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Revision as of 07:26, 26 May 2008 view sourceJagz (talk | contribs)6,232 edits →Expanding the section about genetic explanation: will report← Previous edit Latest revision as of 12:17, 9 January 2025 view source Lowercase sigmabot III (talk | contribs)Bots, Template editors2,302,001 editsm Archiving 1 discussion(s) to Talk:Race and intelligence/Archive 104) (bot 
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| quote3 = "In the article on 'race and intelligence', relatively equal weight is given to the two sides of the debate — hereditarian and environmentalist — though environmentalism is the mainstream perspective in psychology."
== in re ''Caste-like minorities'' ==
|author4 = Shuichi Tezuka

|title4 = Introducing Justapedia
Odd, but I happen to be in an uper-caste (according to the chart), yet I find this crap to be offensive. The presentation gives way too much weight to fringe bullshit. ]<sup>]</sup> 22:55, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
|date4 = December 11, 2023
:I agree with your comment but think you could have worded it in a more civil manner. You have previously used the word bullshit on this Talk page. --] (]) 18:06, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
|org4 = ]
::From WP:CIV - "''Wikipedians define incivility roughly as, personally-targeted''... etc." That wasn't personally targeted, so the civility policy is inapplicable. On the other hand, the point raised by Jim62sch is probably worth responding to in some way. <font color="#0000b0">]</font><sup><font color="#b00000">]</font></sup> 18:08, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
|url4 = https://quillette.com/2023/12/11/introducing-justapedia/
:::Then maybe my comment was just a truckload of dog turds. --] (]) 18:27, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
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::::I'm not American, but I'll take the Fifth on this one!--] (]) 18:33, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
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Does anyone else believe the Caste-like minorities table in the article to be offensive? --] (]) 20:41, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
|archiveurl4 = <!-- URL of an archived copy of the page, if the original URL becomes unavailable. -->
:It would make more sense to me to just summarize: the groups that the author of that book considers to be of "low caste" also tend to do worse than the "high caste" groups. The "castes" themselves need not be listed. <font color="#0000b0">]</font><sup><font color="#b00000">]</font></sup> 20:55, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
|archivedate4 = <!-- do not wikilink -->
::That's an excellent suggestion. A few key example, such as examples that are often cited, could be listed in paragraph form. --] (]) 03:14, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
|accessdate4 = December 11, 2023

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The problem with the 'Caste like Minorities" is simple: correlation is not causation. The authors argue that the higher caste has higher IQ scores. However, what if the higher IQ scores made them the dominant caste? There is no way to prove either way. This should be mentioned int he text. Am I seriously the only one who noticed this? <small>—Preceding ] comment added by ] (]) 23:12, 14 May 2008 (UTC)</small><!-- Template:UnsignedIP --> <!--Autosigned by SineBot-->
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== Rolling back Legalleft's edits ==
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I rolled back Legalleft's edits, as I felt these were adding undue weight to the genetic hypothesis, and started again quoting Rushton and Jensen pretty much everywhere, and I believe there is consensus against that. I woul invite Legalleft to reintroduce his edits one by one so they can be properly discussed on the talk page as necessary.--] (]) 12:34, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
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Here are some of my specific concerns:
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*Not sure why Encarta cannot be cited, as it is a ]
|archive = Talk:Race and intelligence/Archive %(counter)d
*Personnally, no major objection to the Singer quote.
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*The section on tests comes across as trying to attack environmental effects and defend genetic effects. Also, the test for X effect section seems a bit superfluous.
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*The section on chronometric measures goes into too much detail and seems too speculative.
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In a nutshell, these are the problems I see with these edits.--] (]) 13:04, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
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By point:

* Citing the primary authors words, in this case, the words which sparked the entire debate seems like an improvement. Also, citing another encyclopedia just isn't good form; especially in this case where hundreds of other scholarly citations are possible to get the point across. Either editor-written prose should be used or a direct quote -- no need to quote another copyrighted encyclopedia. Given that it is often argued that Jensen's position was misunderstood, a direct quote seem preferable in this case.* Great, I think it adds much needed context.
* Those are the arguments made which are offered to support the genetic hypothesis. If you understand the argument, Jensen et al argue for a genetic contribution by showing the insufficiency of environmental factors. You'll find I made extensive use of antagonistic sources as citations -- this is how Flynn, Jencks & Phillips, Loehlin (writing in Sternberg's book), and others describe the arguments.
* The chronometric measures are considered by several third parties to be the most important evidence because they come from outside psychometrics. They have been debated since the early nineties. The reason why Jensen is cited so much is that he's done so much of the research -- Jensen (1993) for the first chronometric paper, iirc.

In general:

You should restore my edits and work to improve them. Jensen's 1969 argument rests on two pillars -- a theoretical one based on heritability and an empirical one looking at putative environmental effects. I choose the most representative and highly cited examples of these empirical tests by looking at how Jensen's academic adversaries describe them. A topic is given undue weight when it receives more prominence than it deserves. I think its best to leave it up to experts, like the ones I cited, as to what's the proper weight to give these results. The metrics you used -- tends to support the genetic hypothesis and mentions Jensen -- makes no sense as a criteria for judging individual facts. Of course some facts support the genetic hypothesis, that's why there's a debate at all. Citing Jensen is just good form because he's the most prominent person with the view and has written several reviews covering all of this.

Put some elbow grease in and improve the text as I've tried to do. We're getting closer to the point where an average reader might be able to understand this article. --] (]) 16:49, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Factor x:

Do you mean that it isn't explained well? If you think the common-factor / factor-X debate isn't important, then we have far bigger issues because that entire section is built around explaining that distinction, and how realizing it changes the expectation of what the environmental causes should look like. It essentially explains why the Flynn effect is such a big deal. --] (]) 16:56, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

:Jensen has no argument based on heritability. He is not a trained geneticist which may explain why he uses the word in a way that could not even be called a fringe theory among geneticists - he simply uses the word to mean something it does not mean in genetics. It would be like my calling my girlfriend "borderline" because she is ''almost'' a communist but not quite there. Sure, i can use the word however I want, but this way I am using it simply has nothing to do with psychiatry. Similarly, Jensen can use the word "heritability" anyway he wants, but the way he uses it has nothing to do with genetics. I have never seen a geneticist say otherwise. ] | ] 17:42, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

:::SLR -- ''Jensen has no argument based on heritability.'' -- Your claim is mistaken at two levels. I suppose I should have addressed this in the section above rather than delaying. First level - this isn't molecular genetics. It's behavioral/quantitative genetics. The truth is actually the opposite of your claim -- a molecular geneticist has no expertise in heritability estimation. Behavioral/quantitative genetics was actually invented in part to study IQ. Jensen not only is an expert in behavioral/quantitative genetics but he was developed some of the mathematical methods used, and has published extensive on it. Many psychometricans are also behavioral/quantitative geneticists -- Wendy Johnson comes to mind. Second -- Jensen very much does base his argument on heritability. Massive amounts of text have been dedicated to examining this argument in the scholarly literature. The argument has, IMO, now been described very clearly in the article. Whether his argument is correct or not is a matter of POVs, which we should be able to manage. --] (]) 21:05, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

::I'm also very concerned that the expanded section on hypothesis testing violates ] and ], at least, as it presents the genetic hypothesis on equal footing with the environmental hypothesis; actually, it even goes so far as advocating the genetic hypothesis. The previous round of RfCs, I believe made it clear that the consensus was that the genetic hypothesis was the position of a very small minority, even a fringe position. Slrubenstein also has a point that the hypothesis is championed by psychologists who, if they may be experts on intelligence are in no way experts on race or on genetics. Lastly as an accessory point, the Minnesota Transracial Adoption Study is purported twice to support the genetic hypothesis. This is purely Ruston et al.'s reinterpretation, as the original authors originally said (and repeated in the follow-up to nthe study) that the results supported the environmental hypothesis rather than the genetic hypothesis.--] (]) 18:06, 5 May 2008 (UTC)


:::Ramdrake, let's take this step by step. I think your points are logically valid but happen to be factually incorrect. Let me outline just a few. (1) SLR is wrong for the reasons I gave above. (2) Uninformed editors opinions about how common a scientific view is are essentially meaningless for us. If we simply wrote things by majority vote of editors, then Stephen Colbert's jokes about wikipedia would be true. The notion that the topic isn't worth discussing is itself a disputed POV (e.g. Turkheimer versus Flynn), and should be described as such in the article. Nick and I both seem to agree that you can't make sense of this topic if you simply leave out the genetic hypothesis. And Nick specifically disagrees with SLR on this point. Taking the position that material in the article should only support on POV is clearly an ] problem. -- To spell that out more clearly. Consider that 52 professors signed a statement that the genetic factors might contribute to BW IQ differences and not long after a panel of 11 experts said there wasn't much evidence for that view. Who's side do you take? NPOV says we skirt the issue by describing the range of views. (3) Rushton and Jensen actually played no role in the MTRAS debate except to comment on it after the fact in their 2005 review. You'll notice that I included a description of the various interpretations of the data. You're free to refactor and rewrite as you choose, but MTRAS is a big deal for this topic. --] (]) 21:05, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

::Also regarding Factor X - what it is and what it stands for isn't explained anywhere in the article, so a section on factor X actually is detrimental to the legibility of the article by non-experts. This article was going in the right direction yesterday by shortening or identifying some of the overlong sections, but this latest round of edits adds back cumbersomeness in the article; worse it reads as positively advocating the genetic hypothesis, a direct violation of ] for the reasons mentioned in the preceding paragraph.--] (]) 18:14, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

:::Read this section: . Please feel free to reorganize the sections for readability, but the common-factor / factor-X distinction is the key theoretical notion that launched Jensen and Flynn's debate, the Flynn effect, etc. --] (]) 21:05, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Legalleft, I do not see where I ever wrote "molecular genetics." I just wrote "genetics." And I was never refering to molecular genetics. If we limit ourselves to population genetics and its mathematical modles everything I say holds. jenson misuses "heritability" like many people misuse the words depression and split personality. The word exists and it has a clear meaning in genetics. jenson was not trained in this field and gets the term wrong. He is not expert on genetics or heritaiblity and his claims about them are as pseudosciency as claims that a professor of comparative literature may make about personality disorders. just because you have a PhD. in one field does not mean you are an expert in another field. ] | ] 21:35, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

:You're just wrong. If you don't trust my word, consult ] (Philosophy of Science, Vol. 67, No. 4 (2000), pp. 580-602). Holding and describing that POV is fine, but enforcing it as a matter of policy is not. --] (]) 21:59, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
:More specifically, "In 1970 Jensen was a founding member of the Behavior Genetics Association. He has served as a consulting editor to both Intelligence and Behavior Genetics..." - from Miele's biography of Jensen. --] (]) 22:06, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
No, I m right. Sesardic is a philosopher, not a geneticist. I know of no evidence that his views are given any weight by geneticists. I think heis another example of someone with a PhD in a field other than genetics who wishes to pass judgement on genetics. in fact, his argument is as confused as Jensen's: according to him, Jenson suggests two kinds of heritability, that which explains WGD and that which explains BGD; moreover, the evidence for the BGD heritability is WGD heritability ''plus'' "other empirical factors." The problemn is there are not two different kinds of heritability, only one. If anything, Sesardic supports my claim, which is that heritability does not apply to BGD. Sesardic goes to pains to point out that Jenson supports his claims that genetics explains BGD because of "other empirical evidence." Heritability thus has nohing to do with it, it is simply not germaine, the question is, what is this "other empirical evidence" and Jensen has never convinced any geneticist that his evidence demonstrates that BGD are explained by genetics.

All the Sesardic (apparently a friend or colleague of Jensen's) really proves is my point that people without phDs in genetics should tread caefully when making claims about genetics. Funny, if a comparative literature professor makes claims about the power of Freud for explaining human behavior, psychologists react that people in literature do not understand pscyhology. Yet psychologists (and in this case a philosopher) seem to have no qualms about making bald claims about fields in which they have no training. that is pretty crappy science! ] | ] 23:36, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

As for the Behavioral Genetics Society, I wonder what standing it has among geneticists? The editorial board of the journal is almost all psychologists. I mean, really, if they wanted to be geneticists, why didn't they go to grad school and get phDs in genetics? Or, if they believe in interdisciplinary research, why don't they team up with geneticists, leave the psychometrics to the psychologists and the genetics to the geneticists? Isn't that how interdisciplinary research is supposed to work? I find it rather funny, a bunch of people who claim to be doing research in genetics while disregarding the views of people with PhDs in genetics.

But maybe it is time to go to the article on ] and start quoting Leo Bersani and Jonathan Culler on the centrality of Freud! ] | ] 23:44, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

:Another point, I could found a society called "The Union of Responsible Psychologists", and get every academic who agrees with me to join, but that wouldn't make me an expert in psychology. What is the standing of the "Behavioural Genetics Society" amongst geneticists? I not there is only a single result for a google search for "Behavioural Genetics Society". Setting up one's own society to promote one's own work and point of view does not make that society relevant to the wider academic community. A search for Behavioural Genetics Society produces 257,000 results. ] (]) 06:49, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

:On the other hand we do have the , which does seem to be a proper professional body. There's also the site, which does not mention the "Behavioural Genetics Society" at all. ] (]) 07:06, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

::Please read what I wrote, not what SLR misreported. -- ''"In 1970 Jensen was a founding member of the '''Behavior Genetics Association'''. He has served as a consulting editor to both Intelligence and Behavior Genetics..." - from Miele's biography of Jensen. --] (]) 22:06, 5 May 2008 (UTC)'' --] (]) 07:33, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
:::*Here is the article link of ], whose journal is ''Behavior Genetics''. Here is the article link of ]. --] (]) 00:50, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

:Slrubenstein, do you feel that your background in anthropology makes you an expert on the subject matter of this article and Jensen's qualifications? --] (]) 01:17, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
::What does your background make you? How does being a cub scout (or whatever you are) make you an expert in genetics or psychology? Thought I'd ask as you have several times complained about other's qualifications, while at the same time apparently having zero academic qualifications (relevant or otherwise) whatsoever. ] (]) 06:49, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
:::Right, I was in the Scouts years ago but that is changing the subject. Do you feel that Slrubenstein's background in anthropology makes him an expert on the subject matter of this article and Jensen's qualifications? --] (]) 10:07, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
::::It's not changing the subject, you actually seem to know something about being a boy scout, but you appear to know nothing about psychology or genetics. What is your expertise in the fields of genetics or psychology? Why should we accept anything you have claimed here? If you want others to justify themselves then why can't you justify yourself? ] (]) 10:26, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Jagz seems to completely miss my point, or distort it - typical of his trollish behavior. I never claim to speak with expertise ''as'' a geneticist. All I have been arguing is that psychologists cannot speak with authority about genetics either. My only argument is that mainstream views about genetics come from geneticists. As to why I understand the concept of heritability better than many psychologists, the answer is that American anthropology comprises cultural anthropology, physical anthropology, archeology and linguistics. Although my own research is in cultural anthropology, as an undergraduate and graduate student I needed to take courses in physical anthropology. These covered the Darwin, Mendel, and the modern synthesis/evolutionary theory; primate behavior (including ethology and behavioral ecology); population genetics; paleoanthropology (human evolution based on the fossil record). The first two years that I taught anthropology to undergraduates, I taught four-field introductory anthropology. This means that in addition to teaching cultural anthropology at a graduate and undergraduate level, at a first year undergraduate level I had to teach the theory of evolution; the location of human beings in the phylogenetic taxonomy (including the differences between plattyrhini and catarrhyini, the differences between cercopithecidea and hominidae, and the differences between genus homo and other apes); human evolution; and basic population genetics (e,g, Hardy-Weinberg; clinal variation; drift; heritability). I wouldn't teach this stuff at a higher level - I can't tell the difference between jaws from H,. habilus and H. erectus and have not followed the debates concerning H. ergaster and H. rudolfensis, for example. But I understand the basic concepts and can have an intelligent conversation with my physical anthropologist colleagues, whether they specialize in primate behavior, paleoanthropology, or population genetics. And i appreciate the amount of training and research one must do in order to become a geneticist. That is why I would not make original claims about genetics, and am skeptical of original claims about genetics made by psychologists, especially when what they say contradicts (or is refuted by) actual geneticists.

I have never - '''never''' - claimed to be an expert in genetics, and I defy jagz to locate one sentence where I ever made such a claim. As with the usual ignorant and disruptive BS he spews, I am sure he will ignore this challenge. But the fact remains I have never claimed expertise in genetics. All I have argued is that claims about genetics and what constitutes mainstream genetics, fringe theories within genetics, and pseudoscience parading as genetics, should come from experts in genetics. I am curious to see how Jagz will change the topic this time, in order to continue disrupting this article and pushing his racist agenda. ] | ] 11:14, 6 May 2008 (UTC)<br />
] --] (]) 16:35, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

:I believe that properly summarized, the objections here are that the field of "race and intelligence", especially in regards to the genetic hypothesis, needs to summarize the views of experts in all three fields: anthropology (for race), psychometrics (for intelligence measurements) and genetics (specifically for the genetics hypothesis). I think it would be a logical fallacy to posit as an ''expert'' on the overall question anyone not trained in '''all three''' disciplines. Since these people would be rare (if they in fact exist), while Jensen's (for example) opinion may be valid in intelligence measurements, I don't think his ideas as to how to define "race", or on the population genetics aspect of his work. What we are lacking here is the opinion of population geneticists and anthropologists on the question. Without it, the article is hopelessly lopsided, not unlike having creationists define what phylogeny is.--] (]) 16:49, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
::I believe we need to differentiate between the genetic hypothesis itself and the belief that the genetic hypothesis is true. I think there may be some confusion here. A belief in the viability of the genetic hypothesis and the belief that it plays a role are two different things. --] (]) 21:32, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
:::A belief in something that doesn't play a role in anything is useless, no? Especially in science. A hypothesis must exist to explain something - to have a role; if it doesn't explain anything, then it serves no purpose.--] (]) 22:32, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
::::Belief as shown here: . The "researchers who believe that there is no significant genetic contribution to race differences in intelligence", however, are not necessarily rejecting the hypothesis. They believe that it is not significant or perhaps they are not convinced; this can be different than completely rejecting the hypothesis. --] (]) 22:50, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
He is trolling, again, Ramdrake - don't feed him. ] | ] 08:59, 7 May 2008 (UTC)<br />
:There is actually someone who is trolling the article, it has been going on for years, and it is not me. --] (]) 11:55, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
] does not apply to a description of the genetic hypothesis. WP:UNDUE applies to viewpoints. --] (]) 12:13, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
:The genetic hypothesis is a viewpoint, therefore ] applies. What next, ] doesn't apply to creationism???--] (]) 12:21, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
::The genetic hypothesis is a hypothesis. Here is the definition of a hypothesis from the Encarta dictionary: "'''theory needing investigation''': a tentative explanation for a phenomenon, used as a basis for further investigation", for example, "The hypothesis of the big bang is one way to explain the beginning of the universe."
::A viewpoint is defined as: "'''point of view''': a personal perspective from which somebody considers something"
::Are you contemplating adding creationism to this article? --] (]) 13:39, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

:::It is not possible to understand the "scientific method" by reading one possibly inappropriate definition from an online dictionary. Please try to find a sensible source, such as a recognized academic text. A hypothesis is not necessarily a theory. In mathematics this is not the case; it is quite unlikely that an online dictionary would explain this point. However, it would be explained in many introductory textbooks on mathematics. I would expect therefore that the correct place to look is in the relevant academic literature, if you have access to it. ] (]) 19:46, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
::Here are some additional definitions of hypothesis: . Some additional definitions of viewpoint are here: . The genetic hypothesis and a genetic viewpoint are not the same thing. --] (]) 20:20, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
:::::This discussion must necessarily use recognized scientific sources. Dictionary definitions have absolutely no relevance; playing with definitions of single words is an unscientific semantic game. Surely an encyclopedia article must reflect what scientists are actually doing (in sourced articles and learned journals). Do you in fact have access to such learned journals or texts? As an example of the use of recognized sources in writing WP articles, I edited an article on a Bach Cantata using the definitive reference book by Alfred Dürr plus a full ] score that I own (formerly freely available on the web). Isn't it important to identify a comprehensive set of proper sources before editing a WP article? In this case it involves trawling through the scientific literature as Slrubenstein has suggested many, many times. Online dictionaries are not particularly useful for writing WP articles. ] (]) 08:21, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
::::Actually I don't think there is a "genetic hypothesis" at all. I think there is an hypothesis that the observed difference in IQ between people identifying as "black" and people identifying as "non-black" in the USA is ''partially'' explained by genetic differences (indeed I think Rushton and Jensen modelled a 50% genetic and 50% environmental contribution). I also think that this hypothesis rests on a belief in the existence of actual "genes" that specifically contribute to IQ, as opposed to genes that may be ] and confer a higher intelligence by chance, for example. So the claim is not for a "genetic hypothesis", the claim is for a partially genetic explanation for the observed differences. Jagz has demonstrated again and again that he doesn't even understand the basics of this, he keeps making claims that no scientist has ever claimed, and he keeps citing ] such as newspapers. There is no such thing as a "genetic hypothesis" and to claim there is just highlights your ignorance. ] (]) 05:48, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
::"Genetic hypothesis": . "Hereditarian hypothesis": --] (]) 14:15, 8 May 2008 (UTC) --] (]) 14:15, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
:::That's OR. Besides, there is hardly anything but blogs and op-ed pieces in the first few pages of each search - oh yeah, and some Misplaced Pages references to this article, which of course don't count.--] (]) 14:40, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
::Here are some more. "Genetic hypotheis": . "Hereditarian hypothesis": --] (]) 14:59, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
:::And more. "Genetic hypothesis": . "Hereditarian hypothesis": . --] (]) 15:04, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
(unindent) Since you insist, let's just look at the last link you give in detail:
*The Race Bomb: Skin Color, Prejudice, and Intelligence - Page 152 by Paul R. Ehrlich, S. Shirley Feldman - Psychology - 1978 ... offspring of interracial marriages tell us anything about innate intelligence and race? ... there is no evidence to support the hereditarian hypothesis. .
*Race and Racism: An Introduction - Page 118 by Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban - Social Science - 2006 - 278 pages Making a "science" of human intelligence, Galton created the first tests of ...now to the hereditarian hypothesis that race, social class, and intelligence ...
*The Scientific Study of General Intelligence: Tribute to Arthur R. Jensen - Page 169 by Arthur Robert Jensen, Helmuth Nyborg - Psychology - 2003 - 669 pages These findings are consistent with the default hereditarian hypothesis. ...theories of race differences make diametrically opposite predictions. ...
*Destructive Trends In Mental Health: The Well-Intentioned Path to Harm by Rogers H. Wright, Nicholas A. Cummings - Psychology - 2005 - 346 pages What if the hereditarian hypothesis is true? ... Should we do research on race differences in intelligence? Intelligence, 16(1), 1-4. ...
*Race, Change, and Urban Society - Page 47 by Peter Orleans, William Russell Ellis - Social Science - 1971 - 640 pages ... deliberately contentious essay upholding the hereditarian hypothesis, ...analogy between intelligence and electricity, writing that intelligence, ...
*Heredity & Environment by A. H. Halsey - Psychology - 1977 - 337 pages Page 11 One can have little confidence in the sociological knowledge about race of a man who ... And we can say on the evidence that the hereditarian hypothesis is ...
*Sex and Destiny: The Politics of Human Fertility - Page 310 by Germaine Greer - Social Science - 1985 - 541 pages... up in the scale of intelligence hereditary weakness to the level of hereditary strength. ... was to prove the truth of the hereditarian hypothesis. ...
*Annual Progress in Child Psychiatry and Child Development by Stella Chess, Alexander Thomas - Psychology - 1968 - 562 pages Page 214 Eysenck deals much more adequately with the concept of race, and places the hereditarian ... to support an hereditarian hypothesis regarding IQ differences, ...
*The Black and White of Rejections for Military Service: A Study of ...by American Teachers Association, Martin David Jenkins - African Americans - 1944 - 51 pages Page 33 Nor are we unaware of the hereditarian hypothesis, advanced by Thorndike and others, ... and rejections for low "intelligence" in the several states. ...
*Journal of Intergroup Relations by National Association of Intergroup Relations Officials, National Association of Human Rights Workers - United States - 1965 Page 23 ... hereditarian analysis of group differences in measured intelligence, ... for controversy that has made Jensen's hereditarian hypothesis one of the most ...
*Federal Aid for Education: Hearings Before the Committee on Education and ... - Page 347 by United States Congress. Senate. Committee on Education and Labor, Committee on Education and Labor, United States Office of Education, United States, Senate, Congress - Education and state - 1945 Nor are we unaware of the hereditarian hypothesis, advanced by Thorndike and ...opportunities and rejections for low intelligence in the several States. ...
*IQ: A Smart History of a Failed Idea by Stephen Murdoch - Psychology - 2007 - 288 pages
That's all. Dates 1978, 2003, 2006, 2003, 2005, 1971, 1977, 1985, 1968, 1944, 1965, 1945, 2007. Germaine Greer? ], you really must try harder. Please try to find convincing sources using an academic database. ] (]) 18:54, 8 May 2008 (UTC)<br />
] --] (]) 19:02, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
:What exactly is that supposed to mean? Is this an admission that you are quite unable to support your arguments and that they are in fact false? If that is the case, we can revert any edits you make on this topic. ] (]) 19:10, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
::Mathsci, I believe he's resorted to calling a ] anyone who disagrees with him. On the downside, it's very uncivil and a definite personal attack under the circumstances. On the upside (for him), it saves him from having to take a good, hard look at his actions. Actually, I believe ] applies to him.
(I quote - from the "Big, Giant Dick section")
#BGD: Start calling people "NAZIS!!!" (In this case, "trolls")
#BGD: Reverting 100 times a day against your opponents in an edit war.
#BGD: Begin sourcing extensively, using reliable fonts of knowledge such as Misplaced Pages Review, Vanguard News Network, and Uncyclopedia as references. (Or in this case, Google)
#Starting a single-purpose account to push your particular point-of-view, while carefully adhering to all Misplaced Pages policies and making a few token edits to other article to muddy the issue.
#Engage in highly offensive vandalism (...) and make sure to blank the warnings on your Talk page so that your pattern of vandalism goes unnoticed for months. (In this case, warning for incivility and revert warring).--] (]) 19:28, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
::: --] (]) 15:24, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
::::Nice, I'll assume this is a picture of you?--] (]) 17:11, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
:::::Nope. --] (]) 18:03, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

== Biomedicine ==

Could ] please explain his unsourced sentence on biomedicine and why he twice attempted to add the same citation from an opinion piece in the Guardian making no mention of biomedicine? In this case it looked as if he was just reporting unsourced hearsay. Surely WP is concerned with reporting the current state of recorded human knowledge, with carefully sourced references, not the privately held beliefs of individual editors? Biomedicine seems to be completely unrelated to the current article. What is going on here? ] (]) 08:41, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
:The sentence and its reference came from an earlier version of the article. I added the sentence back once after fixing the reference link. The second time I added two additional references, one of which used the term biomedicine and the other was referenced in the original reference. --] (]) 18:12, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
Mathsci, he is just a troll - just revert his silly or policy non-compliant edits. ]. ] | ] 10:31, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
:I'd rather be a troll than an asshole. --] (]) 12:25, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
::<s>''Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.'' (Matt. 5:3)--] (]) 13:12, 8 May 2008 (UTC)</s>
:::Instead of using ], could ] please answer my questions? ] (])
::::Mathsci, as a courtesy to the rest of us, could you provide a difflink instead of the pronoun ''this''? It would save us all trying to read between the lines.] (]) 20:43, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
::::: I'm sorry if you found it difficult accessing the history of the main page. Here is ]'s original edit . It was subsequently removed on 3 occasions firstly by ], then by me and most recently by ]. ] (]) 23:02, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

== Article essentially complete ==

The article now is essentially complete with some sections needing cleanup. I think this is as good as the article is going to get under the current circumstances. --] (]) 13:28, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
:You're entitled to your opinion, of course. For the record, I strongly disagree.--] (]) 13:30, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
::Then good luck to you in making it better.--] (]) 14:27, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
] The article is unbalanced. This will continue to be the case while it contains the suggestion that, because certain scientifically unsupported views have been pushed in the popular arena, they are valid alternatives to scientific scholarship. There seem to have been continual attempts to make it look as if this fringe point of view has been accepted by the establishment, contrary to what can be gleaned from mainstream academic literature. I also do not understand why ] has started treating this talk page as a blog. Please could he stop this? He does not ] the article. While practically every change he makes is being reverted, it does not seem reasonable to say that the process of editing is complete. Of course the article could be ] again if his edit warring continues ... and then we could all pretend that editing had finished. ] (]) 00:36, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
:::Today for example an anonymous IP tried to remove an important phrase stating that the debate is in the popular arena and not among mainstream scientists. Again this seems to be an attempt to give the misleading impression that a certain point of view is taken seriously by the academic establishment. The public statement by the ] was not an opinion piece in a daily newspaper and was correctly cited. (BTW ] illustration is from ], not ] :) ) ] (]) 07:31, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
::::::The phrase needs more citations than just one from the American Anthropological Association. It claims scholarly circles, that is plural. --] (]) 12:37, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
:::::::And an association with over 10,000 scholarly members isn't plural enough?--] (]) 12:44, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
::::::::A circle (singular) is a group of people who share a common interest, profession, activity, or social background. --] (]) 13:49, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
:::::::::I reworded the sentence to take into account your objection.--] (]) 14:21, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

In addition, as another indication that the article might not be complete, this report on ] and the evolution of the human brain together with one of its responses might be relevant. It has been discussed in a fairly balanced way in ].
Two of the scientists involved in the papers, ] and ], have WP profiles. This subject matter appears to be within the topic of Race and Intelligence, although the findings so far seem inconclusive. ] (]) 10:11, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

:Jagz you're contradicting yourself. In one sentence you claim it's "complete", and in the very next you're saying it's "as good as it'll get under the current circumstances". These are mutually exclusive statements. It can only ever be "complete" when it is as good as it is ever going to get under any circumstances. ] (]) 10:33, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
::I said "essentially" complete. Maybe it has a different meaning in UK. --] (]) 12:28, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
]
:::], please try to express yourself more clearly. "Essentially" means the same either side of the Atlantic. You think it is complete, but have not said why. It seems to be a personal opinion not so far shared by anybody else. I don't think you can set the rhythm for editing in this article nor can you preclude the addition of new material, because of the very nature of WP. What exactly did you mean? ] (]) 16:04, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
::::] is about to disappear from these pages ...] ] (]) 16:15, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
::::::Mathsci, stop being a Slrubenstein. --] (]) 17:44, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Mathsci, ]. ] | ] 17:48, 13 May 2008 (UTC)<br />
:Quit being yourself. --] (]) 17:56, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
::Jagz, please stop ]. This doesn't work anymore.--] (]) 18:04, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

== Are Blacks More Intelligent? ==

http://www.africaresource.com/content/view/528/236/

http://www.africaresource.com/content/view/528/236/

http://www.africaresource.com/content/view/528/236/ <small>—Preceding ] comment added by ] (]) 23:55, 13 May 2008 (UTC)</small><!-- Template:UnsignedIP --> <!--Autosigned by SineBot-->

:Interesting but the article is not really comparing races, it is comparing immigrants and non-immigrants. The two sampls are chosen because of geographic reasons. ] | ] 08:36, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

::there's no way that site could be used as a source, it's pretty blatantly biased. not to mention they claim the Egyptians were black. If this website counts as a source we'd better start citing niggermania.com ] (]) 05:54, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

:::It's about as unbiased as any other source claiming "racial" differences in "intelligence". All of these claims about so called "races" are made by people with a biased racist view of the world, indeed they can only be made by people who have zero understanding about human genetics, i.e. stupid racist bigots who's gibberish should be treated with the contempt it deserves. This is no worse than Jensen's racist gibberings. ] (]) 09:59, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

::::Actually, it's worth noting that James Watson, who received a nobel prize for assembling the "double helix" structure of DNA in the 60's said this about race: "He says that he is 'inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa' because 'all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours-–whereas all the testing says not really,' and I know that this 'hot potato' is going to be difficult to address. His hope is that everyone is equal, but he counters that 'people who have to deal with black employees find this not true.' He says that you should not discriminate on the basis of colour, because 'there are many people of colour who are very talented, but don't promote them when they haven't succeeded at the lower level.' He writes that 'there is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so."

::::I would say he has a pretty good understanding of human genetics. ] (]) 23:15, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

== Caste table ==

This can be handled with a footnote below the table instead of a change to the table, which was taken from a book. --] (]) 14:34, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

== Expanding the section about genetic explanation ==

Hello, I added the following information:

Culture-only explanations such as stereotype threat, caste-like minorities and race stigma do not explain the low IQ of Africans south of the Sahara, where Blacks are in the majority. The Inuit, who live above the Arctic Circle and have higher average IQs than do either American or Jamaican Blacks even though their socioeconomic conditions are extremely poor.

Black children born to wealthy Black parents with high IQs have test scores 2 to 4 points lower than do White children born to low IQ, poor White parents. According to Jensen this is an anomaly for the culture-only theory but is explained by genetic theory through regression to the mean. Regression toward the mean is seen, on average, when individuals with high IQ scores mate and their children show lower scores than their parents. The children of Black parents of IQ 115 will regress toward the Black IQ average of 85, whereas children of White parents of IQ 115 will regress toward the White IQ average of 100. Black children from the best areas and schools still average slightly lower than do White children with the lowest socioeconomic indicators. ] (]) 20:34, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

:This has been discussed before, in a number of archives. Your additions promote Rushton and Lynn's theories as if they were gospel, which they aren't. There has been grave doubt cast on the accuracy of much of the "IQ by nationality" type of research, mostly due to the poor sampling methods used. Also, while Rushton disputes that the ] actually backs his genetic hypothesis, the very authors of the study interpret the results as saying just the opposite. Therefore, this presents a misleading, rather one-sided view of some of the data and represents ].--] (]) 20:40, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

::I didn't add anything new about the Minnesota Transracial Adoption study or "IQ by nationality". The information is about the the impact of socioeconomic status on IQ differentials between races. The fact that the children of poor whites outperform the children of wealthy blacks is very important and should be mentioned in the article. Both genetic and culture-only explanations should be included. ] (]) 22:01, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

:::Jagz, you're not being funny by trying to be someone else.--] (]) 22:35, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
::::It's not me. I'm done with editing this article for the year as I mentioned. --] (]) 22:37, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
::::::Thank you for input Jagz, we will see you in a year.] (]) 01:06, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
:::::::What if the genetic hypothesis is mentioned in other online wiki encyclopedias? Don't fall into complacency. --] (]) 18:42, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
::::::::Thanks, but I'm quite sure we don't want to follow ]'s lead...--] (]) 19:16, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
:::::I will add the information now. ] (]) 23:40, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
::::::Sorry, but that's not how it works. Please discuss on the talk page and gain consensus there prior to reintroducing.--] (]) 00:22, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
:::::::If you think it is not accurate please provide an alternative viewpoint and an appropriate citation. I suggest as a compromise that both viewpoints should be included. ] (]) 00:55, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
::::::::It is inaccurate for the following reason: it presents IQ differences by nationality as a proven fact, when in fact it is at least highly disputed, and for the most part the methodology used to obtain these results has been discredited. Then, it presents on Rushton's viewpoint on the MTAS, totally oblivious to the fact that the very authors of the study say that this goes counter to the conclusions ''they'' reach. Lastly, by increasing the importance of the opinions of a very small minority of researchers (scientists who are fundees of the Pioneer Fund), it give undue weight to the opinion of a very small but very vocal minority.--] (]) 22:17, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
:::::::::I did not even mention the Minnesota Transracial Adoption study or "IQ differences by nationality". Because your argument is a strawman I will restore the material. ] (]) 22:53, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
::::::::::Well, the studies you are mentioning (even though you don't mention them by name) '''are''' the studies of Rushton and Lynn on IQ by nationality for the first part, and that of the Minnesota Transracial Adoption Study. If you are refering to other studies, please kindly link them here, but please do '''not''' restore against consensus, as this will be your 4th revert, and '''will''' get you blocked per ].

:::::::::::I cited "Berry, 1966" and "MacArthur, 1968" for the first part. My edit included complete citations. The source for the school performance of the children of the wealthy blacks was "Jensen, A. R.. The g factor. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1998." ] (]) 18:02, 16 May 2008 (UTC)


== Piffer (2015) ==
''Culture-only explanations such as stereotype threat, caste-like minorities and race stigma do not explain the low IQ of Africans south of the Sahara, where Blacks are in the majority.'' -Please note that this is taken directly from Rushton, one of the main researchers to claim that IQ varies racially and by nationality worldwide.
Piffer (2015) found differing frequencies of cognition and IQ-enhancing genes in different racial populations:


https://gwern.net/doc/iq/2015-piffer.pdf
''Black children born to wealthy Black parents with high IQs have test scores 2 to 4 points lower than do White children born to low IQ, poor White parents. According to Jensen this is an anomaly for the culture-only theory but is explained by genetic theory through regression to the mean. Regression toward the mean is seen, on average, when individuals with high IQ scores mate and their children show lower scores than their parents. The children of Black parents of IQ 115 will regress toward the Black IQ average of 85, whereas children of White parents of IQ 115 will regress toward the White IQ average of 100. Black children from the best areas and schools still average slightly lower than do White children with the lowest socioeconomic indicators.'' The basis for this claim is Rushton's reinterpretation of the MTAS.--] (]) 23:03, 15 May 2008 (UTC)


] (]) 23:39, 13 May 2024 (UTC)
:You make silly claims which have no basis in fact. I won't even address them because they are just your misinformed personal opinions which are not supported by any reliable sources. If you provide a peer-reviewed article disputing the information we may include another viewpoint. Please don't delete sourced information as per ]. ] (]) 23:38, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
::Sorry, but it is your sources which are challenged. The onus is on the editor wishing for inclusion to get consensus for his edits. Therefore, you ''must'' address these objections to the satisfaction of other editors. Your sources are mostly Rushton's work, which has been discussed at length and deemed ] therefore '''not''' a reliable source. Also, an you please quote the exact excerpt from ] which you allege allows you to make ] edits against consensus?--] (]) 00:06, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
:::The source is a peer-reviewed paper published in the journal ''Psychology, Public Policy, and Law'' which qualifies as a reliable source as per ].
:::: ] states:
::::Whatever you do, endeavour to preserve information. Instead of removing, try to:
*rephrase
*correct the inaccuracy while keeping the content
*move text within an article or to another article (existing or new)
*add more of what you think is important to make an article more balanced
*request a citation by adding the {{tl|fact}} tag


Please don't delete sourced information in the future. ] (]) 00:29, 16 May 2008 (UTC) :See ] for some well-sourced commentary on the merits of that particular publication. ] (]) 23:53, 13 May 2024 (UTC)
::The criticism appears to be sourced to a journalistic piece in a progressive political magazine and another in a pop-sci magazine. 'Well-sourced commentary' such as this doesn't weigh heavily when it comes to a highly-regarded, peer-reviewed scientific journal. ] (]) 01:42, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
:Ramdrake is the current self-appointed article sentinel, backed by the like-minded Slrubenstein. The only time I was able to make good progress with the article was when Ramdrake was out of action with health issues. Suggest you go to ] if you feel strongly about your edit. --] (]) 00:44, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
::Slrubenstein serves as the article's ad hoc chief of propaganda. Anyone who does not come around to his way of thinking is a troll and/or a racist. --] (]) 12:18, 16 May 2008 (UTC) :::'Highly regarded' went out the window when they had white supremacists on the editorial board. ] (]) 01:51, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
::::Even the two critical sources stated describe it as 'one of the most respected in its field' and 'a more respected psychology journal'.
:::Are you done yet with the repeated personal attacks? You've already been warned '''multiple times''' against making them.--] (]) 12:22, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
::::If any experts in the field of intelligence research have made a case against the journal's reputation, then its reliability could be questioned. As it is we have mixed criticism from two journalists of a well regarded peer-reviewed publication. ] (]) 02:11, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
wow, that year went by fast!! ] | ] 09:25, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
:::::Nah. We can discard a source without needing to meet your personal standard, which doesn't have any relation to Misplaced Pages's policies so far as I can tell. It is worth mentioning, though, that the ] (noted experts on racism) that spends multiple paragraphs on this specific paper and how it shouldn't be used as a source. A sample quote: {{Tq|Piffer’s credentials, affiliations and the scientific merit of the paper itself are suspect}} - ] (]) 02:54, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
::He does not have any authority to censor the article. The section about the genetic hypothesis is currently not good. It is too short and uninformative. Would you agree that the information I added belongs to the article? ] (]) 02:05, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
::::::Based on which Wiki policy are you discarding it as a source? It's used several times in articles related to intelligence research.
*''''Black children born to wealthy Black parents with high IQs have test scores 2 to 4 points lower than do White children born to low IQ, poor White parents. According to Jensen this is an anomaly for the culture-only theory but is explained by genetic theory through regression to the mean.''
::::::Not than an advocacy organization's opinion really is of note when it comes to population genetics, I do note that these several SPLC paragraphs go into no more detail than to state that scientific merit of the paper itself are suspect (no reasons for this assessment or counterarguments given, at all), to question the author's credibility and to state that there are no reliable sources to dispute it. Which adds up to nothing in particular from an organisation with absolutely no standing in scientific matters. ] (]) 03:38, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
:How does this make sense? from a genetic point of view the children of intelligent parents should be intelligent because they have inherited their intelligence genes. Any trait under genetic control will obviously be inherited by their children. Or to put it another way, the children of blue eyed people do not have brown eyes due to a "regression to the mean", they have blue eyes because they inherit them from their parents, their parents do not possess the genes for brown eyes. If the children do not inherit this trait then the obvious conclusion is that the trait is under environmental control. To claim that the observation that children of intelligent people are stupid supports a "genetic model" for intelligence is plain daft. It's basically claiming that these children are inheriting genes their parents do not possess. Indeed under this model we should expect the children of intelligent "white" people to regress to the "white" mean as well, which rather contradicts eugenics because we would never be able to stop this regression to the mean however many times intelligent people reproduced with other intelligent people. If intelligent people only procreate with other intelligent people, and intelligence is mainly due to genetics, then the children of intelligent people will always be intelligent. To claim that "genetic theory" explains the opposite effect is to show a complete lack of any biological nous whatsoever. If intelligent people have stupid children then this supports an environmental cause and not a genetic one. These wingnuts don't even seem to have a fundamental understanding of what genetics is. They seem to be implying here that genes are not transmitted from parent to offspring. It's frankly hilarious. Either Jensen is talking from his posterior orifice, or someone here is citing work they simply do not understand. I suspect the latter. ] (]) 13:04, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
:::::::If this Piffer article is used several times, please point those usages out specifically because those definitely need to be removed. ] (]) 04:10, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
::::::::As per my original comment and your response to it, I'm referring to the journal ''Intelligence''. Which seems to have somehow achieved the status of a 'pick-and-choose' source.
::::::::The argument against mention of the Piffer paper, whether it's flawed research or not, requires something more than commentary from a civil rights organisation. ] (]) 04:30, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
:::::::::Contrary to what you might imagine, we rely on editor judgement for evaluating source reliability all the time, and Piffer is definitely a fringe source per our guideline. This would be ascertainable even without explicit debunking in a scholarly source. Some pseudo-scholars are too insignificant to draw that kind of attention. That said, that explains in no uncertain terms what is so profoundly unscientific about Piffer's methodology. No matter how you squirm, you will get nowhere with this line of argumentation. ] (]) 06:38, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
::::::::::A preprint is not a fine peer-reviewed anything.
::::::::::Our guideline places Piffer as a fringe source based on his conclusions, or is it his associations?
::::::::::I'm aware that a past RFC prematurely declared the suggestion that genetics plays a role in population group IQ differences to be 'fringe' rather than merely minority. As RFCs aren't binding and consensus can change at any time, hopefully this will be rectified at some point. Though a consensus against it is emerging, the idea hasn't been conclusively refuted and research is ongoing. ] (]) 08:10, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
::::::::::The author of that paper is Kevin Bird. Kevin Bird also said: "The past isn't an indication of how the future behaves...I do science because I find it intellectually engaging, to be completely honest...I do it with not as much interest in attaining or discovering truth." He then said that he is "not interested in discovering truth". It is completely impossible to take a person like that seriously. And that paper's not peer reviewed. ] (]) 05:38, 29 July 2024 (UTC)
::::::::::: has now been published by '']'', the flagship journal of the ]. It is no longer a preprint. As to your gotcha quote about "truth"... ] (]) 05:57, 29 July 2024 (UTC)
::::::::::::Thanks for the updated cite. But an Indiana Jones meme? What am I supposed to take away from that? ] (]) 06:24, 29 July 2024 (UTC)
:::::::::::::That your attempt to smear Bird is thoroughly unconvincing. Also see ]. ] (]) 12:20, 29 July 2024 (UTC)
::::::The SPLC aren't experts on genetics, and they don't cite any scientific publications in their article to critique Piffer. The closest they come is citing a non-peer-reviewed book review of a book Piffer didn't write. ] (]) 05:40, 29 July 2024 (UTC)
::::::The SPLC may be experts on racism, but is there any evidence that they're experts on science? ] (]) 23:21, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
:::::::Correctly identifying racist pseudoscience is part of their expertise, yes. It's not like they're commenting on an article about astronomy. ] (]) 23:43, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
::::::::Pseudoscience is that which does not employ the scientific method. Neither the SPLC nor Bird have made such an extreme claim about the Piffer paper. Bird may have the expertise to critique the methodology employed, but anything of the sort is well beyond the SPLC's realm of expertise. ] (]) 14:42, 9 September 2024 (UTC)
:Please also read ] concerning the journal co-founded by Davide Piffer. ] (]) 23:57, 13 May 2024 (UTC)


== Notification about ] ==
::Although parents pass on a random half of their genes to their offspring, they cannot pass on the particular combinations of genes that cause their own exceptionality. This is analogous to rolling a pair of dice and having them come up two 6s or two 1s. The odds are that on the next roll, you will get some value that is not quite as high (or as low). Physical and psychological traits involving dominant and recessive genes show some regression effect. Tall people have shorter children on average and intelligent people have less intelligent children on average. http://www.scc.ms.unimelb.edu.au/whatisstatistics/faso.html ] (]) 16:38, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
:::It seems reasonable to believe that two random gifted parents would be unlikely to have a gifted child but more likely to have a gifted child than two random non-gifted parents. --] (]) 22:21, 16 May 2008 (UTC)


I posted already on ], but would like more eyes on the discussion to provide more perspectives.
--] (]) 14:06, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
:Note: What this article is discussing is a genetic hypothesis and not a genetic theory. A genetic viewpoint is not the same as the genetic hypothesis. --] (]) 15:37, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
::We heard you the first time. Doesn't change the fact that it is ] stuff.--] (]) 15:50, 16 May 2008 (UTC)


Also I tried editing the article, to give it more substance, but this is not my area of expertise. Please feel free to clean it up anyway you want. ] (]) 05:20, 31 July 2024 (UTC)
:::Material published in a peer-reviewed journal cannot be fringe by definition. ] (]) 16:38, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
::::Ramdrake, be more specific, what exactly are you saying is ]? --] (]) 17:51, 17 May 2008 (UTC)
:::::Jagz, this is about the twelfth time you're asking the same question, and you've been given an answer several times already. Therefore, I must conclude you're either repeating yourself on purpose or you're just plain unable to understand. <s>I'm just trying to figure out if you're trolling or merely dense.</s>--] (]) 19:50, 17 May 2008 (UTC)
::::::What I mean is: When you say it is "] stuff", are you referring to the genetic viewpoint or the genetic hypothesis? If you want people to know what you are talking about, try not to use the word "stuff". --] (]) 21:35, 17 May 2008 (UTC)
Here Ramdrake, I'll give you the quote directly from ]:<blockquote>
We use the term fringe theory in a very broad sense to describe ideas that depart significantly from the prevailing or mainstream view in its particular field of study. Examples include conspiracy theories, ideas which purport to be scientific theories but have not gained scientific consensus, esoteric claims about medicine, novel re-interpretations of history and so forth. Some of the theories addressed here may in a stricter sense be hypotheses, conjectures, or speculations.
</blockquote> Now please explain precisely what in this article applies to ]. Try to explain it without including personal attacks. Additionally, if you feel I have ever been given a precise answer to this then please provide the diff-link. --] (]) 00:57, 18 May 2008 (UTC)
:Ramdrake, after you have posted your explanation, here is a quiz you can take: --] (]) 14:42, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
Whomever Rubidium37 was, I'm pretty certain he wasn't JagZ and I know he wasn't me. But somebody blocked the guy. That's not very gentlemanly. How does one go about undoing that? Also, on the topic just above, he was right and Alun was wrong. It's called ], the history of which highlights the interesting way that statistics and genetics share a recent common ancestor, so to speak. --] (]) 04:39, 17 May 2008 (UTC)
::Legalleft you don't even appear to have read what I wrote, or what Rubidium37 wrote. The Regression towards the mean article states that '''Regression toward the mean refers to the fact that those with extreme scores on any measure at one point in time will, for purely statistical reasons, probably have less extreme scores the next time they are tested.'''. That is '''not''' what what Rubidium37 said. What he said was that the children of high achieving "black" people will be less intelligent than their parents. The regression towards the mean article is discussing ] performances that are not consistently repeatable by an '''individual''', over the course of a series of tests an individual will produce a mean score, but on individual tests they '''will''' produce a few significantly higher or lower scores, but on the whole they will tend towards their mean test score. This is simple probability theory, throw a die a single time and get a six, this is not evidence that the die is biased, over a series of throws the die will tend towards the mean score, this will be true whatever the ]. The same is clearly true of '''populations''', a few people in any population will clearly produce extremely high average scores, but the population will always tend towards the mean, this says nothing about the children of consistent high performers, it only tells us that the population as a whole will tend towards the mean. This is a simple concept and I find it strange that you appear to be unable to grasp it. In a population with complete ] we will expect the existence of any outlier highly intelligent people to be no more than the actions of chance. Because the population is randomly mating the descendants of the highly intelligent will tend towards the mean over several generations. But human populations ], i.e. intelligent people tend to mate with other intelligent people. If we assume that intelligence has a high genetic component (i.e. not it's variance but it's cause has a high genetic contribution), then we must conclude that because intelligent people mate with other intelligent people their children are also likely to be highly intelligent '''whatever their "race"'''. What Rubidium37 and you appear to be saying is that "black" people mate randomly, while non-"black" people mate assortatively, a spurious assertion. ] (]) 05:59, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
:::Um... no. The mid-parent v. child and the sibling correlations for blacks and whites aren't thought to be different because of differences in assortative mating (maybe assortative mating differences contribute if such differences even exist, but that's not what the researchers talking about regression are getting at). They are different foremost because the populations have different mean IQs. For any trait with a narrow-sense heritability less than 100%, there will be mid-parent -> child regression to the mean. The populations have different means and different regression equations. This finding is replicated many times, so the basic observation is not in doubt. The causal interpretation of that observation is quite interesting. I suggest reading sources and reporting what they say rather than making incorrect leaps of inference such as the one you made here. --] (]) 21:54, 25 May 2008 (UTC)
::::Can't you even spot sarcasm? That was what my comment about assortative mating was, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, given your stated racist views. The plain fact is that to claim that the children of people with a high IQ always "regress" to a "mean" IQ for the population is effectively claiming that IQ is not under genetic control. If IQ is under genetic control, and intelligent people mostly reproduce with other intelligent people, then the children of intelligent people will be above average intelligence. Thats simple genetics, if you claim that a trait is under genetic control, but that offspring can't inherit the trait from their parents, then you clearly know fuck all about genetics. You might as well claim that the children of blue eyed parents will "regress" to having brown eyes, it's just bollocks legalleft, and not even very convincing bollocks. Or to put it another way, if intelligent people are intelligent because they have more "intelligence genes", than the population average, then the children of intelligent people will '''also''' have a greater than average amount of "intelligence genes" than the population. If then we see that these children are of only average intelligence (ie have regressed to the mean), then we must ask the question "Given they are the children of intelligent people (with an above average number of intelligence genes) and therefore have an above average number of intelligence genes themselves, why are they displaying only '''average''' intelligence for the population?" The children of intelligent people will have their parents genes, including their "intelligence genes", if they are only of average intelligence then it implies that they have not inherited their intellectual abilities from their parents i.e. they are more stupid than their parents even though they share the genes of their overacheiveing parents. To claim that this observation supports a genetic hypothesis is ludicrous and could only be made by someone with no interest in science, only by someone interested in pushing racist ideology, which brings us back to your hero, the fascist Jensen. I suggest '''you''' stop talking shite about genetics, a subject '''you''' appear to know nothing at all about. I wonder how you will manage to avoid actually talking about the subject at hand this time. I can't remember you addressing a single point directly ever, it's all evasion and changing the subject. ] (]) 05:40, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
:::::Although I am no longer active, I may report uncivil posts, personal attacks, provocation, unreasonable edit warring, etc. --] (]) 07:26, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
:Rubidium37 was only reacting to the disruptiveness of another editor. --] (]) 17:55, 17 May 2008 (UTC)
::Rubidium37 was being disruptive in his own right, so that's why '''he''' got indef-blocked.--] (]) 19:51, 17 May 2008 (UTC)


== Test scores ==
By the way, didn't a particular troll say he was going away for a year? I've been busy the past few days but it looks like Mr. Toll-a-lot just cannot stay away. Please, folks, can we stop feeding it? ] | ] 17:44, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
:I'd rather be a troll than the north end of a southbound mule. --] (]) 19:20, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
::What do you mean? ] | ] 20:08, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
::: SL, I think that you've been denigrated to a step below a horse’s ass, but since you see J as a troll, then how could you be harmed by his opinion. Cease fire guys, you are both better than that. Cheers! --] (]) 20:45, 21 May 2008 (UTC)


The Test Scores section has a paragraph discussing disparities in academic achievement and math test scores in the UK, but surely those are a less reliable measurement of intelligence than general mental ability (GMA) tests, such as those discussed here?<ref>https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10.1080/1359432X.2024.2377780?needAccess=true</ref> Is there any objection to replacing this paragraph with the results from this meta-analysis of GMA tests? ] (]) 04:03, 3 August 2024 (UTC)
== This could be useful ==
:There is no reason to remove the current text or the sources used, but feel free to suggest additional text sourced to for discussion here to reach consensus. How to define ''intelligence'' and what's a less or more reliable way to measure it are controversial. Many believe that ''intelligence'' includes many disparate capacities and that there cannot be a numerical value that measures general intelligence.
:Note that the reliability of your source is very questionable, since all three authors are closely associated with either '']'' (see also ]) or '']''. ] (]) 06:39, 3 August 2024 (UTC)


{{reflist-talk}}
Found this quote by Zack Cernovsky, himself a psychologist and a university professo (so properly qualified to judge this matter), about Rushton's work:
''Rushton's pseudoscientific writings perpetuate lay public's misconceptions and promote racism...Authoritarian statements "about the reality of racial differences," based on conveniently selected trends in the data, do not qualify as a scientific contribution.''


== Anyone around who can check recent edits for Richard Lynn? ==
Maybe we could work this into the article? :)--] (]) 19:36, 21 May 2008 (UTC)
:Cernovsky's paper was published in the Journal of Black studies which does not qualify as a reputable source in the field of psychology. ] (]) 07:23, 22 May 2008 (UTC)


Thanks. ] ] 13:00, 13 December 2024 (UTC)
:The Journal of Black Studies is published by Sage and comes out of Temple University which makes it very respectable and it certainly is an authoritative source on racist science. ] | ] 10:12, 22 May 2008 (UTC)
::@Khurshid85. The ] has a Misplaced Pages article, it is also an academic publication. Maybe it's not reputable for psychology, but this article is about "race and intelligence" and not about psychology. Since when were psychologists experts on "race"? The subjects covered by the journal are certainly relevant to this article. ] (]) 10:55, 22 May 2008 (UTC)


== Genome-wide association study recent changes ==
This too might be useful: taken from (Race, racism and anthropology, G. Armelagos and A. Goodman, University of Michigan Press, p.368) ''Although Rushton's work is both unscientific and racist, it is amazing that some highly respected physical anthropologists are fascianted by it''.--] (]) 12:30, 22 May 2008 (UTC)


Editors who follow this page will probably take an interest in recent edits over at ]. ] (]) 21:46, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
1. The Journal of Black Studies seems to be a reliable source to cite for Cernovsky's opinion. Whether that opinion is worth noting is a separate issue.
2. ''Since when were psychologists experts on "race"?'' Well, they are the experts on the psychological issues related to race, such as intelligence. You can imagine that individual in a number of disciplines would have expertise at that intersection. I don't know whether Cernovsky is an expert on race re: psychology/intelligence, but that would be a point worth finding out. --] (]) 23:43, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

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Section sizes
Section size for Race and intelligence (31 sections)
Section name Byte
count		 Section
total
(Top) 2,627 2,627
History of the controversy 3,119 11,838
Early IQ testing 3,763 3,763
The Pioneer Fund and The Bell Curve 4,956 4,956
Conceptual issues 25 12,777
Intelligence and IQ 3,402 3,402
Race 9,350 9,350
Group differences 2,017 11,749
Test scores 6,620 6,620
Flynn effect and the closing gap 3,112 3,112
Environmental factors 26 28,726
Health and nutrition 8,895 8,895
Education 4,630 4,630
Socioeconomic environment 3,656 3,656
Test bias 2,671 2,671
Stereotype threat and minority status 8,848 8,848
Research into possible genetic factors 4,981 27,192
Genetics of race and intelligence 4,001 4,001
Heritability within and between groups 4,588 4,588
Spearman's hypothesis 3,826 3,826
Adoption studies 4,255 4,255
Racial admixture studies 2,450 2,450
Mental chronometry 1,939 1,939
Brain size 937 937
Archaeological data 215 215
Policy relevance and ethics 2,717 2,717
See also 142 142
References 18 50,123
Notes 28 28
Citations 31 31
Bibliography 50,046 50,046
Total 147,891 147,891

? view · edit Frequently asked questions Is there really a scientific consensus that there is no evidence for a genetic link between race and intelligence? Yes, and for a number of reasons. Primarily: Isn't it true that different races have different average IQ test scores? On average and in certain contexts, yes, though these differences have fluctuated and in many cases steadily decreased over time. Crucially, the existence of such average differences today does not mean what racialists have asserted that it means (i.e. that races can be ranked according to their genetic predisposition for intelligence). Most IQ test data comes from North America and Europe, where non-White individuals represent ethnic minorities and often carry systemic burdens which are known to affect test performance. Studies which purport to compare the IQ averages of various nations are considered methodologically dubious and extremely unreliable. Further, important discoveries in the past several decades, such as the Flynn effect and the steady narrowing of the gap between low-scoring and high-scoring groups, as well as the ways in which disparities such as access to prenatal care and early childhood education affect IQ, have led to an understanding that environmental factors are sufficient to account for observed between-group differences. And isn't IQ a measure of intelligence? Not exactly. IQ tests are designed to measure intelligence, but it is widely acknowledged that they measure only a very limited range of an individual's cognitive capacity. They do not measure mental adaptability or creativity, for example. You can read more about the limitations of IQ measurements here. These caveats need to be kept in mind when extrapolating from IQ measurements to statements about intelligence. But even if we were to take IQ to be a measure of intelligence, there would still be no good reason to assert a genetic link between race and intelligence (for all the reasons stated elsewhere in this FAQ). Isn't there research showing that there are genetic differences between races? Yes and no. A geneticist could analyze a DNA sample and then in many cases make an accurate statement about that person's race, but no single gene or group of genes has ever been found that defines a person's race. Such variations make up a minute fraction of the total genome, less even than the amount of genetic material that varies from one individual to the next. It's also important to keep in mind that racial classifications are socially constructed, in the sense that how a person is classified racially depends on perceptions, racial definitions, and customs in their society and can often change when they travel to a different country or when social conventions change over time (see here for more details). So how can different races look different, without having different genes? They do have some different genes, but the genes that vary between any two given races will not necessarily vary between two other races. Race is defined phenotypically, not genotypically, which means it's defined by observable traits. When a geneticist looks at the genetic differences between two races, there are differences in the genes that regulate those traits, and that's it. So comparing Africans to Europeans will show differences in genes that regulate skin color, hair texture, nose and lip shape, and other observable traits. But the rest of the genetic code will be essentially the same. In fact, there is much less genetic material that regulates the traits used to define the races than there is that regulates traits that vary from person to person. In other words, if you compare the genomes of two individuals within the same race, the results will likely differ more from each other than a comparison of the average genomes of two races. If you've ever heard people saying that the races "are more alike than two random people" or words to that effect, this is what they were referring to. Why do people insist that race is "biologically meaningless"? Mostly because it is. As explained in the answer to the previous question, race isn't defined by genetics. Race is nothing but an arbitrary list of traits, because race is defined by observable features. The list isn't even consistent from one comparison to another. We distinguish between African and European people on the basis of skin color, but what about Middle Eastern, Asian, and Native American people? They all have more or less the same skin color. We distinguish African and Asian people from European people by the shape of some of their facial features, but what about Native American and Middle Eastern people? They have the same features as the European people, or close enough to engender confusion when skin color is not discernible. Australian Aborigines share numerous traits with African people and are frequently considered "Black" along with them, yet they are descended from an ancestral Asian population and have been a distinct cultural and ethnic group for fifty thousand years. These standards of division are arbitrary and capricious; the one drop rule shows that visible differences were not even respected at the time they were still in use. But IQ is at least somewhat heritable. Doesn't that mean that observed differences in IQ test performance between ancestral population groups must have a genetic component? This is a common misconception, sometimes termed the "hereditarian fallacy". In fact, the heritability of differences between individuals and families within a given population group tells us nothing about the heritability of differences between population groups. As geneticist and neuroscientist Kevin Mitchell explains:

We need to get away from thinking about intelligence as if it were a trait like milk yield in a herd of cattle, controlled by a small, persistent and dedicated bunch of genetic variants that can be selectively bred into animals from one generation to the next. It is quite the opposite – thousands of variants affect intelligence, they are constantly changing, and they affect other traits. It is not impossible for natural selection to produce populations with differences in intelligence, but these factors make it highly unlikely.

To end up with systematic genetic differences in intelligence between large, ancient populations, the selective forces driving those differences would need to have been enormous. What’s more, those forces would have to have acted across entire continents, with wildly different environments, and have been persistent over tens of thousands of years of tremendous cultural change. Such a scenario is not just speculative – I would argue it is inherently and deeply implausible.

The bottom line is this. While genetic variation may help to explain why one person is more intelligent than another, there are unlikely to be stable and systematic genetic differences that make one population more intelligent than the next.

What about all the psychometricians who claim there's a genetic link? The short answer is: they're not geneticists. The longer answer is that there remains a well-documented problem of scientific racism, which has infiltrated psychometry (see e.g. and ). Psychometry is a field where people who advocate scientific racism can push racist ideas without being constantly contradicted by the very work they're doing. And when their data did contradict their racist views, many prominent advocates of scientific racism simply falsified their work or came up with creative ways to explain away the problems. See such figures as Cyril Burt, J. Phillipe Rushton, Richard Lynn, and Hans Eysenck, who are best known in the scientific community today for the poor methodological quality of their work, their strong advocacy for a genetic link between race and intelligence, and in some cases getting away with blatant fraud for many years. Isn't it a conspiracy theory to claim that psychometricians do this? No. It is a well-documented fact that there is an organized group of psychometricians pushing for mainstream acceptance of racist, unscientific claims. See this, this and this, as well as our article on scientific racism for more information. Isn't this just political correctness? No, it's science. As a group of scholars including biological anthropologists Agustín Fuentes of Princeton and Jonathan M. Marks of the University of North Carolina explain: "while it is true that most researchers in the area of human genetics and human biological diversity no longer allocate significant resources and time to the race/IQ discussion, and that moral concerns may play an important role in these decisions, an equally fundamental reason why researchers do not engage with the thesis is that empirical evidence shows that the whole idea itself is unintelligible and wrong-headed". These authors compare proponents of a genetic link between race and IQ to creationists, vaccine skeptics, and climate change deniers. At the same time, researchers who choose to pursue this line of inquiry have in no way been hindered from doing so, as is made clear by this article: . It's just that all the evidence they find points to environmental rather than genetic causes for observed differences in average IQ-test performance between racial groups. What about the surveys which say that most "intelligence experts" believe in some degree of genetic linkage between race and IQ?
  • These surveys are almost invariably conducted by advocates of scientific racism, and respondents to these surveys are also almost exclusively members of groups that promote scientific racism. In short, they are not representative samples of mainstream scientific opinion.
  • These surveys tend to have very low participation rates, and often consist of fewer than 100 respondents.
  • Many of the surveys suffer from methodological flaws, such as using leading questions. This leads to an increase in responses from those who agree, and a decrease from those who disagree.
  • Generally speaking, the better the methodology of the survey, the lower agreement it shows with the claim of a genetic link between race and intelligence.
  • Even the most poorly structured surveys, conducted among members of groups that are dominated by advocates for scientific racism, show much doubt and difference of opinion among respondents.
  • The vast majority of respondents have absolutely no qualifications to speak on genetics.
Is there really no evidence at all for a genetic link between race and intelligence? No evidence for such a link has ever been presented in the scientific community. Much data has been claimed to be evidence by advocates of scientific racism, but each of these claims has been universally rejected by geneticists. Statistical arguments claiming to detect the signal of such a difference in polygenic scores have been refuted as fundamentally methodologically flawed (see e.g. ), and neither genetics nor neuroscience are anywhere near the point where a mechanistic explanation could even be meaningfully proposed (see e.g. ). This is why the question of a genetic link between race and intelligence is largely considered pseudoscience; it is assumed to exist primarily by advocates of scientific racism, and in these cases the belief is based on nothing but preconceived notions about race. What is the current state of the science on a link between intelligence and race? Please see the article itself for an outline of the scientific consensus. What is the basis for Misplaced Pages's consensus on how to treat the material? Misplaced Pages editors have considered this topic in detail and over an extended period. In short, mainstream science treats the claim that genetics explains the observable differences in IQ between races as a fringe theory, so we use our own guidelines on how to treat such material when editing our articles on the subject. Please refer to the following past discussions:

Piffer (2015)

Piffer (2015) found differing frequencies of cognition and IQ-enhancing genes in different racial populations:

https://gwern.net/doc/iq/2015-piffer.pdf

Wiki Crazyman (talk) 23:39, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

See Intelligence (journal) for some well-sourced commentary on the merits of that particular publication. AndyTheGrump (talk) 23:53, 13 May 2024 (UTC)
The criticism appears to be sourced to a journalistic piece in a progressive political magazine and another in a pop-sci magazine. 'Well-sourced commentary' such as this doesn't weigh heavily when it comes to a highly-regarded, peer-reviewed scientific journal. Elisha'o'Mine (talk) 01:42, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
'Highly regarded' went out the window when they had white supremacists on the editorial board. MrOllie (talk) 01:51, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
Even the two critical sources stated describe it as 'one of the most respected in its field' and 'a more respected psychology journal'.
If any experts in the field of intelligence research have made a case against the journal's reputation, then its reliability could be questioned. As it is we have mixed criticism from two journalists of a well regarded peer-reviewed publication. Elisha'o'Mine (talk) 02:11, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
Nah. We can discard a source without needing to meet your personal standard, which doesn't have any relation to Misplaced Pages's policies so far as I can tell. It is worth mentioning, though, that the SPLC (noted experts on racism) published an article that spends multiple paragraphs on this specific paper and how it shouldn't be used as a source. A sample quote: Piffer’s credentials, affiliations and the scientific merit of the paper itself are suspect - MrOllie (talk) 02:54, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
Based on which Wiki policy are you discarding it as a source? It's used several times in articles related to intelligence research.
Not than an advocacy organization's opinion really is of note when it comes to population genetics, I do note that these several SPLC paragraphs go into no more detail than to state that scientific merit of the paper itself are suspect (no reasons for this assessment or counterarguments given, at all), to question the author's credibility and to state that there are no reliable sources to dispute it. Which adds up to nothing in particular from an organisation with absolutely no standing in scientific matters. Elisha'o'Mine (talk) 03:38, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
If this Piffer article is used several times, please point those usages out specifically because those definitely need to be removed. MrOllie (talk) 04:10, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
As per my original comment and your response to it, I'm referring to the journal Intelligence. Which seems to have somehow achieved the status of a 'pick-and-choose' source.
The argument against mention of the Piffer paper, whether it's flawed research or not, requires something more than commentary from a civil rights organisation. Elisha'o'Mine (talk) 04:30, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
Contrary to what you might imagine, we rely on editor judgement for evaluating source reliability all the time, and Piffer is definitely a fringe source per our guideline. This would be ascertainable even without explicit debunking in a scholarly source. Some pseudo-scholars are too insignificant to draw that kind of attention. That said, here is a fine peer-reviewed source that explains in no uncertain terms what is so profoundly unscientific about Piffer's methodology. No matter how you squirm, you will get nowhere with this line of argumentation. Generalrelative (talk) 06:38, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
A preprint is not a fine peer-reviewed anything.
Our guideline places Piffer as a fringe source based on his conclusions, or is it his associations?
I'm aware that a past RFC prematurely declared the suggestion that genetics plays a role in population group IQ differences to be 'fringe' rather than merely minority. As RFCs aren't binding and consensus can change at any time, hopefully this will be rectified at some point. Though a consensus against it is emerging, the idea hasn't been conclusively refuted and research is ongoing. Elisha'o'Mine (talk) 08:10, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
The author of that paper is Kevin Bird. Kevin Bird also said: "The past isn't an indication of how the future behaves...I do science because I find it intellectually engaging, to be completely honest...I do it with not as much interest in attaining or discovering truth." He then said that he is "not interested in discovering truth". It is completely impossible to take a person like that seriously. And that paper's not peer reviewed. Hi! (talk) 05:38, 29 July 2024 (UTC)
Bird et al. has now been published by American Psychologist, the flagship journal of the American Psychological Association. It is no longer a preprint. As to your gotcha quote about "truth"... Dr. Tyree's philosophy class is right down the hall. Generalrelative (talk) 05:57, 29 July 2024 (UTC)
Thanks for the updated cite. But an Indiana Jones meme? What am I supposed to take away from that? Hi! (talk) 06:24, 29 July 2024 (UTC)
That your attempt to smear Bird is thoroughly unconvincing. Also see Misplaced Pages:Verifiability, not truth. MrOllie (talk) 12:20, 29 July 2024 (UTC)
The SPLC aren't experts on genetics, and they don't cite any scientific publications in their article to critique Piffer. The closest they come is citing a non-peer-reviewed book review of a book Piffer didn't write. Hi! (talk) 05:40, 29 July 2024 (UTC)
The SPLC may be experts on racism, but is there any evidence that they're experts on science? Wiki Crazyman (talk) 23:21, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
Correctly identifying racist pseudoscience is part of their expertise, yes. It's not like they're commenting on an article about astronomy. MrOllie (talk) 23:43, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
Pseudoscience is that which does not employ the scientific method. Neither the SPLC nor Bird have made such an extreme claim about the Piffer paper. Bird may have the expertise to critique the methodology employed, but anything of the sort is well beyond the SPLC's realm of expertise. Elisha'o'Mine (talk) 14:42, 9 September 2024 (UTC)
Please also read OpenPsych concerning the journal co-founded by Davide Piffer. NightHeron (talk) 23:57, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

Notification about Misplaced Pages:Articles_for_deletion/Ashkenazi_Jewish_intelligence_(3rd_nomination)

I posted already on WP:FTN, but would like more eyes on the discussion to provide more perspectives.

Also I tried editing the article, to give it more substance, but this is not my area of expertise. Please feel free to clean it up anyway you want. Bluethricecreamman (talk) 05:20, 31 July 2024 (UTC)

Test scores

The Test Scores section has a paragraph discussing disparities in academic achievement and math test scores in the UK, but surely those are a less reliable measurement of intelligence than general mental ability (GMA) tests, such as those discussed here? Is there any objection to replacing this paragraph with the results from this meta-analysis of GMA tests? Stonkaments (talk) 04:03, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

There is no reason to remove the current text or the sources used, but feel free to suggest additional text sourced to for discussion here to reach consensus. How to define intelligence and what's a less or more reliable way to measure it are controversial. Many believe that intelligence includes many disparate capacities and that there cannot be a numerical value that measures general intelligence.
Note that the reliability of your source is very questionable, since all three authors are closely associated with either Mankind Quarterly (see also Jan te Nijenhuis) or OpenPsych. NightHeron (talk) 06:39, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

References

  1. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10.1080/1359432X.2024.2377780?needAccess=true

Anyone around who can check recent edits for Richard Lynn?

Thanks. Doug Weller talk 13:00, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

Genome-wide association study recent changes

Editors who follow this page will probably take an interest in recent edits over at Genome-wide association study. MrOllie (talk) 21:46, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

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