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What is Race?

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

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

Anthropologists disagree on whether race is a valid biological concept. --Heretofore (talk) 04:23, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

The same can be said for "intelligence". There is no definition and no way to measure it directly. I tried to deal with this issue in the first sentence but was denied . When I get a chance I'm going to work on a rewrite of the whole article, and hopefully get consensus to rename it to someting more meaningful and descriptive. T34CH (talk) 07:27, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

This has been one of the most contentious articles at Misplaced Pages. In my experience, the only way to deal with it in a way that limist melodrama nd conflict and maximizes the representation of many informed/informative views is to stop thinking of this article as being about the relationship between two things that exist in the same way that water, soil, and trees exist, and instead to present the article as being about a set of debates among social scientists and in the general public. Obviously the people engaged ino those debates believe that "race" and "inteligence" are real in the same way as "water," "soil," and "trees" but no[REDACTED] policy requires us to take a position on the reality of these things. In my experience it best if we ourselves stay agnostic and just stick to the notable debates. If one of the notable debates centers on the reality of one of these terms, we report the debate. If another notble debate just assumes they are real, again, we just report it. If there is a notable view that argues aganst the terms of all other debates, we include that. If everyone working on this page can agree to this as a starting point, then the main thing we need to discuss is how to organizae the article. My own sense is that the debates can be pegged to specific works e.g. articles or books by Jensen, Murray and Hernstein, Rushton, and Flynn. Why not ivide the article into four parts, in each one begin with a fairly literal account of the argument of the book, then its reception, then the debate, and summing up its current status ... and then move on to the next one. I think we need always to distinguish between works aimed at a popular audience and works aimed at other scholars. think we need to identify the expertise of each scholar. For example, I think for each major protagonist we should list the discipline in which he earned his PhD and what his PhD research was on, and name his current appointment. In some cases, some researchers shifted from researchon something else to research on this topic mid-career. We shoud note this. Context is simportant and I am sescribing context about each major scholar that will take up one short paragraph each, and I think it is ighly relevant. I hope we can all agree that this is just important basic background. Slrubenstein | Talk 10:51, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

What would you call the 4 parts? I don't think it's a good idea to name them "Jenson", "Murray", "Hernstein", and "Flynn", or to make 4 sections which strictly deal with those writers. I would be interested however in exploring ways to divide the article into theoretical camps. T34CH (talk) 18:27, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

I do not know there work well enough but the first question is, are they using the same arguments, the same data, or drawing the same conclusions? If the answer is "no" for any on of these axes, thenwe can name the se3ction after that issue. This would indeed be better than naming it after one person or book s the section could accomdate other researches addressing the issues. But i would not completely foreclose n naming it after those peopple. Their work is significant, but my sense is that thee work has always been the site of controversy. My idea is to organize much of this article by different controversies. Now, if these peopl have been making the same argument using the same data, hat would be intefrestng too Slrubenstein | Talk 09:05, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

That would work for a section called controvercies, but the rest of the article should be about consensus... even if it is short. Otherwise this article would need to be renamed "controvercies in the correlations between race and intelligence". T34CH (talk) 13:28, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean by consensus here. I'm sure you'll find lots of well funded research with various agendas coming to starkly different conclusions in this realm. If you're observation is that the entire field is controversial, then yes you are correct. Aprock (talk) 16:59, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

I didn't say the entire field is controversial. I think there are those with "various agendas" that would have us believe there is zero consensus, or perhaps some very skewed version of consensus. But I maintain that this article needs to be focused what consensus there is. If you look at the mainstream text books on intellegence and intellegence testing, there is almost nothing about race. It's not something that most unbaised researchers see as an important determining factor when compared to health, testing methods, definitions of intellegence, and cultural/social pressures. This goes back to the fact that this article is just a coatrack for those trying to show that something called race actually exists and is important from a eugenics perspective. All these "Race and ..." articles are problematic that way. If we focus on what we know first, condense that and present it rationally, then have a seperate section on the controversies, I think this article will get much better. T34CH (talk) 17:51, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

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

It is obvious that you do not now squat about anthropology or populaton genetics. Slrubenstein | Talk 06:48, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

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

Verbal IQ not IQ

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

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

To clarify what's going on in this paper -- The author pulled the WORDSUM (a 10-question vocabulary test) scores from the NORC's General Social Survey database as well as the self reported race, ethnicity and religion. He partitioned the respondents into "Jews" (N=150), "gentiles" (N=5300), "Blacks" (N=806), and "Others" (N=219). The mean number of questions answered correctly for each of these groups were 7.32, 6.28, 4.96, and 6.09 respectively. By standardizing the "Gentile" scores to 100, the average for the "Jews" is 107.5, the average for the "Blacks" is 89.7, and the “others” is 98.6. However, there's no reason to make a big deal out of the distinction between "Verbal IQ" and "IQ". The author argues they are nearly interchangable in his methods. It seems that you can access the GSS dataset online at http://sda.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/hsda?harcsda+gss08 I've found that the relevant variables are RACE, WORDSUM and RELIG. You can basically do this analysis yourself in about 5 minutes. --Distributivejustice (talk) 08:10, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Lol, you do realise that the sample base of 150 for jews leads to an inherent statistical uncertainty of 1/sqrt(150) = 8.2%. Meaning that their standardized result should be quoted as 107.5+-8.2 (to one standard deviation), meaning that it falls within the range of the 100 value of the standardized result, rendering the whole survey statistically meaningless. This ignores any systemic errors that could be inherent in the data gathering process (potentially many when dealing with such potentially socially biased studies). For stuff like this one needs sample bases of at least 10000 (1% stat. error) to conclude anything meaningfull. It is for the same reason that voting intention polls with sample bases of 1000 are laughable when they conclude things on swings of 2 or 3 percent. 1812ahill (talk) 16:59, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

(1) I agree that this isn't a very impressive study (see my edit summary). Moreover, there's not much point in discussing it further unless there's reason to use it somehow. (2) For the record, the SEM is sigma/sqrt(N) not mu/sqrt(N). So the difference is significant, especially if you consider the comparison to the "gentile" group. (3) FWIW, the real problem is the convenience sample selected and the 10 question test. The cool part is that in the raw data the "Jewish" group does better no matter what their "race". =) --Distributivejustice (talk) 09:26, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Sorry to continue this, and I'm a little confused about your terminology in (2), but by sigma/sqrt(N) I presume you mean 1/the sqrt of the sum of all N. That calculation would give you the stat error on the study as a whole (to which you obviously have nothing to compare with - apart from other studies). If you take a subset of the data for comparison with another subset of the total set, then what I said previously holds true. Imagine if the N for jews was 1, with a measurement of 107, then you would have to say the Verb IQ for jews was 107+-107, even if the total number of samples for all races was a million. It's obvious. So in the case of the above study, error for gentiles is 1.37% (N=5300), error overall is 1.24% (N=6475). I would concede that these stats do suggest some evidence in favour of the study's claims, since the error on the jews' results lies very close to the Gaussian 1 standard deviation boundary (which gives us a probability of 0.68 that the results are correct), but you can not use the smaller error on the data for whites to conclude that the result for jews is any more accurate than the 107+-8 I quote above. For this, a greater jewsish sample is still required, especially, as I said, I would suspect there are systemic errors of even greater significance, a possible one of which I point out below.

Again, apologies for going on about this :) 1812ahill (talk) 13:41, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Verbal IQ is fundamentally different from IQ, it encompasses Performance IQ and Verbal IQ. He can argue otherwise; however, it is only his opinion and it is pretty much baseless and nonsensical--I highly doubt he even said that. The study of Backman is probably the most reliable study on Ashkenazi intelligence, it measures a score of 107.8 on Verbal Knowledge.

You (unsigned above) just said VIQ encompasses PIQ and VIQ. THAT doesn't make sense, and sorry, who is 'he'? I suspect that American Ashkenazim knowledge of a relatively highly inflected language like Hebrew and their, and their parents'/ grandparents' knowledge of other (European) languages may well give them an advantage in terms of VIQ (although I admit I don't know the exact definition of it). It would be interesting to see the results of such a study carried out in a country like the Netherlands, or Sweden, comparing 'native' jews to other natives. 1812ahill (talk) 13:41, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

IQ encompasses Performance IQ and Verbal IQ not Verbal IQ. Anyhow, the study states that it measured Verbal IQ. I doubt a Verbal IQ of 107.8 or a similar value would result in an IQ of 107, especially if performance IQ is 100 or near that value.

See also

I inserted a see also section with the following links:

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

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

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

Spurious tags

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

The tags are there for a reason. In the archives, you will find multiple discussions about the issues that caused the tags to be placed. However each time someone came by and tried to fix the issues, there have always been editors coming in to disrupt the discussion. So, in the end, most editors went home, so to speak. If you want to engage a serious discussion about why the tags are here and solutions to address the issues they are meant to flag, I'll gladly discuss them with you.--Ramdrake (talk) 13:50, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I'm interested in a discussion of the problems and why they haven't been resolved yet, and in discussing restructuring the article in a way that would eliminate the need to have them at the top. In general, I think that if the people who placed or supported the tags have given up on fixing the problems, the tags should be removed. Fixentries (talk) 14:24, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

For starters and in a nutshell, the viewpoint issue was arguing that the article was very US-centric, in the sense that most of the studies cited in the article were conducted there. I'm sure you already know this but the USA has rather specific race issues which may have given a specific twist to the debate. Then, the unbalanced tag is there because this article cites J.P. Rushton, Richard Lynn and a few others many, many times. These researchers are demonstrably fringe, not experts in anthropology (this question relies heavily on anthropology for the argument on race) and less weight should be given to their arguments and more weight to those of really mainstream researchers such as Niessen, Lieberman and many others. The POV issue is in part reflected by the unbalanced tag and is sustained by many of the same arguments. In a previous discussion, all these points were eventually agreed upon by many editors, but a few with an obvious agenda (most of which have left Misplaced Pages since, or have been shown the door) kept stalling rewriting of the article, to the point where many editors decided to let it sleep for awhile. Personnally, I have health issues that prevent me from devoting enough time to rewrite the article, but I still proofread edits and try to keep some balance to the current article. Sorry for the long-winded explanation; there is much more information in the archives if you want to read up first-hand on those discussions. However, I believe significant work needs to be done on the article in order for one to be able to remove these tags. Otherwise, editors will keep putting them back. It's not a very active article right now, but it is on a lot of science-oriented editors' watchlists. Hope this helps.--Ramdrake (talk) 18:26, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

What I see looking at the article is that we have some widely agreed upon correlations between ethnicity or race and IQ, and basically two possible explanations - that genetic intelligence causes social classes, and that social classes cause intelligence (article seems to ignore that both may be a factor, not sure which published works may touch on that possibility). The introduction seems to handle this properly, explaining the "nature vs. nurture" dispute. It's very hard to "prove" either explanation of the correlations so all these published sources seem to have the same basic credibility. Wouldn't the best solution for this article be to give both points of view equal weight (Rushton can certainly be considered an expert on intelligence), more or less like the introduction tries to do.

As far as the US-centric problem, I can see what you're saying. On the other hand, these sort of studies might be illegal or strongly discouraged in other countries, and the US offers an example of people of different ethnic backgrounds living in more-or-less (subject to the obvious sociological arguments) the same conditions. So maybe the world-point-of-view should stay.

I agree that removing the Rushton citations would cause problems again, but it seems like there must be a way (possibly with an extensive rewrite) to present both arguments equally and fairly. Fixentries (talk) 05:49, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

The problem is precisely that in fact, the hereditarian viewpoint is presented in the article as more-or-less equal in credibility to the socioeconomic/environmental viewpoint. In reality,nothing could be further from the truth: the hereditarian viewpoint is a fringe position (it's like putting on the same footing hypotheses which date Tiwanaku from the first millenium AD with those who think it dates from 15,000 BC). This is probably the biggest problem this article has: it fails to treat fringe opinions as fringe opinions, and gives them WP:UNDUE weight.--Ramdrake (talk) 13:18, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

You believe there is absolutely no genetic heritability of either abnormally high or low intelligence? That's certainly a position but it doesn't seem any more credible (to be generous) than the opposite position. Fixentries (talk) 17:06, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

"You believe there is absolutely no genetic heritability of either abnormally high or low intelligence?" That's a strawman if I ever saw one. Ramdrake said that the position that an individual's intelligence is preordained based heavily on something called "race" is wrongly treated as a non-fringe viewpoint in this article. I would go further and say that the very title of the article presupposes this fallacy (or at least heavily influences both readers and editors before any actual views are even given). This article is not about "abnormally high or low intelligence." This article is about a poorly tested hypothesis that not only does G exist, not only are there well defined things called "races", but that G differs between races. The consensus of literature does not support either of these three constructions. T34CH (talk) 19:34, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

To Fixentries: I didn't say that. In fact there is some evidence for a genetic component in intelligence. What I said was a fringe position was to believe that the genetic component of intelligence (whatever it is) is distributed according to the social construct called "race".--Ramdrake (talk) 20:01, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

I'd like to point out that according to Misplaced Pages:TAGGING, if there is not an ongoing dispute about the issues discussed in the tags, they should be removed. --Captain Occam (talk) 20:53, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, I guess it's a good thing we're discussing this then. T34CH (talk) 23:00, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

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

Do you really think they are wp:vandalism? Do you really think there is no intent to fix the problems? Have you read this page or the archives, which indicate the opposite of what you are saying? Have you read wp:UNDUE, which explains that "equal time to both sides" is not appropriate? T34CH (talk) 23:00, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, it appears to be vandalism. If the article falsely portrays a kooky unscientific idea as credible, why leave it like this? The tags seem to say "I don't want this article on wikipedia; I dispute the entire premise, but I am unable or unwilling to take the steps to have the article removed." Fixentries (talk) 23:19, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Because the editors got sick and tired of the bickering and decided to take a break from the article. This in no way can be construed as vandalism. The reason why it remained like this is that the article would need an extensive rewrite from its current form, and that after the latest round of discussions on the talk page (read archives 69 and going back), we found out that every attempt to rewrite the article was being argued to death by racialist editors, therefore got reverted even though the consensus is that this article needs a serious rewrite. By the way, I would very much appreciate if you went over some of the material in archives 69 (and going back), as it will avoid repeating a number of explanations.--Ramdrake (talk) 23:32, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

(ec)

So you really believe that those tags are an "addition, removal, or change of content made in adeliberate attempt to compromise the integrity of Misplaced Pages"? How exactly is the integrity of[REDACTED] compromised by this ongoing discussion? Who is it exactly that is "deliberately" trying to reduce the quality of wikipedia?

By the way, based on your reading of the literature, what are your opinions on the issues at stake here? T34CH (talk) 23:35, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

The tags are certainly not spurious, although I don't have a problem with an editor raising the question on the talk page. But to call them vandalism is absurd. T34CH hit the nail on the head in her 19:34, 5 October 2009 (UTC) comment. Mainstream scientists have a pretty clear view on this issue. Those evolutionary biologists and molecular geneticists - fields in which Rushton does not have any training or credentials - do in fact discuss the influcence of genetics on intelligence but what they actually debate, and the major sides, are far removed from Rushton's views and sadly not represented here. That is because we have too few editors who are molecular geneticists or who care to read the published research by geneticists on the topic, and because Rushton's biological determinism, while reflecting a profound misunderstanding of evolution and of genetics, is nevertheless popular among a general audience that also does not really understand evolution or genetics. There is a place for covering Rushton's views in an artice on the public (or popular) controversy over race and genetics, but in an article that is about the science on race and genetics (this page) Rushton's views are too fringe to justify inclusion. The fact that few people have worked on this article for some time is indeed simply explained, by the fact that good editors get tired of arguing with people who have beliefs but are uninerested in researching mainstream science, and because in Misplaced Pages people with expertise on this field are woefully underrepresented. It is easy to write some controversial articles - e.g. Sarah Palin, when there is a wealth of material published in a wide range of newspapes many editors read, each day. it is harder to write on a controversial theme like this, where expert geneticists publish periodically injournals most editors do not know about and are not inclinded to spend time in a library reading. That is a sad fact but true and accounts for the state of this article, which requires that we keep the tags. otherwise some high school student might read this and think that it is a balanced and accurate account of state-of-the-art scientific thinking on the topic. It is not. To be frank, if you compare this article to the one on evolution or quantum mechanics, this article starts to smell like last week's garbage (or, to read like an encyclpedia article written a century ago). Slrubenstein | Talk 23:53, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

My personal opinions? I don't see how that's really relevant, but ok... I am pretty comfortable with how this article is phrased, and that both sides of nature/nurture have plausible arguments that need to be addressed in like fashion. I agree that race is a tenuous construct and not how I personally would try to look at grouping humanity to see if there are any populations with aggregate genetic advantages over other populations in one regard or another. Personally, I would be more interested in ethnic groups for starters, and in specific genes or phenotypical features that may be responsible for increased or diminished intelligence. It's all speculation until you can point to a gene and say it's clearly associated with higher intelligence and that it's also associated with a particular population. This article contains a lot of quasi-scientific speculation on both sides. I don't see any way to say that a sociologist's wild speculation is any more credible than a psychologist's wild speculation. I'm primarily annoyed at the tag noise on the top of the article. I'd like to see the article fixed, and either way, the tags removed, or reduced in number. 4 tags seems excessive. Fixentries (talk) 00:04, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

I also think that whether social darwinism has any validity is a very important political and social question, and one that can be answered scientifically. It's worthwhile to try to put it to the final test and either fully discredit it, or accept the implications. Fixentries (talk) 00:09, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Can you poin to the "sociologist's wild speculation" to which you refer? Slrubenstein | Talk 00:11, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, for one there's a huge table (with no clear implications or meaning) from a sociological book, Inequality_by_Design:_Cracking_the_Bell_Curve_Myth. By its very nature, it's all speculation. It's just a plausible-yet-not-proven theory. I noticed some other sociologists cited, a historian, probably other people well outside the fields of psychology and genetics. Fixentries (talk) 00:32, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, now I am really confused. What do you mean by "unproven theory?" You sound like a creationist (they say evolution is an "unproven theory"). The word "proof" has meaning within mathematics (e.g. geomery) and logic; it is not used in empirical science. And scintific theories are never "proven" or "disproven." A scientific theory is a model of the world or some portion of the world that produces statements or propositions with observational consequences. It is those propositions (hypotheses) which may be falsified. They can never be proven for reasons that are obvious to anyone who has ever studied science. So I just don't know what you mean by unproven theory. Now, Inequality By Design has within it a host of propositions. perhaps some are personal opinion, but many are the results of a good deal of research. Which propositions in the book do you consider speculation, unsupported by actual research? Slrubenstein | Talk 00:42, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Ok, if you want to stick to scientific terms the sociological assertions from that book are "untested hypotheses." There is no experimental evidence given and no such experiment or observation really seems possible. It's an essentially unfalsifiable assertion. Fixentries (talk) 00:52, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

What makes you think that sociological hypotheses are untestable? T34CH (talk) 01:02, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

There's no practical way to construct an experiment that isolates the known variables. Twin and adoptee studies come close but still have flaws (and seem to support genetic causes anyway). Fixentries (talk) 01:07, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

(ec)

If you believe that a book written by the majority of the senior sociological faculty at UC Berkeley (home of Jenson, so no cracks about it being liberal!) is "wild speculation", then I'm at a loss for words. Sociological research is very real, and these are people who have spent their lives to become the best in the world at explaining why society has certain traits. The book they are refuting raises questions in a sociological frame, and so there is no question that these questions should be answered in a sociological frame. T34CH (talk) 00:46, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

I think the book should be in there. It has a "plausible theory". I just don't see it as any more credible than the opposing theories. Neither have incontrovertible evidence. In fact they have little evidence at all. Fixentries (talk) 00:52, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

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

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

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

Fringe?

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

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

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

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

I'm not sure how pointing to controversial authors writing in a policy journal proves your point. If you were to go to any faculty meeting at any major education research school in the country and ask "aren't whites just smarter than blacks?" you would find very quickly that this is beyond being simply a minority viewpoint. Official policy, research, and classroom practice simply do not operate under this assumption. Whether we call it "fringe" or "extreme minority" is simply semantics. T34CH (talk) 00:34, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Nobody is disputing that whites have higher IQs than blacks. Not in a university and not here. So I don't get what you're saying. The question is not if whites are smarter than blacks, but why. Fixentries (talk) 00:39, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

What is being disputed is that IQ even means anything useful. It does correlate with certain other tests, as well as with later happiness, health and wealth, but so does the zip code you're born in, the food you're fed as a child, and the money in your parents' bank account. There are many questions that remain unanswered before we can even start to suggest that whites are smarter than blacks. T34CH (talk) 00:52, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

You don't believe that something like the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale measures what you would call intelligence? What do you consider intelligence then? I think it's safe to say that most people understand intelligence to mean what the WAIS measures. It does seem to reflect reasoning and problem-solving ability. Fixentries (talk) 01:05, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

The introduction to Ch.1 of Assessing Adolescent and Adult Intelligence (2nd edition) speaks of the validity of the WAIS and other tests strictly in terms of correlation with academic achievement, occupation, and job performance, not in terms of correlation with intelligence. They do not even attempt to define what intelligence is, only what IQ tests measure: "The intelligent(sic) testing philosophy, which considers the clinician's expertise and training to be more important an aspect of the assessment process than the specific instruments administered or the scores obtained, embodies the following principles: (1) IQ tasks measure what the individual has learned; (2)IQ tasks are samples of behavior and are not exhaustive; (3)IQ tests like the WAIS-III, KAIT, and WJ III assess mental functioning under fixed experimental conditions; (4)IQ tests are optimally useful when they are interpreted from and information-processing model; and (5) hypotheses generated from IQ test profiles should be supported with data from multiple sources." (p.23)

As you can see, they feel that the IQ number is not useful unless you are also considering the clinician's complete evaluation, and furthermore IQ is a description of actions and can be learned (the measures are not of inborn qualities or properties of the brain), and any conclusions one assumes from an IQ test should be backed up by some other methods (such as ... dun dun dunnnnn: Sociological research). T34CH (talk) 01:40, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Asking “Aren’t whites smarter than blacks” just describes an IQ difference, which could exist for genetic or environmental reasons. If you’re asking whether educational facilities are aware that a racial achievement gap exists in IQ and other areas, the answer is yes, although for obvious reasons they don’t describe it in the terms you used for it.

The hereditarian theory is not an "extreme minority" view. As I just stated, Misplaced Pages has a term for theories like this, which is “significant minority”. There is a specific set of criteria for a theory being considered a significant-minority view (which this theory clearly meets), and a specific policy for how significant-minority views should be described in articles. None of this is a matter of opinion. --Captain Occam (talk) 00:44, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

That there is a hereditary component of "intelligence" is not in question. The question in this article is whether there is a real difference between groups which we call race in their average intelligence. Unfortunately, we don't have a good working definition of race or intelligence. I suggest that there is an extreme minority of academics that believe that we do have good working definitions of both of these constructs and that there is a significant/meaningful difference in the measure of "intelligence" between these so-called "races". T34CH (talk) 00:56, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

I suggest that there is an extreme minority of academics that believe that we do have good working definitions of both of these constructs and that there is a significant/meaningful difference in the measure of "intelligence" between these so-called "races".

As I have pointed out twice now, according to the standards of Misplaced Pages's policies this is not an "extreme minority" view. Misplaced Pages's policies are the only standards that matter here, so whether or not you disagree with them is irrelevant. --Captain Occam (talk) 01:13, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

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

I can’t list them all, no, but I can name a few notable ones who are proponents of this theory. Three that come to mind are Gregory Cochran, Henry Harpending, and (of course) James Watson.

I’m not sure why this matters, though. Since this topic involves both psychology and genetics, prominent experts in either area who support this theory would be enough to meet Misplaced Pages’s standards for being a significant-minority view rather than a fringe view. --Captain Occam (talk) 01:29, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

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

I’m not sure about Watson, but Cochran and Harpending have both researched this topic and published on it. For example, they’re the authors of this paper , interpreting the above-average IQ of Ashkenazi Jews as being the result of genetic factors caused by natural selection. Since I don’t follow genetics as closely as I follow psychology, though, I’m not able to come up with examples of geneticists as easily as I can for psychologists.

You seem to be discounting the opinions of psychologists without a good reason. Everything related to the nature vs. nurture debate has been part of the psychology for over a century, and the race and intelligence controversy is definitely a part of that debate. And there are other aspects of this topic about which psychologists would definitely be the greatest authorities, such as whether (and in what way) cultural factors can influence IQ. --Captain Occam (talk) 02:00, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Slrubenstein seems to want to restrict the argument to whether genetics is a "major component" of group differences. Isn't the question whether it is a component? I'm not sure how he's defining "major" there but it seems to skirt the real issue. Fixentries (talk) 10:01, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

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

The article lists 15 researchers who support the hereditarian perspective (although it seems to be restricted to psychologists, since it doesn’t mention Cochran or Harpending) and eight who oppose it. But the only person listed there who occupies a middle-ground position, believing that genetics make a difference but a small one, is Reynolds. I’m not aware of any researchers other than him who hold this view. And since Misplaced Pages’s coverage of the various viewpoints on this topic is based on the amount of coverage they’ve received elsewhere, this middle-ground position probably hasn’t received enough attention to be worth describing in much detail. --Captain Occam (talk) 13:50, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

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

I'm not sure you even read what I said. I'm pretty sure you didn't, because you didn't respond to it in any way. Fixentries (talk) 13:54, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

I replied precisely to what you wrote. Read the two sentences below. It is a direct answer to your question. But if it does not satisfy you I will asdd this: I do not want to restrict the discussion to whether it is a "major" component of inter-group variation, I want to "restrict" the discussion to what geneticists researching intelligence actually are debating and concluding. Slrubenstein | Talk 14:00, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Seems to be some kind of severe logical or reading comprehension error going on here. I apologize if it's me. Fixentries (talk) 14:08, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

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

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

Slrubenstein, by outdenting whenever you reply to anyone you’re making it very difficult to tell whom you’re replying to. The way I can tell this reply is directed at me is just because you addressed me by name.

Anyway, we’ve gotten pretty far off-track here. As someone who’s studied genetics, you say that only geneticists can properly understand heritability; as someone who’s studied psychology, I say that only psychologists can properly understand the factors that influence IQ, and how to determine what they are under various circumstances. You say that there aren’t many geneticists who think that genetics contributes a substantial amount to inter-group IQ differences, and although I can name a few who do, I don’t know enough about genetics to be able to determine for certain whether or not what you’re saying is correct.

But in any case, the only question that really needs to be answered here is whether the hereditarian hypothesis about this should be regarded as a “fringe” view. Perhaps it is among geneticists—as I said, I don’t know enough to say either way—but for our article to present this topic only the way geneticists view it would be an NPOV violation. Since this topic is studied by both geneticists and psychologists (in fact, probably the second more than the first), we need to present both perspectives. And if we consider the views of psychologists in addition to geneticists, then the hereditarian perspective clearly fits Misplaced Pages’s definition of a significant-minority view.

As such, I think it currently receives about as much coverage in the article as is appropriate. If you think we should present this as a “fringe” view, you need to support the assertion that the article should present the views of geneticists and not psychologists, when the article covers a topic studied by both of them. --Captain Occam (talk) 07:09, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

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

The article is not ostensibly about genetics. It seems to specifically reference elements of the fields of psychology and to a lesser extent anthropology. Genetics is a tangent. Fixentries (talk) 10:39, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Whether or not Rushton’s views in particular are considered fringe should affect how we portray ideas that are specific to him, such as his r/K life history theory (which our article barely mentions). But how we portray the hereditarian hypothesis in general doesn’t depend on how Rushton is viewed. It depends on Jensen, Eysenck, Gottfredson, and the rest of this theory’s more prominent supporters. If they aren’t considered fringe, then the hereditarian hypothesis in general shouldn’t be portrayed this way.

If you agree that our article should portray the hereditarian hypothesis as a significant-minority view, then that means it should be given about as much space in the article as it currently has. So in that case, the NPOV and unbalanced tags can be removed. If you don’t have any objections to this, I’ll be removing them shortly. --Captain Occam (talk) 15:30, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Actually, I strongly disagree on both points (that the hereditarian hypothesis is a significant-minority view rather than a fringe view), and of course on the removal of the tags. If you will peruse the talk archives, you will see that the fringe label (or something very similar) has been applied to most researchers who've been funded by the Pioneer Fund (this includes Gottfredson and many others in the "hereditarian" group). The specific sources include a nice review by Lieberman and two historical analyses of the Pioneer Fund (there are others). Gee, I go away for just over a day and there's something like 60 new additions to the talk page!!--Ramdrake (talk) 18:45, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

I’ve been reading this talk page since 2007, so I’m aware that this claim has been made in the past. However, it hasn’t (that I have seen) been supported with regard to Misplaced Pages’s policies. Misplaced Pages has a specific definition of what constitutes a fringe viewpoint:

• If a viewpoint is in the majority, then it should be easy to substantiate it with reference to commonly accepted reference texts;
• If a viewpoint is held by a significant minority, then it should be easy to name prominent adherents;
• If a viewpoint is held by an extremely small (or vastly limited) minority, it does not belong in Misplaced Pages regardless of whether it is true or not and regardless of whether you can prove it or not, except perhaps in some ancillary article.

Keep in mind that, in determining proper weight, we consider a viewpoint's prevalence in reliable sources, not its prevalence among Misplaced Pages editors.

Regardless of what Misplaced Pages’s editors think of Jensen, there’s no denying his prominence. If you need a source for this, Haggblom et al. lists him as the 47th most eminent psychologist of the 20th century. Therefore, it is possible to name prominent adherents of the hereditarian hypothesis, and this viewpoint thus fits Misplaced Pages’s definition of a significant-minority view.

As can be seen from the NPOV explanation, the labels that anyone attaches to a viewpoint are not what make it fringe or not fringe. If you wish for the article to regard Jensen’s views as fringe, rather than a significant-minority view, you will need to demonstrate how they do not fit Misplaced Pages’s definition of a significant-minority view which I quoted. If you cannot do this, then as per Misplaced Pages’s policy this is not a fringe view, regardless of how you or anyone else feels about it. --Captain Occam (talk) 19:41, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

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

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

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

Genetics and Intelligence

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So basically we're saying the correlation between intelligence and genetics is between .40 and .70? In other words, the scientific debate is that it is somewhere between a strong correlation and a very strong correlation? And the argument that maybe these characteristics vary between populations is supposed to be fringe and unscientific? Let's see, other genetic traits seem to vary between populations (pretty markedly). I must be missing something here. Maybe I was mistaken to say the sociological theories are "equally plausible" - they are starting to sound like "fringe nonsense". Fixentries (talk) 01:50, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

There is the IQ QTL project . Wapondaponda (talk) 02:06, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

The problem is that even when variation in a trait between individuals is primarily genetic, that does not necessarily mean variation between groups is genetic also. (Although as Jensen points out in The g Factor, in the absence of evidence that between-group differences are caused by different factors than within-group differences, them both having the same degree of heritability is the null hypothesis.)

As for whether race should be presented as a social or genetic category, the reality is that it’s both, so that’s how our article should depict it. This chart from the Race and genetics article is a demonstration of this. Americans who self-identify as “black” have an average of 80% Sub-Saharan African ancestry, and as can be seen on the chart, Sub-Saharan Africans are a well-defined genetic group that have more genetically in common with each other than they have with any other group. Since some black Americans have more or less than 80% Sub-Saharan African ancestry, race can only be defined genetically in a statistical sense, but differences in average IQ can still be discussed for statistically defined races. --Captain Occam (talk) 02:25, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Oh, I agree, the case for individual genetic heritability of intellectual advantage doesn't necessarily apply to groups. I personally think both sociological and genetic explanations must be true to some extent or another. I'm just saying: it's certainly plausible and reasonable to apply that knowledge about individual genetics to groups. If one trait can be associated with groups (skin color, facial structure, muscle type, whatever), it's certainly not a wild postulation to say that perhaps another genetic feature may be associated with groups. I also agree that these observations are going to rely heavily on statistical generalizations rather than absolutely discrete differences.

I think one problem here is the perception that sociology or psychology or even genetics are vaguely unbiased fields, or that a researcher in such a field is really free to pursue any possibility. Sociology in particular seems to be largely premised on environmental explanations for behavior and social differences. The way it is taught, the precepts and the body of research in it are all heavily in favor of (or exclusively in favor of) that sort of interpretation. There is a good deal of pressure against even postulating that there may be genetic differences in intelligence in groups. Whether it's true or not, it is essentially racism. So when we say, "the majority thinks so-and-so," we're really just observing very strong social and political pressures. In many places, this kind of research would quickly put you out of a job (or worse). Fixentries (talk) 07:44, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Fixentries, this page is for discussions of how to improve the article. Perhaps you are acting in good faith but I am sorry to say that what you write simply reveals your ignorance of the topic. Your claim "I'm just saying: it's certainly plausible and reasonable to apply that knowledge about individual genetics to groups" is dead wrong and if you went to college and studied evolution and genetics, you would learn that this is wrong and why it is wrong your first semester. The way geneticists model within-group variation is fundamentally different from how they model between-group variation, for reasons having to do with the laws of population genetics. If you sincerely wish to improve this article, I respectfully suggest you do some research rather than argue misinformed personal opinions. Above I provided sictations for eleven articles by geneticists researching differences in intelligence. Why don't you read those articles and see what information from them you believe should go into this article. That way you would have reliable sources to back up your claims, and not - I am sorry to say this but it is the only appropriate word - ignorant opinion. Slrubenstein | Talk 13:54, 6 October 2009 (UTC)Slrubenstein | Talk 13:51, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

It sounds to me like you basically have no idea what these purported details of population genetics are, and just repeat some assertions you learned from someone else (I'm guessing not in genetics class). The things you've submitted to this discussion have ranged from obviously irrelevant, to illogical, to abusive, to plain wrong. I gather this is a habit with you. Fixentries (talk) 14:01, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

I listed eleven articles that might be good sources for this article. Please tell me which one is - or in what way this might be - "obviously irrelevant, to illogical, to abusive, to plain wrong?" What is the source for your claims? Or do you think it is "abusive" for me to ask you to rely on reliable sources?Slrubenstein | Talk 14:04, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm still feeling like you have no clear concept of what you think are the models used in population genetics. Ignoring that, all the citations you listed seem to be irrelevant to the topic of this article, or at best tangental. Should I spend my time reading a list of citations you provided on your say-so that they are relevant when the titles appear irrelevant or tangental? And yes, you are extremely rude. I think you know you're rude. I think you're being rude on purpose. Fixentries (talk) 14:14, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Also, I have no intent of offering further citations for this article. It's already extensively cited. I'm not trying to insert my personal opinions here, I'm just flabbergasted by the patently worthless logic you're applying, the ignorance you seem to have of the topics, your tendency to lecture on obvious and simple topics that you have an apparently cursory understanding of, and so on. Your condescending tone when you don't appear to be a scientist in this field, or have a good understanding of the scientific method even. I'm just... amazed at everything about you here. I'm not trying to insert any text in the article, so your claiming to ask for "reliable sources" is just another irrational assault. Fixentries (talk) 14:20, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

I mean, you yourself claim the article is about a sociological quesiton. Then you offer citations of geneticists. Which is it? Is this just an accidental inconsistency or are you intentionally bringing up material you believe is irrelevant to the topic of the article? You preface the material with the fact that it is not about race. You know it's irrelevant or tangental. Fixentries (talk) 14:38, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, there is a robust argument that the relationship between race and intelligence is largely or almost entirely sociological. But you and Captain Occam were asking about genetics. I responded by citing some of the leading research in genetics and IQ and explained why it is not about race but about something else. But this was in response to your own questions. As for having no intent to provide any sources to support your view, I leave it to others to judge: I offer sources, you do not. You are right that the article has many citations, but if all you know about the topic is what you learned from reading the[REDACTED] article, um, I do not think that puts you in a strong position to work on the content of the article. of course, if you have editorial comments about ways to improve the style, that would be welcome. Slrubenstein | Talk 16:27, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

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

Why paraphrase? Why not quote me on heritability (since your paraphrase is not even close to what I wrote): "you cannot compare variance in intelligence between groups, only within groups." To spell it out for you with a few more words to help you: heritability is a measure of variance within groups. It is not a measure of the variance between groups. And please explain to me in what way the Devlin and the Plomin articles are in any way tangential to the question of the heritability of IQ? Given the way that you distort what I wrote, and given the way you ignore sources that are directly relevant to the question of the heritability of IQ, at this point I can conclude only that you are trolling. Slrubenstein | Talk 18:11, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

So you don't have a source for your claims, you're just going to "spell it out for me"? This article is not about the heritability of IQ, it's about whether there are racial differences in IQ. One of us is sure trolling. Fixentries (talk) 18:15, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Fixentries. If you look back at the discussion you've started and the evolution of your comments, I think you'll see why the article has the tags it does, and why resolving the basic tagging issue has been difficult. It has very much to do with people coming in with preformed ideas about the subject, and who are unwilling to read the underlying research. To fix the article, it's going to take more than just editing what is there. It *will* take actual reviewing of published research in scientific journals. No one is going to make you do that, but if you don't no one is going to think you're very serious about improving the article. Aprock (talk) 18:26, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm not trying to change the article, it looks good to me. I want to remove the tags because nobody is trying to fix what the tags are complaining about. And the NPOV tag seems completely spurious - the complaint is that the article is neutrally written, so the complaint can't be about NPOV. I have familiarity with published works in this topic, in genetics, in sociology (unfortunately), in anthropology. I have before offered citations in another similar article from The Lancet, which I assume is the kind of source you're talking about. Right now I'm just asking Rubenstein for a source on his claim about population genetics for which he seems happy to keep repeating his personal opinions on rather than offering a source. Fixentries (talk) 18:50, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Changing the tags is changing the article. The article is not neutral. In particular, it gives undue weight to the untested hypothesis that variations in "racial" population genetics play a significant role in variations in population IQ. Aprock (talk) 19:29, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

So by using the qualifier "significant" are you saying that genetics may play some role? Fixentries (talk) 19:48, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

(ec)

I'm not sure what you're confused about... within group comparisons (ie intelligence of middle class white male 11 year olds from normal families) will give you somewhat useful data on relative test scores (IQ, SAT etc). Similar between group comparisons ("blacks" vs "whites") are extraordinarily difficult to control when you're trying to get useful predictive data or form a causative hypothesis because there are too many variables. That's where sociologists and anthropologists become important to the research.

P.S. You need to read about wp:undue, because you have spuriously claimed that the NPOV tag is uncalled for while obviously not even understanding the argument for it's presence. Since this is at least the 3rd time you've been pointed in that direction, I don't have much hope for you to come to understand this point. Feel free to request assistance if you would like to understand what's going on around here. Otherwise I'll have to agree that you are acting very troll like and are not actually here to engage in productive discussion. T34CH (talk) 19:41, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

WP:NPOV is not WP:UNDUE. As far as comparisons between black and white, again I am not asking for your or slrubenstein's opinions on this. Do you have a citation to back up what you're saying? If we just want to shoot from the cuff, you'll agree that blacks all have dark skin right? And that that's a genetic trait? If they all have that genetic trait, why do you suppose that it's impossible to have another genetic trait in common, or that such a trait would be all that difficult to find or analyze if the genes were known? Again, citation please. Your say-so is not really important. Fixentries (talk) 19:48, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

I see Fixentries has trolled before:

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

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

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

Perhaps I haven't taken[REDACTED] as seriously as I should have. I apologize if that's the impression, I would like to learn the customs and policies. Fixentries (talk) 21:37, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Arbitrary break

As someone who’s familiar with the reason why the tags are present, I’ve explained here why I think they should be removed. It seems fairly clear that the hereditarian hypothesis fits Misplaced Pages’s definition of a significant-minority view, and Misplaced Pages has a specific policy on how such views should be presented:

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

Addressing the controversy without taking sides is what the article currently does, so if this is a significant-minority view, then the article is presenting it the way that it should and the tags aren’t appropriate. If you wish for the tags to remain, you will need to explain why this viewpoint does not fit Misplaced Pages’s definition of a significant-minority view, as I’ve quoted here and in my other comment. --Captain Occam (talk) 20:29, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

It would seem that you are confusing addressing the controversy without taking sides with giving equal weight to the mainstream theory and the minority (or fringe) theory. WP:UNDUE warns against this as well.--Ramdrake (talk) 22:47, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

If the only prominent adherent you can name who isn't especially controversial is Jensen, I must point out that Jensen is also known for writing on topics other than the hereditarian hypothesis. If all the editors speaking up here still haven't convinced you, however, that the hereditarian hypothesis is indeed fringe, then we can certainly have an RFC on whether this hypothesis is fringe or not. Althouhg, last time we had one, if you'll remember, the verdict was overwhelmingly that it was indeed fringe.--Ramdrake (talk) 20:39, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

I mentioned Jensen because he is probably the most prominent, but Gottfredson and Eysenck are two other examples. According to Eysenck's article, at the time of his death he was the living psychologist most frequently cited in science journals--this includes psychologists in all areas of psychology--and Gottfredson's numerous credentials are listed in her own article.

As I quoted from the policy page, Misplaced Pages's policy states quite explicitly that the prevalence of a viewpoint among Misplaced Pages's editors has nothing to do with whether or not it's fringe. The only things that matter are the criteria mentioned there. So if you wish for the tags to remain, this is what you'll need to address. --Captain Occam (talk) 20:49, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Both Gottfredson and Eysenck were funded by and involved in the Pioneer Fund, a known racist organisation. Not really good references. I'm afraid we're still in fringe territory. If you still disagree, I suggest you follow the WP:DR dispute resolution process, and I believe the next step in this case is either RFC or mediation. Your pick. Please consider your objections addressed.--Ramdrake (talk) 20:57, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Linda Gottfredson and Hans Eysenck are/were both tenured professors widely published in the peer-reviewed literature. What aspect of their Misplaced Pages entries allows you to describe them as "fringe?" How were they able to fool so many journal reviewers and editors into publishing their fringe theories? David.Kane (talk) 21:11, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Ramdrake: okay, so here I’m arguing from Misplaced Pages’s policy and their definition of what qualifies as “prominent”, and you’re countering this with an argument based on guilt by association, and also based on the assumption that the Pioneer Fund is racist. The first of these is a pretty basic fallacy, which is explained in the article about it, and I know that even people like you are able to recognize what’s wrong with this fallacy when it’s applied to things such as Obama’s association with Jeremiah Wright.

Guilt by association would be a fallacy even if all sources were in agreement that the Pioneer Fund is racist. That it’s racist is one point of view, which you obviously support, but one that is not by any means considered the only perspective about this.

So basically, what you’re saying is that the point of view which you prefer, coupled with a guilt by association fallacy, should overrule Misplaced Pages’s policy about this, which does not mention any exceptions for the kind of argument you’re using. If you can’t understand why your argument here is faulty, I guess requesting help from other editors is our only remaining option, but I’ll give you one more chance. --Captain Occam (talk) 21:24, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

OK, if you want to discuss fringe, maybe we should start with Eysenck's extensive work on astrology? It's not because a particular scientist has published extensively that all their work has been in mainstream areas. I still say this should become an RFC. Your interpretation of Wiki-policy would mean that if there's even one proponent of an idea who passes the notability test, then his/her opinion automatically becomes a "significant minority viewpoint". This would make most fringe theories into "significant minority viewpoints". Another possibility would be to bring up the subject on WP:FTN and see the feedback.--Ramdrake (talk) 21:49, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

BTW, I took the ;liberty of already asking the question at the FTN.--Ramdrake (talk) 22:08, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Eysenk was the most cited because of his work in personality and psychotherapy, not psychometrics or intelligence. Linda Gottfredson made her career on job aptitude and Spearman's g in the 80s, but you'll have a hard time finding anyone calling that mainstream today. T34CH (talk) 22:41, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

According to his Misplaced Pages article, Eysenck studied all aspects of psychometrics, including IQ. You can see that by looking at the “selected works” section of his article. And in Gottfredson’s case, you’re still falling back on the same argument “if people say it’s fringe, then it is”. That isn’t what Misplaced Pages’s policy says.

You need to look objectively at the argument that you and Ramdrake are using here, and see how absurd it is. You’re saying that if the largest focus of Eysenck’s psychometric work was on personality rather than IQ, that makes his prominence as irrelevant to his IQ work as it is to his views on astrology. Can’t you see what’s nonsensical about that? It’s based on the assumption that Eysenck’s psychometric work has no more relevance to IQ than it does to astrology, when intelligence testing is actually considered an area of psychometrics.

Incidentally, I’ve also brought up this issue with an administrator who’s helped me with this sort of thing in the past, so hopefully he’ll be of assistance also. --Captain Occam (talk) 23:02, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

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

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

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

All right, thanks for pointing this out.

What is your opinion on whether this particular view (the hereditarian perspective) qualifies as a signficant-minority view? It does seem to meet Misplaced Pages's definition of one, at least as far as I can tell. --Captain Occam (talk) 23:04, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Even if it were a minority view, it would still need to be clearly labeled as such, and given less prominence than nthe mainstream view, as per WP:UNDUE:

Misplaced Pages should not present a dispute as if a view held by a small minority deserved as much attention overall as the majority view. Views that are held by a tiny minority should not be represented except in articles devoted to those views. To give undue weight to the view of a significant minority, or to include that of a tiny minority, might be misleading as to the shape of the dispute. Misplaced Pages aims to present competing views in proportion to their representation in reliable sources on the subject. This applies not only to article text, but to images, wikilinks, external links, categories, and all other material as well.

The Misplaced Pages neutrality policy does not state, or imply, that we must "give equal validity" to minority views such as pseudoscience, the claim that the Earth is flat, or the claim that the Apollo moon landings never occurred. If that were the case, the result would be to legitimize and even promote such claims. Policy states that we must not take a stand on these issues as encyclopedia writers; but that does not stop us from describing the majority views as such; from fairly explaining the strong arguments against the pseudoscientific theory; from describing the strong moral repugnance that many people feel toward some morally repugnant views; and so forth.

This is the actualwording of the policy.--Ramdrake (talk) 23:51, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Which mainstream psychologists believe there are not racial differences in IQ? Fixentries (talk) 23:53, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Which mainstream psychometricians confuse IQ and intelligence? (Yeah, I know: I broke my own rule in answering Fixentries here... but the remark was SO trolly I couldn't let it slide) T34CH (talk) 00:06, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Ramdrake: I think the way it's currently portrayed is consistent with what would be appropriate for a significant-minority view. Most of the article’s coverage of the hereditarian hypothesis is only to explain what it is, as well as criticism of it; there are only two (fairly short) paragraphs summarizing the evidence for it. Compare this to the areas of evidence that are cited in support for the environmental interpretation of this data, many of which have entire sections of the article devoted to them.

Also, my comment was directed at Nealparr rather than you. I already know your opinion about this, but the point of requesting comment is to obtain input from other people. --Captain Occam (talk) 00:08, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

The difference between WP:UNDUE and WP:FRINGE is really just a matter of degree of minority, as both give the same advice in terms of how to present views: Represent them in proportion to their prominence among reliable sources. The question of whether this particular view is a signficant minority view, or a tiny fringe view, is really besides the point, because the rules are the same for both. Don't make a view appear more prominent than it actually is. How many proponents are there, really? If one can only think up a handful of notable proponents, that's probably a clue as to how prominent the view actually is, especially when compared to how many intelligence researchers there are as a whole. I'd say (athough it's not necessarily policy) that if you can "eas name prominent adherents", and name most or all of them, then it's likely not a very widespread view, because if it were it'd be much harder to name them all off. That's just my opinion though. The part that is policy is that we shouldn't make the view appear more prominent than it actually is. If there's only a small number of proponents, the article should clearly state that. --Nealparr 01:17, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

I mentioned Jensen, Gottfredson and Eysenck because it’s very hard to argue with the prominence of any of those three, but it has considerably more proponents than that. The article lists 15 of them that are fairly well-known.

It’s hard to judge exactly what the proportions are, because the only study I’m aware of about this specific question (by Snyderman and Rothman) is from 20 years ago, and there’s a good chance the proportions have changed since then. I can think of two somewhat effective ways of judging this. One is Mainstrean science on intelligence, an editorial with the signatures of 52 experts in intelligence and related fields, which states that all of these researchers view the hereditarian perspective as a valid scientific hypothesis, although the article does not make a statement as to whether or not it’s correct. Its phrasing is, “Most experts believe that environment is important in pushing the bell curves apart, but that genetics could be involved too.” (Emphasis mine.)

The other way is the June 2005 issue of the professional journal Psychology, Public Policy and Law, which was devoted to the controversy over whether or not the IQ difference is genetic. All of the papers published in this issue took the hereditarian hypothesis seriously as a scientific theory, and although not all of them viewed it favorably, the issue’s featured paper (Thirty years of research on race differences in cognitive ability by Jensen and Rushton) was supportive of this viewpoint. If Misplaced Pages is to portray this topic in the same way that it’s portrayed in professional literature, this issue useful as a point of reference.

I think that based on these measurements of how prominent the theory is, the amount of coverage it currently received here is more or less appropriate. Do you agree? --Captain Occam (talk) 02:36, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

It's important that you don't read more into your sources than what is there. I read the Mainstrean science on intelligence paper, and that source indicates that the genetic stance is fringe. Reread your quote: "There is no definitive answer to why IQ bell curves differ across racial-ethnic groups... Most experts believe that environment is important in pushing the bell curves apart, but that genetics could be involved too." Simply said: environment important, genetics maybe. Aprock (talk) 18:35, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Looking at the 2005 publication, it looks like the only articles arguing that intelligence is influenced by race are written by Rushton and Jensen. Again indicating that the hypothesis is fringe. Aprock (talk) 18:45, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Actually, if you look carefully at the 2005 publication, you’ll see that the only papers there specifically arguing against Jensen and Rushton’s conclusions are Nisbett’s and Sternberg’s. Gottfredson’s paper mostly agrees with Jensen and Rusthon, and Suzuki and Aronson examinine the criticism of Jensen and Rushton’s and come to the conclusion that their view is partially correct.

This issue of Psychology, Public Policy and Law contains papers by seven authors. Three of them argue for the hereditarian hypothesis, two of them argue against it, and two of them offer a combination of criticism and qualified support. While this is obviously a pretty small sample, I maintain that the fact that a well-respected peer-reviewed journal chose to frame the issue in this manner is an argument that the psychology community views this as a valid hypothesis.

Also, see my reply to Slrubenstein below. --Captain Occam (talk) 20:53, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

I looked at the publication. It contains review articles and commentary, primarily about Rushton's work. There is no indication in the publication about how the psychology community views Rushton's hypothesis. Aprock (talk) 21:04, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

You’re missing my point. The indication is just the fact that a well-known, well-respected psychology journal chose to present the issue in this particular way. For something like creationism or the flat-earth view, which is regarded as truly fringe, you would never see a professional journal attempting to present the controversy about it in a balanced manner like this. How difficult is this to understand?

And I’d like you to answer my question about why you’re calling this “Rushton’s hypothesis”. The person responsible for this hypothesis is Arthur Jensen, and Rushton is no more important a supporter of it than any of its other proponents. --Captain Occam (talk) 21:11, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Actually, yes he is, for publishing about 60+ papers on this and similar subjects. He is also the most well-known of the proponents, having had press coverage many times (not always for commendable reasons).--Ramdrake (talk) 21:15, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

OK, I know Rushton has published on this topic more than most, but he hasn't published as much on it as Jensen has. Jensen can also be considered the theory's creator. If we're going to attribute this hypothesis to a specific person, Jensen deserves the credit for it more than Rushton does. --Captain Occam (talk) 21:22, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

"For something like creationism or the flat-earth view, which is regarded as truly fringe, you would never see a professional journal attempting to present the controversy about it in a balanced manner like this." This is not obvious to me. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me to find any number of citations from reliable sources which did exactly that. Aprock (talk) 21:15, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm quite certain of this. I've been involved in the creation/evolution controversy for 10 years, and am currently writing a book about it. While evolutionary biologists occasionally put out popular books about this topic, the existence of creationism is barely even acknowledged in the professional literature. If you don't believe me about this, I can probably find a reference that mentions this. --Captain Occam (talk) 21:20, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

"I'm quite certain of this." Allow me to suggest that you do a literature survey of reliable sources from the 1920s. Aprock (talk) 21:30, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm not talking about the way it was 80 years ago, I'm talking about the way it is currently. Whether creationism was taken seriously as science 80 years ago isn't relevant to the current topic. --Captain Occam (talk) 21:35, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

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

By all means, do the legwork and let us know what you find out. Aprock (talk) 15:30, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm not the one trying to change the article. If you want to say Rushton and others offer a fringe or a minority view, provide evidence that more psychologists are explicitly opposed to the heredity theory than accept as possible, plausible or likely. Fixentries (talk) 15:46, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

You're the one suggesting that the tags don't belong. Aprock (talk) 16:27, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Ok. At this point I'm comfortable leaving the article as it is, tags and all. I understand better why they are in place. Fixentries (talk) 16:50, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

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

Another example may help illustrate this point. Isaac Newton is arguably one of the greatest scientists of his age if not all time. Yet he still toiled for years on alchemy, a field of study which turned out to be very unscientific. Just because Newton did extensive research into alchemy does not mean that it is a science. Aprock (talk) 16:32, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

So the mainstream view is that racial differences in intelligence is explained by environmental and genetic factors that vary in importance for each group; therefore, environment may play a bigger role in the IQ of certain groups relatively to others, and that the higher IQ of East Asians is due to cultural factors, although the environment in which they develop is of lesser quality than for White? This explanation do not fully account for certain scientific data. While Rushton's work may suffer from certain substantial flaws, I do not believe we can dismiss all of it. It is certainly not very wise to do so. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.29.243.36 (talk) 17:05, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

“The view has to be considered valid or plausible by a significant number of experts in the field to cross the threshold of a minority view, or needs to be accepted by the vast majority of experts in the field to be considered majority or mainstream.”

I’m certainly not arguing that the hereditarian perspective is actually a majority view. Rushton himself has said in an interview on NPR that researchers who hold this view are in the minority—he refers to it as a “significant minority”. However, if you’re looking for a demonstration that a large number of experts consider this a valid hypothesis (even if they don’t agree with it), this is a lot easier to demonstrate. The “Maintream science” paper and the 2005 publication both demonstrate that most researchers at least take this hypothesis seriously, even if they don’t necessarily support it. In fact, even the number of peer-reviewed publications that cite papers arguing for the hereditarian hypothesis, for the purpose of criticizing this theory, is an argument that this hypothesis is at least taken seriously as a scientific theory. If you compare this to something truly fringe, such as creationism, most scientists feel like creationism is so obviously false (even though around 50% of Americans believe it) that there’s no point in taking the time to explain what’s wrong with it in peer-reviewed literature. --Captain Occam (talk) 20:39, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

There is a wide gap between the language "genetics could be involved too" and Rushton's hypothesis. Don't overstate your sources. Aprock (talk) 20:49, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

I think I've made it clear that I'm not claiming the authors of the "Mainstream science" paper believed this hypothesis was necessarily correct. What the paper states is just that in the view of most psychologists, this hypothesis is enough of a possibility to be worthy of consideration.

By the way, why are people calling the hereditarian view "Rushton's hypothesis" in this context? The "Mainstream science" paper was mostly a commentary on The Bell Curve, which was by Murray and Herrnstein, not Rushton. And as for the person responsible for this hypothesis in its modern form, that was Jensen in 1969. As far as I can tell, Rushton has nothing to do with this. --Captain Occam (talk) 21:00, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

I call it Rushton's hypothesis because I have to call it something. IIRC, Rushton's hypothesis is essentially the same as that of the authors of the Bell Curve. That is, genetic race plays a primary role in shaping the bell curves of IQ test results of racial populations. If you have a better name for it, by all means use it. Regardless, there is a wide gap between that hypothesis and "genetics could be involved too". Aprock (talk) 21:08, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Man, did you even read my whole comment? I know there’s a gap, but it doesn’t matter for the point I’m making. All I’m trying to demonstrate is that this viewpoint is viewed as a valid theory by psychologists, which is what Slrubenstein was asking me about.

I would suggest that if we have to attribute this hypothesis to a specific person, rather than just calling it the “hereditarian hypothesis”, we should call it Jensen’s hypothesis. Since he’s the primary person responsible for it, it’s better to refer to this hypothesis as “his” than it is to do this in Rushton’s case. --Captain Occam (talk) 21:17, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

No, as this is how it's called in the literature, usually. We cannot invent new terms.--Ramdrake (talk) 21:20, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Where in the literature has it been called Rushton's hypothesis when referring to the hereditarian hypothesis in general, rather than just a specific paper or book by Rushton? --Captain Occam (talk) 21:24, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

break

Captain Occam, I read your comment. Using the term "hereditary hypothesis"... You have not demonstrated that the hereditary hypothesis is viewed as a valid theory by psychologists. In fact, I doubt you'll find a citation which shows broad support for the idea that the hereditary hypothesis is a meaningful hypothesis. What you have found is significant support for the hypothesis that "environment plays an important role, and genetics could be involved too". Aprock (talk) 21:28, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

I have explained at least three times in what way the sources I'm using support this argument. Each time, you have repeated this same assertion--"My sources don't support my claim"--while not even acknowledging my explanation of how they do. Until you at least make an attempt to address my point, your continued claiming of this is not meaningful. it’s no longer necessary for me to reply to you when the only thing I can reply with is re-explaining what I’ve explained multiple times before, which you’ve ignored each time. --Captain Occam (talk) 21:39, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

I certainly haven't been ignoring what you've written. What I have been doing is trying to point out that your sources do not say what you think they do. The hereditary hypothesis is a minority/fringe view, and your sources support that position. The "Mainstream Science" editorial states that "Most experts believe that environment is important in pushing the bell curves apart, but that genetics could be involved too." That position rules out the hereditary hypothesis, which proposes something akin to the inverse: "that genetics is important in pushing the bell curves apart, but that environment could be involved too." Likewise your other source, the 2005 journal publication, illustrates that the hereditary conclusions of Rushton are actively disputed by other researchers. Aprock (talk) 21:54, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

I think you may not be aware of what the hereditarian hypothesis actually says. If you listed to the NPR interview with Rushton that I linked to earlier, he says in it that he believes the IQ difference to be caused by 50% environment and 50% genetics. That’s what the hereditarian hypothesis is—not that the IQ difference is 100% genetic, but just that is has a substantial genetic component. If genetics are involved in causing the IQ difference, then the hereditarian hypothesis is right. So for this reason, saying “most researchers think genetics could be involved” means the exact same thing as, “most researchers think the hereditarian hypothesis could be right”.

And you still haven’t addressed my point about the 2005 publication. I know they’re actively disputed by other researchers, but that has nothing to do with my point. If you want to dispute my conclusion about this, address the point that I actually made about it. --Captain Occam (talk) 22:12, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, the hereditarian hypothesis is that genetics play a significant role in determining the shape of IQ test curves for racial populations. "genetics could be involved" != "hereditarian hypothesis could be right". WRT to the 2005 publication, you seem to be saying "because it was published, it MUST be a mainstream hypothesis". That sort of leap is awfully close to original research. The hereditarian hypothesis is a minority/fringe hypothesis will very little (no?) genetic data to support it. Aprock (talk) 22:23, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

No, that’s not what I’m saying. I can’t believe I need to explain this again. I’m just going to quote my earlier comment about this:

“This issue of Psychology, Public Policy and Law contains papers by seven authors. Three of them argue for the hereditarian hypothesis, two of them argue against it, and two of them offer a combination of criticism and qualified support. While this is obviously a pretty small sample, I maintain that the fact that a well-respected peer-reviewed journal chose to frame the issue in this manner is an argument that the psychology community views this as a valid hypothesis.”

And then again:

“You’re missing my point. The indication is just the fact that a well-known, well-respected psychology journal chose to present the issue in this particular way. For something like creationism or the flat-earth view, which is regarded as truly fringe, you would never see a professional journal attempting to present the controversy about it in a balanced manner like this.”

In response to this, you disputed whether creationism was presented in a balanced way by peer-reviewed journals in the 1920s, which is irrelevant for reasons that I explained. This is what you need to address if you want to address my point, and which so far you’ve been ignoring.

The other point is incredibly simple logic. If genetics are involved in causing the IQ difference, then the hereditarian hypothesis is right. Therefore, any statement that refers to possibility of genetics being involved in causing the IQ difference is, by proxy, referring to the possibility of the hereditarian hypothesis being right. This is because genetics being involved in causing it is what the hereditarian hypothesis says.

I’m not going to explain this again. If you continue to just claim that I’m wrong without acknowledging either of these points, I’m going to just refer back to this comment, and point out that you’re continuing to ignore my point no matter how many times I make it. --Captain Occam (talk) 22:36, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

I've acknowledged these points, and explained to you why those points aren't valid. Allow me to try one more time (1) publication does not indicate anything other than the articles were worthy of publising. (2) genetics being involved != hereditarian hypothesis. Aprock (talk) 22:42, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Hey, just as long as the article clearly indicates that the majority view is that genetics may play some role in racial differences in IQ... Fixentries (talk) 22:44, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Jagz, please shut up before I turn you in for evading your block.--Ramdrake (talk) 12:50, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Whether you want it or not, genetics is clearly a factor in IQ differences. Just think of certain people with mental retardation. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.29.241.123 (talk) 22:47, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

1: I’m not talking about the fact that it was published. I’m talking about the fact that a professional journal devoted an entire issue to this controversy, with a collection of papers arguing both for and against this position. This is something you would not see if they didn’t take it seriously as a hypothesis, which is why you don’t see it for things like creationism.

Claiming that my argument is just based on the fact that it’s been published is a strawman.

2: The hereditarian hypothesis is that genetics is making enough of a contribution in the IQ difference to be considered significant. How is this different from saying that genetics is “involved” in causing it? The only difference is a semantic one, so if you aren’t willing to equate the two, you’re splitting hairs. --Captain Occam (talk) 22:51, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

I see that you have once again not understood what I wrote. This looks like a good time to take a break. Aprock (talk) 22:56, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

There is a good amount of evidences suggesting that intelligence is inherited; however, saying that genetics is playing a major role in racial differences in IQ is another thing--although there are more evidences suggesting it is effectively the case. If it wasn't the case as Aprock suggests, scientists would not widely use psychometrical data in conjunction with biological data to assess heredity of intelligence in its different aspects. Even the slightest knowledge in physiology is enough to suggest that intellectual potential is determined by genetics as within a group there is a wide variety of brain morphology. Now, if that is the case, the hereditarian view is quite clearly acknowledged as not being a minority/fringe hypothesis, while lacking, or seeming to lack, public acknowledgment for obvious reasons. There are perhaps two confounding factors to genetics, namely, decisional and environmental factors. http://www.jneurosci.org/cgi/content/full/28/41/10323 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WNP-4CTN475-2&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1040556075&_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=821d19ec33c5f391c5dd9bae43fb160a —Preceding unsigned comment added by Aerain (talk • contribs) 23:36, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

To clarify, I have not suggested that IQ performance is not genetically heritable. I've only noted that intelligence determined by racial genes is a minority/fringe theory. Aprock (talk) 23:50, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

(Outdent) Aprock, I can’t assume good faith about you here anymore. Nobody could have the same thing pointed out to them so many times, in so many different ways, and still believe the other person to be saying something other than what they actually are. I think you know that Misplaced Pages’s policy dictates nothing significant can be changed in the article without obtaining consensus, and that by continuing to stonewall like this you can prevent any kind of consensus from being reached, logic be damned. That seems to be the only thing you care about here.

I can’t stop you from doing this, but you need to realize (regarding your recent edits) that in this respect you can’t have your cake and eat it too. If you’re going to resist allowing any kind of consensus to be reached in the discussion here, so that I can't remove the tags from the article, that means none of your recent edits to the article are allowed to stay either.

Ramdrake, Slrubenstein, is this what you wanted? I know you care about the tags remaining in the article, and I also notice you’ve dropped out of this discussion. Are you satisfied with Aprock continuing to stonewall so that no consensus can be reached, and nothing in the article can ever be changed? --Captain Occam (talk) 00:29, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

If that is so, there is hardly any reason to say that the "hereditarian" view is minority/fringe. First of all, you cannot attribute all of the group differences to environment. Secondly, "considerable" is a matter of debate, it can be anything from "10% or less to 50% or more". Thirdly, it is even less likely that group differences is entirely due to the environment (100%/0%) than to say the effect distribution is the same (50%/50%), or around mid-way (~75%/25%). It is also hard to explain with a purely environment model (100%/0%) why the gaps between groups are virtually the same among trans-racially adopted children. It is hardly arguable to say that the "hereditarian" view is minority/fringe —Preceding unsigned comment added by Aerain (talk • contribs) 00:35, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Capt. Occam, as far as I can see, you seem to be the one stonewalling the discussion. You dismiss out of hand explanations that demonstrate the fallacy of your position (such as Alun's and Aprock's), and ignore the responses they give to your queries. This looks like it is going sooner or later into dispute resolution. Why not have an RfC and see where your position really stands? After all,[REDACTED] is run by consensus.--Ramdrake (talk) 12:48, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

As far as I'm concerned, this section has veered way into OR territory, and Captain Occam, you have threated to disrupt Misplaced Pages to prove a point. A huge problem here is that there are fundamental differences of opinion that aren't even being discussed. On one side we have

people saying that "race" (and to some even "intelligence") are so ill-defined/undefinable that the whole argument is meaningless (to wit, very few people are sufficiently genetically different from each other for between group differences to mean very much--racial designations are usually self-reported--, and intelligence is such a culturally biased concept that it's nearly impossible to control all the independent variables). On the other hand we have people saying that because of observed differences in IQ scores of various populations that look different from each other, (and given the fact that with-in groups it is possible to show a link between parents/offspring IQ) it is possible to infer some population-wide genetic basis for IQ scores.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that these are the two view points we should be comparing. It is certainly the way I perceive the argument to be phrased by the likes of Gould and Gardner, as well as in education psychology literature and basic psychometric theory. Certainly the concessions given by so-called hereditarians seem to follow these socio/anthropological lines, and concessions from non-hereditarians seem to refer to statistical/genetic reasoning. The real question raised in this section should be, laying the spectrum out as I just did (and given the tacit assumption that most academics do favor the socio/anthropological side of the spectrum), is the other side of the spectrum (favored by Jensen etc.) considered minority/fringe. T34CH (talk) 01:26, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

As far as I can tell what that all meant (after reading it 3 times), you seem to be restating exactly what is being discussed. Fixentries (talk) 01:40, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

How have I threatened to disrupt Misplaced Pages? I've accused Aprock of stonewalling, and said that if he prevents consensus from being reached, that means the article can't be improved. That isn't disrupting Misplaced Pages; that's simply restating Misplaced Pages's policy. If there's anyone here who's disrupting Misplaced Pages, it's him.

I agree that the things you're mentioning would be worthy of discussion, and we can discuss it if you like. Something to keep in mind, though, is that we don't need to actually determine which of these viewpoints is correct. Since both viewpoints exist, NPOV policy states that we should simply present both of them without taking sides. --Captain Occam (talk) 01:52, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

The POINTY part I was referring to was the reversion of his edits simply because he didn't ask permission first. Aprock certainly has permission to change things, and you certainly have permission to revert, but BRD also has a very important D at the end. I respectfully request that you either self revert or start a new section specifically addressing your problems with his changes.

NPOV policy: now we're getting back to a very important point... significant minority viewpoints should be mentioned, but the article should spend give each side space proportionate to the weight each side holds in the academic world. We need to be on the same page here. If the academic world is most interested in and persuaded by the socio/anthropological explanations, most of the article should be about that. Right no that's not the case. T34CH (talk) 02:02, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

I guess I'll mention here what problem I had with Aprock's edits: he removed one properly sourced sentence that he claimed was original research even though it was supported by the source, and he also added a new paragraph that was POV. Although the article should give more space to the environmental hypothesis than to the hereditarian one (as it currently does) making a statement like that in the lead paragraph suggests the issue to be more resolved than it is.

I don't think pointing this out deserves a new section, though, for two reasons. First, I'm already discussing with Aprock the same viewpoint of his that these edits were based on, and his desire for it to be in the article. In fact, he edited the article in the middle of my discussion with him, in order to make it conform to his viewpoints which I was in the process of disputing. And second, Aprock has already demonstrated a lack of interest in working towards consensus on this topic. He's welcome to discuss this issue with me again in the context of his new edits, but I don't expect this to accomplish anything.

Anyway, I agree with what you're saying about NPOV, and I think you can see from my earlier comments what my perspective is about this. The hereditarian perspective is a minority viewpoint, but still a significant minority; significant enough that a peer-reviewed journal was careful to present the arguments for and against it in a balanced way, and also significant enough that a majority of researchers acknowledge the possibility of it being correct, even if most of them don't personally agree with it. With these things in mind, I think it receives about as much coverage in this article as is appropriate. Aprock didn't appear to understand my point about this, but if you do, I'd appreciate knowing what you have to say in response. --Captain Occam (talk) 02:44, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

BTW, I think what is happening is not so much stonewalling as it is a bunch of semantic arguments. It looks like terms such as "valid", "meaningful", and "broad support" are being used in slightly different ways. I suggested the format of a continuum because it avoids such semantic issues (though it may oversimplify the sides at times--something we can address later). T34CH (talk) 02:08, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Look at my points, and his responses. I described several times how Psychology, Public Policy and Law presented this topic, with an entire issue devoted to it, a collection of papers arguing both sides about it, and the issue’s featured paper one that argues in favor of the hereditarian view. Each time that Aprock replied to this, he claimed that my point was simply that a paper about this had been published: “publication does not indicate anything other than the articles were worthy of publising.” No, that was not my point; my point was that the journal that published about this considered the controversy significant enough to devote an issue to it, and was careful to present this controversy in a balanced way. But no matter how many times I pointed this out, Aprock claimed that I was the one misunderstanding him.

This isn’t a matter of semantics. There is an inherent difference between simply arguing from the fact that a paper was published, and the point I’m making about the balanced way that this journal chose to present the topic in their issue devoted to it. I think Aprock is aware of the distinction between these two points, and just isn’t willing to acknowledge it. --Captain Occam (talk) 02:44, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Updating and cleaning up article

It's clear from the recent discussion that there is some interest in addressing some of the issues related to the current tags. Instead of delving into another deeply nested conversation about what exactly it means for a viewpoint to be a minority one, I'd like to take the time to list some of the main issues with the article, and hopefully resolve one or more of them.

• It is not clear what is meant by Race in this article. Generally, the article deals with race as a social construct, primarily because the ability to genetically determine race is still in its infancy and very little (any?) research has been done which links racial genetics and intelligence. Many of the studies that have been done have used self identification as the determinant of race, not genetic race. This becomes a significant issue when people of mixed ancestry identify with a single race, whether through limited choice, or through ignorance of their own ancestry. Race as a social construct may correlate with genetic race, but it's important to be clear on how race is being used in the article, and in the citations that are referenced.

• It's also not clear what is meant by intelligence. Most of the article uses various psychometric studies to infer intelligence of populations identified with a particular race. This is a fairly minor issue, but need to be addressed early in the article.

• Most of the conclusions that are made by researchers about the relationship between genetic race and human intelligence are, by necessity of current methodologies, correlational inferences, and do not represent actual data relating population genetics and psychometrics.

• It's not clear what this article is trying to be about. Currently it is a hodge-podge of various trivia. A lot of the prose in the article is just baggage which has accumulated over years of various editor dropping in whatever reliably cited information they could find into the article. This causes a lot of duplication with other (better written and organized)[REDACTED] articles. Ideally, summaries of the other WP articles would replace the currently clumsy mish mash that there is. Finally, a decision needs to be made as to what this article is trying to be. Is it ... ?

1. a summary of the history of various efforts to try and measure the relationship
2. a summary of current scientific understanding
3. a discussion of testing methodologies and results

In the end, I think much of the article could be cleaned up by using the summary technique, possibly augmenting it with new sub-articles for sections where there is no useful reference already on wikipedia. When that is done, a reorganization and redirection of central topic might be easier. As a point of comparison I'll refer to the IQ page which manages to be much more organized with another hotly debated topic. Aprock (talk) 04:31, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Nice summary of the article there. I think that this sort of article will always be a magnet to those who want to promote a specific point of view. For example the talk page nearly always descends into a discussion of the evidence rather than a discussion of the article. The article cannot really have a good focus because it does not really deal with a specific subject, it deals with a plethora of subjects (1) the validity of race (genetics indicates that humans are not divided into anything like discrete genetic populations) (2) the validity of cognitive testing (e.g. cultural bias) (3) the utility of heritability estimates (they do not measure genetic causation) (4) the lack of any direct evidence (no genes have ever been discovered that directly affect intelligence, despite lots of people looking for them). The article has been put up for deletion several times, but the fact is that there is clearly a body of academic work covering this subject. But all of the work covering this subject is not equal, much of the work cannot be considered proper academic work, e.g. The Bell Curve was not written by people who could be considered experts. This subject was pretty much put to bed in the seventies by Montague's book "Race and IQ", which comprehensively debunked the proposition. In the nineties it was brought again to the fore by "The Bell Curve", but this is a political ideology, and not a scientific book, currently the proposition is promoted by those espousing right wing economic policies, there's no more evidence for this belief system than existed in the seventies, it's still based on conflating heritability with heredity and pretending that "race" is a simple easily definable, tangible thing, and it is still full of the same basic flaws that Montague et al. dealt with in the seventies.

So I recommend summary style. We can have a brief discussion of the validity of "race" and link to the main article. Another section about cognitive testing, and link to that article etc. etc. If it needs a history section dealing with the misuse of cognitive tests by past eugenicists, then I'm happy with that. Alun (talk) 06:14, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Aprock, I agree that in principle, the article would benefit from cleanup. However, your history of edits and comments makes me necessarily mistrustful about your ability to overhaul the article in an NPOV manner. If you want to make major changes to the article, what I would recommend doing is showing us your proposed edits first, either here or in your userspace, in order to build a consensus for them before you change the article itself.

If you decide to do this, something that might be useful to you is this, an explantion of the hereditarian perspective that was posted on the discussion page last year, with the intention of being included in the article in some form. It’s rather unfortunate the way this went: although that explanation is probably too long to go in the article in its entirety, the idea was to summarize it and put the summary of it in the article. What happened instead is that certain sections were included almost verbatim, while others were omitted entirely. And as a result, while our current article devotes about as much space to the hereditarian hypothesis as is appropriate, its explanation of this theory is not very informative.

Alun, it’s important that we present the science on this topic as it currently stands, not as it was in the 70s. Of particular importance with regard to the concept of race is Cavalli-Sforza’s 1994 study about genetic populations, whose results are described here. As can be seen from the chart there, genetically-defined populations based on continental origin do exist; the reason why race is a sociological as well as biological concept (rather than purely biological) is because people do not always self-identify with the race associated with the population to which they belong, and their ancestry also usually isn’t 100% pure. But as Aprock pointed out, the sociological concept of race correlates with the genetic populations that it’s based on, so it’s important for the article to not dismiss race as biologically meaningless. --Captain Occam (talk) 06:54, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

I don't know what you mean by "genetically-defined populations". Can you expand? Can you specifically say why what you call "genetically-defined populations" are the same as "races"? Who makes this claim? My degree is in genetics, and it is my understanding that any population of any size can be "genetically defined". In fact you can "genetically define" the population of England as different to the population of Wales, if you want to, certainly the distribution of Y chromosomes in these two countries are different, and we could certainly use statistics to show that the difference is not due to chance (i.e. is significant). Does this "prove" that English people and Welsh people are different "races"? Apparently you believe it does. In population genetics a population is a theoretical entity, all we can do is sample organisms from a geographical region and theorise that they belong to a "population". But a population is a theoretical entity, it is not a discrete group of organisms. Anyone who makes this claim simply is ignorant of genetics. Indeed there's a very good paper about this called What is a population? An empirical evaluation of some genetic methods for identifying the number of gene pools and their degree of connectivity The fact is that population geneticists have used small island models to try to understand genetic variation, and these have worked relatively well. The idea of "populations" is based on this model, but no one has ever claimed that these theoretical populations represent real discrete subdivisions of organisms. In fact most population geneticists would agree that in truth organisms are isolated by distance, and not distributed into discrete groups.

The reason why "race" is a nonsense is because it doesn't make any sense when we look at human demographic history. To put it another way, all non-Africans represent a sub-population of Africans, or Africans are a paraphyletic group to non-Africans. What we actually see is a gradual diluting of African diversity as humans move away from Africa, what we don't see is any well defined bounded groups, we don't see separate human clades, and we don't see any subspecific division.

We don't include original research in Misplaced Pages, what you seem to be saying is that you believe that Cavalli-Sforza’s work proves that races are real. But if I can be frank, Misplaced Pages doesn't exist to promote your personal interpretations of Cavalli-Sforza’s work. Indeed Cavalli-Sforza himself makes the opposite claim to you, that his work disproves that "races" are real. You can promote the opinions of reliable sources if you like, but if you want to claim that this work "proves" that humans are divided into well defined subspecies, then you need to find an anthropologist who says this, or at least a well respected taxonomist.

Who say that "the sociological concept of race correlates with the genetic populations that it’s based on"? The only claim I saw here was that on average African-Americans have ~80% of their ancestry from Africa. That's not a definition of "race" is it? I don't think so. For example there are African Americans who have a majority of their ancestry from Europe, but they are still African Americans, no? So being African American is a cultural marker, no? To be African American means to subscribe to African American culture, it is not to belong to a genetically "defined" group, because clearly African-Americans are a genetically heterogeneous group. Likewise the idea that in Africa there is genetic homogeneity is absurd, there is about twice as much genetic diversity in Africa than there is in the rest of the world combined. Indeed, if there is any sensible way to genetically divide the global human population, it is between Africans and non-Africans, and that is only based on the much reduced diversity seen outside of Africa. Loo at it this way, as Long and Kittles say, about 100% of global human genetic diversity can be found in an African village, whereas only about 70% of the global human genetic diversity can be found in New Guinea. In Europe we are closer to Africans in our diversity, but still much reduced.

Besides, the truth is that the debate is identical to the seventies. The debate is not about the existence of "race", there is greater consensus from experts today that "race" is biologically meaningless than there was thirty years ago, so the academic world is going in the opposite direction to you. But more importantly, the fallacy that the measure of the proportion of test score variance within group that is due to genetics (i.e. heritability) can tell us anything about the causation of between group average score was dealt with decades ago, and it hasn't changed. See esp. Lewontin and Lazer papers in Montagu's book "Race and IQ". The claim has been comprehensively debunked as a fallacy. Indeed this article should concentrate n the fact that these claims are fallacious. The claims are based on confusing heritability with heredity, and they have become a matter of faith to so many people that it has become impossible to have a decent article here, we always have to pretend that this fallacy is somehow scientifically valid. Alun (talk) 10:31, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

I’m aware that you can view any interbreeding group of humans as a population, and there’s no biological reason why we use the term “race” for the some populations but not others. That distinction is purely a sociological one. The point is simply that when you look at the ancestry of groups of people who consider themselves “races”, their ancestry tends to correlate with certain genetic groups shown on that chart. (Such as “Black” with sub-Saharan African, “White” with Indo-European, and “Oriental” with East Asian.) The reference for the Race and genetics article mentioning this is from Arthur Jensen, and Aprock made this point also.

I’ve seen your comments on this article’s talk page before, and I’d like to politely point out something that you ought to be aware of by now. When you post a huge block of text like this that’s laden with ad hominem, claims about what the overwhelming majority of researchers believe but without any citations for these claims, and so many questions that it would require a post several times the size of yours to answer them all, you aren’t likely to get a very detailed response. And sure, you can claim that you won the argument by shouting down the opposition, but it won’t by any standard be a consensus. So if you have any interest in actually improving the article, I’d advise that you change your tactics. --Captain Occam (talk) 10:56, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

"there’s no biological reason why we use the term “race” for the some populations but not others." That's the crux of the matter. If race is defined here more by social constructs than by biology, then that needs to be clear. Non biological definitions of race are going to be fundamentally flawed when applied to the problem of racial genetic determinism. Aprock (talk) 16:43, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Actually you can view any group of organisms of the same species living in the same geographical region that can interact with one another as a population, e.g. the population of Chicago. Who says populations have to be breeding? Take a look at the paper I link to above, they discuss at least three different concepts of biological population. The term "race" is not "applied to some populations and not others". Who says it is? What is the source of this claim, or is it simply your opinion? As a geneticist I don't think one would ever call a "race" a population. For one thing a breeding population would at least have to include individuals with a very good chance of meeting and interbreeding, that hardly applies to, say the African American population of the USA. Indeed it hardly applies to someone from Cape Town and someone from Addis Ababa.

As for the claim that the genetics of people with ancestors from geographically close regions correlates, that's not rocket science, neither is it relevant to concepts of "race". If the Race and genetics really has a definition from that non-expert Jensen, then clearly it needs a major overhaul, if it had contained such non-genetically valid povs when I was editing it regularly I would have removed them. Jensen is neither an anthropologist nor a geneticist. In fact as far as I can see his only contribution to any conception of race is to demonstrate that he is truly ignorant of the basics of both biology and anthropology. If you take Jensen's pronouncements on race with any seriousness then you really are gullible.

I didn't make any ad hominem attacks, if you're going to say I did, then at least have the decency to point them out. As for "winning the argument", seriously? Do you really think that is what it is all about? I thought it was about improving the article.

The fact is that I've been contributing to population genetics articles on Misplaced Pages for four years or so, I have read extensively around the area, and when you claim that the vast majority of expert on human genetic variation support the concept of "race", then I can only conclude that you haven't read any of the serious scientific literature.

It's simply true that those who have a deep belief in "race" see any evidence of genetic and phenotypic variation as supporting this belief. It doesn't matter that this variation is not distributed in anything like a fashion that supports this concept. It doesn't matter that the overwhelming majority of geneticists and anthropologists have proven again and again that "biological race" is a meaningless concept, the only thing that matters is their belief.

Seriously, you'll have to do better that the argument "race is real because there is genetic variation" because I can cite numerous papers about population genetics that say the exact opposite. Alun (talk) 16:56, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

I am uncomfortable with all the claims made in this article. The entire topic is questionable. Not because I don't believe there are population differences in intelligence, but because the science is too immature. We haven't identified the specific genes that may offer intellectual advantages. We don't know what mutations are involved or when they may have happened. Both sides of this issue seem to rely largely on speculation. Fixentries (talk) 17:01, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

There is no speculation with regards to the distribution of human genetic diversity. The consensus is that "races" derive from folk concepts of heredity, they are social constructs and do not conform to the distribution of genetic variation as observed experimentally. This is well understood by physical anthropologists who long ago found that the more metrics they take, the more "races" they get, currently molecular biologists find the same thing. When one samples in discontinuous regions one finds "discrete groups", but when one samples on a continuous basis, one gets clines of variation. See e.g:

Early anthropologists and human geneticists focused on defining “biological races” of humans. This treated races as fixed, naturally derived, categorical entities in our species, which was odd because it was always known that each individual is biologically unique. The classical definitionwas that races differ in the frequencies of at least some genes (10, 100). This makes race inherently a population concept. In practical terms, this also means that results depend upon one’s choice of sampling or inferential frames of reference. But not everyone agrees on what these should be. Kittles and Weiss "RACE, ANCESTRY, AND GENES: Implications for Defining Disease Risk" (2003) Annu. Rev. Genomics Hum. Genet.

Anthropologists long ago discovered that humans’ physical traits vary gradually, with groups that are close geographic neighbors being more similar than groups that are geographically separated. This pattern of variation, known as clinal variation, is also observed for many alleles that vary from one human group to another. Another observation is that traits or alleles that vary from one group to another do not vary at the same rate. This pattern is referred to as nonconcordant variation. Because the variation of physical traits is clinal and nonconcordant, anthropologists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries discovered that the more traits and the more human groups they measured, the fewer discrete differences they observed among races and the more categories they had to create to classify human beings. The number of races observed expanded to the 30s and 50s, and eventually anthropologists concluded that there were no discrete races (Marks, 2002). Twentieth and 21st century biomedical researchers have discovered this same feature when evaluating human variation at the level of alleles and allele frequencies. Nature has not created four or five distinct, nonoverlapping genetic groups of people. Ossorio and Duster "Race and Genetics Controversies in Biomedical, Behavioral, and Forensic Sciences" (2005) American Psychologist

..genotyping to estimate biogeographical ancestry can be a better control for population substructure than self-identified race, ethnicity, or ancestry... labels such as “Hispanic,” “Black,” “Mexican American,” “White,” “Asian,” “European,” or “African” can have ambiguous or contradictory meanings among researchers, research subjects, and the general public. Use of such broad labels without careful definitions can impair scientific understanding and imply that distinctions between socially defined populations are genetically well established. Race, Ethnicity, and Genetics Working Group, National Human Genome Research Institute, Bethesda "The Use of Racial, Ethnic, and Ancestral Categories in Human Genetics Research" Am. J. Hum. Genet. 77:000–000

I could quote many many more examples. But this is not speculation. Anyone claiming that human populations are "genetically defined" does not know what they are talking about. Alun (talk) 17:46, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

I agree with your cited material, but you’re drawing an inference from it that isn’t warranted. Let’s look at the part that addresses your point specifically:

“labels such as “Hispanic,” “Black,” “Mexican American,” “White,” “Asian,” “European,” or “African” can have ambiguous or contradictory meanings among researchers, research subjects, and the general public. Use of such broad labels without careful definitions can impair scientific understanding and imply that distinctions between socially defined populations are genetically well established.”

I agree with this, and I think it’s best to view ethnic differences in IQ in terms of differences between “populations” rather than “races”, and break it down according to the groups on the chart that I linked to. This is the way Arthur Jensen breaks it down in The g Factor. However, even though it’s less precise to view human groupings in terms of socially defined “races” than in terms of populations based on area of ancestry, none of the material you’ve cited supports your assertion that there’s no correlation between the two, or that it isn’t possible to define certain populations in a genetic sense. If Indo-Europeans are more genetically similar to one another than they are to any other group (as can be seen from the chart), and people who self-identify as “White” tend to have predominantly Indo-European ancestry, then this “race” can still be defined biologically in a statistical sense.

The reason why the article is called “race and intelligence” rather than “population and intelligence” is because most of the data available about this topic is based on statistical races, rather than genetic populations. Most people have a self-identity of what “race” they belong to, but not a precise idea of their genetic ancestry, so it’s necessary to use the first as an (albeit imprecise) proxy for the second. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Captain Occam (talk • contribs) 18:15, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Alun, you didn't respond to what I said. Please re-read it. I was talking about this topic of this article. I didn't say I thought your statements were speculation, you are right. You do seem to be harping on a pet topic with a hair trigger though. Please be more careful to read what people actually say, and let's stick to the topic of this article. Fixentries (talk) 18:43, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

To an extent I agree with wobble, that there is only one solid and objective biological distinction to be made, between Sub-saharan Africans and non-Africans (see Haplogroup F (Y-DNA) and related). There are a few other groups that also seem to have a very homogeneous background but they are limited in number, and aren't mentioned in this article that I have seen. However, the topic of the article has a meaning that is understandable to any reader, and the statistics only claim to based on self-reported or apparent ethnic background. This article should have some mention of the dispute over the definitions of race, and possible ambiguities. It doesn't invalidate the article or require a detailed explanation. We can refer the reader to the appropriate articles. Fixentries (talk) 16:54, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, whether or not we consider race as a social construct, it does not matter at all; in fact, if we were to accept such a claim, it would merely result in an insignificant semantic shift, that is, A, B, C, D have higher IQ than E, F, G, H instead of Z has higher IQ than Y. Whether we consider ethnicities instead of races, we need to explain why differences occur. IQ is certainly an imperfect measure of intelligence, it ignores the multi-aspect nature of intelligence, such reduction don't give us information on how deep test-taker A understanding of concept B is, nor how effective his cognitive processes are, and so on; however, it correlates with too many life-history and biological variables to dismiss it as meaningless.--Aerain (talk) 21:58, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

intro edit

I removed the last sentence of the first paragraph: "The only consistent claim of consensus on this issue is that as of yet no one knows what causes racial group difference in cognitive ability because no single answer is widely supported."

The citation is unclear as to the source, but I assume it is referring to Volume 37 of Intelligence. The article on pages 1-2 can be found here. The book review authored by Hunt can be found here: Book Reviews. Neither article makes a mention of there being "claim of consensus" in this regard. Aprock (talk) 15:49, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

I think this sentence needs to be in the article, because the intro section ought to make readers aware of what the currently prevailing attitude among researchers about this is. If you don’t think the source that was cited for this claim supports it specifically enough (it appears to imply this, but without stating it outright), I think it’s better to keep this sentence but use a difference source for it. I’ve added it back, but now cited to the APA’s statement on race and intelligence. Their report states:

The differential between the mean intelligence test scores of Blacks and Whites (about one standard deviation, although it may be diminishing) does not result from any obvious biases in test construction and administration, nor does it simply reflect differences in socio-economic status. Explanations based on factors of caste and culture may be appropriate, but so far have little direct empirical support. There is certainly no such support for a genetic interpretation. At present, no one knows what causes this differential.

That’s basically the same thing that the sentence in the article is saying: that nobody knows what causes this difference between groups, because of the paucity of support for any single hypothesis about it. I hope that change is acceptable to you. --Captain Occam (talk) 16:48, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm fine with a summary of the APA statement, the current phrasing does not reflect the statement. I'll change the wording to reflect the APA statement. Aprock (talk) 17:00, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

I think you’re misrepresenting what the APA statement says. Where in their statement do they say that environmental factors can account for this difference? They seem to state the opposite: that there are no known environmental factors which could have this effect, but genetic explanations lack direct support also. --Captain Occam (talk) 17:35, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Page 94. Aprock (talk) 17:45, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

You'll need to be more specific about what portion of the statement says this if you want this claim to be included in the article. Page 94 introduces socio-economic status and caste-like minorities as possible environmental explanations, but the paper later points out the problems with these explanations, and concludes that they are inadequate. --Captain Occam (talk) 17:49, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Page 94:

Interpreting Group Differences If group differences in test performance do not result from the simple forms of bias reviewed above, what is responsible for them? The fact is that we do not know. Various explanations have been proposed, but none is generally accepted. It is clear, however, that these differences -- 'whatever their origin -- are well within the range of effect sizes that can be produced by environmental factors. The Black/White differential amounts to one standard deviation or less, and we know that environmental factors have recently raised mean test scores in many populations by at least that much (Flynn, 1987: see Section 4). To be sure, the "Flynn effect" is itself poorly understood: it may reflect generational changes in culture, improved nutrition, or other factors as yet unknown. Whatever may be responsible for it, we cannot exclude the possibility that the same factors play a role in contemporary group differences.

(emphasis added) Aprock (talk) 17:55, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

OK, I see where the problem is. The APA is saying that the size of the IQ difference is within the range of what environmental factors could produce, although no one has yet identified a specific environmental factor that could account for this. But your paraphrase of this makes it sound as though specific environmental factors have actually been identified that can explain this difference, which the APA specifically says is not the case. Do you see how your explanation of this is imprecise?

I’m going to change this sentence to make it clearer what the APA’s statement actually says. --Captain Occam (talk) 18:22, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Your edit does not properly reflect the paper. Specifically, you write "no one has yet identified a specific environmental effect which could cause them" which is not the case. Environmental effects have been found that could cause the difference, but no one has determined that any specific or combination of environmental effects are the actual cause. If you could update the text, that would be great. Aprock (talk) 18:34, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

I think you're misconstruing their position. Let's look at this quote again:

The differential between the mean intelligence test scores of Blacks and Whites (about one standard deviation, although it may be diminishing) does not result from any obvious biases in test construction and administration, nor does it simply reflect differences in socio-economic status. Explanations based on factors of caste and culture may be appropriate, but so far have little direct empirical support. There is certainly no such support for a genetic interpretation. At present, no one knows what causes this differential.

So all of the specific potential environmental factors that they consider--test bias, socioeconomic status and caste-like minorities--are dismissed as lacking evidence. (And so is genetics). They conclude that nobody has yet identified the cause of the IQ difference. This is the single most common position about this, held by people such as James Flynn: that the cause is environmental, but that no existing environmental explanation is adequate, so it is caused by some as-yet undiscovered environmental factor.

the part of their statement that you quoted only refers to the size of the difference being within the range of what could be caused by environmental factors. It isn't making a statement about any such factors having actually been identified, and the later part of the article rejects that assertion. --Captain Occam (talk) 18:43, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

They are not dismissed. Regarding socioeconomic factors: "Several considerations suggest that this cannot be the whole explanation... no model in which "SES" directly determines "IQ" will do.". Regarding caste-like minorities, there is no indication in the article that that environmental factor can be dismissed. The statement I summarized specifically says: "If group differences in test performance do not result from the simple forms of bias reviewed above, what is responsible for them? The fact is that we do not know." None of the environmental causes are dismissed. But we do not know which environmental factors are responsible, and we do not know if there is (or is not) a genetic component at play here. I'll ask that the wording be changed to reflect the article being quoted. Aprock (talk) 18:54, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

All right, I changed it slightly. Is the new version acceptable to you? --Captain Occam (talk) 19:09, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

It looks great. Aprock (talk) 19:11, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

“While these differences are of a size that could be accounted for by environmental factors, no specific environmental factors have been identified as definitive causes, and genetic factors cannot be ruled out.”

Frankly, I think all this minority/fringe hypothesis nonsense has birthed the above nonsensical sentence. If we were actually considering the scientific data, we would rather say—to be completely objective: “...no specific factors have been identified as definitive causes, and genetic and environmental factors may play important roles.” Even if the environment hypothesis was indeed the majority view, considering it as such does not take into account that factors other than pure and unbiased reason may play a role in the widespread acceptance of the theory.--Aerain (talk) 22:28, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

If you’re going to change the wording of this sentence the way you’ve suggested, you’ll need to find a reference for it other than the APA statement, since their statement doesn’t support this sentence the way you’ve worded it.

To be frank, I think the other editors here will probably have a problem with you changing this, but if you decide to edit this aspect of the article after it’s unprotected, I probably won’t try to interfere with this myself. I’m involved in so many separate disputes here that I’d rather not have to take on an additional one. --Captain Occam (talk) 00:13, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

This theory, the environment hypothesis, implies a very unscientific notion by stating that differences between groups are strictly environmental. This is a step backward toward indoctrination as I see it. By claiming what all-environment-explanation proponents claim, we also imply that there is a sort of good-hearted process in evolution that prevent any group from having an advantage over another in intelligence.--Aerain (talk) 01:35, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

You don’t need to argue with me about this. I personally think that the hereditarian hypothesis is probably better-supported than the environmental one, but I also think it’s important to follow Misplaced Pages’s policy about covering each theory about this in proportion to the amount of support it receives from researchers, even if the reason why this is a minority viewpoint may be because of something other than which viewpoint has the most evidence to support it.

If you want to edit the article to provide more coverage of the hereditarian perspective, you need to convince the editors here that this change is consistent with Misplaced Pages’s policy. As I’ve stated earlier, I think it probably receives about as much coverage in the article as is appropriate, but if you have an argument against that idea, I’m listening.

You should probably create a new section of the talk page if you want to debate this, though. --Captain Occam (talk) 01:58, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

I propose we say "We don't know what factors exactly account for these differences, some believe that environment play an important role or account for all of them, but genetic factors may play as big of a role" instead of "While these differences are of a size that could be accounted for by environmental factors, no specific environmental factors have been identified as definitive causes, and genetic factors cannot be ruled out." The reason why is that the fact that the environment hypothesis is more widespread does not mean that more scholars BELIEVE it is true, SAYING it is not the same thing as BELIEVING it.--Aerain (talk) 02:31, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

The fundamental issue is that it's not us who get to say. There has to be reliable sourcing of information. This specific discussion is about the APA article, which may not be the freshest view, but reflects a broad base of researchers. If you can find another broad survey of scientific understanding from which to draw information from, by all means offer it up. As for inferring unsaid beliefs, I think I'll take a pass on that one. Aprock (talk) 02:36, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Then instead of making a non-factual claim such as "While these differences are of a size that could be accounted for by environmental factors, no specific environmental factors have been identified as definitive causes, and genetic factors cannot be ruled out" you should state that this claim comes from APA. For instance, you could say "A group of scientists concluded that while these differences are of a size that could be accounted for by environmental factors, no specific environmental factors have been identified as definitive causes, and genetic factors cannot be ruled out."--Aerain (talk) 02:50, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

That is, in effect, what is happening through citation. By citing the statement with that reference, credit to the statement is given to the reference. We could replace all footnoted references with full expansion of quotes and references, but I suspect that would become unwieldy fast. Aprock (talk) 03:01, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Actually, I don't think so. A citation actually gives you a basis to think the statement made is true.--Aerain (talk) 03:06, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

This is probably a good time to review WP:CITE Aprock (talk) 03:31, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

the 1990s debates

This section only discusses the book "The Bell Curve" and related work. I'd like to suggest that this section be retitled to "The Bell Curve" and replaced with a summary of the corresponding[REDACTED] page. Aprock (talk) 17:51, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

I think that calling this section "The Bell Curve" would present too limited a view of the debate. Although the Bell Curve was what initiated the 1990s controversy, many of the articles that were published as a result of this controversy (such as the APA statement) are arguably more significant than the book itself was. This is the same reason why we don't refer to the 1970s debate under the name of Arthur Jensen's paper that initiated it. --Captain Occam (talk) 17:54, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Currently the section is entirely about the book and the debate it created. If you read the Bell Curve entry, you'll find that there is nearly 100% coverage of the section there. I'm fine with a more appropriate title, like "The Bell Curve debate", or something similar. Aprock (talk) 17:56, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Why can't we just call this "the 1990s debates"? That's at least as descriptive a term as anything referring to The Bell Curve specifically. We refer to the debates in the 1970s as "the 1970s debates", and it's best to be consistent about this. --Captain Occam (talk) 18:33, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

We can call it whatever we want. However, since the section is essentially a summary of the entry on the book, replacing the section with a summary of the entry, and an appropriate title is sensible. Aprock (talk) 18:40, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

This section of the article includes a lot of topics than the article about The Bell Curve doesn't. The Bell Curve article talks about the "Mainstream Science" statement and the APA "Knowns and unknowns" statement, but it doesn't include the other 1990s statements from the APA that this article covers, or the coverage of the "Knowns and unknowns" statement in American Psychologist.

Some of these are only tangentially related to The Bell Curve. The coverage in American Psychologist was a commentary on the APA statement, which itself was only an indirect commentary on The Bell Curve. As a result, referring to the American Psychologist coverage under the heading "The Bell Curve" is a bit of a stretch. --Captain Occam (talk) 18:51, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

This stuff is in The Bell Curve see:

I already acknowledged that it mentions that report, but it doesn't mention any of the other APA reports that the race and intelligence article does, or the American Psychologist coverage. If you're going to dispute what I'm saying, please respond to my actual points, rather than a strawman of them. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Captain Occam (talk • contribs) 19:05, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

It does mention the AP coverage. From The Bell Curve: "The APA journal that published the statement, American Psychologist, subsequently published eleven critical responses in January 1997." If you could be more specific about which reports are not mentioned, that might help. Regardless, the issue isn't whether the content is a mirror image of The Bell Curve. The issue is that this section is about the debates that publication of The Bell Curve produced. Changing the title to "The Bell Curve debates" is an improvement over "The 1990s debates" Aprock (talk) 19:10, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

If you want its title changed, can you address my point about consistency? The section titled “the 1970s debates” is about the debate caused by Jensen’s 1969 paper about this in the Harvard Educational Review. But the section about that debate is named after the decade during which it occurred, rather than the piece of writing which caused it. If we don’t name that section after Jensen’s article, we shouldn’t name the 1990s section after The Bell Curve either. --Captain Occam (talk) 19:15, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

I don't see any reason to name two of the three sections after the decades in which they occurred. As it current stands, there is currently "The 1970s debates", "The 1990s debates", and "Policy debates". Aprock (talk) 19:19, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

If we’re going to change the name of “the 1990s debate” to “The Bell Curve debate”, what name do you think should we use for the section about the debate that occurred during the 1970s? --Captain Occam (talk) 19:24, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

I think "The 1970s debates" is kind of clunky but I don't have any better suggestions at the moment. If you think there is a better title, I'm all ears. Aprock (talk) 19:25, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

I don’t have any better ideas either, and I also think it’s important to be consistent. If we’re going to name one of these sections after the decade in which it occurred, we should do that for both of them. So I would suggest that we don’t change the title of the “1990s debate” section unless we can find a suitable new title for the “1970s debate” section also. --Captain Occam (talk) 19:29, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Currently two subtitles are decades, one is not. I don't see any issue with maintaining consistency here. And I don't know that it should trump more appropriate titles. Aprock (talk) 19:32, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Analysis by bloggers

This statement in the article: However, in 2007 the New York Times reported preliminary results suggesting that some genes which influence IQ may be distributed unequally between races. Refers this NYT article . However this NYT article refers to a blog. Blogs don't qualify as reliable sources on scientific matters. I looked up some of the recent studies concerning the particular genes discussed in the blog, including

• Kircher; et al. (2009). "Association of the DTNBP1 genotype with cognition and personality traits in healthy subjects". {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help); Explicit use of et al. in: |last= (help)
• Hashimoto (2009). "A genetic variation in the dysbindin gene (DTNBP1) is associated with memory performance in healthy controls". {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)

According to the abstract of Kircher et al. "Results Significantly lower scores on the SPQ-B (p=0.0005) and the Interpersonal Deficit subscale (p=0.0005) in carriers of the A-risk allele were detected. There were no differences in any of the cognitive variables between groups". According to the abstract of Hashimoto et al. "This haplotype did not affect IQ and its sub-scores as measured by the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised in both groups."

In the genomic age, it is frequent to hear of genes for this and genes for that. As long as it is a single gene/SNP I think it can be treated with some degree of skepticism. I believe the Robert Plomin group do the most comprehensive genome scans for IQ traits, and as yet they admit to not finding any single trait that associates with IQ. Such traits may be found in the future, but currently there doesn't seem to be any reliable DNA association. Genes have been identified that depress IQ due to diseases such as schizophrenia, but no gene that affects IQ in healthy populations. Wapondaponda (talk) 18:24, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

It doesn't matter whether this issue was originally reported in a blog; the only thing that matters in a Misplaced Pages article is what source is actually being used on Misplaced Pages. Otherwise, we could never include articles that are based on interviews with eyewitnesses to important events, which aren't (on their own) reliable sources either. --Captain Occam (talk) 18:31, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

The best thing to do would be to update the information to reflect current research. If the NYT article is of historic importance, it could be included in the history or contemporary issues sections. Aprock (talk) 18:38, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Well the blog entry has been shown to be misleading, these two 2009 studies show no association of the gene with IQ, as speculated by the blogger. We should cite peer reviewed scientific publications rather than an analysis done by a blogger. There plenty of peer reviewed scientific publications on DTNBP1, why should we rely on a blog. Wapondaponda (talk) 18:57, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

We aren't relying on a blog, any more than we're relying on the testimony of an eyewitness when citing an article based on an interview with them. What we're relying on is a New York Times article which won a pulitzer. If you want to include the 2009 research about this gene in order to present another perspective about it, you're welcome to add that to the article, but we should include what was reported in the New York Times also. --Captain Occam (talk) 19:02, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes it may be the times, but each article published by the times should be assessed individually, recall that scholarly articles in general are the most reliable per Misplaced Pages:Rs#Scholarship. News sources are sub-standard to peer reviewed publications. Especially if the source is citing analysis done by a blogger. Wapondaponda (talk) 19:12, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Actually, Misplaced Pages's guidelines dictate that we should rely on secondary sources as much as possible. The New York Times is a secondary source, while new findings that are first being reported in a journal are a primary source.

Regardless, I already said that you can add this new research to the article if you want, but there's no justification for removing the NYT coverage. --Captain Occam (talk) 19:18, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Scholarly articles are in fact secondary sources, their data is the primary source. Most blogs are unreliable sources of information. This is why quoting the Times results in the dissemination of incorrect information. A software engineer who in his spare time decides to blog about the subject of race and IQ is hardly a reliable source. The race/IQ debate is a favorite of the blogs, but[REDACTED] is WP:NOTBLOG for us to entertain speculative theories promoted by bloggers. Wapondaponda (talk) 19:28, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

You still don't seem to understand the way sources work here. It isn't our job to evaluate what sources are being used for by The New York Times, and determine whether or not those sources are reliable.

You could raise the exact same objection to most news articles. When an article about an event is based on the account of a person who witnessed it, how do we know that this witness in particular is a reliable source? We don't, any more or less than we do with a blog. But what matters is that The New York Times has a good reputation for fact-checking, so when they report anything that would not have been a reliable source on its own, the fact that a reputable newspaper is reporting it makes it reliable by Misplaced Pages's standards.

This policy isn't negotiable. If it were, large portions of articles about current events would be subject to removal, because they're sourced from news articles whose original sources wouldn't be considered reliable on their own. --Captain Occam (talk) 19:38, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Looking at the specific text in the article that is mentioned it reads like weasel words to me: "... reported ... preliminary ... may be ...". It would be better to replace this report of preliminary results with a reference to the actual results. Aprock (talk) 19:47, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

The thing is, the New York Times expressed a similar amount of uncertainty about these results in their own article. If I remove those words, I'll make it sound as though the author of this article considered the results more certain than she did.

Also, as I mentioned earlier, what they're reporting wasn't a formal study. It was a widely-publicized analysis performed by a blogger, which wouldn't be a reliable source on its own, although as I mentioned earlier, the NYT article is a reliable source even if the original blog isn't. So this is a case where citing the original results isn't possible. --Captain Occam (talk) 19:58, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Here is the paragraph that I think is being referenced:

Nonscientists are already beginning to stitch together highly speculative conclusions about the historically charged subject of race and intelligence from the new biological data. Last month, a blogger in Manhattan described a recently published study that linked several snippets of DNA to high I.Q. An online genetic database used by medical researchers, he told readers, showed that two of the snippets were found more often in Europeans and Asians than in Africans.

If that's the case, then the phrasing "nonscientists" and "highly speculative" should probably be included. Aprock (talk) 20:01, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

The purpose of the "weasel words" was to communicate the speculative nature of the results. (I know this because I'm the one who added that sentence to the article.) If you'd rather remove the weasel words and replace them with the phrase "highly speculative", that's acceptable also, although you'll have to wait until an administrator un-protects the article first. --Captain Occam (talk) 20:08, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Regarding your edit to your comment: I think mentioning the fact that it was performed by a non-scientist would skew the NPOV nature of the sentence, unless we include several other details also. The analysis he performed was so simple that virtually anyone could have done it, so the fact that he wasn’t a scientist doesn’t actually make much of a difference. However, if we mention the fact that he wasn’t a scientist without mentioning what the analysis actually involved, that creates the impression that the analysis was done by someone who wouldn’t have had the ability to perform it accurately.

If we’re going to mention that he wasn’t a scientist, we need to also mention how the analysis was performed. Or alternatively, we could avoid mentioning either of these things. --Captain Occam (talk) 20:15, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, the only material we can work with is what was included in the NYT article, which I believe is only the paragraph quoted above. Any edit you can make which better represents that paragraph is welcome. Aprock (talk) 20:28, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

All right, I’ll try doing that whenever the page is unprotected.

Are you satisfied with these proposed edits, along with the ones we’ve made already? Since the page is currently protected until our editing dispute can be resolved, we’ll need to both be satisfied with the changes being suggested before it can be unprotected.

If you are, then the NPOV and unbalanced tags ought to be removed also. According to WP:TAGGING, the tags should only remain there as long as there’s a current dispute about these aspects of the article, so they shouldn’t stay there if we’ve resolved this. --Captain Occam (talk) 20:58, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Please see http://en.wikipedia.org/Talk:Race_and_intelligence#Updating_and_cleaning_up_article for my thoughts on what needs to be done to resolve the various issues with the article. Aprock (talk) 21:06, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

I stand by what I said there: I don’t think it’s a good idea to do a major overhaul of the article like this without first obtaining consensus about it. You know I’m bound to have at least some problems with your edits, and will most likely revert them; and then we’d get to the “D” part of the BRD cycle, where we would have to discuss all the edits you made during this overhaul. For a proposed change that’s this large, it’s going to save us some effort if we can look at and discuss your proposed changes before making them, rather than having to keep editing and reverting dozens of them at a time.

Considering the article is now locked, and will most likely remain locked until this dispute is resolved, creating a revised version in your userspace is probably the only way to proceed at this point anyway. Do you approve of that suggestion? --Captain Occam (talk) 21:21, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

← Note that I have shortened the length of the full-protection from 24 hours to 12 hours. I felt that perhaps 24 was perhaps a bit much for something like this. The one thing I ask is that everyone keeps a cool head and try to rationally discuss changes here between now and then. MuZemike 21:46, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

@Captain Occam. You are simply dead wrong. The NYT is not a reliable source for science. Furthermore, they are reporting on something produced by someone who is clearly not a scientist or an expert. You are wrong about our policies. They are very clear, but you are confused about them. Firstly your claim about using articles based on eyewitness accounts is a fallacious analogy. If a specific news event is being covered by a newspaper, then they will use an eyewitness account, but that's a news story, it is not science. Newspapers are not reliable sources for science, indeed we have explicit policies that say that for science we should use sources published by reputable scientific journals or by reputable scientific/academic publishing houses. Go and read our policies.

• Misplaced Pages:Reliable sources (medicine-related articles)-"The popular press is generally not a reliable source for science and medicine information in articles."
• Misplaced Pages:Reliable sources- "information about academic topics, such as physics or ancient history, scholarly sources are preferred over news stories. Newspapers tend to misrepresent results, leaving out crucial details and reporting discoveries out of context"

Misplaced Pages:Misplaced Pages Signpost/2008-06-30/Dispatches- "the most reliable sources in medicine and biology are peer-reviewed publications in scientific journals."

Frankly any claims that blogs, or that newspapers reporting about blogs about science, are reliable for scientific articles are, quite frankly erroneous. Go and think again, you have not got a leg to stand on, this informations should not be in the article, it is unreliable from at least two of Misplaced Pages's content guidelines. This information might have a place in an article about non-scientists who retrieve scientific data from the internet and try to interpret it in their own way to promote their own whacky theories. But reliable science it aint. Alun (talk) 03:41, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

1. Hunt. Book review. Intelligence (2009) pp. 1-2

• Former good article nominees
• Old requests for peer review
• All unassessed articles
• B-Class psychology articles
• Mid-importance psychology articles
• WikiProject Psychology articles
• Start-Class sociology articles
• Mid-importance sociology articles