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== Other Intelligence Tests? ==
}}

Besides IQ, what other forms of measuring cognitive abilities are there?

== I will be adding numerous references and bibliography entries. ==

Last year I began a major revision of a working paper project (begun in 2006, based on shorter research notes I began compiling as early as 1993) largely on this Misplaced Pages topic. As the talk page templates note, "This is a controversial topic that may be under dispute." As a courtesy to the editors who have long been here, I will note that I will begin adding the dozens of books and articles I have at hand for my non-Misplaced Pages project (a literature review for popular audiences interested in the primary source literature on IQ testing) to this Misplaced Pages article. At first I will add books and articles from various points of view to the bibliography. Then I will add more references to verify the statements that have already long stood in the article. (I hope to add specific page numbers to both the references I add and the existing references that I am able to look up here.) At some length, I expect to expand sections with additional facts, perhaps add a few subsections, and from time to time do substantive edits under the NPOV principle, as the sources report various points of view. Thanks to all of you who have already worked on this very detailed article. I am lucky to have access to a very comprehensive academic library at which I have circulating privileges, so I am delighted to add some V and NPOV to various Misplaced Pages projects. ] (]) 03:42, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
:That sounds like a great job. I'm looking forward to reading your additions. Good luck to you! :) ] ] 08:19, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
:: Here is an update on that project. <!-- ] 03:12, 8 August 2020 (UTC) --> You may find it helpful while reading or editing articles to look at a bibliography of ], posted for the use of all Wikipedians who have occasion to edit articles on human intelligence and related issues. I happen to have circulating access to a huge academic research library at a university with an active research program in these issues (and to another library that is one of the ten largest public library systems in the United States) and have been researching these issues since 1989. You are welcome to use these citations for your own research. You can help other Wikipedians by ] through comments on that page. It will be extremely helpful for articles on human intelligence to edit them according to the ], as it is important to get these issues as well verified as possible. -- ] (]) 17:22, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

::: I have begun substantive edits to this article based on sources that other Wikipedians can check in the ] list. All of you are encouraged to suggest new sources for that list, which will be useful for editing quite a few articles on Misplaced Pages. -- ] (]) 15:48, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

== I will be adding a lot of see also references to Misplaced Pages articles not already linked from this article. ==

It happens that last year I gathered a bunch of Misplaced Pages article links for my own working paper project, and now I see that not all of those are yet linked from this article. So I will be updating the See Also section of this article to add those.
] (]) 15:37, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

: Of course I ran into the issue that most of those articles need edits also. But as long as I have the ] list posted for all Wikipedians to refer to (and your suggestions of new sources for that are most welcome), it should be possible gradually to make progress in editing the various articles related to this topic. -- ] (]) 15:51, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Great article. A nit on article links and "Psychometrics". As presented in the article, Psychometrics is (despite a link to a much better description in its own article), portrayed here as only associated with the sordid history of eugenics - an unintended smear on all those good folks in the field today, I'm sure, but an unjustified association nonetheless. Perhaps a following sentence to rectify that, or just linking to its better description in its own article, would be better. <span style="font-size: smaller;" class="autosigned">—Preceding ] comment added by ] (]) 18:23, 12 October 2010 (UTC)</span><!-- Template:UnsignedIP --> <!--Autosigned by SineBot-->

: I'm a little bit unclear about what part of the article text (as I surmise) you are referring to by your comment. (That's because I didn't write much of the article text here, and I am still becoming familiar with the article as a whole and with its details.) What sources would you suggest for a good overall view of psychometrics? -- ] (]) 23:05, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

== Section edits coming up. ==

I saw an edit summary in a diff calling for more sources for the new reliability section of this article, and I expect to supply those soon (I hope as early as later today). On the basis of ] I will also be restructuring this article, at first not adding or subtracting much content but simply moving sections together or reordering sections to match the usual treatment of the subject of IQ testing in published books and review articles. As that goes on, I will try also to update sources so that they rigorously meet ]. If anything I'm doing looks weird or controversial, feel free to ask me about it here on the article talk page. And of course normal editing conditions still apply here. Other than that the article is on pending changes review, anyone can edit, and I encourage everyone else who watches the article or who surfs by to think about ways to improve and better source the article and to make it an even more valuable resource for readers than it already is. -- ] (]) 15:55, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

: I will begin some of those section edits. At first I will just be moving text around without changing anything other than drop-dead-easy copyedits. -- ] (]) 20:59, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

:: I was distracted by the ] recently, but I'll return now to doing section moves and eventually other edits on this article. As before, at first I'll just rearrange section order with matching the structure of this article to the structure of reliable secondary sources in mind. I won't be changing article text at first. Later on, I will be changing article text '''a lot'''{{emdash}}typically with notice to fellow editors here on the talk page{{emdash}}to add in ] content from sources of the ], which is important for articles like this article that have medical and forensic implications that literally can be issues of life and death. -- ] (]) 22:06, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

I agree that the current structure of the article is a mess. Can you post a draft here of what you think the structure should be like? I also think we should create a separate article named ] or something like that, so that this article could concentrate on current results and controversies.--] (]) 08:29, 24 August 2010 (UTC)
:The history section doesn't seem large enough to warrant splitting off, so I can't see the point. I think invoking life and death over intelligence quotient is rather over the top. ] (]) 10:11, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

: You haven't heard about the '']'' case? That's the court decision that literally makes IQ scores a matter of life or death, that is eligibility or not for capital punishment in the United States. It has been claimed in several articles on Misplaced Pages, including this one, that IQ has some implications for health, and that is why I agree with the suggestion of ] that it's best to apply the ] to articles on IQ. (Those rules strike the correct balance between primary and secondary sources, for one thing.)--?

:: At the very least the history section should have fewer than seven subsections.--] (]) 10:26, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

::: Yes, that's an example of my ''not'' being bold so far. That's too fragmented a presentation of the history in its current form.--?

Off the top of my head, I think the structure should be something like this:

:1. History<br>
:2. Test construction and reliability<br>
:3. General mental ability (g factor)<br>
:3. Validity and social significance<br>
:4. Environmental and genetic influences<br>
:5. Flynn effect<br>
:6. Group differences<br>
:7. Criticisms<br>
:8. In popular culture

--] (]) 10:52, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

: Thanks for the very concrete suggestions. I'll take your list of sections (by copy-and-paste) and annotate it here.

::1. History - yes, in this article history should probably be first, and I agree with your separate suggestion that the history section shouldn't be so busted up into separate subsections<br>
::2. Test construction and reliability - I'm glad you added test construction here (I just found a book-length source on that over the weekend, not yet logged into my source list)<br>
::3. Validity and social significance - I think it's customary in most of the secondary literature to mention validity immediately after reliability (and "social significance" might be treated as one aspect of validity) You are, I suppose, thinking of some of the things Linda Gottfredson has written about IQ scores and life outcomes.<br>
::4. General mental ability (g factor) - noting that there is a separate article about ], and that most current tests are based on CHC theory, maybe this could be called Factor structure of tested abilities<br>
::5. Environmental and genetic influences - with of course "heritability" being the summary term that examines the balance of each, and with malleability/mutability/changeability definitely needing mention in that section<br>
::6. Flynn effect - I'll check secondary sources, as I think you are right that this usually follows the heritability section in a typical current source<br>
::7. Group differences - I think, by the way, that this would be a good neutral title for a rewritten version of the article that just went through the ArbCom case<br>
::8. Criticisms - this would draw in information from disciplines other than the psychometric subfield of psychology for NPOV<br>
::9. In popular culture - I think this kind of section is actually disfavored by veteran Misplaced Pages editors like John Broughton, although this is certainly a topic with more than a typical amount of popular culture references, and you certainly see sections like this all over Misplaced Pages

: Thanks for the helpful suggestions. I've had to rearrange my whole office just to put the few dozen most useful sources nearest to my computer as I type. It will be good to dig into the sources together and rewrite the article. -- ] (]) 13:46, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

:: Good comments, thanks. "Factor structure of tested abilities" is a good heading. Flynn effect could also be rolled into the section on "Environmental and genetic influences". I agree that the Popular culture section is a bit superfluous, but I think high-IQ societies could perhaps be discussed there instead of in a section of their own (I think they're worth mentioning).

:: I don't think "Group differences in intelligence" is a good title for the R&I article for the reasons I discuss on the R&I talk page.--] (]) 14:46, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

@ Victor and History of...: The current history section is very choppy and doesn't seem very cohesive in being a narrative on the evolution of testing. Perhaps simply rewriting that section would be a start, if it gets too big it can be summarized and spawn a daughter article. Also, unless I'm mistaken, shouldn't "1929" be "1939"? ]<small> ►]</small> 17:30, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

: @Peters: I can probably redo the history section soon with material I have (footnoted and everything) from my working paper. @Dmcq: I'm glad to see you pondering the section levels, and the issues of what sections belong. I'll have to look at the included content of each section; I think validity would belong right after reliability (the typical order in secondary sources). -- ] (]) 22:16, 26 August 2010 (UTC)


== Addition of Negative Flynn Effect Citation ==
:: To all: I've decided the most efficient way to do the edit of the history section, which is a good bit too long, is to copy the entire section off-line and edit it there. You'll see the results soon, with fewer sections and more up-to-date references. -- ] (]) 01:06, 28 August 2010 (UTC)


Thanks to @] for asking why I think it would be beneficial to cite new Dworak study. The current page on the Intelligence quotient already has a paragraph talking about the "negative flynn effect", citing a 2016 study coauthord by Richard Lynn and a 2018 study coauthored by Bernt Bratsberg. In the current issue of the "Intelligence" journal there has been new research on the topic, including the (2023) study I cited. I think that study would be beneficial to cite since it provides interested readers of Misplaced Pages another, more recent, source on the topic.
== Group differences section now being actively edited. ==


Apologies - but I don't know what you mean by the topic being contested? The negative flynn effect definitely a phenomenon for which evidence has been recently discovered. Besides, I didn't add any new description, only another source for the already existing description confirming what the previous sources already have shown. Maybe I misunderstood what you meant? ] (]) 19:59, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
I see from watching diffs that there is editor activity now in the group differences section of this article. As the section currently notes, the issue is very controversial. As many experienced Wikipedians know, the main article linked out to from that section was recently the subject of an ], which has just been decided. I have just reverted a graphic that was just kindly inserted into that section by an editor whom I have not had the pleasure of interacting with before. I am happy to discuss my rationale for reverting the graphic here on the article talk page. As a precaution and friendly reminder to new editors here, I will post at the top of this talk page a template that links to the ArbCom case decision. Let's discuss how we can improve that section and all sections of this important article. -- ] (]) 16:33, 26 August 2010 (UTC)


:When another editor reverts your addition, that means it's been contested, see ]. The article you wanted to add from the journal ''Intelligence'' is a primary source appearing in a journal that often publishes questionable material. There are already two sources, so there's no need to add a 3rd source that's low-quality. ] (]) 20:55, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
: I see the image has been restored by the editor who submitted it at first. I think to avoid ] problems it would be necessary to mention a lot of criticism of the source from which the image comes, if the source is cited in such a brief paragraph that points to a longer article. It would be better editorial practice, based on my understanding of Misplaced Pages policy, to have no image at all there but perhaps a slightly expanded summary paragraph or two (cited to a balanced selection of current secondary literature) rather than relying on one source, and one source only, in that section. Thanks for any thoughts any of the rest of you have on this issue. -- ] (]) 19:53, 26 August 2010 (UTC)
::I see, so "contesting" refers to other editors here, thanks. It's weird then to see how one of the other two sources accepted are also from <i>Intelligence</i>, in fact, coauthored by Richard Lynn, who is <i>the</i> scientific racist. Surely that's even lower credibility. Many thanks for the clarification anyway @]! ] (]) 21:36, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
:::I agree that we should remove the Richard Lynn source. Unfortunately ''Intelligence'' does not conduct any meaningful peer review to screen out pseudoscience when race / ethnicity / nationality are concerned, so I'd be concerned about the new Dworak study for that reason. A secondary source would be better. Are you aware of any that we could use to discuss the "negative Flynn effect"? For now I'll remove the Lynn source and retain the NAS Norway study. ] (]) 21:44, 9 April 2023 (UTC)


== Induction is not a specialized ability like spelling ==
:: I see it's (IQ by race, Lynn ete al. as I recall) gone again. It's definitely misplaced in this article, plain and simple. There's no value judgement associated with that. ]<small> ►]</small> 15:18, 27 August 2010 (UTC)


It is learning from examples. There is lots of this all the time in out environment. ] ] (]) 19:05, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
Group differences is a different topic from predictive validity. Now the article gives the impression that all research on the predictive validity of IQ was about group differences, whereas most research on validity is about individual differences within populations. We should have a small section on group differences, with links to ] and ], and a separate section called "Validity" or "Validity and social significance" with subsections on the associations between IQ and health, job performance, school performance, etc.--] (]) 11:06, 31 August 2010 (UTC)
:{{ping|Ran8dom9}} Article talk pages are for ], not discussion of our personal thoughts about the topic. Do you have a specific suggestion for improving the article? Induction as a specialized ability (a subfactor of ]) has been demonstrated by ] (and a tremendous amount of subsequent research by a vast number of researchers, including ], ], and ]) using ] of massive amounts of test data. Can you cite research from peer-reviewed academic journals that clearly refute all of that research, and not just your personal opinion? ] (]) 19:26, 18 July 2023 (UTC)


== Job-performance correlation issue ==
== Race and intelligence ==


§ "Job performance" includes this paragraph: ''"Newer studies find that the effects of IQ on job performance have been greatly overestimated. The current estimates of the correlation between job performance and IQ are about 0.23 correcting for unreliability and range restriction."''
An editor has been sticking a lrge amount about race and intelligence into this article. I've pointed out there's a separate article ] but they are persisting.


I fear this presentation lacks WP:BALANCE, given that it's citing what is essentially a single paper by two researchers (the other is a minor follow-up) which has been subject to from experts in just the few months since publication, who point out that it's narrow (only including supervisor ratings as a "performance" measure) and is hardly "new" (as its range-restriction claims have been brought up and dismissed in the past). Moreover, the paper(s) referenced find diminished correlations between ''almost every other'' metric and performance (e.g., interviews; work sample tests; job-knowledge tests, etc.)
The ] article has been edited quite a lot recently. What I'm wondering is has it changed significantly so this article should be updated and how much about the subject should be here? I pointed out to the editor that the Sex section just before Race was quite small and the main stuff was also in another article. ] (]) 17:14, 5 September 2010 (UTC)


Given that there is hardly a consensus in support of the Sackett, et al. paper(s) it seems unbalanced to include them, at least in the current framing. I'm in favor of removing it entirely, since it runs contrary to consensus backed by an staggering amount of research. Alternately, we could add its narrow focus and other significant criticism, but that may just compound the WP:UNDUE issue. Frankly, I'm not sure it adds much to our article, since of course Sackett, et al. still concede that cognitive ability is one of variables most highly correlated with job performance. Thanks! ] (]) 19:26, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
: '''Good initial call.''' This article, which bears on its talk page a notice about the recent ], is surely of interest while editing several other articles that were enmeshed in that case. It's best to seek consensus on the talk page before making major changes of content in this article{{emdash}}as other editors and I have been careful to do. As we discuss, I encourage all editors to look up ] and to ] that will be helpful to other editors. P.S. probably semiprotection of the main article (after a long period when it was full-protected) has driven some I.P. editors over here to do section edits. -- ] (]) 18:51, 5 September 2010 (UTC)
::The pending changes protection has been removed from this page after the test period for it. Pity, I certainly thought it helped and I prefer it to the type of protection on Race and intelligence which stops all IP edits.
::I'd have thought that the leader of the race and itelligence article would be the maximum one wold want here so anything not in that could usually be considered as being over he top here. ] (]) 19:49, 8 September 2010 (UTC)


== Suggestion to add a source ==
::: Yes, in general if a set of Misplaced Pages articles have already established an article including subarticles structure, the whole point of the subarticle is to be the place to go on at somewhat greater length on a more specific topic. A good lede paragraph or two (which is something the editors over at the subarticle are still working on) ought to be about the right length for a similarly worded "For further information, see . . . " section over here. -- ] (]) 20:09, 8 September 2010 (UTC)


Hello,
== Turkheimer et al. ==


I would like to suggest a source that could enrich this article:
A paper by Turkheimer et al. claiming that the heritability of IQ varies by SES in small children is discussed in the article. The paper itself is cited along with some non-scholarly website. This is problematic, as we should use reliable secondary sources. Citing this study by Turkheimer et al. is also problematic because it's just one study, and other studies have failed to replicate its findings. I'm not sure if Turkheimer et al. should be discussed in this article at all, but if it is discussed, we should use secondary sources and point out that its results are contradicted by other studies and also perhaps make it clear in this context that the heritability of IQ rises with age.--] (]) 10:56, 10 September 2010 (UTC)


"''IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle''" by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (January 2019) -
: Turkheimer has written some good recent review articles (thus, secondary sources) that well belong in this article as sources. He is, of course, one of the most experienced researchers in twin studies of human behavior. I agree with the general proposition that this article, and the several related articles, could be improved by deleting statements that can only be found in primary sources (especially unreplicated primary sources). In lieu of primary sources, we should all look for the latest ] for more statements that can be backed up by those (which may be the same statements already in the article, now cited to less reliable sources). A review of the best current secondary sources will also provide guidance for the overall structure of the article. The ] had Victor, Dmcq, and I discussing a revision of the structure of this article that still seems sound to me. -- ] (]) 15:51, 10 September 2010 (UTC)


This source could be relevant to this article on Intelligence Quotient for the following reasons:
== How many templates does one article need? ==


<u>Critical perspective</u>: The article offers a critical view on the concept of IQ, which could contribute to a balanced presentation of the subject on Misplaced Pages.
A new editor has kindly added a new template to the top of this article and to several other articles linked to from the template. So far he (and I, and the one other editor who has done any editing on that template) hasn't achieved a broad consensus about what the template is for, what should be included in it, and how it can help readers of Misplaced Pages. What do you think? -- ] (]) 00:24, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
:What is wrong with having a template for the many intelligence articles? Obviously a template about intelligence articles will help reader interested in intelligence. That is why Misplaced Pages have templates for similar articles. There is no other intelligence template on this article and only one other template about "Human group differences" which is a much broader topic. A dispute regarding exactly what the template should contain is not a reason for removing it.] (]) 05:05, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
''"''']...?'''"''


<u>Renowned author</u>: Nassim Nicholas Taleb is an influential scholar, whose opinions on scientific subjects are often discussed.
The template is for human intelligence articles. It contains intelligence articles. Thanks WBB for adding an article to it, I hope others add stuff too. ] (]) 12:19, 21 October 2010 (UTC)


<u>Arguments against validity</u>: The article presents arguments questioning the validity and usefulness of Intelligence Quotient as a measure of intelligence.
== Two paths forward ==


<u>Scientific debate</u>: It illustrates the ongoing debate in the scientific community regarding the value and limitations of Intelligence Quotient.
(1) A while ago, editors Victor Chmara and Dmcq and I discussed some restructuring of this article, with some rearrangements of sections. I still think that the outline largely proposed by Victor is sound and would be a good framework for improving this article. (2) Having been reminded about Misplaced Pages ] guidelines through editor discussion on other articles, I am beginning to flag article text statements cited only to primary research studies, to remind editors to collaborate in looking for ] for article text statements in this article and elsewhere. -- ] (]) 11:32, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
:Again, primary sources are not disallowed. Explain concretely what is wrong with the specific sources you tag. Otherwise I will eventually remove the tags.] (]) 14:06, 26 October 2010 (UTC)


<u>Methodological aspects</u>: The article addresses methodological issues related to the measurement and interpretation of IQ.
:: See the ] ("Articles should rely on secondary sources whenever possible. For example, a review article, monograph, or textbook is better than a primary research paper. When relying on primary sources, extreme caution is advised: Wikipedians should never interpret the content of primary sources for themselves. See Misplaced Pages:No original research.") and the ] ("Respect secondary sources Individual primary sources should not be cited or juxtaposed so as to "debunk" or contradict the conclusions of reliable secondary sources, unless the primary source itself directly makes such a claim (see Misplaced Pages:No original synthesis that advances a position). Controversies or areas of uncertainty in medicine should be illustrated with reliable secondary sources describing the varying viewpoints. The use and presentation of primary sources should also respect Misplaced Pages's policies on undue weight; that is, primary sources favoring a minority opinion should not be aggregated or presented devoid of context in such a way as to undermine proportionate representation of expert opinion in a field.") for guidance on what sources to prefer for Misplaced Pages article text, especially for statements about human intelligence or neuroscience or other medical claims. -- ] (]) 14:13, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
:::Again, primary sources are not disallowed generally. The science articles are full of peer-reviewed articles. If you have a specific problem with a specific source, then take it up here for discussion. But mass tagging peer-reviewed articles because they are peer-reviewed articles is not acceptable. Again, explain for each specific source what is the specific problem. Otherwise I will eventually remove the tags.] (]) 14:53, 26 October 2010 (UTC)


This source seems reliable to me and could provide useful information regarding the rigor of Intelligence Quotient. ] (]) 11:57, 4 September 2024 (UTC)
:::: Miradre, you have referred on other article talk pages to what you observe in other articles. Misplaced Pages has {{numberofarticles}} articles, and most of those have no article rating at all, or are rated as stubs or start class articles. The thing to do if you would rather use inductive learning (look at examples and then develop a practice for editing) rather than deductive learning (look at Misplaced Pages policies and guidelines and then develop a practice for editing) is to look at ''recently'' featured articles. Articles that have achieved featured article status and are about related topics may indeed be good examples of how sources are used. They have passed a review process that most Misplaced Pages articles have never experienced. One article I like, ], is an illustrative example. The article cites what are plainly primary research articles, supporting your statement that those can be allowable sources on Misplaced Pages. It also cites a rather larger number of standard textbooks and review articles from professional journals than most Misplaced Pages articles, which is a condition that I think more Misplaced Pages articles ought to achieve. Any statement in article text that is cited to a reliable secondary source doesn't have any sourcing issue, so a source tag is an opportunity for an editor to find a better source. Referring to secondary sources rather than primary sources, as the Misplaced Pages guidelines I quoted above note, helps ensure that primary sources used in articles are used with ], a separate issue from sourcing that relates to the core Misplaced Pages policy on ]. Again, the reason that Misplaced Pages editors have long had an editing template available to them to mark primary sources is that reliable sourcing is important for all of the {{numberofarticles}} articles on Misplaced Pages, most of which do not have reliable sourcing yet. -- ] (]) 15:13, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
:::::As a general point I will note that literature reviews in no way guarantees neutrality or accepted scholarly consensus. For example, regarding if genetics are a partial explanation for the racial gaps in the US regarding IQ and other achievement tests, both sides have produced literature reviews with totally opposing conclusions.


:] is indeed a super influential person, but he is not a subject-matter expert on this topic. ''Medium'' is what we call a ], meaning that only stuff by subject-matter experts can be considered reliable and only in certain contexts (see ]). So unfortunately, while this is an interesting essay, it can't be used as a source for our article on IQ. That said, if a subject-matter expert were to publish a response, both Taleb's arguments and the response could then be discussed in article space. I hope that's helpful! ] (]) 15:14, 4 September 2024 (UTC)
:::::Looking at featured science articles, such as ], ], ], and the others at ], there are numerous peer-reviewed articles as sources. Neither is there any general prohibition of such sources in any policy. Yes, there may be specific problems in specific situations. But you have not given any specific explanations for why each the sources you tagged have specific problems. Please explain the specific reasons for each source tagged or I will eventually remove the tags.] (]) 15:34, 26 October 2010 (UTC)


== Summary of race relationship ==
While secondary sources are of course preferable and articles should be mainly based on them, there is no reason to dogmatically oppose all use of primary sources. ] lays out the rules for using primary sources:


''Proposed summary sentence for the paragraph on race:'' <br>
{{quote box|Primary sources that have been reliably published may be used in Misplaced Pages, but only with care, because it is easy to misuse them. Any interpretation of primary source material requires a reliable secondary source for that interpretation. A primary source may only be used on Misplaced Pages to make straightforward, descriptive statements that any educated person, with access to the source but without specialist knowledge, will be able to verify are supported by the source. For example, an article about a novel may cite passages to describe the plot, but any interpretation needs a secondary source. Do not make analytic, synthetic, interpretive, explanatory, or evaluative claims about material found in a primary source. Do not base articles entirely on primary sources. Do not add unsourced material from your personal experience, because that would make Misplaced Pages a primary source of that material.}}
The scholarly consensus finds environmental factors, not race, determines IQ scores. ] (]) 18:14, 12 October 2024 (UTC)


:I appreciate you bringing your suggestion here. The issue with this sentence is that IQ differences between individuals do indeed seem to be highly heritable, i.e. genetics plays a role in accounting for why person A scores higher than person B. Some folks have naively assumed that this fact redounds to group-level differences, but it does not. This mistake has been called the "hereditarian fallacy".
As to the structure of the article, this is what I propose, based on the earlier discussion:
:If you'd like to explore a source, see e.g. , which lists in its table of {{tq|Misconceptions regarding heritability}} the notion that {{tq|Heritability is informative about the nature of between-group differences}}.
:As they explain: {{talkquote|This misconception comes in two forms, and in both cases height and IQ in human populations are good examples. The first misconception is that when the heritability is high, groups that differ greatly in the mean of the trait in question must do so because of genetic differences. The second misconception is that the observation of a shift in the mean of a character over time (when we can discount changes in gene frequencies) for a trait with high heritability is a paradox. For IQ, a large increase in the mean has been observed in numerous populations, and this phenomenon is called the Flynn effect, after its discoverer. The problem with this suggested paradox is that heritability should not be used to make predictions about mean changes in the population over time or about differences between groups, because in each individual calculation the heritability is defined for a particular population and says nothing about environments in other populations. White males born in the United States were the tallest in the world in the mid-19th century and about 9 cm taller than Dutch males. At the end of the 20th century, although the height of males in the United States had increased, many European countries had overtaken them and Dutch males are now approximately 5 cm taller than white US males, a trend that is likely to be environmental rather than genetic in origin.}}
:I hope that's helpful. As I stated in my edit summary, I'm all for improving the language if anything is unclear or wonky, but a lot of this stuff is the result of painstaking consensus-building across a number of related articles in the ], so changing anything substantially is going to require some workshopping. Cheers, ] (]) 22:30, 12 October 2024 (UTC)
::I appreciate the detailed answer. How about:<br>"There are no biological differences based on race." ] (]) 22:51, 12 October 2024 (UTC)
:::I hate to be a ] but I also find that sentence confusing. Most scientists prefer the formulation "race is a social construct", which is what we already state at the beginning of the subsection.
:::Maybe it would help if you explain what you find disagreeable about the current section intro? {{talkquote|Among the most controversial issues related to the study of intelligence is the observation that IQ scores vary on average between ethnic and racial groups, though these differences have fluctuated and in many cases steadily decreased over time. While there is little scholarly debate about the continued existence of some of these differences, the current scientific consensus is that they stem from environmental rather than genetic causes.}}
:::Thanks, ] (]) 23:41, 12 October 2024 (UTC)
::::The intro does not seem clear as it is a bit jargony as written. I think a thesis sentence could help it out a lot:<br>"Scientists do not believe that IQ differerences are influenced by one's race." ] (]) 01:15, 13 October 2024 (UTC)
:::::I don't feel particularly qualified to speak on this subject<s>, but your proposed sentence sounds off. At least in the US, race does entail environmental differences, even if they are not genetic.</s> ] (]) 01:29, 13 October 2024 (UTC)
::::::<s>I should maybe add that these environmental differences are themselves heritable, again even though they are not genetic.</s> ] (]) 01:36, 13 October 2024 (UTC)
:::::::I suppose I should be clear for the talk history that I struck my own comments. I noted my own lack of qualification, and was graciously corrected on my misunderstanding. ] (]) 12:55, 13 October 2024 (UTC)
:::::::In vernacular usage "heritable" is sometimes used to mean anything that's often passed on from parents to children, such as wealth, a history of domestic abuse, poverty, obesity. But in the context of this article -- that is, in scholarly usage -- it does mean genetic. ] (]) 07:31, 13 October 2024 (UTC)
::::::::<s>There is a lot of cherry-picking of sources that's gone on with respect to this sentence, and similar sentences in other articles. Of the sources for the current sentence, only uses the word "consensus" or any similar term as required by ]. While it's a high-quality source, it also is fifteen years old. Of the other two sources is from twelve years ago, and contains only a single sentence about group differences in IQ. Statements like this one appear in nearly every Misplaced Pages article related to intelligence, and the sourcing is mostly of a similar level of quality. See my earlier comment about a similar statement in another article: </s>


::::::::<s>All of these sources, even the ''Guardian'' article and the VOX blog post, theoretically satisfy the requirements of WP:RS and can be cited. But in a Misplaced Pages article about virtually any other topic, sources like these would not be used to make a statement about what academic "consensus" is, especially when more recent and higher-quality secondary sources are available, such as those linked to in the last comment and the cited there. The most recent source this article cites about academic "consensus" is from 2017, but the off-wiki list includes ten secondary sources about this topic that were published more recently, and nine out of ten of those newer sources (all except Harden's book) present a very different view.</s>
:1. History<br>
:2. Test construction and reliability<br>
:3. Factor structure of test batteries<br>
:4. Validity and social significance<br>
:5. Environmental and genetic influences<br>
:6. Flynn effect<br>
:7. Group differences<br>
:8. Criticisms<br>
:


::::::::<s>Various people have been objecting for years that these statements about academic "consensus" are based on a very small number of sources which were selected to support a specific viewpoint, and past such objections have usually been dealt with by piling on yet more of these old or mediocre-quality sources (the equivalent statement in the ] article now cites nine of them, including that was published more than half a century ago). But maybe now we finally have the critical mass of editors needed to change this trend.</s>
--] (]) 16:23, 26 October 2010 (UTC)


::::::::<s>{{U|CAVincent}}: you seem to be new to this topic, so I'd like to hear your opinion about whether we should make use of some of the newer sources I mentioned, and modify these parts of the article(s) accordingly. ] (]) 11:30, 13 October 2024 (UTC)</s> <small>Striking ]. ] (]) 22:20, 20 October 2024 (UTC)</small>
== Correlation and causation ==
:::::::::There is zero ambiguity about the scientific consensus in top-quality scholarly sources, e.g. <ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Bird |first1=Kevin |last2=Jackson |first2=John P. |last3=Winston |first3=Andrew S. |date=2024 |title=Confronting Scientific Racism in Psychology: Lessons from Evolutionary Biology and Genetics |url=https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Famp0001228 |journal=American Psychologist |volume=79 |issue=4 |pages=497–508 |doi=10.1037/amp0001228 |pmid=39037836}}</ref>: {{talkquote|Recent articles claim that the folk categories of race are genetically meaningful divisions, and that evolved genetic differences among races and nations are important for explaining immutable differences in cognitive ability, educational attainment, crime, sexual behavior, and wealth; all claims that are opposed by a strong scientific consensus to the contrary.}}
:::::::::] is clear as well. It will not be relitigated here. ] (]) 15:25, 13 October 2024 (UTC)
:::::::::{{u|Superb Owl}}: Perhaps the IP's comment offers some perspective as to why we use "scientific" language here. Scientists speak with great precision for a reason. This topic area is a case where white supremacists are highly motivated to misrepresent what the science says, which is why we need to be extra vigilant to say things precisely as the ] do. If you'd like to read more about this context, I suggest this recent article in ''The Atlantic'': . ] (]) 15:29, 13 October 2024 (UTC)
::::::::::Thanks for sharing the research, the WP:RS article and your perspective - I still believe that it would be very helpful to include a clear succinct summary of the scientific consensus in the first sentence. Paraphrasing that quote you added:<br>''According to a strong consensus of scientists, there are no genetically meaningful differences between racial groups related to IQ or intelligence.'' ] (]) 15:40, 13 October 2024 (UTC)
:::::::::::I like this suggestion a lot, but it's still not 100% there in my opinion. How about we just import the sentence from the first paragraph of ]:
:::::::::::''Today, the scientific consensus is that genetics does not explain differences in IQ test performance between groups, and that observed differences are environmental in origin.''
:::::::::::We could also add this other sentence from the lead:
:::::::::::''In recent decades, as understanding of human genetics has advanced, claims of inherent differences in intelligence between races have been broadly rejected by scientists on both theoretical and empirical grounds.''
:::::::::::The current sources, along with Bird et al. easily support this. How does that sound? ] (]) 16:20, 13 October 2024 (UTC)
::::::::::::I still think your language is a bit too science-y but we are getting much closer. Curious to hear what others think/propose. I also would prefer the paragraph giving background to come after the main paragraph establishing that there is no relationship which seems to be a better summary paragraph of the section. ] (]) 17:51, 13 October 2024 (UTC)
:::::::::::::That's fair. Let's leave the question open for the time being and see if other editors care to weigh in. ] (]) 18:43, 13 October 2024 (UTC)
:::::::::{{quote|Various people have been objecting}}
:::::::::Your use of ] makes it unclear who these various people are, but if you mean Misplaced Pages editors, this topic has been litigated and re-litigated repeatedly and the consensus of Misplaced Pages editors on this subject has been made repeatedly quite clear. This comment boils down to ], which is doubly apparent in your claim that any and all new sources added as a result of these litigations are {{tq|mediocre}}, while not even pretending to acknowledge the criticisms of the quality of the sources you feel contradict the current Misplaced Pages consensus.
:::::::::If, on the other hand, you mean Justapedia editors, well, there's a reason they don't comment over here much, except periodically from IPs in futile attempts to relitigate long settled issues.
:::::::::As for your link to that Justapedia thread, I'm sorry, but a thread on a far-right Misplaced Pages clone is not a reliable source, and I don't just mean this in the sense of the term used on ], but also in the conventional definition of the term "reliable". Since anyone purporting to calculate the relative percentage of {{tq|major secondary sources}} that agree vs. disagree with Murray must necessarily make some decisions about which sources to look at, which qualify as "major" (the terminology of the post), and which qualify as neutral, for, or against, the methodology by anyone from that site is inherently suspect because of the known biases of the vast majority of Justapedia's editors and articles. But I am not merely casting vague aspersions here; the immediate effects of this bias are apparent in their selection criteria and their justifications, enumerated in three items which I will likewise address point by point:
:::::::::# They begin by limiting their "survey" to just two fields known to be a magnet for white supremacists and their fellow travellers.
:::::::::# They then proceed to summarily disregard the views of those that agree with the stated consensus of the American Anthropological Association that {{tq|"race" is an arbitrarily defined social category}} (the author's words, not the AAA's), since, according to them, this means such researchers have nothing {{tq|much of substance to say about the empirical research on this topic}}. How convenient that the people most likely to disagree with you are immediately judged to be irrelevant. They further justify this by citing ] and the corresponding Justapedia policy—apparently, a policy designed to encourage one to make necessary assumptions largely ''tangential'' to the topic at hand ''in the writing of an encyclopedia article'' is justification for assuming as true the most basic ''sina qua non'' premises and conclusions of the supporters of a hypothesis when conducting a ''literature survey'' on the relative scientific support vs. criticism of that hypothesis. Imagine your reaction if we applied this principle in reverse while conducting the same sort of literature survey: we disregard any scientist and their writings who assume that race has biological substance on the grounds that "we must make necessary assumptions".
:::::::::# Finally, in a marked demonstration of their complete lack of self awareness, they actually claim that the use of the stated selection criteria is {{tq|in order to avoid the sort of cherry-picking of sources about this topic that's occurred at Misplaced Pages}}. Because immediately ruling out anyone who believes in a position fundamentally at odds with the one you are trying to advocate for is definitely not cherry picking.
:::::::::] (]) 10:06, 19 October 2024 (UTC)
::::::::::Just FYI {{u|Brusquedandelion}}, the IP you're responding to was blocked as a sock. I didn't hat the comment since it had been referenced in my exchange with Superb Owl, but at this point their comment above should probably be struck so no one else wastes time on them. ] (]) 13:41, 19 October 2024 (UTC)
:::::::::::Update: I went ahead and struck it. ] (]) 22:21, 20 October 2024 (UTC)
:::::We don't need to hedge our sentences on Misplaced Pages with "scientists believe". Scientific consensus can be written in ], appropriately cited of course. ] (]) 04:16, 16 October 2024 (UTC)
::This sentence:
::{{quote|The issue with this sentence is that IQ differences between individuals do indeed seem to be highly heritable}}
::But the proposed sentence says ''nothing'' about heritability, only that {{tq|environmental factors, not race, determines IQ scores}}. Race is ''not the same thing'' as genetic inheritability. ] (]) 04:13, 16 October 2024 (UTC)
:::My objection to the sentence in question is not that it's wrong but rather that it might be confusing to the reader, because it seems to imply that environmental factors are the ''only'' determinants of individual differences in IQ test performance, which most scientists agree is not the case.
:::On the other hand, environmental factors <u>do</u> appear to be the only determinants of differences in average IQ test performance between ''population groups''. And we should indeed state that emphatically. ] (]) 07:58, 16 October 2024 (UTC)
::::This is not true. A scientific discussion about evidence is not a discussion of politics or social policy. The safe and obvious assumption is that population differences are a result of genetics and environment. There are several reasons this is clear to anyone with sufficient verbal abstraction ability:
::::intelligence is highly, highly polygenetic. Groups separated for tens of thousands of years are not going to have the exact same variance of genes. Can you name me a biological trait that is only environmentally determined?
::::just because something is true, it doesn’t mean you have to say it. But the ethical answer never is too tell a lie when the truth is expected. ] (]) 19:54, 19 October 2024 (UTC)
:::::Hi RationalFactor,
:::::You've done a great job illustrating why ], especially not about what it is "safe and obvious" to assume. Instead, we follow what the ] say, and this has ]. If you truly have good-faith questions on the matter, I will direct you to
:::::Cheers, ] (]) 20:57, 19 October 2024 (UTC)
::::::There is no evidence to suggest it’s only environmental, except for some falsified data from Gould a long time ago. There are only arguments made by some scientists, but they do not pass scientific scrutiny.
::::::After some minimal comprehension of biology and statistics, it’s clear that such a claim would not even be considered were it about any other topic, like sprinting or height or propensity to heart disease or hairiness or hormone production or ability to digest lactose or alcohol response or immunology or propensity to certain cancers or heat tolerance.
::::::No environmental change outside the extremes of neglect, poverty, iodine deficiency, injury, or poisoning in a developed nation has ever been found to even influence IQ scores. ] (]) 20:34, 20 October 2024 (UTC)
::::::Importantly, this was the consensus. However, since these are all university jobs, it couldn’t possibly be the consensus today.
::::::I think informed people who are open minded and good faith could in fact be confused, because in the past people hoped IQ was only 50% genetic, and in nearly any university this is presumably still the number given as fact. It might even be given in this article. If it were true, there would be room to say only environment; HOWEVER, even then, it’s not true science to now stray from the null: mix of environmental and genetic. ] (]) 20:42, 20 October 2024 (UTC)
:::::::My grandfather used to say: ''It ain't the stuff you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's the stuff you're damn sure of that just ain't so.''
:::::::This is a case in point. I explained the hereditarian fallacy above, and quoted a gold-standard source saying that yes, serious genetics professionals understand this to be a fallacy, and yet you're repeating it. To reiterate: the heritability of individual-level differences tells us nothing about group-level differences. If you think this is all based on Gould, you have clearly not looked at the literature that was so thoroughly discussed in the RfC.
:::::::I'm sorry to say, but at this point there's nothing more to be said. If you have source-based suggestions for improving the article, you are free to suggest them. But this talk page is not a place for complaining about the ]. ] (]) 22:12, 20 October 2024 (UTC)
{{hat|]}}
::::::::Many sources expressing agnosticism or hereditarian views were provided below. But you dismiss these in favor of your favorite blog post. ] (]) 08:36, 21 October 2024 (UTC)
:::::::::Account with 1 edit, created today, after the IP sock was discovered and banned. @], does this warrant admin investigation? ] (]) 08:38, 21 October 2024 (UTC)
::::::::::Not worth wasting admin time unless it continues. Just expand the hat to cover the troll. ] (]) 16:47, 21 October 2024 (UTC)
:::::::::::Done. ] (]) 16:48, 21 October 2024 (UTC)
::::::::::Generalrelative, that source you're linking to was published in ''American Psychologist'' so it's of good quality. But of its authors, one (Kevin Bird) is a botanical geneticist, one (John P. Jackson) is a professor of communication studies and Systems Training for Emotional Predictability and Problem Solving (STEPPS), and one (Andrew S. Winston) is a historian of psychology. In other discussions you've linked to which has the opposite issue: it is written by experts in human genetics but is a blog post.
::::::::::For statements about scientific consensus, the ''best'' possible sources are those from prominent journals and academic publishers that are written by experts in human genetics or aspects of psychology that relate directly to intelligence. And we actually do have such recent sources available, such as these four: The Harden source more or less agrees with the current article, but the other three don't. Can you explain why, in terms of policy, we would privilege academic sources written by people whose expertise lies outside this field over those written by subject-matter experts? ] (]) 18:24, 13 October 2024 (UTC)
:::::::::::I think we should stick with peer-reviewed scholarship, not books (especially not without quotes and page numbers backing up these extraordinary claims), for this topic ] (]) 04:33, 14 October 2024 (UTC)
::::::::::::There are quotes and page numbers for the relevant parts of all these sources in the linked to in my earlier comment. I also don't see a reason for regarding books from reputable academic publishers as either more or less reliable than reputable academic journals, as academic presses' editorial boards use a review process that's very similar to peer review, and the relevant sourcing guideline ] makes no distinction between the two. ] (]) 05:09, 14 October 2024 (UTC)
:::::::::::::64.127 – Likely block evasion from and stop linking to Justapedia an unreliable source. The only reason you are linking to that is because you have posted on that very page you are linking to. Most of the sources you are citing over there are not reliable: , , all hold far-right political views and have appeared on alt-right podcasts. Academia has ignored their publications. Definitely not WP:SCHOLARSHIP. Most of what you are citing is ]. ] (]) 10:17, 14 October 2024 (UTC)
::::::::::::::Rindermann has a poor academic record. Here he is only last month, a paper of his retracted by the editor in chief, "''The Editor-in-Chief has retracted this article. After publication, concerns were raised about the methodology and dataset used in this research. Independent post-publication peer review has confirmed fundamental flaws in the use of student assessment studies as a measure of IQ or cognitive ability, and in the prominence of individual examples taken from the author's life''". . Rindermann is the same person who spends his time attending far-right conferences making anti-immigration talks several of which can be found on YouTube. Obviously not a neutral or reliable source for this topic area. ] (]) 10:24, 14 October 2024 (UTC)
:::::::::::::::Well, so much for you having "". But it's valuable that you're citing those RationalWiki pages, because that provides some useful information about whether the Norwegian IP user was correct in his about you. There is only one person who cites RationalWiki articles to support his arguments here, although I respect your patience in building up a convincing contribution history in other topics before returning to that behavior. You apparently (incorrectly) think I'm someone evading a block, and with your recent comments you've made me suspect that you're evading one also, so there is no meaningful discussion we can have here. All we can do is wait for other editors to comment, unless this discussion has already become too sidetracked to go anywhere. ] (]) 11:38, 14 October 2024 (UTC)
::::::::::::::::Avoiding the valid points I made. Why are you citing far-right extremists? They fail ] And no I am not particularly interested in this subject I have rarely commented on it, but I have been attacked off-site by yourself and your friends so sometimes I will take exception. Several users have agreed you are a block evader and it is obvious, you have been using IPs on here for months to evade your block. And lol at the conspiracy theory claims I am evading a block myself from your far-right group of friends. I have created 100s of articles here and improved 1000s of articles. BTW I am an admin at RationalWiki, I think I have created 200+ articles there as well. Who are you again and what have you ever done for this project?
::::::::::::::::Based on your Captain Occam account you had no constructive edits but just trolled talk-pages on race and intelligence. It seems you have been at this for decades. It seems your MO is to stir up drama on race articles. Pathetic. I won't waste time responding to you again. See you in a few weeks I guess on a new IP like you have been doing for years. ] (]) 12:28, 14 October 2024 (UTC)
:::::::::::::::::WP:AGF ] (]) 14:10, 14 October 2024 (UTC)
{{hab}}


{{reflist-talk}}<!--Please place new comments in this section above this template-->
Correlation means a lot of things and all of these are described in ]. This includes that correlation does not imply causation. The source material says IQ correlates with something without making a statement about causation so why should "correlation" link to an article only about this principle? This leads the reader to the conclusion that this principle of correlation is uniquely relevant here, when the source doesn’t support that.] (]) 00:22, 11 November 2010 (UTC)


== Intro paragraph ==
: This question wouldn't mostly be directed to someone new here, as the article text has been as it is for a while, but what is the rationale for mentioning the IQ correlations at all? What does reliable secondary literature (rather than one or another researcher's unreplicated primary research finding) say about the correlations? Perhaps better sourcing is needed in the section of the article under discussion. -- ] (], ]) 02:36, 11 November 2010 (UTC)


The concluding sentence, “Many of the proponents of intelligence tests and IQ scores were eugenicists who used pseudoscience to push now-debunked views of racial hierarchy” is inappropriate, given that it’s irrelevant to a discussion of empirical evidence. Furthermore, hierarchy has nothing to do with this conversation. IQ has been the most replicable aspect of all of psychology, and it is summarized as racist in the introductory paragraph? That’s advocacy, not science. ] (]) 03:04, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
::IQ tests were invented as performance predictors, so it makes perfect sense for the article to discuss whether they predict the things they were designed to predict. Maybe better sources can be found for this. In the meantime though, you aren't disputing the point that it makes no sense for the word "correlation" to link to an article about only one aspect of correlation, so I'm changing it back again.] (]) 03:53, 11 November 2010 (UTC)


:This is ''historical context'', and historical context is relevant to an encyclopedia, provided it is well-sourced. ] (]) 20:59, 19 October 2024 (UTC)
:::IQ tests were invented to measure relative intelligence. With respect to predictability IQ predicts some things, and some things predict IQ. This general problem of direction of causality (which you might also be confusing) is exactly why some explanation of correlation vs. causation is relevant. But the extent to which it is discussed depends on reliable sources, and is probably more relevant to include in the body of the article rather than hidden under a link. ] (]) 04:05, 11 November 2010 (UTC)


== I've linked to IQ classfications in the headers ==
::::According to the article about ], who invented intelligence tests, the tests were invented to predict scholastic performance and identify students who were in need of special education.] (]) 05:03, 11 November 2010 (UTC)


:::::That's not what the article says at all: ''Binet made it his problem to establish the differences that separate the normal child from the abnormal, and to measure such differences''. ] (]) 16:25, 11 November 2010 (UTC) I'm curious what the opinion is on this. I'm new to wikipedia, and this is my first edit, just wondering if the link I put is alinging with the rules. ] (]) 16:13, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

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Addition of Negative Flynn Effect Citation

Thanks to @Generalrelative for asking why I think it would be beneficial to cite new Dworak study. The current page on the Intelligence quotient already has a paragraph talking about the "negative flynn effect", citing a 2016 study coauthord by Richard Lynn and a 2018 study coauthored by Bernt Bratsberg. In the current issue of the "Intelligence" journal there has been new research on the topic, including the (2023) study I cited. I think that study would be beneficial to cite since it provides interested readers of Misplaced Pages another, more recent, source on the topic.

Apologies - but I don't know what you mean by the topic being contested? The negative flynn effect definitely a phenomenon for which evidence has been recently discovered. Besides, I didn't add any new description, only another source for the already existing description confirming what the previous sources already have shown. Maybe I misunderstood what you meant? LenoJeno (talk) 19:59, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

When another editor reverts your addition, that means it's been contested, see WP:BRD. The article you wanted to add from the journal Intelligence is a primary source appearing in a journal that often publishes questionable material. There are already two sources, so there's no need to add a 3rd source that's low-quality. NightHeron (talk) 20:55, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
I see, so "contesting" refers to other editors here, thanks. It's weird then to see how one of the other two sources accepted are also from Intelligence, in fact, coauthored by Richard Lynn, who is the scientific racist. Surely that's even lower credibility. Many thanks for the clarification anyway @NightHeron! LenoJeno (talk) 21:36, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
I agree that we should remove the Richard Lynn source. Unfortunately Intelligence does not conduct any meaningful peer review to screen out pseudoscience when race / ethnicity / nationality are concerned, so I'd be concerned about the new Dworak study for that reason. A secondary source would be better. Are you aware of any that we could use to discuss the "negative Flynn effect"? For now I'll remove the Lynn source and retain the NAS Norway study. Generalrelative (talk) 21:44, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

Induction is not a specialized ability like spelling

It is learning from examples. There is lots of this all the time in out environment. Inductive reasoning Ran8dom9 (talk) 19:05, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

@Ran8dom9: Article talk pages are for discussing suggested improvements to an article, not discussion of our personal thoughts about the topic. Do you have a specific suggestion for improving the article? Induction as a specialized ability (a subfactor of fluid reasoning) has been demonstrated by Thurstone (and a tremendous amount of subsequent research by a vast number of researchers, including Cattell, Horn, and Carroll) using factor analysis of massive amounts of test data. Can you cite research from peer-reviewed academic journals that clearly refute all of that research, and not just your personal opinion? Sundayclose (talk) 19:26, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

Job-performance correlation issue

§ "Job performance" includes this paragraph: "Newer studies find that the effects of IQ on job performance have been greatly overestimated. The current estimates of the correlation between job performance and IQ are about 0.23 correcting for unreliability and range restriction."

I fear this presentation lacks WP:BALANCE, given that it's citing what is essentially a single paper by two researchers (the other is a minor follow-up) which has been subject to quite significant significant criticism from experts in just the few months since publication, who point out that it's narrow (only including supervisor ratings as a "performance" measure) and is hardly "new" (as its range-restriction claims have been brought up and dismissed in the past). Moreover, the paper(s) referenced find diminished correlations between almost every other metric and performance (e.g., interviews; work sample tests; job-knowledge tests, etc.)

Given that there is hardly a consensus in support of the Sackett, et al. paper(s) it seems unbalanced to include them, at least in the current framing. I'm in favor of removing it entirely, since it runs contrary to consensus backed by an staggering amount of research. Alternately, we could add its narrow focus and other significant criticism, but that may just compound the WP:UNDUE issue. Frankly, I'm not sure it adds much to our article, since of course Sackett, et al. still concede that cognitive ability is one of variables most highly correlated with job performance. Thanks! Ekpyros (talk) 19:26, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

Suggestion to add a source

Hello,

I would like to suggest a source that could enrich this article:

"IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle" by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (January 2019) - https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a-pseudoscientific-swindle-f131c101ba39

This source could be relevant to this article on Intelligence Quotient for the following reasons:

Critical perspective: The article offers a critical view on the concept of IQ, which could contribute to a balanced presentation of the subject on Misplaced Pages.

Renowned author: Nassim Nicholas Taleb is an influential scholar, whose opinions on scientific subjects are often discussed.

Arguments against validity: The article presents arguments questioning the validity and usefulness of Intelligence Quotient as a measure of intelligence.

Scientific debate: It illustrates the ongoing debate in the scientific community regarding the value and limitations of Intelligence Quotient.

Methodological aspects: The article addresses methodological issues related to the measurement and interpretation of IQ.

This source seems reliable to me and could provide useful information regarding the rigor of Intelligence Quotient. Narzil (talk) 11:57, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

Nassim Nicholas Taleb is indeed a super influential person, but he is not a subject-matter expert on this topic. Medium is what we call a self-published source, meaning that only stuff by subject-matter experts can be considered reliable and only in certain contexts (see WP:MEDIUM). So unfortunately, while this is an interesting essay, it can't be used as a source for our article on IQ. That said, if a subject-matter expert were to publish a response, both Taleb's arguments and the response could then be discussed in article space. I hope that's helpful! Generalrelative (talk) 15:14, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

Summary of race relationship

Proposed summary sentence for the paragraph on race:
The scholarly consensus finds environmental factors, not race, determines IQ scores. Superb Owl (talk) 18:14, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

I appreciate you bringing your suggestion here. The issue with this sentence is that IQ differences between individuals do indeed seem to be highly heritable, i.e. genetics plays a role in accounting for why person A scores higher than person B. Some folks have naively assumed that this fact redounds to group-level differences, but it does not. This mistake has been called the "hereditarian fallacy".
If you'd like to explore a source, see e.g. "Heritability in the genomics era — concepts and misconceptions" in Nature Reviews Genetics, which lists in its table of Misconceptions regarding heritability the notion that Heritability is informative about the nature of between-group differences.
As they explain:

This misconception comes in two forms, and in both cases height and IQ in human populations are good examples. The first misconception is that when the heritability is high, groups that differ greatly in the mean of the trait in question must do so because of genetic differences. The second misconception is that the observation of a shift in the mean of a character over time (when we can discount changes in gene frequencies) for a trait with high heritability is a paradox. For IQ, a large increase in the mean has been observed in numerous populations, and this phenomenon is called the Flynn effect, after its discoverer. The problem with this suggested paradox is that heritability should not be used to make predictions about mean changes in the population over time or about differences between groups, because in each individual calculation the heritability is defined for a particular population and says nothing about environments in other populations. White males born in the United States were the tallest in the world in the mid-19th century and about 9 cm taller than Dutch males. At the end of the 20th century, although the height of males in the United States had increased, many European countries had overtaken them and Dutch males are now approximately 5 cm taller than white US males, a trend that is likely to be environmental rather than genetic in origin.

I hope that's helpful. As I stated in my edit summary, I'm all for improving the language if anything is unclear or wonky, but a lot of this stuff is the result of painstaking consensus-building across a number of related articles in the R&I topic area, so changing anything substantially is going to require some workshopping. Cheers, Generalrelative (talk) 22:30, 12 October 2024 (UTC)
I appreciate the detailed answer. How about:
"There are no biological differences based on race." Superb Owl (talk) 22:51, 12 October 2024 (UTC)
I hate to be a Debbie Downer but I also find that sentence confusing. Most scientists prefer the formulation "race is a social construct", which is what we already state at the beginning of the subsection.
Maybe it would help if you explain what you find disagreeable about the current section intro?

Among the most controversial issues related to the study of intelligence is the observation that IQ scores vary on average between ethnic and racial groups, though these differences have fluctuated and in many cases steadily decreased over time. While there is little scholarly debate about the continued existence of some of these differences, the current scientific consensus is that they stem from environmental rather than genetic causes.

Thanks, Generalrelative (talk) 23:41, 12 October 2024 (UTC)
The intro does not seem clear as it is a bit jargony as written. I think a thesis sentence could help it out a lot:
"Scientists do not believe that IQ differerences are influenced by one's race." Superb Owl (talk) 01:15, 13 October 2024 (UTC)
I don't feel particularly qualified to speak on this subject, but your proposed sentence sounds off. At least in the US, race does entail environmental differences, even if they are not genetic. CAVincent (talk) 01:29, 13 October 2024 (UTC)
I should maybe add that these environmental differences are themselves heritable, again even though they are not genetic. CAVincent (talk) 01:36, 13 October 2024 (UTC)
I suppose I should be clear for the talk history that I struck my own comments. I noted my own lack of qualification, and was graciously corrected on my misunderstanding. CAVincent (talk) 12:55, 13 October 2024 (UTC)
In vernacular usage "heritable" is sometimes used to mean anything that's often passed on from parents to children, such as wealth, a history of domestic abuse, poverty, obesity. But in the context of this article -- that is, in scholarly usage -- it does mean genetic. NightHeron (talk) 07:31, 13 October 2024 (UTC)
There is a lot of cherry-picking of sources that's gone on with respect to this sentence, and similar sentences in other articles. Of the sources for the current sentence, only one uses the word "consensus" or any similar term as required by WP:RS/AC. While it's a high-quality source, it also is fifteen years old. Of the other two sources one is from twelve years ago, and the other contains only a single sentence about group differences in IQ. Statements like this one appear in nearly every Misplaced Pages article related to intelligence, and the sourcing is mostly of a similar level of quality. See my earlier comment about a similar statement in another article:
All of these sources, even the Guardian article and the VOX blog post, theoretically satisfy the requirements of WP:RS and can be cited. But in a Misplaced Pages article about virtually any other topic, sources like these would not be used to make a statement about what academic "consensus" is, especially when more recent and higher-quality secondary sources are available, such as those linked to in the last comment here and the off-Wiki discussion cited there. The most recent source this article cites about academic "consensus" is from 2017, but the off-wiki list includes ten secondary sources about this topic that were published more recently, and nine out of ten of those newer sources (all except Harden's book) present a very different view.
Various people have been objecting for years that these statements about academic "consensus" are based on a very small number of sources which were selected to support a specific viewpoint, and past such objections have usually been dealt with by piling on yet more of these old or mediocre-quality sources (the equivalent statement in the race and intelligence article now cites nine of them, including one that was published more than half a century ago). But maybe now we finally have the critical mass of editors needed to change this trend.
CAVincent: you seem to be new to this topic, so I'd like to hear your opinion about whether we should make use of some of the newer sources I mentioned, and modify these parts of the article(s) accordingly. 64.127.212.41 (talk) 11:30, 13 October 2024 (UTC) Striking WP:BLOCKEVASION. Generalrelative (talk) 22:20, 20 October 2024 (UTC)
There is zero ambiguity about the scientific consensus in top-quality scholarly sources, e.g. :

Recent articles claim that the folk categories of race are genetically meaningful divisions, and that evolved genetic differences among races and nations are important for explaining immutable differences in cognitive ability, educational attainment, crime, sexual behavior, and wealth; all claims that are opposed by a strong scientific consensus to the contrary.

The consensus among Misplaced Pages editors is clear as well. It will not be relitigated here. Generalrelative (talk) 15:25, 13 October 2024 (UTC)
Superb Owl: Perhaps the IP's comment offers some perspective as to why we use "scientific" language here. Scientists speak with great precision for a reason. This topic area is a case where white supremacists are highly motivated to misrepresent what the science says, which is why we need to be extra vigilant to say things precisely as the best sources do. If you'd like to read more about this context, I suggest this recent article in The Atlantic: "The Far Right Is Becoming Obsessed With Race and IQ". Generalrelative (talk) 15:29, 13 October 2024 (UTC)
Thanks for sharing the research, the WP:RS article and your perspective - I still believe that it would be very helpful to include a clear succinct summary of the scientific consensus in the first sentence. Paraphrasing that quote you added:
According to a strong consensus of scientists, there are no genetically meaningful differences between racial groups related to IQ or intelligence. Superb Owl (talk) 15:40, 13 October 2024 (UTC)
I like this suggestion a lot, but it's still not 100% there in my opinion. How about we just import the sentence from the first paragraph of Race and intelligence:
Today, the scientific consensus is that genetics does not explain differences in IQ test performance between groups, and that observed differences are environmental in origin.
We could also add this other sentence from the lead:
In recent decades, as understanding of human genetics has advanced, claims of inherent differences in intelligence between races have been broadly rejected by scientists on both theoretical and empirical grounds.
The current sources, along with Bird et al. easily support this. How does that sound? Generalrelative (talk) 16:20, 13 October 2024 (UTC)
I still think your language is a bit too science-y but we are getting much closer. Curious to hear what others think/propose. I also would prefer the paragraph giving background to come after the main paragraph establishing that there is no relationship which seems to be a better summary paragraph of the section. Superb Owl (talk) 17:51, 13 October 2024 (UTC)
That's fair. Let's leave the question open for the time being and see if other editors care to weigh in. Generalrelative (talk) 18:43, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

Various people have been objecting

Your use of WP:WEASEL WORDS makes it unclear who these various people are, but if you mean Misplaced Pages editors, this topic has been litigated and re-litigated repeatedly and the consensus of Misplaced Pages editors on this subject has been made repeatedly quite clear. This comment boils down to WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT, which is doubly apparent in your claim that any and all new sources added as a result of these litigations are mediocre, while not even pretending to acknowledge the criticisms of the quality of the sources you feel contradict the current Misplaced Pages consensus.
If, on the other hand, you mean Justapedia editors, well, there's a reason they don't comment over here much, except periodically from IPs in futile attempts to relitigate long settled issues.
As for your link to that Justapedia thread, I'm sorry, but a thread on a far-right Misplaced Pages clone is not a reliable source, and I don't just mean this in the sense of the term used on WP:RS, but also in the conventional definition of the term "reliable". Since anyone purporting to calculate the relative percentage of major secondary sources that agree vs. disagree with Murray must necessarily make some decisions about which sources to look at, which qualify as "major" (the terminology of the post), and which qualify as neutral, for, or against, the methodology by anyone from that site is inherently suspect because of the known biases of the vast majority of Justapedia's editors and articles. But I am not merely casting vague aspersions here; the immediate effects of this bias are apparent in their selection criteria and their justifications, enumerated in three items which I will likewise address point by point:
  1. They begin by limiting their "survey" to just two fields known to be a magnet for white supremacists and their fellow travellers.
  2. They then proceed to summarily disregard the views of those that agree with the stated consensus of the American Anthropological Association that "race" is an arbitrarily defined social category (the author's words, not the AAA's), since, according to them, this means such researchers have nothing much of substance to say about the empirical research on this topic. How convenient that the people most likely to disagree with you are immediately judged to be irrelevant. They further justify this by citing WP:MNA and the corresponding Justapedia policy—apparently, a policy designed to encourage one to make necessary assumptions largely tangential to the topic at hand in the writing of an encyclopedia article is justification for assuming as true the most basic sina qua non premises and conclusions of the supporters of a hypothesis when conducting a literature survey on the relative scientific support vs. criticism of that hypothesis. Imagine your reaction if we applied this principle in reverse while conducting the same sort of literature survey: we disregard any scientist and their writings who assume that race has biological substance on the grounds that "we must make necessary assumptions".
  3. Finally, in a marked demonstration of their complete lack of self awareness, they actually claim that the use of the stated selection criteria is in order to avoid the sort of cherry-picking of sources about this topic that's occurred at Misplaced Pages. Because immediately ruling out anyone who believes in a position fundamentally at odds with the one you are trying to advocate for is definitely not cherry picking.
Brusquedandelion (talk) 10:06, 19 October 2024 (UTC)
Just FYI Brusquedandelion, the IP you're responding to was blocked as a sock. I didn't hat the comment since it had been referenced in my exchange with Superb Owl, but at this point their comment above should probably be struck so no one else wastes time on them. Generalrelative (talk) 13:41, 19 October 2024 (UTC)
Update: I went ahead and struck it. Generalrelative (talk) 22:21, 20 October 2024 (UTC)
We don't need to hedge our sentences on Misplaced Pages with "scientists believe". Scientific consensus can be written in WP:WIKIVOICE, appropriately cited of course. Brusquedandelion (talk) 04:16, 16 October 2024 (UTC)
This sentence:

The issue with this sentence is that IQ differences between individuals do indeed seem to be highly heritable

But the proposed sentence says nothing about heritability, only that environmental factors, not race, determines IQ scores. Race is not the same thing as genetic inheritability. Brusquedandelion (talk) 04:13, 16 October 2024 (UTC)
My objection to the sentence in question is not that it's wrong but rather that it might be confusing to the reader, because it seems to imply that environmental factors are the only determinants of individual differences in IQ test performance, which most scientists agree is not the case.
On the other hand, environmental factors do appear to be the only determinants of differences in average IQ test performance between population groups. And we should indeed state that emphatically. Generalrelative (talk) 07:58, 16 October 2024 (UTC)
This is not true. A scientific discussion about evidence is not a discussion of politics or social policy. The safe and obvious assumption is that population differences are a result of genetics and environment. There are several reasons this is clear to anyone with sufficient verbal abstraction ability:
intelligence is highly, highly polygenetic. Groups separated for tens of thousands of years are not going to have the exact same variance of genes. Can you name me a biological trait that is only environmentally determined?
just because something is true, it doesn’t mean you have to say it. But the ethical answer never is too tell a lie when the truth is expected. RationalFactor (talk) 19:54, 19 October 2024 (UTC)
Hi RationalFactor,
You've done a great job illustrating why we don't rely on the original analysis of our volunteers, especially not about what it is "safe and obvious" to assume. Instead, we follow what the reliable sources say, and this has already been adjudicated. If you truly have good-faith questions on the matter, I will direct you to this handy explainer.
Cheers, Generalrelative (talk) 20:57, 19 October 2024 (UTC)
There is no evidence to suggest it’s only environmental, except for some falsified data from Gould a long time ago. There are only arguments made by some scientists, but they do not pass scientific scrutiny.
After some minimal comprehension of biology and statistics, it’s clear that such a claim would not even be considered were it about any other topic, like sprinting or height or propensity to heart disease or hairiness or hormone production or ability to digest lactose or alcohol response or immunology or propensity to certain cancers or heat tolerance.
No environmental change outside the extremes of neglect, poverty, iodine deficiency, injury, or poisoning in a developed nation has ever been found to even influence IQ scores. RationalFactor (talk) 20:34, 20 October 2024 (UTC)
Importantly, this was the consensus. However, since these are all university jobs, it couldn’t possibly be the consensus today.
I think informed people who are open minded and good faith could in fact be confused, because in the past people hoped IQ was only 50% genetic, and in nearly any university this is presumably still the number given as fact. It might even be given in this article. If it were true, there would be room to say only environment; HOWEVER, even then, it’s not true science to now stray from the null: mix of environmental and genetic. RationalFactor (talk) 20:42, 20 October 2024 (UTC)
My grandfather used to say: It ain't the stuff you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's the stuff you're damn sure of that just ain't so.
This is a case in point. I explained the hereditarian fallacy above, and quoted a gold-standard source saying that yes, serious genetics professionals understand this to be a fallacy, and yet you're repeating it. To reiterate: the heritability of individual-level differences tells us nothing about group-level differences. If you think this is all based on Gould, you have clearly not looked at the literature that was so thoroughly discussed in the RfC.
I'm sorry to say, but at this point there's nothing more to be said. If you have source-based suggestions for improving the article, you are free to suggest them. But this talk page is not a place for complaining about the WP:THETRUTH. Generalrelative (talk) 22:12, 20 October 2024 (UTC)
Don't feed the trolls.
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Many sources expressing agnosticism or hereditarian views were provided below. But you dismiss these in favor of your favorite blog post. Tarantaloid (talk) 08:36, 21 October 2024 (UTC)
Account with 1 edit, created today, after the IP sock was discovered and banned. @Generalrelative, does this warrant admin investigation? Brusquedandelion (talk) 08:38, 21 October 2024 (UTC)
Not worth wasting admin time unless it continues. Just expand the hat to cover the troll. Generalrelative (talk) 16:47, 21 October 2024 (UTC)
Done. Generalrelative (talk) 16:48, 21 October 2024 (UTC)
Generalrelative, that source you're linking to was published in American Psychologist so it's of good quality. But of its authors, one (Kevin Bird) is a botanical geneticist, one (John P. Jackson) is a professor of communication studies and Systems Training for Emotional Predictability and Problem Solving (STEPPS), and one (Andrew S. Winston) is a historian of psychology. In other discussions you've linked to this source which has the opposite issue: it is written by experts in human genetics but is a blog post.
For statements about scientific consensus, the best possible sources are those from prominent journals and academic publishers that are written by experts in human genetics or aspects of psychology that relate directly to intelligence. And we actually do have such recent sources available, such as these four: The Harden source more or less agrees with the current article, but the other three don't. Can you explain why, in terms of policy, we would privilege academic sources written by people whose expertise lies outside this field over those written by subject-matter experts? 64.127.212.41 (talk) 18:24, 13 October 2024 (UTC)
I think we should stick with peer-reviewed scholarship, not books (especially not without quotes and page numbers backing up these extraordinary claims), for this topic Superb Owl (talk) 04:33, 14 October 2024 (UTC)
There are quotes and page numbers for the relevant parts of all these sources in the off-wiki discussion linked to in my earlier comment. I also don't see a reason for regarding books from reputable academic publishers as either more or less reliable than reputable academic journals, as academic presses' editorial boards use a review process that's very similar to peer review, and the relevant sourcing guideline WP:SCHOLARSHIP makes no distinction between the two. 64.127.212.41 (talk) 05:09, 14 October 2024 (UTC)
64.127 – Likely block evasion from Captain Occam and stop linking to Justapedia an unreliable source. The only reason you are linking to that is because you have posted on that very page you are linking to. Most of the sources you are citing over there are not reliable: Russell T. Warne, Heiner Rindermann, Richard Haier all hold far-right political views and have appeared on alt-right podcasts. Academia has ignored their publications. Definitely not WP:SCHOLARSHIP. Most of what you are citing is WP:Fringe. Psychologist Guy (talk) 10:17, 14 October 2024 (UTC)
Rindermann has a poor academic record. Here he is only last month, a paper of his retracted by the editor in chief, "The Editor-in-Chief has retracted this article. After publication, concerns were raised about the methodology and dataset used in this research. Independent post-publication peer review has confirmed fundamental flaws in the use of student assessment studies as a measure of IQ or cognitive ability, and in the prominence of individual examples taken from the author's life". . Rindermann is the same person who spends his time attending far-right conferences making anti-immigration talks several of which can be found on YouTube. Obviously not a neutral or reliable source for this topic area. Psychologist Guy (talk) 10:24, 14 October 2024 (UTC)
Well, so much for you having "no interest in race and intelligence". But it's valuable that you're citing those RationalWiki pages, because that provides some useful information about whether the Norwegian IP user was correct in his suspicion about you. There is only one person who cites RationalWiki articles to support his arguments here, although I respect your patience in building up a convincing contribution history in other topics before returning to that behavior. You apparently (incorrectly) think I'm someone evading a block, and with your recent comments you've made me suspect that you're evading one also, so there is no meaningful discussion we can have here. All we can do is wait for other editors to comment, unless this discussion has already become too sidetracked to go anywhere. 64.127.212.41 (talk) 11:38, 14 October 2024 (UTC)
Avoiding the valid points I made. Why are you citing far-right extremists? They fail WP:RS And no I am not particularly interested in this subject I have rarely commented on it, but I have been attacked off-site by yourself and your friends so sometimes I will take exception. Several users have agreed you are a block evader and it is obvious, you have been using IPs on here for months to evade your block. And lol at the conspiracy theory claims I am evading a block myself from your far-right group of friends. I have created 100s of articles here and improved 1000s of articles. BTW I am an admin at RationalWiki, I think I have created 200+ articles there as well. Who are you again and what have you ever done for this project?
Based on your Captain Occam account you had no constructive edits but just trolled talk-pages on race and intelligence. It seems you have been at this for decades. It seems your MO is to stir up drama on race articles. Pathetic. I won't waste time responding to you again. See you in a few weeks I guess on a new IP like you have been doing for years. Psychologist Guy (talk) 12:28, 14 October 2024 (UTC)
WP:AGF 24.126.11.219 (talk) 14:10, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

References

  1. Bird, Kevin; Jackson, John P.; Winston, Andrew S. (2024). "Confronting Scientific Racism in Psychology: Lessons from Evolutionary Biology and Genetics". American Psychologist. 79 (4): 497–508. doi:10.1037/amp0001228. PMID 39037836.

Intro paragraph

The concluding sentence, “Many of the proponents of intelligence tests and IQ scores were eugenicists who used pseudoscience to push now-debunked views of racial hierarchy” is inappropriate, given that it’s irrelevant to a discussion of empirical evidence. Furthermore, hierarchy has nothing to do with this conversation. IQ has been the most replicable aspect of all of psychology, and it is summarized as racist in the introductory paragraph? That’s advocacy, not science. RationalFactor (talk) 03:04, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

This is historical context, and historical context is relevant to an encyclopedia, provided it is well-sourced. Generalrelative (talk) 20:59, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

I've linked to IQ classfications in the headers

I'm curious what the opinion is on this. I'm new to wikipedia, and this is my first edit, just wondering if the link I put is alinging with the rules. Addi-bot (talk) 16:13, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

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