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Revision as of 19:42, 20 May 2010

This article was nominated for deletion on 19 October 2009 (UTC). The result of the discussion was no consensus.

criticism

none of the criticism appears to be about the study. --W.R.N. 00:33, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't see how you can say that about the first paragraph. futurebird 00:57, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, yes, the first paragraph is fine. I'm not sure it's criticism, but rather "responses", as the argument isn't with the study itself but rather reactions to the findings. The other paragraphs were what I was referring to. --W.R.N. 01:06, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Missing references

This article is missing several references, and has a number of format problems. Could someone take a look at this? ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 08:44, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Original Research

The following sentence:

Regardless of the spin placed on such stories, the choice by media professionals to legitimize racial research by publishing articles and presenting such questions as unresolved "debates" seem to demonstrate a bias that, far from being "liberal", is more conservative in character.

would appear to advance a new synthesis of material. The citation leads to the following:

Challenging the Racist Science of "The Bell Curve" by Randolph T. Holhut (Holhut has been a journalist in New England for more than 20 years. He edited "The George Seldes Reader"): "Murray and Herrnstein claimed that the IQs of blacks are 15 points lower than whites, a claim that most of the mainstream media has treated as fact."

which obviously does not support the claim that the media ' a bias that, far from being 'liberal', is more conservative in character'. I am sure a proper source can be found for the claim, of course, but as it stands it is OR if ever such a thing existed. --Plusdown (talk) 09:11, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Notability?

What's the notability of this study? I can see a section that details the findings of the study, and I can see a section that is supposed to contain criticism of the study, but for which few of the citations actually mention the study. So how is this study notable? Was it commented on a great deal in the media? Was there a significant level of academic debate about the study? The lead needs to establish the notability of the study and currently it doesn't, it simply states that this was a study published in 1988 and that it was a survey. That's not a demonstration of notability. No study is necessarily notable simply by existing. I'd like to see more evidence o notability. How often has it been mentioned, where and by who. Demonstrating that this study has been widely referred to in the mainstream media or by academic publications would go a long way to demonstrating it's notability. This Google search indicates some notability to the study, some of these comments should be included in the lead and the article to show notability. Alun (talk) 09:11, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

I am unfamiliar with the value of search hits in the world of WP, but for the original study ("Survey of Expert Opinion on Intelligence and Aptitude Testing") Google Books cites 200 references, Google Scholar cites 71 references, with 110 citations for the article. For the book that the authors brought out to popularize the findings of the study ("The IQ Controversy: The Media and Public Policy"), Google Books cites 250 references, Google Scholar cites 105 references, with 111 citations for the book.

You are right that the old "Criticism" section was a violation of WP:OR and WP:SYNTH, and it had been flagged as such for more than a year. I removed it, as it had nothing to do with this study at all. I've also tried to introduce some RS which discuss this study specifically while at the same time addresses the issue of notability. More can be done, and I already have my eye on more possible inclusions. Help is of course welcome. Thanks, --Aryaman (talk) 07:45, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Past work of authors?

The article lead currently states:

Mark Snyderman who has written one article for the conservative magazine National Review and Stanley Rothman who has written for National Review and Public Interest, a neoconservative magazine...

How is this not a classic example of original research? It appears that some editor thinks of him/herself as an investigative reporter instead of a contributor to an encyclopedia. --Aryaman (talk) 18:46, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

What's do discuss, Ramdrake? This is WP:OR and WP:NPOV. It needs to be removed. This is not the New York Times, and "investigative reporting" has no place in this encyclopedia.

Please cite specific examples from the article of what you call OR and NPOV violations. Then we can discuss. The one example you bring forward is just background info on the authors; hardly OR.--Ramdrake (talk) 01:55, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Oooooh. Then perhaps we should mention that Snyderman likes margaritas and has an overweight Cocker Spaniel named "Wiggles". Because, you know what they say about folks with Cocker Spaniels! (*wink wink*, *nudge nudge*) Give me a break, Ramdrake. It's obvious that this information has been added in the attempt to portray the authors in a slanted fashion, e.g. "Oh, they're "conservatives". Well, that explains everything." NPOV and NOR are sufficient to require removal. --Aryaman (talk) 03:58, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Actually, no. This was done to show that the authors' background was political rather than scientific. Very relevant point. And please tone down the sarcasm: it doesn't become you.--Ramdrake (talk) 21:30, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, then. Let's put "Smith College professor Stanley Rothman and Harvard researcher Mark Snyderman". That's what it says in Carol Swain's article. But, hey! Maybe she's a conservative, too. Hmm. Do you think we should delete her quote altogether?

I've tried "killing others with kindness". It doesn't pay off around Misplaced Pages, especially with POV-pushers. --Aryaman (talk) 21:42, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

This description fails to convey the fact that their background is with the political sciences rather than say psychometrics or statistics. I can't help it if you fail to see the relevance.--Ramdrake (talk) 21:46, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

I love how you can give etiquette lessons about sarcasm out of one side of your mouth and then try to insult my intelligence out of the other. Bravo. To the point: Which is more encyclopedic? To mention that Stanley Rothman is Professor Emeritus of Government and Director of the Center for the Study of Social and Political Change at Smith College, or that he wrote something for the National Review and Public Interest, "a neoconservative magazine"? I repeat: Give me a break, Ramdrake. Please stop trying to prevent someone from making a positive contribution to the encyclopedia. --Aryaman (talk) 21:58, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Sarcasm aside, both are relevant. I think the best way about it is to mention both. That way, we have their credentials and their background. How about it?--Ramdrake (talk) 22:36, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm glad to see you propose something at least reasonable. I would greatly prefer, however, if we could find a criticism of this report in which the critic mentions this "background" as part of his/her reasoning process. I.e., if a critic could be quoted as saying something like "since they are experts in psychology and law (Synderman) and government (Rothman) and not intelligence, then xyz, etc.." That, I think, is the only way we could really justify including this stuff, as it just doesn't hold up when compared with their actual credentials. Otherwise, the reader can surmise as much themselves. But, I'm willing to compromise for now, pending the finding of such critique. Do you think you could look for such criticism? --Aryaman (talk) 22:58, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

"Criticism" section

Apart from the Carol Swain passage - which actually isn't criticism at all, the material in the "Criticism" section is entirely unrelated to this study, and its presence constitutes a violation of WP:SYNTH. This is not "Accuracy of race and intelligence reporting", this is an article about a specific study. This section has been flagged as SYNTH for over a year, and I am going to remove it. If you want to have a criticism section, please limit sources to those which deal explicitly with this study. Otherwise, take it somewhere more appropriate. Thanks, --Aryaman (talk) 16:33, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

After more than a week with no response, I corrected this problem. Any criticism which is found related to this study can be added to the new section "Reception". --Aryaman (talk) 07:39, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Tagged

I have tagged the article as it presents in an overall very positive light a study which has been found to be very controversial when discussed. For example, it fails to mention that the 600+ responses were out of over 1000 "specialists" surveyed, that who was and who wasn't on the list was controlled by the study's authors (no random selection), and lacks proper criticism. All these need to be added in order to improve the article.--Ramdrake (talk) 20:14, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm a bit puzzled to learn that this article has a "positive" overtone, considering that others have accepted the results of the study and nonetheless interpreted its results to be very "negative", i.e. as strongly suggestive of continued bias/racism in the intelligence research community. But, to each his own, I suppose. Regarding the ca. 1000 surveyed, my reading gave me the impression that there were 661 experts, and the other 400 odd were composed of the journalists, reporters and science editors. Those from the expert community who did not respond were included in the results. A bit more research, however, should be sufficient to clear that up. Anyway, you're certainly invited to help in correcting these "deficits" where relevant RS can be found. --Aryaman (talk) 20:28, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Actually, a footnote does mention that 359 specialists did not answer the survey (that makes a total surveyed of 1020, or 1000+ as I said earlier). That is quite enough to introduce a very large selection bias in the survey sample, over and above that introduced by the authors by hand-selecting their respondents rather than picking them at random.--Ramdrake (talk) 00:45, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Did you gather that I was the one who added that footnote? (See my comment below from October 29.) If you can find a RS claiming selection bias (which would be directed at (a) below), then add it. --Aryaman (talk) 01:46, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

I've added some comments from Ronald F. Ferguson, Malick Kouyate and Jerome Taylor which, I hope, are the kind of thing you were referring to when you put up the NPOV and UNDUE templates. I've also incorporated this into the lead. Also, I've added a note explaining that there were 1020 questionnaires sent out and only 661 completed questionnaires received. I have not been able to find the number of editors and journalists, but I'll look the next time I go to the library.

As far as "proper criticism" goes: There are three main ways in which a study such as this can be criticized: (a) in terms of its data gathering methods; (b) in terms of its analysis of the data; and (c) in terms of the interpretation of the results of the analysis. Ferguson, Kouyate and Taylor accept (a) and (b), but find fault with (c). This has been indicated in the article. If you can find critics who find fault with (a) or (b), then they should certainly be mentioned. I've looked, and have not found any to date. --Aryaman (talk) 21:48, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

npov

While race is an important part of the study, it was not the only issue considered. Also discussed is are opinions about the nature of intelligence and intelligence testing. The current article has only focused on the race/iq debate but not on general issues regarding intelligence. Also missing is the fact that on average, the respondents felt that there were biases in testing and that SES does influence test scores . Wapondaponda (talk) 07:37, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Please fix these aspect if you have a copy of the study readily available. It will take me some time before I can get access to it again. Thanks, --Aryaman (talk) 07:54, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Isn't there a free copy available here. I believe that it is not very common for[REDACTED] articles to be about a single academic article. Rather the norm is to have subjects that are supported by academic publications, instead of the academic publications being the subject. Of course[REDACTED] does have articles about books, however this particular publication is eight pages long. The book The IQ Controversy, the Media and Public Policy covers a lot more than the publication. Like The Bell Curve, which devoted only two chapters to race, this publication, at least on wikipedia, has only been discussed with race in mind.

I find it interesting, that within group differences don't generate significant interest from the public. Also between group differences are also don't raise much concern, except when the issue is the the IQ scores from the black population. Just a thought because this publication is portrayed as only addressing the race issue. Wapondaponda (talk) 13:04, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

In the secondary sources I found, all of them refer to the study as being notable for its findings on the race issue. If you think there's a problem, you're free to try and fix it. --Aryaman (talk) 13:19, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't doubt that the study has notability, I just question whether it has notability for a stand-alone article, since it is a single survey that was conducted 25 years ago. There is a 300 page book by the same authors that has more detail and analysis media/IQ debate. The content was once part of the article Media portrayal of race and intelligence. Wapondaponda (talk) 14:59, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

I wanted to bring up the issue of whether or not this article should either include the book, shift its focus to the book, or some other option. But T34CH, Ramdrake and I got involved in an AfD which pretty much cut off any sober discussion regarding what to do in this case. That's not an excuse, it's simply an explanation of what happened. If you have ideas about possibly recreating "Media portrayal of race and intelligence (research)" and merging this content, I'd be interested to hear them. If they go off-topic somewhat, you are welcome to take the discussion to my talkpage. --Aryaman (talk) 16:31, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Secondary Sources

These are easy to find. So far no attempt has been made to do so. Adding material from these will give proper context to the article, which it lacks at present, which renders it fairly useless for[REDACTED] readers. I am restoring the tags until somebody bothers to do their homework properly here and converts this into a normal[REDACTED] article. I would advise Captain Occam to exercise a little more self control at the moment. His edit summaries do not take into account the problems with the article, which alas are genuine. I have no idea what he means by "tag bombing." Did he invent this neologism? Mathsci (talk) 19:44, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Tag bombing is a type of disruptive editing that's explained here: Misplaced Pages:TAGBOMB. If you have no idea what I meant when I referred to this, it sounds like you're not aware of the page instructing editors to avoid doing this, so I recommend that you read it and avoid engaging in this behavior in the future.

What specific secondary sources do you think need to be added to this article in order to make it more balanced? --Captain Occam (talk) 20:06, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Examples written by some of the top researchers in the subject have been given here . Mathsci (talk) 20:23, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Can you be more specific about what you think is missing? All of the criticism that Varoon Arya removed in October was synth, because it was from sources that didn’t actually mention this study. So after he had removed this, he and Ramdrake made an effort to add all of the notable viewpoints about this study specifically that have appeared in reliable sources. If you think they’ve overlooked something important, you need to be clear about what.

If there’s additional information about this study in the source material that you think needs to be added here, you can also try adding it yourself, as long as you can do so in an NPOV manner. --Captain Occam (talk) 00:17, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Tags

Attaching tags to an article and explaining the reasons for doing so in the talk page is perfectly legitimate. It is fair to argue that the tagger is wrong, i.e., in this case to point to the inclusion of secondary sources, explaining why the article already provides the proper context, etc. (As an aside, please note that essays are neither policies nor instructions to editors but are the personal views of editors, and they should not be used as a basis for argument.) I am restoring the tags for now. I also suggest that Mathsci avoid the use of negative statements ('do their homework' and 'convert this into a normal[REDACTED] article). The article has survived an afd, therefore it is a normal[REDACTED] article. --RegentsPark (talk) 02:59, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

The reason I accused him of tag bombing is because when he originally added the tags, he did not provide any justification for them here. (And he actually said specifically here that he had no interest in participating in this article, other than to tag it.) He didn’t attempt to justify the tags here until the third time he added them, after Mikemikev and I had both reverted his first two attempts to add them with no justification.

At the same time that he tagged this article, he also tagged the Mainstream Science on Intelligence article, and he still has yet to participate in that article or its talk page at all. --Captain Occam (talk) 14:39, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

No worries. Generally, it is better to give the tagger a couple of days to add a rationale on the talk page. If no rationale is added, you can then delete the tag. If the tag is repeatedly added without explanation, then you can alert the WP:AN3 noticeboard. If, a rationale is added and you disagree with the rationale, then you'll need to seek some sort of dispute resolution (a third opinion is probably the quickest and easiest). Though I agree that in controversial articles it is better to add the rationale before adding the tag. --RegentsPark (talk) 16:11, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

WP:Summary style

It's not clear that the summary is written in summary style or is non-neutral in its choice of topics. It is certainly not acceptable to use a source like Linda Gottfredson who used this study as a keystone in many of her papers related to Jensen. I have not been able to locate any unbiased academic source which discussed the report in any detail. Mathsci (talk) 11:03, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

We've been through this issue multiple times before in the History of the race and intelligence controversy article (which used Gottfredson as a source for several points). Gottfredson is a reliable secondary source about this topic, although also a somewhat opinionated one. This doesn't mean we can't include her viewpoint; what it means is that when including her viewpoint we need to balance it against the viewpoints of other people who disagree with her. And since NPOV policy demands that we present each viewpoint in proportion to its prominence on the source material, this means that if there aren't any reliable secondary sources which disagree with her, the viewpoint which appears in the secondary sources is the only one that we need to represent. (This should be obvious, but it's still worth pointing out--sometimes the secondary sources themselves favor a certain viewpoint, such as in evolution vs. creationism topics, and when that's the case articles about these topics need to reflect that fact.)

You've just blanked an entire section of the article, without providing any clear justification for it here, so per WP:BRD I'm going to revert your edits for now. I ask that you please also comply with WP:BRD yourself, and leave the article in its pre-existing state until we've had a chance to discuss these edits, and obtain a consensus for whichever of them are necessary. --Captain Occam (talk) 19:29, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

No we have not discussed this at any point. This article violated[REDACTED] policies and you seem now to be attempting to do the same.

Normally on[REDACTED] when writing about a book, which this became - even if regarded by mainstream science as of no consequence - we take book reviews to give criticism or reception. This did not happen happen in this case. Both Gottfredson and Rushton are biased commentators: both of them write polemically Obviously Robert Sternberg and Christopher Jencks are in quite different league. Sternberg, who was one of the members of the APA committee, gave the Snyderman and Rothman survey no credence at all. (Less that 2/3 of those surveyed replied.)

BTW if you revert my edits you are very likely to be blocked for a considerable period of time, possibly by ArbCom. Mathsci (talk) 19:42, 20 May 2010 (UTC)