 1987)" visible to the reader) as we go along. That is the expected form of an inline reference in the discipline of psychology, and so I would expect this article and all articles on related topics eventually to adopt that style. I'll read the Wikipedia articles on Wikipedia:Parenthetical_referencing some more (I've read most of them once already) and get into practice doing this. Meanwhile, I'll keep expanding the citations list and ensuring that is in detailed citation template format for all of you to use. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 14:47, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

I may be using the wrong terminology. I mean references like the style that MathSci uses for [History of the race and intelligence controversy]. Basically, there is a single reference section and then footnotes refer to that reference section. This makes it simpler to give multiple references to the same article and to use different page numbers to each. This is orthogonal to the issue of using thing like (Flynn 1987) in the article text. David.Kane (talk) 15:05, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the follow-up. Yes, being able to refer to specific page numbers in varying ways across an article to a single source is also a convenience. I will look some more at the example you have kindly mentioned. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 15:42, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Many thanks to Mathsci for providing the example on the daughter article and to David for drawing that to our attention. I've looked at the example on the History_of_the_race_and_intelligence_controversy article and agree that that form of citation and markup is both reader-friendly and editor-friendly for making a well sourced article with high verifiability. As I look at the documentation on how to present citations and details about footnotes and the citation templates, especially the Harvard citation examples, I'm gradually wrapping my head around what to do to bring this article's references into that format. Fellow Wikipedian RexxS has a great tutorial on citing multiple pages from one source in different references for the same article, and that is very clear and helpful. I'm glad this was brought up here so that this article can improve in clarity of citation as it improves in content. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 00:55, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

Temporary 1RR on this article

Per this statement, a temporary WP:1RR restriction has been imposed on this article by User:Georgewilliamherbert for the duration of the current Arbcom case. I have modified the timestamp of this notice to try to prevent bot archiving. EdJohnston (talk) 16:51, 13 July 2010 (UTC) Due to the current uncertainties, I'm striking my notice of a 1RR restriction. See the discussion below. Any admin who is confident about the 1RR situation is welcome to place a new notice on their own. EdJohnston (talk) 12:39, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

I.P. editor 82.101.205.224 seems to be disregarding the 1RR restriction at present--I hope an administrator takes note of this. For what it's worth, the "fact" he tries to insert in the lead is disputed in the sources. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 00:29, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

We are still getting the same 1RR-disregarding (now, 3RR-disregarding) unsourced edit from the same I.P. Could an administrator please do something about this edit warring? I have already found a better source (and a link to another Wikipedia article) to greatly improve the paragraph, but I don't want to run afoul of any temporary rules here by fixing it myself until I'm sure how the administrators are going to enforce--or not enforce--the temporary 1RR restriction. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 13:52, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

I counted out the hours, and then fixed the unsourced statement with a paragraph I stored off-wiki. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 01:38, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for reminding us about this. I think my reply here may also slow archiving of your helpful notice. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 17:16, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

As a follow-up on this, please see this thread on the arbcom case. Rlevse says that his understanding is that this is a motion that has yet to be approved. He is supporting it and pinging the other arbs on it, so presumably it will be passed at some point very soon. --B (talk) 20:59, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for clarifying that reporting a user here to the notice board was based on a misunderstanding, since no 1RR restriction has officially taken effect here yet. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 21:20, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Wrong. It had been in effect for some time (although not as an ArbCom ruling), but the anouncment was auto-archived. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 21:29, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

See Talk:Race and intelligence/Archive 82#Article temporarily full-protected and 1RR. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 21:32, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

The point here is that apart from an arbcom ruling, an admin does not have the authority to unilaterally impose this sanction. Arbcom is taking it up as a motion and will approve or reject it. (Presumably it will be approved.) --B (talk) 21:58, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Arthur, thanks for the further follow-up. Isn't it odd that a notice of a reversion restriction gets plucked out of sight by the archiving bot, while the top of this user talk page is full of templates full of obsolete or obsolescent information? Why couldn't a reversion restriction show up on top and archiving-proof on both the article page and on the main article talk page? (P.S. I'm still almost in zero-editing mode here, trying to observe the lay of the land while the ArbCom case is still pending. I'll appreciate any comments you have on the Intelligence Citations list meanwhile.) -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 22:37, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Actually, a community consensus could also impose 1RR on articles. But I can't say I see that here, either. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 22:24, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

If/when the restriction is approved, it can be added to a template using {{mbox}} or something similar. The bot archives anything that is signed. If you don't sign your template, it doesn't get archived. --B (talk) 00:24, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

B, thank you for the explanation of how the archiving bot works. It occurs to me that when this article comes out from under the ArbCom case, one to-do will be cleaning up all the templates at the top of this talk page. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 01:35, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Question: Who has the following sources at hand?

Soon it will be time to begin editing the article in earnest, once the ArbCom case is decided. Who has each of the following sources, all of which I have within reach of my computer as I edit Wikipedia?

• Flynn (2007 or 2009) What Is Intelligence?

• Mackintosh (1998) IQ and Human Intelligence

• Murray and Herrnstein (1994) The Bell Curve

• Kaufman (2009) IQ Testing 101

• the full text of Jensen (1969) How Much Can We Boost . . .

I'm just curious what sources I can refer to that I can be confident other editors will be able to check immediately. Feel free to mention other good sources in replies to this, if you like. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 00:35, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

I have got all but Kaufman. I haven't much time to devote to another Race and Intelligence related article but I can cite check if necessary. Professor marginalia (talk) 04:10, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

The only one that is at my local university library is Flynn's What Is Intelligence; all others I have no access to whatsoever aside from an ILL. Please look around (e.g., Google Scholar search for author:[author name]) to make sure that these sources are really necessary and the authors' haven't developed the arguments in a freely-accessible place. It can also be helpful to check the WorldCat results; for example, WorldCat shows that only 167 libraries carry IQ Testing 101. Another benefit of papers is that they are concise and include the most important information while books can be repetitive and wandering. While I'm sure Flynn has some good things which could be included in this article in his book, for example, but we also have a 2006 paper in Psychological Science from him whose preprint is available, among other freely-accessible articles showing up in Google Scholar. I'm skeptical about citing Jensen's 1969 article for anything outside of historical reasons. Jensen wrote a long 2005 paper updating his arguments, it's freely-accessible, and if any of the information in his 1969 article stood up to the test of time, he will most likely have summarized it there. I mean, we can discuss using it, but keep that 2005 paper in mind when you do. The Bell Curve should be mentioned, but it's got too much associated baggage, plus it wasn't subject to peer review. The IQ Testing 101 article could be good if makes the complex topic of IQ testing simple and understandable, but there's only so much detail on IQ testing that we can include here, and it would be best if we had free primer/introductory articles so we could easily adopt a summary style in the articles and give readers the benefit of a quick source of information. II | (t - c) 07:29, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

Good online sources One source I just discovered today is the full text of The Nature of Intelligence, a great book on the subject that not enough academic libraries have, a source that meets reliable source for medical information standards on most issues it treats. I'm checking on getting through the paywall on most of the chapters after downloading the book's index for free. Read and enjoy. The book includes transcripts of seminar discussions among the different chapter authors, which are especially interesting. Another source that is entirely free and a very interesting read is Beyond the Flynn Effect from the Psychometrics Centre at Cambridge University. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 02:07, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

II, my concern is more along the lines of preventing misciting sources that don't actually support assertions in the article. On my part, I assume that everyone is looking over my shoulder at my sources as I edit. But I found a ref in the article yesterday that did not support the factual assertion in the article, and that was worrisome, because the ref was to a recent, reliable source, the kind of source that ought to be cited more in the article. So now I am alerted that some editors (perhaps not now active on the article) weren't even doing the work of quote-mining: they were just forgetting their sources (charitable interpretation) or making stuff up (what we all have to guard against under the verifiability policy of Wikipedia). So what I'm really asking here is, "What sources can any of us verify if some random I.P. editor inserts a new source into the article?" I'll try to make the sources I prefer inserting the article be those that are most reliable and current and most accessible (in that order of priority), and it occurs to me that further responses in this section of the article talk help me know which sources are most accessible, but the main thing is that on an article this contentious, we are going to have to be especially wary of sources being misrepresented. I think there are other bad examples of misciting in the article currently, but I have to check to be sure. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 14:10, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

Isn't the Black White IQ gap approximately 1 standard deviation?

If not what is it? mikemikev (talk) 10:58, 16 July 2010 (UTC) The APA report seems to agree. mikemikev (talk) 11:01, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

Some researchers dispute the actual size of the difference, and note that the size of the difference does seem to depend on the test.--Ramdrake (talk) 12:04, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

Of course some researchers dispute the actual size of the difference. But they all agree that it's approximately one standard deviation. mikemikev (talk) 13:49, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

The article improves best when we all take the responsibility to read reliable sources. First of all, the difference depends on the brand of IQ test, with some recently normed, theory-based tests showing much smaller differences among socially defined groups. Second, most tests show a trend line toward a smaller difference. Third, the difference is not an interval measurement anyway when expressed as standard IQ scores, and thus one really needs to look at comparable raw scores on identical item content to compare population groups. Referring to more sources with more detail helps the article improve. I already have a fix in place for the article, stored on my computer for when it's been twenty-four hours since I last edited. Another editor could fix it sooner. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 14:00, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

"Second, most tests show a trend line toward a smaller difference." Really? I can't think of a single test that shows a trend to a smaller difference over the last 25 years. Can you provide a citation? There is some evidence of a decrease in the difference in the fifty years before 1980 (although Ruston/Jensen dispute that), but I can't think of a single reference that claims improvement over the last 25 years. David.Kane (talk) 18:02, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

David, what sources have you been reading? I can cite chapter and verse in a while, and have weeks ago revealed a list of sources that back up the statement "most tests show a trend line toward a smaller difference," but meanwhile where are you getting any different impression? P.S. The point that IQ scores are not interval scores, but only ordinal scores, is extremely important to proper writing of the article and too little discussed in much of the literature. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 18:34, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

I look forward to reading your citations. Jensen and Rushton (2005) make this claim. By the way, the article should reprent topics in proportion to their discussion in the literature. If Topic X is "too little discussed" (in your view), then it will also play a small/negligible role in the article. See WP:DUE for discussion. David.Kane (talk) 18:41, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

Err, the current version, citation 6, has a quote from Flynn:

Some data shows that blacks have made no IQ gains on whites, despite relative environmental gains, and that this adds credibility to the case that the black/white IQ gap has genetic origins. Until recently, there have been inadequate data to measure black IQ trends. We analyze data from nine standardization samples for four major tests of cognitive ability. These suggest that blacks have gained 5 or 6 IQ points on non-Hispanic whites between 1972 and 2002. Gains have been fairly uniform across the entire range of black cognitive ability.

II | (t - c) 18:58, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

My mistake! Thanks for pointing that out! I seem to recall that Charles Murray has a comment on that paper that argues that most of the gain occurred between 1972 and 1980, but Flynn and Dickey are (obviously) excellent scholars and their views certainly belong in the article. David.Kane (talk) 20:07, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

In addition, there are multiple secondary sources that point out that the Kaufman series of IQ tests, recently normed and more theory-based than most other brands of IQ tests, have always had a smaller gap between white and black test-takers than, say, the Stanford-Binet series of tests. One also can point to multiple secondary sources that show that the Stanford-Binet tests until the Fourth Revision and the Raven tests have never had properly representative norming samples for the United States national population. The size of the "gap" depends on which test one is referring to. (Flynn takes special care to compare raw score data whenever possible, which helps a lot.) -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 01:42, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

This is a case of using primary sources in a questionable manner. I would be much more comfortable if there was more sources for this information. aprock (talk) 19:52, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

I've changed the first paragraph of the article to say "somewhat lower" rather than "a standard deviation lower". This isn't because I'm expressing any opinion on the size of the gap; it's just because Mainstream Science on Intelligence seems like the best source to use for this part of the lead, and this statement doesn't actually say that the gap is one standard deviation. It says that the average IQ of African-Americans is 85, and that for whites it's 100, but it seems like it might be synth for us to combine this with other sources saying that the standard deviation for IQ is 15 points.

The APA statement does say that the black-white IQ gap is around 1 standard deviation, so if other people would rather use that as a source for the first part of the lead, we can include what it says about the size of the gap. The reason I went with the "Mainstream Science" statement instead is because it more closely supports what this part of the article is saying about the average IQ of Asians. --Captain Occam (talk) 07:04, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

…And I see that Mathsci has reverted me already, with the edit summary “Mainstream Science on Research (whatever that is) not a suitable citation for the lede”. The article has used this paper as a source many times before, since it’s a secondary source which provides an overview of this topic, and which has passed peer review for the journal Intelligence. If Mathsci thinks there’s something wrong with using this as a source, he’ll need to explain what it is.

Mathsci need not explain anything, unless he so chooses, because I am happy to indicate reasons that the edit is correct. Mainstream Science on Intelligence is neither recent enough nor reliable enough to be a source for that point. The date of the source is a problem because there have been changes in the underlying fact over time, and reliability is a problem because what Linda Gottfredson says about the composition of "Mainstream Science" editorial demonstrates that it doesn't fully meet the reliability guidelines for sources with medical implications on Wikipedia. For the point indicated, it didn't really follow the procedures expected of a review article on that point. P.S. Isn't the usual practice to edit the article body text so that it has reliable sources, and then to build a lede section that doesn't include footnotes but does accurately reflect the article content? -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 11:30, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

Per the discussion here, it seems that this article will not actually be under 1RR until the arbitrators approve this restriction, which they haven’t yet. So if Mathsci is unwilling or unable to explain what’s wrong with using this source, I intend to reinstate my change the lead, unless someone else does so first. --Captain Occam (talk) 07:17, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

I'll be happy to rewrite the lead section to make sure it stays closely factually lined up with the best sources. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 11:30, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

Which sources do you think will be the best to use Weiji? mikemikev (talk) 12:47, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

The article is now under protection.

This shouldn't have much to do with registered editors, but I see that the article has just been put under protection, the kind called semi-protection, for an indefinite period. Let's all take special care to do high-quality editing work, after thoughtful discussion, during this restriction. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 20:09, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

Just in case you didn't know, semi-protection means registered editors can still edit, while unregistered ones (anonymous IPs) can't. Apologies if I'm telling you something you already knew.--Ramdrake (talk) 21:11, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

It's definitely appreciated to emphasize basic information like that for newbies like me and for any onlookers who surf by. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 01:57, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

Interesting project:

http://iq-test.co.uk/stats/

This online project has already tested more than 1 million people. Women consistently score higher than men. It seems that all these tests have more to do with being goog book smart students than anything else. Women are now more applied in school. Or are now women quite more intelligent than men genetically speaking?. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.39.41.147 (talk) 18:07, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

There is no validation of that testing program. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 18:15, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

Well, keep an eye on it. More than 1000000 peoples tested and counting (for some reason women always doing better). Jan. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.39.41.147 (talk) 09:53, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

Statistics teachers take care to point out that a large sample can still be junk data if the sample is biased. Rather than count how many people have self-selected to be tested by an unvalidated test, I would prefer to read the professional literature on carefully gathered samples used to norm recently developed IQ tests for professional psychologists to use. Thanks for bringing up that example of mass media comment on IQ testing, which I'm sure must influence the opinions of some readers of Wikipedia articles. -- 14:15, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

I am about to follow David's kind suggestion.

David kindly pointed out that the "Harvard" style of tagging for specific page references to sources has been helpful in other articles, for example the History of the race and intelligence controversy article largely edited by Mathsci. So I will take the first step on this article--adding a section heading--to get ready to start upgrading this article with the same citation tags. The edit may look disruptive, but it isn't meant to be. All I am about to do is add a new section to the article for future use by notes, and otherwise to leave all content entirely unchanged. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 20:08, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

I'm not a huge fan of this citation style but I suppose it could be well-suited to this page. This is not really "Harvard referencing", though, which is parenthetical - this is Chicago style. II | (t - c) 18:11, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

ArbCom Proposed Decision Now Posted (was Consensus versus Sources as a Basis for Editing)

(After edit, time stamp updated below:) The ArbCom proposed decision on the current case related to this article has been posted, and as arbitrators vote on findings and remedies we will have guidance about how this article should be edited as we move forward. The proposed decision largely reemphasizes Wikipedia core policies that remind us how all articles should be edited. My comment is that the verifiability policy demands that edits be based on reliable sources, so all of us are encouraged to look for and to identify and to read and to use such sources. By contrast, seeking consensus as an aspect of Wikipedia etiquette is a behavioral guideline, and an important guideline, but not a bar to being bold in editing articles on the basis of reliable sources, because "You can edit this page right now" is still a "core guiding check" to ensure that edits are based on sources and not on commonly shared (possibly mistaken) opinion. One good idea I learned from the ArbCom case files was using the stringent reliable source standards for medicine-related articles to edit articles on human intelligence (which relates to some medical diagnostic categories and also to some categories in the criminal justice system of various countries). It appears that many of us here are happy to seek consensus, which can make working on this article a mutual learning experience. Consensus is especially valuable if it forms around grappling with and understanding the best sources on the subject. It will always be appropriate to challenge a current consensus if the sources so demand. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 16:28, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

Good Link about How to Evaluate Sources The director of research at Google, Peter Norvig, has an excellent online article on "Warning Signs in Experimental Design and Interpretation" that is very helpful for sizing up sources that are proposed as bases for editing Wikipedia articles. One common problem for articles on many topics on Wikipedia are small-sample-size case studies with no control group being proposed as bases for general conclusions about some matter of fact. Many such case studies are never replicated, and causation cannot validly be inferred from such a study design. Norvig's article links to quite a few other interesting articles about errors in conducting research or interpreting research that will be valuable to all of us as we edit articles all over Wikipedia. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 14:11, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

• I am sorry to disappoint you, but the approach by Coren will hardly work. One can have something signed by 52 scientists and marked "Mainstream Science" right in the title, but still have the entire thing removed and replaced by another reliable source that tells something different: [15]. There is no shortage of books in this area. Now, just a comment on this specific diff. The original text tells something about normal distributions being shifted. This is language I can understand. The revised text tells about "researchers disagreeing". That means nothing. They always disagree. The sourced info removed. POV-pushing, classic. Biophys (talk) 19:05, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

* Biophys, by the nature of its composition and publication, the "Mainstream Science on Intelligence" editorial is not a reliable source for the factual assertions it contains, although it is a reliable source for the opinion of the signers in the year it was signed. Some of the underlying facts have changed in the past decade and a half, and I get the impression from reading current literature on the topic that not all of the still living signers would still sign that statement today in the form that was published in 1994. It is known from the sources cited in the Wikipedia article on that document that not all psychologists who were contacted to sign the document agreed with it--quite a few refused to sign, or had reservations toward one part or another of the document. On my part, I will do my best to ensure that all remedies adopted by ArbCom vote (the voting is not yet finished) are followed by me and work as a framework for collaborating with other editors to improve Wikipedia. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 19:43, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

• • Are you telling that the curves were not shifted? Let's not discuss specific sources. My point is different: the problem is never the sources, but the people. There is an obvious POV-pushing here, and POV-pushers are usually the ones who remove specific sourced information from the articles. Here is just another similar example by someone else (the removal of exact percentage) [16]. Also note how someone else quotes the same Flynn (first diff), but interprets him differently [17]. Visiting the WP:RS will not resolve anything.Biophys (talk) 20:07, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

• • • I am willing to assume good faith and figure that any editor here who evaluates sources for quality and for centrality in the literature on the topic is not pushing a point of view but simply reminding fellow editors about Wikipedia policies. I'll post a quick-draw link to a quotation from a book that I requested from a local library last night.Gander quoting Pinker There are a lot of popular misconceptions about IQ, which are adequately refuted in the best professional sources, but they influence what Wikipedians think is plausible and which assertions need strong sources rather than weak sources. We will all do one another a favor by digging deeply into the sources and confronting our presuppositions as we read and discuss the sources here. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 20:44, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

He's making no determination about the facts in the editorial. He's merely pointed out that the source is not a reliable source. If the facts in the editorial can be sourced by reliable secondary sources, then including them with the proper sourcing is the thing to do. Using bad sources for good facts is never the correct approach. You seem to be on a quest for WP:TRUTH, which is something which wikipedia does not do very well, mostly because it's policies are not designed for that purpose. aprock (talk) 20:29, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

Correct. As long as reliable sources can be found to assert certain facts, and as long as those facts fit the topic of this article, in they go, with citation of the sources. We have been cautioned by the draft ArbCom decision (which I think will be final on this point soon enough, as it is fully in accord with existing Wikipedia policy) to take special care to find reliable secondary sources for this article, especially those independent of scholar-advocates related to clashing positions on this issue. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 20:44, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

We need to start checking article text for sole primary sources for assertions.

It looks like ArbCom will have no problem reaching agreement that this article should be sourced to reliable secondary sources, not to primary sources, and so now we should be looking for authors like Harpending (a smart guy, but not a long-term researcher on this issue) and Rushton (a person of a decidedly minority opinion on this issue) as sources in the article, to see if the factual assertions cited to those sources are also to be found in reliable secondary sources. The article is plenty long already, and reads more like a sourcebook than like an encyclopedia article. There should be plenty of scope for trimming the article text to make sure it matches how the mainstream secondary sources write about this same issue. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 19:59, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

At the moment, there’s one vote in favor of this proposal and one vote against, so I think it’s a little early to be saying that ArbCom will have no trouble reaching an agreement about this.

If they do reach an agreement about it, I agree that we’ll need to replace the primary sources with secondary sources where that’s possible, and remove statements from the article where it isn’t. However, I think it’s important to make sure we’re on the same page about what is and isn’t a primary source. The Cochran and Harpending paper currently cited by the article is a primary source, but Cochran and Harpending’s book The 10,000 Year Explosion (which does not present any new data, but summarizes data from existing studies) would probably be considered a secondary source. Likewise, Jensen and Rushton’s Thirty Years of Research on Race Differences in Cognitive Ability is a review paper, so it would be considered a secondary source also. The way determine whether a source is primary or secondary should not be based only on who the author is, since most researchers who have published in this area have written both primary and secondary material. --Captain Occam (talk) 01:57, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

The lede

I don't think the lede is at all accurate at the moment. It should summarise the article: it does not do so at present. It reads like some sort of essay. There should be no need for citations in the lede; certainly not from articles like Mainstream Science on Intelligence, which fails WP:RS. The lede continues to talk about "research in Race and intelligence". In a WP:RS, Thompson and Gray say there is very little of it: the lede implies otherwise. This should be fixed. Mathsci (talk) 07:08, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

WeijiBaikeBianji removed the statement about which groups tend to score lower or higher, which has been supported by consensus every time we’ve discussed it in the past. The reason he gave in his edit summary for removing it is because it wasn’t sourced, so I added it back with Mainstream Science on Intelligence as a source. I could come up with any number of other sources for this, but that seemed like the best one to me.

"Mainstream Science on Intelligence" is neither a reliable nor a current source for such a statement. (It IS a reliable source to show that the signers had that opinion as of that year. When it was republished in Intelligence, that was as an editorial, not as a review article.) Mathsci is correct that Wikipedia guidelines on article style ordinarily expect lead sections to be simply summaries of the body of the article, with no citations in the lede. (Although I would like someone please to remind me where to find chapter and verse to show that that is a Wikipedia editing guideline.) It would be very good to have a lede with a high level of generality and overview of what the article is about (something I attempted to provide in my edit of the first two paragraphs last evening) and meanwhile to work methodically at sourcing each and every statement in the article, taking care to 1) use only the most reliable sources, 2) prefer current sources to old sources, 3) prefer mainstream sources to minority sources without giving undue weight to minority sources that must be mentioned because of their importance in the literature, and 4) maintain a multidisciplinary perspective on the topic, with better representation of data from outside the United States and much better sourcing to behavioral genetics sources. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 18:28, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

If you think this paper is not a reliable source, you need to explain why not. The version of it that I’m using has passed peer review for the journal Intelligence. WP:RS states, “Material such as an article or research paper that has been vetted by the scholarly community is regarded as reliable. If the material has been published in reputable peer-reviewed sources or by well-regarded academic presses, generally it has been at least preliminarily vetted by one or more other scholars.” Since the source I was using fits this description, I have no idea why you were claiming it isn’t reliable.

WeijiBaikeBianji has removed this information because it was unsourced, and now you’re removing it with the explanation that the lead shouldn’t need sources. Which is it? Either the lead shouldn’t need sources, in which case the lack of a source isn’t a reason to remove anything from it, or else it does need them, in which case your own reason for removing this isn’t valid. --Captain Occam (talk) 07:30, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

Anything in the lead should either be sourced to RS in the lead (not preferable) or sourced to RS in the body (preference). There should be no need for references in the lead. The statement I have just removed, following MathSci, was removed by me as it is not supported by WP:RS. Verbal chat 12:53, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

Well, I agree that sources do not belong in the lede and that the lead should summarize the article. So, I would edit the corresponding part of the article that deals with test scores and make sure that it is clear and well-sourced. Then, with that fixed, the lead could be changed. David.Kane (talk) 15:49, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

MathSci: I agree that the lede is not as good as it should be. Why not try the same procedure for fixing the lede that worked so well when you fixed the history section? Rewrite the lead here, in Talk, and invite comments on your draft. Incorporate (useful) comments in a second version. Seek consensus. When consensus is achieved (and I believe it could be, as it was with history --- leaving aside our disputes over various sentences that), insert it in the article. David.Kane (talk) 15:49, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

All right, I guess we don’t have to use Mainstream Science on Intelligence as a source for this. But nobody has explained why it’s inappropriate for the lead section to state which groups score higher on average than others. This is pointed out in the body of the article here, and attributed to reliable sources there. I still don’t understand why WeijiBaikeBianji thought removing it from the lead was necessary.

As pointed out here, the lead section ought to provide a concise summary of what will be covered by the rest of the article. The existence and nature of the racial IQ gap is an important part of what the article will be covering, so mentioning it there is consistent with that policy. (And this is why it was mentioned there until it was removed two days ago.) The existence of the gap is not especially controversial—the controversy is over what’s causing the gap as well as whether it’s shrunk over time, so for the lead section to point out that the gap exists is not providing undue weight to one hypothesis over another.

Can anyone provide a specific justification for why the lead section can’t mention this? If not, I intend to put it back. --Captain Occam (talk) 19:18, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

You are referring to a paid advertisement in the Wall Street Journal. You have to be kidding. I think it is reasonable to use official statements by the AAA and APA and, if they ave one ASA in the lead, and then lean towards reliable secondary sources as mathSci has suggested - countless times - in the body for the details. Slrubenstein | Talk 19:28, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

The description "paid advertisment" is not correct. However, the description "solicited editorial" would be correct, and is verifiable in the sources cited in the Wikipedia article Mainstream_Science_on_Intelligence. (The story is actually quite interesting.) The historical description of that editorial's composition by its own author, Linda Gottfredson, makes clear enough that the editorial is not a reliable source for the assertions at issue in this section of the article talk page, all the more so because it is an old source (out of date) besides not being a peer-reviewed review article. P.S. As a follow-up to Captain Occam, what's really necessary for the lede right now is that it be as general and uncontroversial as possible while we first of all figure out how to better source the article proper, which the lede is meant to summarize, and especially how to trim the bloated length of the article. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 19:57, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

“As a follow-up to Captain Occam, what's really necessary for the lede right now is that it be as general and uncontroversial as possible while we first of all figure out how to better source the article proper, which the lede is meant to summarize, and especially how to trim the bloated length of the article.”

I don’t object to this in principle, but I don’t see how removing information about which groups score above or below others is a valid application of it. However we end up improving the body of the article, I think it’s safe to assume that the article is going to describe what the test score difference is. If it doesn’t, that would be a rather severe oversight—how can the article explain the debate over what’s causing the test score difference, or over whether it’s shrunk, if we don’t explain what’s being debated about? And if we can be sure that this information is going to be included in the article, wanting to keep the lead uncontroversial is not a reason to remove it.

If the assumption here is that the information about the test score difference is going to be removed from the article, then apart from objecting to this because I think that information is necessary, I also think it’s a bad idea to be modifying the lead based on the assumption that the article will be changed in a way that hasn’t even been proposed yet. Once a change to the article has been proposed and has consensus, then the lead can be updated in accordance with it, but removing information from the lead based on a change to the article which hasn’t been proposed yet is putting the cart before the horse. --Captain Occam (talk) 20:09, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

Slrubenstein: Just to clarify, you have no problem with mentioning the difference in IQ test performance either in the article or in the lede. Correct? Mackintosh, Flynn and many other secondary sources refer to the racial difference in IQ scores. (I need to check whether they specify one standard deviation or not.) David.Kane (talk) 19:55, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

Actually, I’m referring to an editorial that was published in Volume 24, #1 of the peer-reviewed journal Intelligence. That’s the version of Mainstream Science on Intelligence which I was citing, not the WSJ version. The fact that it had previously existed as a newspaper article isn’t relevant here, since this journal’s standards for the statement passing peer review were exactly the same regardless of whether it had previously existed as a newspaper article or not.

However, this doesn’t really matter. The opinion here seems to be that something which is reliably sourced in the body of the article doesn’t need a source in the lead, so using Mainstream Science on Intelligence as a source here isn’t necessary. Do you have any argument against the lead section describing which groups score higher on average than others, without citing anything for this in the lead itself, since this is reliably sourced in the body of the article? --Captain Occam (talk) 19:58, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

The lede statement as it now stands (a block of text that came from my keyboard) acknowledges that there are score differences found among groups and points to the scholarly controversy about significance of those differences that makes up the bulk of the article. Once the article is edited some more, there may be warrant to edit the lede, but no one has shown that there is anything against Wikipedia guidelines or contrary to reliable sources with the lede in the condition it now is in. I might also add, as an American who has lived abroad for six years of my life, that English-language Wikipedia is generally supposed to report world-wide facts, and too much focus solely on the United States in the lede or anywhere else in the article would not be appropriate. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 20:21, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

“I might also add, as an American who has lived abroad for six years of my life, that English-language Wikipedia is generally supposed to report world-wide facts, and too much focus solely on the United States in the lede or anywhere else in the article would not be appropriate.”

The lead section used to mention wordwide scores also, along with the caveat that those are considered less reliable, but someone (not me) removed it. If that’s your only serious objection to the version of the lead from before two days ago, it shouldn’t be hard to fix.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that your version of the lead violates the policy about this, but it can be improved a lot in order to follow this policy more closely. The policy page states, “The lead section should briefly summarize the most important points covered in an article in such a way that it can stand on its own as a concise version of the article.” Surely you wouldn’t argue with the fact that which groups score above or below others is one of the article’s most important points—since the debate over this topic is over what factors could depress the average IQ of blacks and raise that of Asians, knowing which groups tend to score above or below others is a necessary prerequisite to understanding the debate over this topic at all. If summarizing this makes the lead more informative, is slightly more consistent with the lead guidelines, and does not violate NPOV or any other policy, what reason is there to leave it out? --Captain Occam (talk) 20:32, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

Since there don’t appear to be any counter-arguments to what I’m suggesting, I’ve added back the information about which groups tend to score lower or higher. Per WeijiBaikeBianji’s comments, I’ve also tried to make the lead section focus less heavily on the United States, by adding back the sentence about worldwide scores. (I actually don’t think there was ever a consensus for removing this sentence, so it probably should have been added back before now.)

Before making this change, I waited around 24 hours to make sure nobody would raise any further objections to it, so if anybody has any objections to it at this point I hope they’ll make a similar effort at discussion before reverting it. --Captain Occam (talk) 18:53, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

I think the underlying issue revolves around trying to lead the reader on by selectively presenting data so they can draw their own conclusion. If secondary sources indicate that the meaning behind the measurements are unclear, providing context free measurements (quantitative or qualitative) in the lede is inappropriate. That's not to say the measurements shouldn't be discussed in the body of the article, they just don't well summarize the article. This relates to the fact that the topic of the article which is intelligence, not IQ. aprock (talk) 00:52, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

(outdent) "I think the underlying issue revolves around trying to lead the reader on by selectively presenting data so they can draw their own conclusion." Yes, this is also my concern about the lede as it is now written. It is not a summary of what a well sourced article would look like but more like a set of talking points for a blog post. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 01:22, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

Aprock, you’ve already agreed that the article should take the same general perspective that the APA report does. The APA report states that IQ scores are a valid measure of mental ability, and summarizes the debate on this topic as being over what’s causing the difference in average scores between races. So does nearly every other secondary source that discusses race and intelligence, so I’m really not getting what the problem is here.

Can you be more specific about what conclusion you think it’s “leading the reader” to? The only conclusions I see it implying are that the IQ difference exists and that it’s more than just a measurement artifact, both of which are reliably sourced in the rest of the article also. Stating that you think it’s “selectively presenting data” isn’t helpful if you don’t mention what you think is being left out. --Captain Occam (talk) 01:07, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

What is being left out is that there is no agreement among reliable secondary source that the difference is due to race. aprock (talk) 03:24, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

The content which you removed doesn’t state, or imply, that the difference is “due to race”. The only thing it states is that, whatever the cause of the IQ difference, its effects cause races to differ in average IQ. I think the lead also made it clear that there is no agreement among experts about whether the cause of the difference is due to genetic traits that vary between races, environmental influences that vary between races, or anything else. But if you think that ought to be made clearer, can you please be specific about what should be changed in order to accomplish this? --Captain Occam (talk) 07:04, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

The content which you removed doesn’t state, or imply, that the difference is “due to race”. I never said it did. Please reread what I (and WeijiBaikeBianji) wrote. I really have no desire to explain something to you over and over again. aprock (talk) 08:00, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

You haven’t explained this at all. You said in your previous comment that the past version of the lead was “selectively presenting data” in order to lead readers to a conclusion, I asked you how you thought it was selectively presenting data and what conclusion it was leading readers to, and your response was that it was leaving out the fact that there’s no agreement among secondary sources that the difference was due to race. Since your original point was that what you think the selective presentation of data was leading readers to a certain conclusion, it followed that you thought the wording was implying the IQ gap was caused by inherent racial differences. If that isn’t what you meant, you still haven’t answered my question about what conclusion you think this wording was leading readers to.

I hope this is wrong, but you’re giving me the distinct impression that you’re being deliberately vague about your problems with this section, because you don’t want me to be able to come up with a wording for it that satisfies your concerns about it. If that’s the case, you need to be aware that this completely goes against the spirit of collaborative editing and seeking compromise, and is basically just a backhanded version of Wikipedia:I_just_don't_like_it. If this vagueness isn’t intentional, you still need to realize that you’re being really unhelpful with working towards a compromise with you about this.

I want to come up with a wording for this section that’s satisfactory to you, but I also want to come up with a wording that’s consistent with the lead section policy, which the current wording isn’t. Let me ask you again: if your problem with the content you removed is that it left out the fact that sources don’t agree that the IQ gap is due to inherent racial differences, will it be satisfactory to you if I make the lead clearer about the fact that the cause of the IQ gap has not been identified? --Captain Occam (talk) 08:30, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

What I wrote: If secondary sources indicate that the meaning behind the measurements are unclear, providing context free measurements (quantitative or qualitative) in the lede is inappropriate. Of course, providing the the appropriate context would help considerably, but it's not clear that this can be done in the lede. Maybe it can, maybe it can't. aprock (talk) 16:19, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

Well, I hope you’ll allow me to try and provide more context for them after the article is unprotected. What I mean by this is that when I try to include the score difference in the lead while explaining that its cause is unknown, I hope you’ll let me know what additional context I should add if you think I haven’t added enough of it, or work together with me to help add it yourself, rather than repeatedly reverting me while making a non-specific objection like “nope, that’s not good enough”, which would tell me nothing about what else you think I need to change. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with including more context for this information in the lead, and you also haven’t argued against my assertion that mentioning the score difference in the lead would be more consistent with the lead section guidelines than not mentioning it, as long as the necessary context is provided. So it shouldn’t be difficult for us to reach a compromise about this, unless you make it unnecessarily difficult. --Captain Occam (talk) 19:23, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

(outdent) Hi, Captain Occam, just to be clear what kind of summary statement you would like in the lede, would you be agreeable to posting this the following? "33 percent of blacks are brighter than 50 percent of whites" I have a source for this that is unimpeachably a reliable secondary source. Could we have this statement in the lede as the summary of group differences data? -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 01:22, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

Summarizing the group difference data in that manner would be an awfully convoluted way of describing it, and the term “brighter” also is neither precise nor scientific. I can’t tell whether your question is serious or not (I suspect that it isn’t), but the answer is that I would not approve of the group IQ data being described this way, because it’s unnecessarily convoluted and uses unscientific terms, and therefore doesn’t accurately summarize the rest of the article even if it’s reliably sourced.

I’ve explained my problem with your version of the lead. The policy for lead sections states that “The lead section should briefly summarize the most important points covered in an article in such a way that it can stand on its own as a concise version of the article”, and your version of the lead does not do this. As I stated before, the article is about the racial IQ gap, and the various theories that have been proposed about what could lower the average IQ of Blacks and raise that of Asians. Therefore, anything intended to be “a concise version of the article” will need to include an explanation of what the IQ distribution is.

If you have a problem with the way I changed the lead to summarize this (which is the way it was summarized for several months before your changes), can you suggest another way to summarize it that would be satisfactory to you? Since neither you nor Aprock has been specific about what conclusions you think this was leading readers to, or how it was doing so, I’m not able to determine how to address the problems you think it had while still following the guidelines for lead sections. --Captain Occam (talk) 01:47, 20 July 2010 (UTC)