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Caste

Ye gods, this looks like a horrifically contentious article, and with good reason, no doubt. Reading the 'caste' section, however, there are problems from a neutrality point of view. It seems to make implicit assumptions about race being a 'social construct' and suchlike: which while it is a major and important viewpoint, is not the only one, and it is certainly not the place of the article to endorse it (or any other viewpoint) as the right one.

I have added a 'converse' interpretation to the section, and will look for a proper citation for that when I get the chance. Until then, I hope that my addition can remain as it is what the Germans might call 'offensichtlich': so glaringly obvious a fact that it doesn't need a citation (when I say a 'fact', I mean that it is a fact that the data could be interpreted like that, not that it is a fact that that interpretation is the correct one).

Anyway, if anyone has any other suggestions I would be interested to hear them.

I have doubts that we should even use the word caste, which has a precise definition. However, absent a citation, I have removed the following:

The converse explanation would be that if intelligence is positively correlated with ability and performance, and if intelligence is genetically determined and differs across racial groups, that these differences in intelligence are the reason for caste differences; in other words, groups with higher average intelligence are likely to acquire higher social status.

in part because it looks like original research and in part because it is so obviously an inappropriate explanation, by which I mean not that it is simply wrong, but wrong in a way that contradicts the very terms of what it seeks to explain. If we can liken say African Americans in the US to a "caste" it is because of historically documented acts of political violence - slavery and Jim Crow legislation - that no one denies as factual. Slrubenstein | Talk 18:53, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Not necessarily: the very fact that certain groups could be dominated or exploited through slavery and Jim Crow legislation is possibly explicable through a difference in ability between them and their exploiters. Hence, while a correlation would seem to be established by the data between low IQ and low social status, the causal link (if indeed there is one) may be in either of the two directions. The 'converse' view, that low IQ may lead to low social status, is essentially the main argument of the Bell Curve book by my understanding, as well as a pretty standard hereditarian line (which the lovely little table does little to refute, because the data tell us nothing of causal links).

In any case, the argument presented at the moment is dubious, because while it may be that IQ tests (designed primarily by European males etc.) are biased against low status groups in those societies in which the IQ test designers operate, it's a little weird that they simultaneously manage to discriminate against low social status groups in every country, while giving high scores to the 'elites'. Indeed, the argument undermines itself quite drastically, by alleging that ethnicity is a 'local social construct' while still allowing for IQ tests to globally distinguish between (ethnically divided) social status groups in totally unrelated cultures.

I'm quite happily agnostic about this particular debate, but I would be very surprised if someone hasn't written a formal critique of the 'caste' argument as it is presented here; if not, and if there are no other researchers writing in support of the argument either, I would argue that the entire section should be removed as a relatively unimportant contribution to the debate, which has attracted little critical attention in either direction: surely an encyclopedia article cannot, and should not, include every researcher's (or group of researchers') opinions on the matter, but only the most influential, since the literature in this field is somewhat bloated. Additionally, the main source for the section seems to be a chapter synopsis of a book, which scarcely amounts to proper research since the arguments of the authors are not present to be evaluated.

That being said, I agree wholeheartedly about the word 'caste' being inappropriate here, and have taken the liberty of replacing it with the more accurate 'social status'. The fact that the authors of the source use the word 'caste' in that manner also indicates a perspective that is perhaps, to be charitable, idiosyncratic.

I recommend that the Caste section be removed because it gets into ethnicity. This article is about race, not ethnicity. We need to shorten the article. --Jagz (talk) 19:46, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Then why do you have Hispanics, which is NOT a racial grouping. Brusegadi (talk) 08:19, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Hispanics is only mentioned in the bell curve diagram which I got from an older version of this article. The article originally included a discussion of Hispanics. If I could remove Hispanics from the diagram I would. --Jagz (talk) 13:21, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Unlogical conclusion

The fact that there is a relation between High status and low status and High test scores and low test scores, does not necessarily mean that the low status races have to have low scores because they are low status, nor those it mean that these groups would have a higher score if they were high status. With all likelyhood, they have low status because they have low scores. There is a reason why one group has a high status and the other does not. Its that nature thing again-were the strongest survives, witch is the smartest in this case. The high status group is the high status group just because of this differences in test scores. The low scores group are low status because they are low score. There is a reason why the high stutus group is the high status group, they are smarter, or superior, witch is proven by the tests. The fact that the charts are the same should be a "well da'ah". It proves the fact that darwinism exists in societies as well, infact, in all of the societies tested. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.197.153.168 (talk) 05:51, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Let's not have a revert war over this comment; why don't we instead leave it, talk about how it's unsigned flamebait, and move elsewhere? (Me fail English? That's Unlogical!) Aron.Foster (talk) 10:07, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Right, you can't remove someone's comments just because they're controversial. --Jagz (talk) 19:40, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Actually it depends on how hard you enforce WP:TALK. In an article like this one it should be enforced in a broader way because we have too many who just want to piss people off. The comment is not controversial, its bait, and its "unlogical" and poorly written. Brusegadi (talk) 08:22, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Then just write a comment like Aron.Foster did above. --Jagz (talk) 13:24, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Stereotypes

I am going to remove the examples of media portrayal of stereotypes. I have already moved this information to the Stereotype article. I will keep a brief summary along with a link to the Stereotype article. --Jagz (talk) 14:55, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

I have not received comments so I proceed to remove the information as discussed. --Jagz (talk) 05:32, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Seems fine to me. Cheers, Mathsci (talk) 06:28, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Editing the main article

Now that the festive season is over, I hope that the discussion on how to improve the article by gathering references will recommence. At the time that the article was unprotected by MRG, it was hoped that editors would not add contentious or inflammatory content without discussion on this talk page. Quotations are currently being added by a WP:SPA which seem to be in the style of a permanently banned user. They centre on one of the books of Richard Lynn, whose work has been publicly charged with being unscholarly and unduly manipulating statistics. Please discuss such edits here: it is not sufficient to justify these edits in edit summaries, disingenuously claiming "censorship". That is intellectually dishonest and shows a fundamental misunderstanding, possibly deliberate, of the way troublesome WP articles like this one should be edited. --Mathsci (talk) 02:06, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

On the basis of his latest revert, User:Jagz seems set on allowing this article to descend into an appalling sequence of poorly argued and quite unscholarly edits. This attitude seems both disruptive and irresponsible: it ignores any consensus reached on this talk page and encourages disruptive and tendentious edits. This strategy will not produce a good article. It is now probably appropriate to ask MRG to reprotect the article. --Mathsci (talk) 05:18, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Please stop the wholesale reversion of the article. I'm not sure who the hell you people think you are. You don't have those kinds of rights. You don't own Wikipeida. --Jagz (talk) 05:28, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

This intemperate language is completely uncalled for. It is you that are going against consensus: I simply agree with Kevin, who is representing consensus. Kindly refactor your comments. Mathsci (talk) 05:46, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

As previously discussed, I will try to comply with this template. --Jagz (talk) 05:34, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

The subject of this article is controversial and content may be in dispute. When updating the article, be bold, but not reckless. Feel free to try to improve the article, but don't take it personally if your changes are reversed; instead, come here to the talk page to discuss them. Content must be written from a neutral point of view. Include citations when adding content and consider tagging or removing unsourced information.

I have asked User:Moonriddengirl to reprotect the article because editors such as you are going against the consensus reached on this talk page. You are allowing pseudo-scholarly poorly sourced information to be added to the page, which was certainly not what was discussed in mid-December. Or do you remember otherwise? I do not own wikipedia, but edits to this particular page were subject to special restrictions. Why do you choose to forget this now? Mathsci (talk) 05:42, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Just to reiterate what I thought had been agreed by consensus about edits to this article:

• no edits without prior discussions and agreement here
• a list of references would be compiled using scholarly databases and, on the basis of this search of the academic literature using pairs of keywords, proposals for restructuring/rewriting the article, further articles or substitute articles would be discussed.

Is this not what was agreed? Mathsci (talk) 05:59, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

The editors have failed to make satisfactory progress at improving the article. I suggested that we use the guidance in the template and Kevin Murray agreed. There was no further discussion. I will use the guidance in the template. --Jagz (talk) 06:36, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

You should take into account that we've just had a seasonal break. Several editors are students and might not yet have returned to the computer accounts from which they edit. The template is fine as far as it goes, but does not completely summarise the discussions on this page. To suggest that the template is the only guideline is wikilawyering. Kevin Murray said he didn't see a problem with using the template, but never suggested that it was the sole guideline for editing. Mathsci (talk) 07:04, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

I suggest some of the editors take some laxatives and sit on the toilet for a couple of hours. --Jagz (talk) 07:07, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Jagz, you descend into intemperate language of the playpen here and pseudo-scholarship below. I'm surprised that anybody takes you seriously. Mathsci (talk) 07:24, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Why don't you do something constructive for the article. --Jagz (talk) 07:34, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Carrying out surveys of academic literature is time-consuming and, as already discussed on this page, takes days or weeks. I start teaching a graduate course next week in the UK, so it's not clear that I can at present invest much of my time on such a project, although I'm willing to help. I have already for example included elsewhere on the WP a summary of an academic review that harshly criticizes Lynn's statistical methods. I believe Steven J Gould also criticizes the findings on IQ tests, e.g. the use of bell curves or normal distributions. However, as already discussed, this is not the correct way to go about writing the article. If you yourself haven't written WP articles which require research from academic databases, perhaps it might be an idea to temper your language and try to be more patient. Editing this article by trying to make a "main point", as you put it, that demands explanation does not seem to be an acceptable route. We can only report as accurately as possible on mainstream findings in the academic world. I don't know why you think that should be an easy task. Mathsci (talk) 08:31, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Obeying the template is necessary but not sufficient. Brusegadi (talk) 07:36, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Minor changes do not need to be discussed. --Jagz (talk) 15:37, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

The article slowly becomes a joke and goes in the same direction like articles made by leftist donkeys on CITIZENDIUM. No racial IQ data are listed, all related articles with additional info were merged, photos of discredited racial fabulists (Boas) were added, various half-truths are favoured (Flynn and Dickens show no increase of IQ in US blacks; the increase was observed only in children and decreases with age), and the content was filled with messy ballast dealing with societal problems of blacks in USA, which non-American readers are hardly interested in (Curiously, I missed any societal explanation of the high IQ scores of Asians in USA). Centrum99 (talk) 04:41, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

The article started out in 2002 discussing the IQ gaps between whites, blacks, and Hispanics in the United States. We are now changing the perspective of the article to have a worldwide view. The information on the societal problems of blacks in the USA will have to be eliminated or reduced drastically. I had started an article titled "Race and intelligence in the United States" that could have included that information but the article was deleted by editor Slrubenstein; the way it was deleted appeared to blatantly violate Misplaced Pages policy. --Jagz (talk) 14:31, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Since IQ values differ even within races, it is true that some arguments against the name of the article could be taken in consideration (although they obviously come from editors with political agenda), e.g. "Racial and ethnic (or Population) variation in IQ". Each group should get its own section, from East Asians, Europeans, Eskimos to Khoisan and Pygmies. At least averages of available studies and their range should be listed. A different section can be devoted to critics of IQ theories and societal explanations - again, it can be divided into sections dealing with each group specially. And as for Mr. Rubenstein (and his close friend Mr. Wobble/Alun), they are politically motivated contributors, who can't stand any reasonable discussion. They only recite the same phrases over and over again, despite facts to the contrary. Their opinions basically stem from a religion, to which they passionately reshape the surrounding reality. Centrum99 (talk) 08:30, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

The main point of the article

Older versions of the article included these bell curves. I intend to add this diagram and the following information so we get to one of the main points of the article near the beginning of the article, that is the disparity of IQ between races. --Jagz (talk) 07:05, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

IQ tests are often designed to have an average score of 100. Studies have shown that Whites in Europe and the United States (U.S.) average from 100 to 103 on IQ tests. Orientals in Asia and the U.S. tend to have scores of about 106. Blacks in the U.S., the Caribbean, Britain, and Canada have average IQs of about 85. The average IQs for sub-Saharan Africans range from 70 to 75. Black Africans in the South African school system have an average IQ of 70, whereas Mixed-Race Black students in South Africa, with about 25% White ancestry (as determined by genetic testing), have an average IQ of 85 -- the same as Blacks in the United States, Britain, and the Caribbean.

For an additional source of IQ score data, click on the bell curve diagram. --Jagz (talk) 17:43, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

• Are you not citing just one WP:FRINGE source? That is why the consensus was that the article should summarise the current mainstream state of academic research, ascertained from scholarly databases. Rushton is not a mainstream source unfortunately. Mathsci (talk) 07:22, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

His book contains some theories that are not considered mainstream but there does not seem to be a problem with the IQ numbers. I have not included any non-mainstream information from his book. --Jagz (talk) 07:32, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

There may be a problem with the statistical methods which have been criticized by biologists and experimental psychologists. The article must reflect mainstream academic findings in the correct context. How can you judge what's mainstream or not without having surveyed the literature? That would be original research. Mathsci (talk) 08:37, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Are you disputing the IQ numbers? I think your main reason for participation in this article is because you enjoy debating. Could you please do or say something constructive for once? --Jagz (talk) 09:23, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

It doesn't seem particularly fruitful to criticize my editing history on main space articles, which you can check for yourself. What might emerge from this interchange possibly is that you may already have a fixed point of view before writing.

The present article is extremely problematic – you must surely be aware of that – and I do not find that your suggestions above are at all constructive or that your approach is scholarly. The interpretation of the graphs, statistical or otherwise, that you propose is not clear at all. Do you take it as a proof that "blacks in the US are less intelligent than whites" or as a proof that "the average score on IQ tests taken by blacks was less than that taken by whites". The latter statement is correct; but for example were the tests "controlled", i.e. were the tests taken under exactly similar circumstances (e.g. were both groups

equally prepared)? These questions are scientific and are addressed in the literature - that is what we have to record in the article. The text that you have written suggests that the IQ test measures innate intelligence and is independent of circumstances, which has been shown not to be the case in the literature. This is what I meant by context. Again let me repeat myself: it is not for us to interpret these findings, but to record how they are interpreted in mainstream literature, e.g. whether they are regarded as having any significance, statictical or otherwise. In what you wrote above, it is unclear whether you meant to suggest that there is an inherent undisputed intelligence gap between races, irrespective of upbringing and independent of the method of testing. Is that what you meant to write? The case of Irish vs English (that you also mention), instead of Black Americans vs White Americans, seems equally problematic and WP:FRINGE. Mathsci (talk) 10:25, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

The main purpose of the article is to discuss what appears to be an intelligence gap between races. An intelligence gap is suggested by the IQ gap. After presenting the IQ gap data, the article can discuss whether or not it actually indicates an intelligence gap between the races and whether the concept of race is meaningful, etc. This key information was removed from earlier versions of the article. There is no point in continuing any further with the article until this is resolved. --Jagz (talk) 14:29, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

"An intelligence gap is suggested by the IQ gap." Thank you for at last making your position so clear. Mathsci (talk) 19:22, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Right, you were reading things into the article that were not there in writing. --Jagz (talk) 19:27, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Apologies for confusing your quotes with similar sources which suggest that the IQ gap between blacks and whites in the USA is the same as the IQ gap between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland (or between the English/Scottish and the Irish). Following your "logic", should we now also be discussing whether Irish Catholics are less intelligent than Irish Protestants? Mathsci (talk) 19:36, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Since Irish Catholics are not a race, at least in the context of this article, the answer is no. --Jagz (talk) 19:45, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

There, sir, you are wrong: Irish Protestants are of Scottish origin; Irish Catholics are of Irish origin. Please read a history book, in particular the bits about an individual called Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland. No, Jagz, if you're in for a penny, you're in for a punt :) Mathsci (talk) 19:54, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

The article started out in 2002 discussing the IQ gaps between whites, blacks, and Hispanics in the United States. We are now changing the perspective of the article to have a worldwide view. It should include white Europeans, black Africans, and oriental Asians; indigenous races. Also, countries other than the USA should be discussed and I did that by mentioning Britain and Canada for example. Also, mixed-race people add another consideration. --Jagz (talk) 20:24, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps the exercise of comparing the IQs of Irish Protestants and Irish Catholics might also show that IQ tests could possibly be scientifically meaningless, since so many white Americans are of Irish Catholic origin (following the 19C emigrations resulting from the potato famines in Ireland). Mathsci (talk) 21:08, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Did you know that Irish people were brought to Iceland as slaves but now the people there are of mixed Icelandic and Irish ancestry? --Jagz (talk) 21:33, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

This source says Dublin was probably the prime slave market of western Europe. It also says the Irish slave trade "appears to have petered out in the early 12th century along with the Viking Age itself". --Jagz (talk) 20:00, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

The article Slavery in Britain and Ireland shows that hundreds of years later, thousands of Irish people were sent to the the West Indies as indentured servants and slavery was resurrected. --Jagz (talk) 23:56, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Here is another article disussing Irish slavery. Also see Irish diaspora. --Jagz (talk) 07:00, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

It is better to discuss geographic regions and not islands. --Jagz (talk) 14:59, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Mathsci, when you mention "comparing the IQs of Irish Protestants and Irish Catholics might also show that IQ tests could possibly be scientifically meaningless", it seems to me to be dangerously close to original research. If indeed that's what the data suggests, and if a reputable source concludes that, then that information should be included in the article about IQ tests, not this one. Aron.Foster (talk) 23:52, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Fringe

Some editors appear to be overusing the word fringe. Theories that are not mainstream are not necessarily fringe theories. See WP:FRINGE. --Jagz (talk) 23:49, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

The WP:FRINGE argument is difficult or impossible to resolve because it's so difficult to prove. Those who think intelligence differences are entirely environmental will cite the preponderance of published journals and studies that reach that conclusion; those who believe in a genetic component will mention the enormous press and attention the possible genetic component gets, and the bias in the field against even acknowledging that it's a possibility. Aron.Foster (talk) 00:03, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

That's right, they don't want to get Al Sharpton stirred up. --Jagz (talk) 06:11, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

I do not know of any participant in this discussion who has claimed that 100% of variation in IQ scores is environmental. In fact, most of the current scholarship - mainstream scholarship - on IQ scores is not even concerned with the debate "is it environmental or is it genetic." There is a body of literature, and I provided many citations above, that debate what the heritability of IQ is and that also debates a very specific environmental factor, namely the fetal environment, in differences between monochorionic and dichorionic twins. There is another body of literature that is critical of actual IQ tests and the ways IQ results have been used to characterize people of different social groups (generally either races or classes); these people are not rejecting the claim that there is a genetic component to IQ, they are however rejecting the claim that the genetic component is relevant to the phenomena they are investigating. Given that those scientists who are investigating heritability are not addressing differences between social groups, I'd say there is no "nature versus nurture" debate, there are rather two separate lines of research right now. Since people in either line of research are not criticizing people in the other line of research, I have no reason to believe that either set of researchers rejects the claims of the other set. Now we come to the word "fringe." There is indeed a fringe group that mixes up claims about heritability and social groups. They are fring not because they are "not mainstream." They are fringe because they are not trained in th area of research in which they claim to have expertise, do not publish in the major peer-reviewed journals that do publish articles on either of these lines of research (heritability and fetal environment on the one hand, and the interpretation of IQ results for different social groups on the other), and they are not cited by established scholars. Rushton, for example, not only was not able to publish his opinions in a major peer-reviewed journal, his publisher actually had to give away free copies of his book. That is right - scholars, and university libraries, who regularly spend thirty, forty, or fifty dollars on an academic book (that's right, they are not Dell Paperbacks!), wouldn't even buy the book. He had to give away free copies. These to me are all indicators of "fringe." Slrubenstein | Talk 19:10, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

What audience do you think Misplaced Pages articles should be written for? Fourth-graders, experts in the field, etc.? --Jagz (talk) 21:05, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

My comment was a direct response to your comment, and Aron's. Your comment is a non-sequitor, it does not follow from mine. Let's keep this thread on point. if you want to open another discussion on another topic, create a new section. Slrubenstein | Talk 22:13, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

You should not be making up your own criteria of what a fringe theory is, instead refer to WP:FRINGE. Also, I believe that the Rushton books that were given away were abridged versions. --Jagz (talk) 08:31, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

• Those who think intelligence differences are entirely environmental will cite the preponderance of published journals and studies that reach that conclusion; those who believe in a genetic component will mention the enormous press and attention the possible genetic component gets

What a phenominally biased way to express this. You frame the debate as if it is between a group on the one hand who claim that variation in IQ is 100% environmental, while on the other is another group that claims "a genetic component". This at best displays ignorance, and at worst a deliberate misrepresentation of the facts. I don't know of a single person who has ever claimed that "intelligence differences are entirely environmental". "Those who believe in a genetic component" would therefore include all reliable researchers. As anyone knows who has read even a small amount about this subject it is impossible to differentiate between biologically inherited ability and environmentally inherited ability, the best anyone can do is to try and estimate the relative contributions of "biologically inherited" vs. environmentally stimulated ability, and it is here that there seems to be a dispute. On the one hand a small group of academics claim to have evidence that about 80% of intellectual ability is "biologically inherited", on the other hand a much larger consensus of scientists claim that the "biologically inherited" component of a person's intellectual ability is about 40%. One the other hand a recent study found that the within group variance for the children of affluent people was estimated at 60% "genetic", while the within group variance for the children of poor people was estimated at 40% genetic. Their conclusions are obvious, the more environmental opportunities children have to reach their full potential, the greater the influence of innate ability, but given a poor environment, then innate ability is not given the opportunity to flourish. Clearly no academic claims there is a dichotomy between "nature" and "nurture" as Aron is claiming, there are only very crude attempts to estimate the relative contributions of innate ability vs. environmental effects. The fact is that the overwhelming consensus in the academic community is that environment is fundamentally important to a child's ability to learn and progress, a small group of researchers claim the opposite, that environment is of little import, so we should say this in the article, should we not? I've said this before, we are discussing the difference between a minority point of view and a tiny minority point of view. If it is decided that the likes of Jensen and Rushton comprise only a tiny minority, then their beliefs need not be included, if we decide that their beliefs comprise a minority point of view, then their beliefs may be accorded a small section in the article as per policy. The "race" thing is just a side issue of the belief in an 80% "biologically inherited" ability is it not? Of course this suffers from the obvious flaw that ideas of "biological race" have been systematically and comprehensively disproven over the last 50 years or so. Alun (talk) 12:23, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

It was unnecessary to add all this drama to the discussion. --Jagz (talk) 15:27, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree, so why did you do it? Alun (talk) 15:41, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Alun, it should be clear to you by now that Jagz is racist (not because he disagrees with you or me, but because on several occasions he has made comments here that have nothing to do with the article and serve only to denigrate non-Whites); he is a troll (virtually all of his edits have been disruptive and insulting) and he is ignorant (he has demonstrated no understanding of science, and seems to have no respect for people who value scientific research). In short, DNFTT Slrubenstein | Talk 17:03, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Agreed on all points. Thanks for the reminder. Alun (talk) 17:31, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

The article is crap and you are both zealots. --Jagz (talk) 17:48, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, ok, wow. Thanks for the insults, Alun. Listen, I'm not arguing about whether or not the heritability of intelligence has a genetic component; as you point out, it's generally accepted as somewhere between 40-80%. I argue that some scientists believe that the difference in intelligence between blacks and whites has a genetic component, while others argue that it has no genetic component (hence all environmental). From the APA report:

It is sometimes suggested that the Black/White differential in psychometric intelligence is partly due to genetic differences (Jensen, 1972). There is not much direct evidence on this point, but what little there is fails to support the genetic hypothesis.

When I said "intelligence differences" above, I assumed that it was clear that I was talking about intelligence differences between the races, as this is the "race and intelligence" page. Sorry if I was unclear.

I'd also like to point out that to discuss intelligence differences between races, we must assume that intelligence and race exist. There are arguments that both are constructs of society, not important, etc., but this article should briefly touch on and link to those, and then discuss studies, people, history, and science assuming those two things exist. By the way Slrubenstein, how do you define racist? Jagz may have a habit of poorly choosing his words, but I seriously doubt he believes that blacks can't be intelligent enough to be professors, doctors, and the like. Aron.Foster (talk) 10:56, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

I can't find where I have insulted you, but if you feel I have, then I appologise. Some researchers claim that all intelligence differences are overwhelmingly (80%) "genetic" in origin, they use this claim to make a further claim that the largest component of intelligence differences between African-American, Asian-American and European-American must also be overwhelmingly genetic. The point is not that they make this claim, the point is that the people who make this claim do not represent mainstream opinion, it is at least a minority, if not a tiny minority point of view, as such it should not be given undue weight. This is clear. The fundamental point is that this article is not about that particular group of people's work, though the argument can be made that their claims might be considered worthy of inclusion in a small section of their own. I don't know how fringe these claims are, but they certainly are not mainstream. I do know that just a few weeks ago a radio programme broadcast by NPR discussing just this ("Race and IQ" from "On Point" by WBUR Boston, the podcast may still be available for download) made absolutely no reference to either Jensen or Rushton, and made it clear that this subject is about disparities in wealth and opportunity. Furthermore the claims about a genetic component do not represent work by geneticists. I don't know what evidence they have for making this claim, I do know that it is virtually impossible to differentiate between what is genetic and what is not genetic in this, and also that just because a group of researchers claim only to be able to identify a 20% environmental effect, this does not necessarily imply that the rest of the difference in intellectual ability is "proven" to be "innate", it could just as easily imply that they are just not very good at differentiating between what is an environmental effect and what is not and environmental effect. Genetics and anthropology show us that the concept of "race" is biologically nonsense, and is a house of cards, they also show us that differences between groups of people represent two distinct types, differences that are neutral, (caused by Genetic drift and Founder effect etc.) and those that are under selection, such as HaemoglobinS and skin pigmentation. Those under selection have identifiable causes, such as the protection from Plasmodium falciparum infection or protection from Folic acid degradation by strong UV light. Note that traits under selection are determined by environmental factors, which are not distributed "racially", skin colour is distributed by UV intensity and HaemoglobinS by exposure of people to the anopholes parasite, both traits cut across stereotypical "racial" boundaries. Those that are neutral are random and have no significance beyond chance. The best essay I read on this was written in the 1970's by Ashley Montague and Theodosius Dobzhansky and it makes the obvious point that any genes for "intelligence" must occur in all populations because they will be under positive selection in all populations (because the children of intelligent people will always better survive). The upshot of this will be that all genes for "intelligence" will always tend to be distributed throughout all populations due to the positive selection of the people carrying these genes. There is no human environment where there is a negative selection for the most intelligent people. This essay has been reprinted in the book "Race and IQ" edited by Montague himself. Alun (talk) 11:45, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Let me sum it up for you, Aron: there is no sense to having an article on genetic explanations for differences in IQ results between races - not because there is no genetic component to IQ (Alun and I and I think everyone else here has stated that there is, and I have provided a list of mainstream scholarly research on just this topic), but because races are not biological groups. They are social groups and the mainstream research on IQ differences gbetween social groups understandably looks at social factors. This is a simple fact (a simple observation about scientific research). It in no way implies that there is no genetic component to intelligence. Slrubenstein | Talk 13:22, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, you said succinctly what I was trying and failing to say. Alun (talk) 13:45, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

However, there is a genetic component on the average to our social constructs of race. This is especially true when discussing indigenous races. The question is whether these small genetic differences include differences which affect the average intelligence (most commonly measured by IQ) of races. --Jagz (talk) 17:37, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

From reading these 'fringe' authors (The Bell Curve, Rushton, Jensen), they aren't arguing that the genes that make someone black or white also increase or decrease intelligence. That idea doesn't stand up to scrutiny for reasons you point out above, it's as ignorant as Melanin Theory, and any straw man you set up to believe that will be an easy target. Hereditarianism argues that if all social factors were equal, there would still be differences in intelligence between groups. "Genetic component" can mean differences in gene pool as well as differences in genes. IRT "overwhelmingly genetic", from Rushton and Jensen 2005: " view contends that a substantial part (say 50%) of both individual and group differences in human behavioral traits is genetic". From The Bell Curve: "...variaton within groups is much greater than variation between groups." Aron.Foster (talk) 00:07, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

The problem, Aron, is, that neither Rushton and Jensen are geneticists, which may be why they either do not understand or understand and reject the science of population genetics ... that is, they are either misrepresenting the research by geneticists, or are presenting a wholly original theory that is simply rejected by mainstream science. I am refering to their claim that the hereditarian view holds that x % of the difference between groups is genetic. Geneticists do have a concept, called heritability, which is a measure of the degree to which genes account for phenotypic variation. However, heritability applies only to variation within a group. It cannot be used to explain differences between groups. This is just basic population genetics. Anyone who claims otherwise is either misrepresenting population genetics, or is simply making a claim that has nothing to do with research by population geneticists. This is why, as far as arguments about genetics and heritability go, Jensen and Rushton are fringe. Slrubenstein | Talk 12:52, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't think that we should be judging someone's expertise on a subject by what they studied for their PhD or what their job title is. Also, you need to use WP:FRINGE for guidance on what a fringe theory is according to Misplaced Pages standards. Until you start being more compromising you are not going to get anywhere ever. --Jagz (talk) 13:32, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Actually we really should be judging their expertise based on what their PhD and research is. This is how we judge a source to be reliable or not. Jensen and Rushton are psychologists with an interest in psychometrics. Neither seems to have even any expertise of either genetics or evolution, and neither claims such an expertise. Speaking of compromises, you have had the most uncompromising and obstreperous attitude of anyone here, coupled little or no understanding of the subject at hand. Alun (talk) 14:11, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Race and intelligence in the United States (continued)

This article started out in 2002 discussing the IQ gaps between whites, blacks, and Hispanics in the United States. We are now changing the perspective of the article to have a worldwide view. The information on the societal problems of blacks in the USA will have to be eliminated or reduced drastically. I suggest that an article titled "Race and Intelligence in the United States" be created to cover race and intelligence issues in the USA in more detail. --Jagz (talk) 03:30, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

I really like that idea, with a caveat. All the race/intelligence articles were merged because some people thought that it was too difficult to monitor all the sub-articles against "racists". Therefore, prior to creation of a new article there must be a general approval on this talk page.

Race in the US is, in my mind, more of an issue than Europe or elsewhere because of the large disparity in intelligence between blacks and whites. There certainly has been more research into the B/W difference in America than anywhere else (in this language anyways). I think it's a better division than environment/genetics. Aron.Foster (talk) 23:10, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

We have a consensus to do this, 2 for and 0 against. --Jagz (talk) 19:49, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Not so fast, please. The concerns raised before on this talk page are still valid; i.e. there are good reasons why Race and intelligence in the United States was speedily deleted.--Ramdrake (talk) 20:42, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Actually it is not clear why it was deleted. It sounds like you are preparing for another edit war instead of making an effort to cooperate. If you have a specific objection you should state it here. --Jagz (talk) 20:51, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

That is a POV fork. Brusegadi (talk) 21:56, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Why is it a POV fork? --Jagz (talk) 22:17, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Because that information belongs here. If you place it elsewhere you are obviously doing it to present the material in a different way, hence, a POV fork. If race is so correlated with intelligence, then geographic distinctions like "in the US" are not important. Brusegadi (talk) 01:05, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

This article was begun in 2002 to discuss the IQ differences between blacks, whites, and Hispanics in the USA. We need to change the article to give it a worldwide view but that will not be possible unless we remove a large amount of the information about the plight of blacks in the USA. What is your choice, to have that information deleted or moved to a new article? It doesn't make any difference to me. --Jagz (talk) 01:52, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Like Brusegadi said, it was deleted because it was found to be a POV fork. That, in and of itself, should be enough to convince you not to recreate it.--Ramdrake (talk) 22:03, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Why is it a POV fork? --Jagz (talk) 22:17, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

If I remember correctly, one of the salient points was that it was presenting the POV of minority scientists as if it were the mainstream scientific opinion, and that's just to start with.--Ramdrake (talk) 23:12, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

You remembered incorrectly. Here is the link to the discussion. Now can you explain why it is a POV fork? --Jagz (talk) 23:31, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

I'll take Ramdrake's lack of a response to mean that they had zero evidence to support their claim that a new article would be a POV fork. Ramdrake should not make false claims. I'd like to request that Ramdrake and others quit using the term POV fork as some type of religious mantra. --Jagz (talk) 15:21, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, you pointed to the discussion where the most prominent argument was that it was a POV fork, saying that I was incorrect in my recollection (AFAIK, the explanation I gave did come up prominently in the talk page discussions). No matter what you say it is still a POV fork. The discussion of IQ test score differences between Blacks and Whites cannot be dissociated from considerations of B-W differences in socio-economic status and a host of other considerations (foremost among them, that which you designated as the "plight of blacks in the USA"). Trying to convey that differences in SES have nothing to do with differences in IQ test scores is the POV fork, if you must know. Again, please discuss and gather consensus before attempting to recreate anything like that if you wish to avoid yet another speedy deletion.--Ramdrake (talk) 16:21, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

You can't have so much focus on blacks in the US and credibly say that the article has a worldwide view. It is a big world and the article is way to big as it is. There are almost 200 countries. Part of your motivation seems to be supporting Futurebird who posted a photo on their user page of mixed race female who is partially black and presumably from the US. That brings up another point in that most US blacks are of mixed race; they have a significant percentage of European ancestry. I suspect that a lot of whites in the US have a small percentage of African ancestry without having any knowledge of it. Blacks and whites have lived together here for hundreds of years and it is inevitable. Race as used in the US for example is largely a social construct because really there are a lot of mixed race people here. This article needs more of a focus on indigenous people that have low levels of racial mixing and other countries besides the US. --Jagz (talk) 18:25, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

However, outside of the US (and UK in some smaller measure), the subject of the correlation of race to IQ test score results has not been extensively studied. However, if you can find reliable sources relating studies in such countries, you're welcome to add them. However, I think removing the social issues relating to this subject (SES concerns and all) is inappropriate.--Ramdrake (talk) 18:37, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

How could anyone justify adding anything to this article, which is way too large as it is? What about ethnic discrimination among blacks in African countries; does that lower IQ? --Jagz (talk) 19:04, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Here is an example of discrimination in Trinidad. --Jagz (talk) 21:28, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Do incidents in which Africans shoot and hack each other to death with machetes, like the Rwandan genocide, lead to lower IQs? --Jagz (talk) 22:31, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

It is almost universally acknowledged that the article is a piece of garbage and the editors have no clue how to turn it around. Every time someone tries to do something to improve it they object or spout out a bunch of repetitive rhetoric like Ramdrake. Ramdrake believes there is no genetic connection between intelligence and race and wants everyone else to share his belief. Now he feels he has to oppose me in everything because just maybe I will somewhere mention a possible genetic connection and that will conflict with his personal beliefs and upset him greatly. --Jagz (talk) 23:58, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Edit-warring on race-related articles

Here is evidence provided in a request for arbitration for edit-warring on race-related articles. It says:

"Per request for specificity on the talk page, the users who are most commonly involved in revert wars on these articles are Dbachmann, Deeceevoice, and Ramdrake, with Jeeny and Futurebird also contributing some, but not as many, reverts. Egyegy, Muntuwandi, Taharqa, and Lusala lu ne Nkuka Luka, and other also join from time to time. This list is by no means exhuastive."

I believe that some of these individuals form edit-warring gangs to get around the 3RR policy. --Jagz (talk) 14:31, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Qualities/skills of editors who may produce a successful Race and intelligence article

I have been watching this article from the sidelines for some time. It appears to me that the level of scholarship reqired to effectively edit this complex topic is, at this stage, beyond most WP editors. It may be that as WP editor culture develops the necessary skills and attitudes will become available in sufficient quantities. Am interested in what other editors think this skill set would include. Is it beyond what is suggested in WP:POLICY? How much familiarity with genetics, the history of psychology, sociology and science, and access to online scientific journals would be necessary. How would effective editors deal with a group of ineffective/ignorant editors attempting to edit? How would a group of effective editors prevent themselves being swamped by a constant stream of tangential, unfocused, ignorant discusion flowing through the discusion page? SmithBlue (talk) 00:36, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

I strongly believe that credentials are not an issue at Misplaced Pages. One need not have a PhD. in population genetics, psychology, or sociology to edit this article. Surely, we do not demand that someone have a PhD. in math or physics in order to edit Maxwell's equations or Gauss's law! That said, surely we expect an editor to understand math and physics well, if they are to contribute to those articles. Articles like Maxwell's equations and Gauss's law must be accurate and reflect the state of the art in mathematicians' and physicists' understanding of these things, and should be based on sound research by editors capable of doing sound research, right? I would expect nothing less for this article. Slrubenstein | Talk 00:51, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

I believe it is important to decide who the target audience is for the article and write it for their benefit. The article is not for the benefit of the editors. If you try to write it like a scholarly journal you are not going to connect with a lot of the readers and a lot of the editors are not capable of writing the article at that level because most are not experts. I'm not sure if Misplaced Pages has a policy on this. --Jagz (talk) 02:02, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Non sequitor. Please stick to the topic. Are you repeating the same trollish tactic you did in the section above, "Fringe," where instead of responding to other people's points you just change the subject? First of all, it is very much Misplaced Pages's policy that we write articles for editors since anyone can edit Misplaced Pages and all readers of Misplaced Pages articles are, potentially, editors. Second, no one has ever said that this article should be written "like a scholarly journal." I defy you to quote even one sentence in which anyone has suggested that this be written "like a scholaly journal." Or, by "scholarly journal" are you referring to what I wrote immediately before your comment, that the article should be ccurate and well-researched? Please be clear: are you saying that the article should be inaccurate and poorly-researched? Is that what you mean when you say it should not be written like a scholarly journal? If that is not what you mean, I see no point or sense to your comment, it has no connection then to what SmithBlue or I wrote. I repeat what I wrote bfore: If you do not want to respond to what others are discussing, then start a new section to introduce your new point. Slrubenstein | Talk 08:28, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Slurbenstein, will you please find another article to work on. You have been involved in this article for 6 years and what do you have to show for it. The article is a well known piece of garbage. Your arrogant ramblings on this Talk page are unhelpful. --Jagz (talk) 15:18, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Jagz, another non-sequitor. Please focus. if you have nothing to say related to this thread, then just don't say anything. Slrubenstein | Talk 17:00, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm saying it would be in the best interest of the article for you to stop participating. --Jagz (talk) 17:06, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Split the article

I see that it is impossible to come to any conclusion with this article, as many people are divided on whether race influences intelligence or not. I suggest to split the article in two parts, one arguing against any link between race and intelligence, the other part arguing the opposite. Bh3u4m (talk) 18:51, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

That would be a POV fork and is forbidden at Misplaced Pages. besides, why divide the article this way? Shouldn't encyclopedia articles be based on appropriate sources? We should divide the article according to content, not points of view. We could have one article on the heritability of IQ scores, and debates among scientists who study the heritability of IQ scores, and we can have another article on IQ and socio-economic status, including all notable views (i.e. debates among scholars) concerning this topic. But it is absured to argue that a topic is "right" or "wrong." There are two bodies of scholarship out there, written by scholars trained in different disciplines using different methods to answer different questions. We should have articles that provide clear accounts of these two bodies of scholarship. Slrubenstein | Talk 20:30, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

It would not make sense to split the article that way because both genetics and environment could influence one's IQ. --Jagz (talk) 22:28, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Also, genetics and environment are not independent variables over generations. They both affect each other on the average over time. --Jagz (talk) 16:10, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Pray tell, how can genetics affect environment???--Ramdrake (talk) 17:06, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Adults with a low IQs are more likely to live in a poor environment. If your parents have low IQs you are more likely to grow up in poor environment. --Jagz (talk) 18:00, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Non sequitor. I repeat Ramdrake's valid question: Pray tell, how can genetics affect environment??? Slrubenstein | Talk 18:19, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

I have explained the basics of what I meant. --Jagz (talk) 19:00, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

That would be a fork. We have to have everything here. Brusegadi (talk) 22:29, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Content forks are permitted. The title and contents of an article should conform to actual topics, not ones that just exist in the head of an editor. Jagz just hasn't read - or understood - what I wrote. I wrote that "We could have one article on the heritability of IQ scores, and debates among scientists who study the heritability of IQ scores." Such an article - on heritability - will by definition discuss environmental influences on IQ. On December 18, in the section on "A more recent version of Snyderman and Rothman" I provided a list of journal articles that would be notable, verifiable, and appropriate sources for such an article. On 19:10, 19 January, in the section "Fringe," I provided one example of a debate among these scientists involving environmental factors. So once again, Jagz' comment is just an ignorant non-sequitor. DNFTT. Slrubenstein | Talk 17:15, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Are you proposing that these two articles replace this article? I had assumed that when you brought this up earlier but then I believe you made a statement somewhere that that is not what you intended. --Jagz (talk) 05:25, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I proposed this split some time ago. I am opposed to POV forks, which violate policy. I favor Content Forks, which lead to better articles. Slrubenstein | Talk 12:46, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

I think that there should be one main article that discusses both issues but that there could be two additional articles that discuss socio-economics and hereditability in more detail. --Jagz (talk) 18:34, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

The question is: how much does intelligence depend on inheritage or on genetics, and if the difference among races in intelligence is environmental or an heritage. I think a good idea would be to split the article in an environmental section and a genetic section, both collecting arguments for their side. Well, what's the problem with it? There's no POV problem, research is going on and there are various different results, so stating different things is OK because the medical study of intelligence is still under development and lacks a unique scientific truth. So, just write these two hypothesis for explaining the differences, eventually adding other hypothesis. What's the problem for doing so? Bh3u4m (talk) 18:39, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

You claim that these are two hypotheses. Where did you get them from? if you thought of these hypotheses, then we cannot use them to organize the article - that would violate WP:NOR. Any hypothesis that the article discusses has to come from a notable source. Now, I know of only two notable sources that have proposed that there are significant differences in IQ between races and that the explanation for this difference is genetic: Arthur Jensen and later Murray and Herrnstein. However, I know of no geneticist who has ever supported their claims or who has even taken their hypothesis seriously. I think their works are notable enough that Misplaced Pages should have articles on these men and their books, which provide full accounts of their views. But in the scholarly literature I know of, concerning variation in IQ score, the views of Jensen, Murray and Herrnstein are not notable, they are fringe. Such fringe views may or may not be mentioned in the article but they certainly should not be used to organize the article. I do not want to violate NOR. I think wikipedia articles concerning heredity, IQ, and race should represent mainstream scholarship. Above, i provided a short bibliography of people actively researching heritability and IQ. None of them propose the hypothesis that genetics accounts for differences in IQ scores between races. Please tell us what your sources are. How many articles published by trained geneticists published in peer-reviewed journals address the hypothesis you suggest? If there is indeed a notable body of literature from mainstream sources that addresses this hypothesis, I defer to you - we should indeed present it in the article. But can you provide us with such sources? If you cannot, you are just proposing original research and that is forbidden by our policies. Slrubenstein | Talk 19:01, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Excuse me, ever heard of James Watson ? He is the co-discovered of the DNA and Nobel Prize winner, thus he is notable (or not too much for wikipedia standards? Perhaps winning a Nobel prize is just a fringe thing). I saw he claimed that scientific research is leading us to a discovery of genetical origins of intelligence, that blacks are probably on the average less intelligent because of genetic factors, and he said that he is hopeful that in a few decades the genes responsible for the gap will be discovered. Well, I know that this is not politically correct, because political correctness wants un to claim that we are all equal (and that could be a good thing), but we have to realize that there are differences, I remind you that there is an evolutionary gap of 50 to 300 thousand years between different races, so why cannot there be any difference in intelligence? It seems that your claim of fringe theories would just lead to censorship on wikipedia, as happened to nobel prizes such as Watson and Shockley (who are not fringe theorists). Thus, your sources claiming that intelligence is an environmental factor, are welcome, along with sources discussing the hereditability of intelligence!, but do not try to push for a censorship of different opinions and reseach. Bh3u4m (talk) 20:01, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Excuse me, ever heard of James Watson - Yes, he is a molecular biologist, neither a geneticist nor a psychologist or a psychometrician, thus very much a non-expert on the subject at hand.

I remind you that there is an evolutionary gap of 50 to 300 thousand years between different races - Please cite relevant, verifiable sources. This is breaking news.

You seem to be clamoring for equal wieght to be given to all viewpoints on this matter. This is not what WP:NPOV says. NPOV says: All Misplaced Pages articles and other encyclopedic content must be written from a neutral point of view, representing significant views fairly, proportionately and without bias. (emphasis mine). The viewpoint of people like Watson is that of the minority (if not that of a tiny minority), therefore, it should not by any means be given equal weight. I hope this clears up the matter.--Ramdrake (talk) 20:56, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

• Excuse me, ever heard of James Watson?

Yes, I've heard of him, can you please provide citations for research he has published in the field of "intelligence" and any theories he has published regarding the genetics of intelligence. Please take a look at his Misplaced Pages article James Watson, where no mention is made of him having made any contributions to the study of the genetic component of intelligence. So he is in fact non-notable in this field of research. Alun (talk) 07:17, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

• I saw he claimed that scientific research is leading us to a discovery of genetical (sic) origins of intelligence, that blacks are probably on the (sic) average less intelligent because of genetic factors, and he said that he is hopeful that in a few decades the genes responsible for the gap will be discovered..

Actually Watson didn't say any of this. If you want to make a claim at the very least make it accurate. according to his Misplaced Pages article "In his book... Watson does not directly mention race as a factor in his hypothesized divergence of intellect between geographically isolated populations." Watson also stated: " understand why people, reading those words, have reacted in the ways they have . . . To all those who have drawn the inference from my words that Africa, as a continent, is somehow genetically inferior, I can only apologize unreservedly. That is not what I meant. More importantly from my point of view, there is no scientific basis for such a belief". As far as I can see he makes no mention of "genes responsible for the gap". Most interestingly Watson appears to be one of the many so called European-Americans who has a significant recent African ancestry, the Sunday Times claims that 16% of Watson's DNA is of recent African origin (and Watson is one of only two people who have published their whole genetic code, so we can know this, the other being Craig Venter). This actually means that Watson's recent African ancestry is significantly greater than that of many African-Americans. Alun (talk) 07:17, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

• political correctness wants un to claim that we are all equal

Eh? "political correctness" is just a term the far right use when they make unfounded claims against rational people. It has little meaning above and beyond being an ad hominem attack. Alun (talk) 07:17, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

• I remind you that there is an evolutionary gap of 50 to 300 thousand years between different races

This is the most fatuous piece of ignorance I have read on Misplaced Pages for a very long time. Our species appeared ~200,000ybp by most estimates. I don't know your source for claiming an "evolutionary gap" between "races", but given that anthropologists and geneticists generally reject the concept of "biological race" I can only assume your source is non-reliable. I find it interesting that Coon claimed that Europeans evolved a million years ago and represented a much older population that Africans, and used his theory to claim that Europeans were "more evolved" because they were older, now Rushton uses the opposite claim to draw the same conclusion, that Europeans are better because they appeared more recently. Just goes to show that racists will always discover that their group is "better", whether they claim it's older or more recent, one might conclude that they have an agenda above and beyond science. In reality evolution is not necessarily progressive, evolution is adaptive, there is no such thing as "more evolved", there is only well adapted, there isn't even "poorly adapted", because poorly adapted individuals are dead individuals, so poorly adapted species do not arise. This is why we get mass extinctions, when the environment changes rapidly species that are not adapted to the new environment become extinct very quickly, it's adaptation not progress. Please see The Use of Racial, Ethnic, and Ancestral Categories in Human Genetics Research. Alun (talk) 07:17, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Fellas, settle down - I asked the guy for a source for the hypothesis, and he could not provide one. That is enough to end the discussion. Slrubenstein | Talk 16:39, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

The Flynn Effect

I think the section on the "Flynn Effect" needs real expansion. The New Yorker recently published an article by Malcolm Gladwell reviewing a recent book by Flynn that emphasizes not just that IQ's have gone up over time, butthat the standard IQ test is renormed ("100" is recalibrated periodically so that it remains the average score) periodically. This means that the results from IQ tests administered in the 1950s cannot be compared with results from the 1970s or the present, without adjustment. yet, many studies that compare IQs of different races do just that - compare scores from different times, without taking into account the renorming of the test. here is one excerpt from Gladwell's article:

For instance, Flynn shows what happens when we recognize that I.Q. is not a freestanding number but a value attached to a specific time and a specific test. When an I.Q. test is created, he reminds us, it is calibrated or “normed” so that the test-takers in the fiftieth percentile—those exactly at the median—are assigned a score of 100. But since I.Q.s are always rising, the only way to keep that hundred-point benchmark is periodically to make the tests more difficult—to “renorm” them. The original WISC was normed in the late nineteen-forties. It was then renormed in the early nineteen-seventies, as the WISC-R; renormed a third time in the late eighties, as the WISC III; and renormed again a few years ago, as the WISC IV—with each version just a little harder than its predecessor. The notion that anyone “has” an I.Q. of a certain number, then, is meaningless unless you know which WISC he took, and when he took it, since there’s a substantial difference between getting a 130 on the WISC IV and getting a 130 on the much easier WISC.

.............

The fact that the I.Q.s of Chinese-Americans also seemed to be elevated has led I.Q. fundamentalists to posit the existence of an international I.Q. pyramid, with Asians at the top, European whites next, and Hispanics and blacks at the bottom.

Here was a question tailor-made for James Flynn’s accounting skills. He looked first at Lynn’s data, and realized that the comparison was skewed. Lynn was comparing American I.Q. estimates based on a representative sample of schoolchildren with Japanese estimates based on an upper-income, heavily urban sample. Recalculated, the Japanese average came in not at 106.6 but at 99.2. Then Flynn turned his attention to the Chinese-American estimates. They turned out to be based on a 1975 study in San Francisco’s Chinatown using something called the Lorge-Thorndike Intelligence Test. But the Lorge-Thorndike test was normed in the nineteen-fifties. For children in the nineteen-seventies, it would have been a piece of cake. When the Chinese-American scores were reassessed using up-to-date intelligence metrics, Flynn found, they came in at 97 verbal and 100 nonverbal. Chinese-Americans had slightly lower I.Q.s than white Americans.

The Asian-American success story had suddenly been turned on its head. The numbers now suggested, Flynn said, that they had succeeded not because of their higher I.Q.s. but despite their lower I.Q.s. Asians were overachievers. In a nifty piece of statistical analysis, Flynn then worked out just how great that overachievement was. Among whites, virtually everyone who joins the ranks of the managerial, professional, and technical occupations has an I.Q. of 97 or above. Among Chinese-Americans, that threshold is 90. A Chinese-American with an I.Q. of 90, it would appear, does as much with it as a white American with an I.Q. of 97.

There should be no great mystery about Asian achievement. It has to do with hard work and dedication to higher education, and belonging to a culture that stresses professional success. But Flynn makes one more observation. The children of that first successful wave of Asian-Americans really did have I.Q.s that were higher than everyone else’s—coming in somewhere around 103. Having worked their way into the upper reaches of the occupational scale, and taken note of how much the professions value abstract thinking, Asian-American parents have evidently made sure that their own children wore scientific spectacles. “Chinese Americans are an ethnic group for whom high achievement preceded high I.Q. rather than the reverse,” Flynn concludes, reminding us that in our discussions of the relationship between I.Q. and success we often confuse causes and effects. “It is not easy to view the history of their achievements without emotion,” he writes. That is exactly right. To ascribe Asian success to some abstract number is to trivialize it.

Two weeks ago, Flynn came to Manhattan to debate Charles Murray at a forum sponsored by the Manhattan Institute. Their subject was the black-white I.Q. gap in America. During the twenty-five years after the Second World War, that gap closed considerably. The I.Q.s of white Americans rose, as part of the general worldwide Flynn effect, but the I.Q.s of black Americans rose faster. Then, for about a period of twenty-five years, that trend stalled—and the question was why.

Murray showed a series of PowerPoint slides, each representing different statistical formulations of the I.Q. gap. He appeared to be pessimistic that the racial difference would narrow in the future. “By the nineteen-seventies, you had gotten most of the juice out of the environment that you were going to get,” he said. That gap, he seemed to think, reflected some inherent difference between the races. “Starting in the nineteen-seventies, to put it very crudely, you had a higher proportion of black kids being born to really dumb mothers,” he said. When the debate’s moderator, Jane Waldfogel, informed him that the most recent data showed that the race gap had begun to close again, Murray seemed unimpressed, as if the possibility that blacks could ever make further progress was inconceivable.

Flynn took a different approach. The black-white gap, he pointed out, differs dramatically by age. He noted that the tests we have for measuring the cognitive functioning of infants, though admittedly crude, show the races to be almost the same. By age four, the average black I.Q. is 95.4—only four and a half points behind the average white I.Q. Then the real gap emerges: from age four through twenty-four, blacks lose six-tenths of a point a year, until their scores settle at 83.4.

That steady decline, Flynn said, did not resemble the usual pattern of genetic influence. Instead, it was exactly what you would expect, given the disparate cognitive environments that whites and blacks encounter as they grow older.

Does someone have Flynn's book and other work? It would be better to work from the actual source, except for Gladwell's reporting of a public event. Suggestions for how to incorporate this in? Slrubenstein | Talk 18:32, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Bot archiving

This page grows quickly. I was wondering if anyone had any objections to having a bot do all the archiving. I would set it to archive anything thread older than 31 days. Let me know asap. Thanks, Brusegadi (talk) 01:55, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

No objections here.--Ramdrake (talk) 15:34, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Ok, I set it to 35 days. Hopefully that will keep this page at a nice size. Brusegadi (talk) 02:50, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Race and Intelligence article on Wikinfo

Here is a link the the Race and Intelligence article on Wikinfo: http://www.wikinfo.org/index.php/Race_and_intelligence --Jagz (talk) 15:07, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

While there is some interesting material in the intro of the article, a lot of it relies on OR and synthesis and is therefore unsuitable for WP. Also, the lack of references is disturbing.--Ramdrake (talk) 15:37, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

It's more readable, better organized, and more succinct than the WP article. --Jagz (talk) 15:45, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

So not actually more accurate, factual or representative of academic thinking then? Your criteria for comparison are stylistic and superficial. You seem to be saying "look at this, it's better because it's less intelligent". Alun (talk) 18:45, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm drawing attention to some shortcomings of the WP article. --Jagz (talk) 19:00, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

I just added a lng section on other points made by Flynn that are relevant to this topic. i thought we could move towards some consensus about how best to incorporate that into the article - Flynn is a well-regarded scholar who is an expert in this field and surely a better source that Wikinfo's ignorant original opinion essay. One editor here insists on never making a constructive contribution; aqny time someone attempts to bring well-informed research into the article he either changes the topic or introduces a non-sequitor, or a racist remark or a personal attack. Folks, WP:DNFTT. Let's focus on what we can do to improve the article rather than get bogged down in ignroant, racist drivel. Slrubenstein | Talk 19:42, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

It would be better to fix what is in the article now before adding something else. It needs to be made more readable, organized better, shortened, and written more succinctly. Also, see the templates at the top of the article. I suspect that a lot of knowledgeable editors have long ago abandoned this article out of frustration. --Jagz (talk) 20:21, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

We may be able to get some ideas for improving the Misplaced Pages "Race and intelligence" article from the Wikinfo "Race and intelligence" article. See: http://www.wikinfo.org/index.php/Race_and_intelligence --Jagz (talk) 15:00, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Anti-racism

Anti-racism includes beliefs, actions, movements, and policies adopted or developed to oppose racism. In general, anti-racism is intended to promote an egalitarian society in which people do not face discrimination on the basis of their race, however defined. By its nature, anti-racism tends to promote the view that racism in a particular society is both pernicious and socially pervasive, and that particular changes in political, economic, and/or social life are required to eliminate it. --Jagz (talk) 21:36, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Proposal to move article

I propose that this article be moved to Wikibooks and it be replaced by a condensed version that has more resemblance to an encyclopedia article. The article could be expanded further in Wikibooks by interested editors. --Jagz (talk) 22:25, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Everyone is overcomplicating this.

We need to remove many more sections than you folks indicate. Sorry for the long post, but I think it is needed. I feel that the lists and debates on this talk page overcomplicate what the total, simple rewrite should be:

1. Remember that the article is called "Race and Intelligence" 2. Therefore, it should start out referring to the page race and the page intelligence. 3. Then, almost by definition, it should summarize the findings about any trends between, you guessed it: race and intelligence. 4. Then it should discuss the controversy about the various hypotheses about the causes of these trends. 5. Then it should end.

The discussion of whether races exist does not belong in this particular article. Colonial history does not belong here. Lengthy discussions of IQ testing do not belong here. Sections on colonialism, slavery, and segragation do not belong here. To use it as an example, it may be appropriate to say something like "one hypothesis highlights the dynamics in colonial history as a major driving cause of the differences" and link colonial history, etc. Of course this is only after we say what the differences are.

But let's stick to the topic, mention the other things as they apply, but discuss those other things in the appropriate wiki page.

One more example: There is no need for a caste section. If there is some reference saying caste is part of the cause or an effect, we say "some have claimed that caste structure has maintained intelligence differences between races, others argue that caste is partly the effect of intelligence difference." and link to caste. Most people know what caste means, and if they don't, this page is not the place to educate them.

(Regarding my item 3: In the entire article, I cannot find the one thing summarizing the findings relative to what the article is about: race and intelligence. These correlations and trends should be reported. These results do not even appear in the "Test Results" Section. Yes we should report the controversy over causes, but we need to report the results first. So here I am just agreeing with the Ideas about "the main point of the article".)

75.52.252.147 (talk) 07:23, 26 January 2008 (UTC) artman772000

Actually I think your own argument about it not being necessary to include long discussions about "cast" and "colonialism" are equally applicable to "test results". What I mean is this, this is an encyclopaedia, wherever possible we should avoid using primary sources, well test results are primary sources. All we need to do is have a simple statement saying that many independently conducted surveys, mainly in the USA, show that some groups of people on average have lower test score results than other groups of people. Then we can expand upon it, in the 20s it was people from the Mediterranean and eastern Europe who underperformed, now African Americans tend to underperform. Then it's just a question of including the various theories and models that attempt to explain this phenomenon, and it's the various theories and models that the article should concentrate on. Most of the intelligent debate (and as one would expect from such an article there are a fair number of flame warriors, see above) here on the talk page seems to revolve around the validity of including theories that are in essence based on biological determinism, ie are these theories so fringe that they deserve no place in the article. Personally I'm ambivalent, I don't have a problem with including a small mention of biological determinism as long as it isn't given undue weight. To a great extent you are right though. Alun (talk) 12:02, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

How are the Somalis in Finland performing? Maybe we can add that to the article. --Jagz (talk) 15:00, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

IQ gap

IQ tests are often designed to have an average score of 100. Studies have shown that Whites in Europe and the United States (U.S.) average from 100 to 103 on IQ tests. Orientals in Asia and the U.S. tend to have scores of about 106. Blacks in the U.S., the Caribbean, Britain, and Canada have average IQs of about 85. The average IQs for sub-Saharan Africans range from 70 to 75. Black Africans in the South African school system have an average IQ of 70, whereas Mixed-Race Black students in South Africa, with about 25% White ancestry (as determined by genetic testing), have an average IQ of 85 -- the same as Blacks in the United States, Britain, and the Caribbean. --Jagz (talk) 01:37, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

I just found this data: "Virtually all of today's African Americans have some degree of White ancestry. The average for the entire United States is 25%..." This is the same percentage as the Mixed-Race Black students in South Africa discussed above and they both have the same average IQ of 85. Is this just a coincidence??? --Jagz (talk) 01:37, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

sources for the diligent editors

Look for papers by authors who are recognized as experts in the field. The editorial boards of journals in the field are good source lists. For example:

• http://www.isironline.org/journal.html

The Watson affair brought out a lot of bad and some good commentary. This exchange was particularly frank and detailed (participants include Flynn, Ceci, Turkheimer and Gottfredson):

• http://www.cato-unbound.org/archives/november-2007/

In particular, Flynn, Ceci Turkheimer and Gottfredson seem to each stake out different positions.

The June 2005 issue of Psychology, Public Policy and Law included a number of review articles (freely available here):

• http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/30years/

And from a decade ago there were some balanced review articles written after the publication of The Bell Curve:

• http://michna.com/intelligence.htm
• http://www.lrainc.com/swtaboo/taboos/wsj_main.html
• http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~cfc/Chabris1998a.html

Cheers --Legalleft (talk) 11:30, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Genetics of Brain Structure and Intelligence

"Nature is not democratic. Individuals’ IQs vary, but the data presented in this review and elsewhere do not lead us to conclude that our intelligence is dictated solely by genes. Instead genetic interactions with the environment suggest that enriched environments will help everyone achieve their potential, but not to equality. Our potential seems largely predetermined." http://www.loni.ucla.edu/~thompson/PDF/TT_ARN05.pdf --Jagz (talk) 17:05, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Nice quote, it seems about right. Just two observations: First, "individuals' IQs vary" not "group IQs vary", this is specifically a comment about variation at the individual level, not at the group level. Second "genetic interactions with the environment suggest that enriched environments will help everyone achieve their full potential". So again, unless one can categorically show that everyone's environments are "enriched" to the same degree then it just supports the repeated observation that environmental factors are extremely important with regards to the ability of everyone to reach their potential, or to put it another way even someone with extremely good "intelligence genes" would do exceedingly badly on IQ tests if their environment were impoverished. Note further that this quote is totally irrelevant to any discussion about group differences in IQ test scores. Alun (talk) 18:01, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

So you are saying that on the average, groups vary in the degree to which they are reaching their potential because of socio-economics, etc.? Don't you believe that it is also important to discuss that groups are born with different average potentials? --Jagz (talk) 18:34, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

No I'm not. I'm making an observation about the quote you give. This quote makes reference to individuals, it makes no claims one way or another to group differences in IQ. Therefore this quote has little or nothing to offer to this article. This quote may be useful for the "Intelligence" article, it may be useful for an article about "Gentics and intelligence", but it is of no value to an article about group differences because it has nothing to say about group differences, be those groups defined by "race", gender, income, social status, height or mass. It's still a nice quote though, just not relevant here. Alun (talk) 06:33, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Again, there is no direct evidence that groups are born with different average potentials. Individuals are born with different individual potentials; such has been demonstrated. That the same applies to group differences isn't supported by any direct evidence at this point.--Ramdrake (talk) 19:04, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

So should we assume that all groups have the same average potentials because there is no direct evidence to indicate otherwise? Would that be a better assumption than groups having different average potentials? --Jagz (talk) 19:22, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

I believe that, in the absence of proof that groups have different average potentials, assuming that groups have the same average potential would be the most logical assumption.--Ramdrake (talk) 19:36, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

I know it's a much-tried analogy, but when we talk of race differences in athletic ability vice intelligence the logical assumption is a difference in average potentials. Aron.Foster (talk) 00:47, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Aron, please keep it relevant to the article, this article is not about the absurd and demonstrable claptrap notion that some so called "races" are better at athletics (or any sport). Jagz, we should not assume anything. You posted a quote, presumably because you thought it was relevant to this article, I pointed out that this quote is specifically about how environment is important for individual differences in intelligence, however good one's "intelligence genes" may or may not be. As such the quote is somewhat irrelevant to any article about group differences. Above and beyond what the quote actually says we can make no other inferences. Please try to remember that this is not the place to promote personal opinions or for a general discussion of the subject. The quote was irrelevant to any observed "group difference". Alun (talk) 06:33, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Alun, when did we stop knowing that blacks have more fast twitch muscles than whites, hence better at sports? If you say it's demonstrable claptrap, I beg demonstration. That issue is in direct parallel to the race/intelligence debate; I agree this quote isn't. Aron.Foster (talk) 07:58, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Hence the plethora of black people who participate in sports like Ice Hockey, Lacrosse, Table Tennis, Eventing etc. Not to mention the fact that the best (by far) cricket team over the last fifteen years or so has been the Australian team (until recently all white) and not the West Indian team (predominantly black with the exceptions of Shivnarine Chanderpaul and Ramnaresh Sarwan). Different sports are played by different social groups are they not? The sports of working class people such as Football (or American football, basketball or baseball in your case), are played by working class people, the sports of the affluent (for example rugby in England or golf in the US) are played by the affluent. Let's face it, the only way the "blacks are better sports people" ideology (and it is an ideology) works is if one selectively chooses what sports and what country to analyse, in the USA some sports are dominated by black people, also in the USA some sports are dominated by white people. Outside the USA the discrepancy is far less apparent. If you want to read a very good demolition of this fallacy then I can recommend Joseph L. Graves' The Emperor's New Clothes: Biological Theories of Race at the Millennium. I agree, the issue is in direct parallel to the race/intelligence debate, in that only people with a racist ideology to promote believe either. Alun (talk) 09:32, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Maybe we've reached an impasse on this, but I don't appreciate being labeled a racist. Aron.Foster (talk) 11:09, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

If you are trying to suggest that I have labelled you a racist, then please re-read what I have written. I am saying that people that promote racial stereotypes are racist, I have not accused you of doing this. This is the second time you have accused me of making personal attacks against you, you should assume good faith more and not assume that all comments are necessarily about you personally. Nevertheless I am sorry if I offended you, it certainly was not my intention. All the best. Alun (talk) 13:24, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

No hard feelings, but please understand that when you say someone's comment "at best displays ignorance, and at worst a deliberate misrepresentation of the facts" or that "only people with a racist ideology to promote believe" the issue someone is defending, it will be taken as an attack. "Only stupid people would say what you just said" doesn't work any better. Sorry I overreacted. Aron.Foster (talk) 23:04, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Maybe there's just a cultural difference here. I have noticed on Misplaced Pages that often when I write things on talk pages that I think are quite innocuous sometimes people from the USA get offended. For example I don't think it's an attack to claim something displays ignorance, we are all ignorant of some things. I'm happy to admit that if I were discussing mathematics with you I would be relatively ignorant. Anyway you are clearly a good faith editor and again I'm sorry I offended you. I'll try to be more careful how I express myself in future. Cheers. Alun (talk) 06:36, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

So there are two different beliefs unless I have missed some; one being that groups of people should be assumed to be born with equal average potentials unless proven otherwise and the other that it cannot be assumed that groups are born with equal average potentials, especially when the groups (or their recent relatives/ancestors) have been geographically separated for an extended period of time. I believe both views must be respected, at least for the purposes of this article. --Jagz (talk) 14:22, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

I added "born with" above because the average potentials of groups may change in succeeding generations through a variety of factors. --Jagz (talk) 15:02, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

No. There are no "beliefs". There is evidence. This evidence comprises of IQ test scores that show that in the USA "white" people score better than "black" people. Science is about producing theories to explain what we observe. The problem with the test score results is that very little is actually known about how intelligence is transmitted from parent to offspring. Clearly there are many ways a parent can transmit intelligence, to a certain (unknown) extent genes determine the intellectual potential of a child, but genes are only a small part, genes give a potential for excellence, but in a poor environment having good genes may make little difference, no one can learn calculus if they are never encouraged or taught to learn calculus. Environmental effects are so varied that they comprise a huge set of unknown variables. Environmental effects include things as diverse as: Nutrition during pregnancy, nutrition during childhood (including breastfeeding), reading to children from a young age, schooling (how good the teaching and facilities are, how often a child attends), exposure to toxins such as lead during brain development (this last is especially important for people living in older and poorer housing), parental affection, class (social status), wealth (economic status), some people even claim that listening to Mozart can "boost" the intellectual development of a child etc. etc. Environmental effects are so diverse and varied that scientists need to study them in order to understand the extent of these effects on cognitive ability. One group of academics want to promote their biological deterministic theories (geneticists generally do not support biological determinism), on the other hand the overwhelming majority of scientists say that these theories are simplistic and do not take into account the vast amount of environmental effects we just don't know about. The question is about presenting the various theories about what affects a child's cognitive development in a neutral way, that is what this talk page is for. This is not a forum for debating the merits of various theories. This means that we present the consensus opinion in academia and only give a small section to minority theories, as per policy. Alun (talk) 06:36, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

No one is disputing that environmental factors affect to what degree someone reaches their potential. What we were discussing is that one's potential is limited by genetics. You're not necessarily going to be like Albert Einstein, Mozart, or a professional athlete just by having a good environment and trying really hard. --Jagz (talk) 11:27, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Well no one is disputing a genetic component to "intelligence". I don't understand what you mean by "maximum potential". Potential is what one has at the start, there can be no "maximal" or "minimal" potential. A person has an unknown potential, they may or may not reach the full ability that their potential indicated, depending upon circumstance. Indeed probably no one ever does, there must be environmental constraints on all of us. It is the environment that provides the unknown circumstances. There appears to be little dispute that on the whole black people have a much worse environment than white people, this is a fact and easily supported. So the question arises, how much of the IQ difference is because of this environmental gap? A small group of scientists want to claim that the massive disparity in environment between white and black Americans is irrelevant, that the differences are "genetic", though they appear to have zero genetic evidence for this claim. This tiny group constantly claim that they know why there is a "test score gap", a breathtakingly audacious claim, though one they have clearly failed to support. Most scientists acknowledge that what we don't know is greater than what we do know, but that environment is clearly very important. Obviously it doesn't matter how good a person's "potential" is, if that person is not taught to read, then they will perform badly on a written test, so are we then measuring how good "education" (an environmental effect) is in a place, or are we measuring the lack of ability of an individual? The OECD clearly think that when we test children, we are actually testing how good the teaching is in any particular region. For example see the recent PISA results. On the other hand there appears to be a 17 point difference in IQ between French and German people. Education or "genetics"? Alun (talk) 07:10, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

The quote at the beginning of the article says, "Our potential seems largely predetermined." This implies that potential can be affected to a small extent by other factors besides genetics and that is why I used the term "maximum potential". For the purposes of our discussion here the term "potential" is sufficient. --Jagz (talk) 13:59, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

It implies no such thing. Potential may very well be largely predetermined, but one's actual achievements may be dramatically affected by other factors. A Ferrari has the potential to travel over 200kph, but if one fails to provide it with petrol then it will not move at all. Likewise a child may have the potential to be a genius, but will be a dunce if not provided with adequate nutrition, education etc. QED. Alun (talk) 15:42, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

You disagreed, changed the subject, then explained something else. I struck through it so as not to create confusion. --Jagz (talk) 19:55, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

You are being disingenuous. Heritability measures the influence of genetics within groups, not between groups. No one, for the nth time, has claimed that intelligence is not heritabile. All this article is suggesting is that the heritable component of intelligence may be connected to a specific aspect of brain structure - that it the point of the article. Stop trying to use it to make your own point. The article makes no claims about differences between races (the word race occurs once in the article, in the bibliography, and the word racial appears once in the article; the article simply is not about differences between races). Of course, my height and the length of my legs will limit how high I can jump. But so does nutrition and how much I exercize and these factors create as much a "maximum" limit on how high I can jump as any other factor. As the authors state, explicitly, it is impossible to distinguish between the effects of nature and nurture in intelligence. You are quoting selectively, misinterpreting, and arguing to push your own POV. Please, show a little respect for the science. Try. Try hard. Let's see what your maximum potential to understand science is. Slrubenstein | Talk 16:33, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Did I see on your user page that you are a scientist? What type of scientist are you? --Jagz (talk) 17:01, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

It doesn't matter. Credentials do not mater at Misplaced Pages, what matters is good research. I do not care what you do for a living. What I do care about is your disregard for serious researchers (as in your 13:32, 22 January 2008 edit) and research (as in your 02:02, 20 January 2008 edit); your childish, ad hominem attacks whenever you talk to someone who knows more than you (as in your 07:34, 11 January 2008, 17:48, 23:58, 19 January 2008, 15:18, 20 January 2008, 20 January 2008 and 23:58, 19 January 2008 edits); your hypocracy in saying we should not introduce new material that is directly relevant (20:21, 23 January 2008 and 18:00, 29 January 2008 edits) and then your introducing new material that actually is not related directly or even indirectly to race and IQ (17:05, 27 January 2008); and your racist, disruptive edits (06:11, 16 January 2008, 22:31, 19 January 2008). Aside from these, your contributions amount to non-sequitors and confused points that ignore other people's attempts to explain the science to you, or that are just meaningless disruptions (21:36, 23 January 2008). You complain about the sorry state the article is in, but I have yet to see a single constructive point or edit; moreover you systematically disrupt any serious attempt to discuss improving the article. Your question, above, is just another non-sequitor disruption. Let's stick to the point about how scientists study variation in IQ scores. Given that you systematically fail to do this, I can only conclude that it is because you actually have no understanding of the science, and based on some of the edits I just mentioned, you have made it clear, you do not care. Slrubenstein | Talk 17:42, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Well said. Alun (talk) 17:47, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

I will say that both Slrubenstein and Alun/Wobble's logic and reasoning seem to be markedly different than that of the scientists and engineers whom I have worked with throughout my career. I can only speculate that Alun has a political agenda whereas Slrubenstein has a religious agenda. --Jagz (talk) 18:33, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

It is a policy of Misplaced Pages to assume good faith, which you are failing to do. Discussions of intelligence are within the scope of the article and especially discussions on this Talk page. There is a good chance I understand hard sciences better than you do. You seem to be mostly involved in social science. If you don't want to participate in the discussion here then start another discussion. --Jagz (talk) 19:55, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Jagz, you dumb, lying hypocrite. You write "It is a policy of Misplaced Pages to assume good faith" immediately after a statement in which you state that you do not assume good faith on my part of Alun's!!!! At least be smart about this and do not accuse me of failing to assume good faith until a few days or weeks from now, after we might have forgotten your own declaration that you fail to assume good faith. It just is not intelligent to accuse someone of violating a guideline immediately after you yourself have violated that guideline! Anyway, there is plenty of hard evidence that you do not understand science as well. I am not sure what you mean by hard science, by the way; population genetics and the theory of evolution are not that difficult, certainly no harder than any other science. Or did you mean something else? Science is science, but sciences can be distingished by their objects. Evolutionary theory used to be classed as one of the natural sciences but today is considered a life science. Either way, you have made it very clear that you do not understand it. I have not failed to assume good faith, I have concluded that you systematically act in bad faith based on various edits of yours. I said it before and I will say it again: you are an ignorant, racist troll and most of your edits serve only to disrupt any progress on this talk page. Slrubenstein | Talk 23:38, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Slrubenstein and Alun; it's like Batman and Robin, the Dynamic Duo of arrogance. --Jagz (talk) 06:22, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Doesn't that make you The Joker?--Ramdrake (talk) 20:05, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Sure, and you can be Ace the Bat-Hound. --Jagz (talk) 22:52, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

What we are discussing is not "that one's maximum potential is limited by genetics." This is of course true in a vague and banal sense: in the course of human evolution we evolved so that we can no longer swing from branch to branch in the forest canopy; we evolved language; we evolved a particular kind of intelligence ... in all these things our genes simultaneously limit and enable us. But that is neither here nor there. What we are discussing is only one thing: how best to improve this article. When it comes to matters of content (the title of this section suggests we are talking about content and not style), the only thing to discuss is: what are the notable points of view in reliable sources? The literature that I know of that concerns itself with variation in IQ scores does not concen itself primarily with the point "that one's maximum potential is limited by genetics." This is just Jagz's WP:POINT and really irrelevant to this article. The literature that I know of discusses different measurements of heritability; different explanations for the effects of fetal environment on monochorionic twins (obviously in contrast to dichorionic twins); the effect of changes in IQ tests and the norming of IQ tests on the classification of people by degrees of intelligence; the effect of social and economic circumstances on IQ scores. If we want to focus on brain structure and intelligence, one of the most important sources is Ralph Holloway's research using cranial endocasts. But this body of literature really relates to a different topic, the evolution of human intelligence, and not variation in IQ scores among humans, who - absent a congenital birth defect, inherit the same brain structure. A Misplaced Pages editor can draw on these literatures selectively to make his own points, but that violates WP:NOR. Let's leave this page for discussing improvements to the articles. Readers who are more concerned with airing their own points and opinions can, I am sure, find some chat-room or list-serve where they can bloviate to their hearts' content, or they can create their own blog. Slrubenstein | Talk 17:30, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

There are two different beliefs unless I have missed some; one being that groups of people should be assumed to be born with equal average potentials unless proven otherwise and the other that it cannot be assumed that groups are born with equal average potentials, especially when the groups (or their recent relatives/ancestors) have been geographically separated for an extended period of time. I believe both views must be respected, at least for the purposes of this article. --Jagz (talk) 17:46, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

This will hopefully help to alleviate endless debates on this discussion page. --Jagz (talk) 18:40, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Please provide a verifiable and notable source that explicitly asserts the first "belief." As for the second "belief," I know of a few sources already - like Rushton and Jensen - but there views are fringe and therefore do not meet the threshold for inclusion according to our NPOV policy. Slrubenstein | Talk 17:59, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Art Jensen is fringe?

Please provide a verifiable and notable source that explicitly asserts the first "belief." As for the second "belief," I know of a few sources already - like Rushton and Jensen - but there views are fringe and therefore do not meet the threshold for inclusion according to our NPOV policy. Slrubenstein | Talk 17:59, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Art Jensen is fringe? I don't see any support for that and plenty that argues against it. "Despite two decades of jousting with Jensen, Flynn says he has the deepest regard for the scholar and his scholarship." http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=00037F65-D9C0-1C6A-84A9809EC588EF21&print=true See also Detterman, D.K. (Ed.). (1998). A king among men: Arthur Jensen . Intelligence, 26(3). --Legalleft (talk) 07:38, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps Jensen is notable, I will accept that - but Rushton surely is not. Slrubenstein | Talk 14:38, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Jensen is reputable in some contexts and not reputable in others. While he may have contributed significantly to psychology in some areas, his racist ideas about intelligence are clearly fringe. He uses folk theories of "race" to try to support straw men regarding the validity of genetics. Geneticists, anthropologists and evolutionary scientists reject folk theories of "race", the claim that the IQ gap is due to genetics is not supported by any genetic evidence. Jensen appears not to be an expert in evolution, genetics, biology or anthropology. In this regard Jensen's racism is clearly not derived from any notability in the fields of human biology or anthropology, as it is based on an ignorant view of how genetic variation is distributed in humans. Jensen may know something about psychology, but this does not qualify him as an expert on "race" or genetics. Being an expert in one area does not make one's views universally valid. Alun (talk) 16:02, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

good point Slrubenstein | Talk 16:33, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Jensen's views on race and IQ are exactly what Flynn was referring to when he commended the quality of his scholarship -- while disagreeing with his conclusions. I just don't see where you can get the idea that Jensen's views are fringe. A large number of academic discussions of this topic begin by noting Jensen's contributions, and his arguments are taken seriously by people like Flynn. Indeed, it's not unreasonable to say that Jensen's work has largely shaped the landscape of the debate (look at the citation counts of his top articles) -- rather than being fringe his views are quite central to understanding the debate. Also, you're appraisal of Jensen's areas of expertise is inaccurate. Quantitative genetics is very different than molecular genetics, but Jensen is made a number of novel contributions to quantitative genetics (in addition to psychometrics). His technical works are replete with the mathematical formalism of these fields. You shouldn't let personal opinions about someone's view cloud your objectivity when describing them. However, I'd tend to agree that some of the things Rushton writes have a rather small academic following, and so aren't prominent enough to warrant much attention in a shortened article. For example, his r-K theories to explain group differences. However, I'm not sure even they meet a criteria of being not normal science, and they have certainly attracted a lot of 'attention'. --Legalleft (talk) 20:40, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Nonsense, Jensen's views on "race" are not mainstream. Only someone with zero understanding of genetics or anthropology could make such a claim. Human genetic variation is not structured "racially", it is structured clinally. Any half competent geneticist or anthropologist knows this. Jensen's ideas concerning "race" are folk ideas vested in the misrepresentation of differences between population groups. If one can speak of any meaningful division within the human species (which is dubious to say the least) then the only division would be between sub-Saharan Africans on the one hand and all non-Africans on the other (including Indigenous Australians for example, a black people if ever there were any), with non-Africans representing a sub-set of East African genetic diversity. As it is, even this represents a gross oversimplification because there is plenty of evidence for multiple waves of migration both in to and out of sub-Saharan Africa. Furthermore we see a dilution of diversity the further we go from Africa, with African populations having about twice as much genetic diversity as all non-Africans combined. For example in a single African ethnic group we see a 100% representation of human diversity, while we see only about a 60% representation of human diversity in a group in Papua New Guinea, this supports the RAO model of human origins. The fallacy is also based on the misunderstanding that somehow human "racial" groups are somehow genetically discrete, a fallacy promoted by racists ad nauseum. In fact, of the genes we do know about, it is clear that they are shared by all population groups, even genes that are very common in some groups and rare in others are nearly always (with a single exception) shared by all population groups. It is therefore clear that all genes occur in all groups, but at varying frequencies. The final fallacy is the claim that some environments seem to be selectively neutral for "intelligence" a claim so full of holes it should go o Switzerland and become a cheese. Clearly whatever environment a human lives in it is clear that more intelligent people are going to be better at ensuring their offspring survive than more stupid people are. This is so obvious that it beggars belief that any half competent academic could ignore it, unless they have a racist axe to grind of course. So the situation as it is understood by geneticists and anthropologists is that (1) Human genetic diversity is not structured into discrete "races". (2) Human gene frequencies tend to vary geographically, but all human groups contain nearly all human alleles. (3) Intelligence "genes" will always exist in all populations and will always give people who carry them a selective advantage. These are our mainstream understandings of how human variation is structured, how genes are distributed and how selection works. It takes a very great leap of faith to claim that any other interpretation of human genetic diversity or selection is anything other than fringe. Jensen is clearly not mainstream in his ideas of "race and IQ". Of course people like Flynn takes his arguments seriously, we should debunk pseudo-scientific racism at every opportunity, it does not make his claims for a genetic basis for the test score gap "mainstream". You would have to show that a significant proportion of people with a detailed understanding of human biology and genetics agreed with his racism, to support your claim that his ideas concerning "race" are mainstream.

THE involvement of Eysenck and Jensen, not to mention other academics of high repute, in the attempts to create a racist culture shows the difficulty of distinguishing between 'respectable' and non-respectable racism. This is reinforced by the fact that Eysenck's and Jensen's involvement goes further than connections with the semi-academic publications of The Mankind Quarterly, Nouvelle Ecole and Neue Anthropologie. It is possible to point to two occasions when Eysenck and Jensen have figured in actual fascist publications.

Alun (talk) 06:47, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

(1) Flatly claiming Jensen's views are fringe is clearly nonsense and the burden of proof is on you. (2) Jensen's 1969 Harvard Educational Review article alone has over 1000 citations. Whether the content is correct or incorrect, the content of a paper that's been cited more than 1000 times is important. (3) I'm quite certain in my credentials and research experience to be sure that I know a lot about race, genetics and IQ. (4) Here's an apt quotation from the winner of a Nobel prize for the discovery of the structure of DNA:

Unlike you and your colleagues I have formed the opinion that there is much substance to Jensen’s arguments. In brief I think it likely that more than half the difference between the average I.Q. of American whites and Negroes is due to genetic reasons, and will not be eliminated by any foreseeable change in the environment. Moreover I think the social consequences of this are likely to be rather serious unless steps are taken to recognize the situation.

That's Crick, not Watson! http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/SC/B/B/N/M/_/scbbnm.pdf

(5) Most of your post is attacking a straw man. Have you read his 1998 book? (Yes, a lot has changed since 1998, but it was up to date for the time.) (6) If 1000 loci contribute to population variation in IQ, allelic differences at each loci affect IQ by 0.1 points, and the frequency of the IQ boosting variants are 0.45 in one population and 0.55 in a second population, then the average IQ difference between the two populations would be 10 points. You don't need any implausible genetic architectures to get quantitative trait differences between groups, and there's been a lot of selection in the last 10k years to tweak allele frequencies. --Legalleft (talk) 07:16, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

(1) I haven't "flatly" claimed anything. I have pointed out that human genetic diversity is not structred by "race". A claim easily verified form hundreds of papers published by both molecular anthropologists and geneticists. The most obvious place to start would be with Nature Genetics supplement on "race", in which paper after paper staes this fact again and again.Genetics for the Human Race.

Knowledge gained from the Human Genome Project and research on human genome variation is forcing a paradigm shift in thinking about the construct of 'race'...Today, scientists are faced with this situation in genomics, where existing biological models or paradigms of 'racial' and 'ethnic' categorizations cannot accommodate the uniqueness of the individual and universality of humankind that is evident in new knowledge emerging from human genome sequence variation research and molecular anthropological research.

A true understanding of disease risk requires a thorough examination of root causes. 'Race' and 'ethnicity' are poorly defined terms that serve as flawed surrogates for multiple environmental and genetic factors in disease causation, including ancestral geographic origins, socioeconomic status, education and access to health care.

The term 'race' engenders much discussion, with little agreement between those who claim that 'races' are real (meaning natural) biological entities and those who maintain that they are socially constructed...An examination of these discussions indicates that there is a problem with semantics. 'Race' is not being defined or used consistently; its referents are varied and shift depending on context. The term is often used colloquially to refer to a range of human groupings. Religious, cultural, social, national, ethnic, linguistic, genetic, geographical and anatomical groups have been and sometimes still are called 'races'...The within- to between-group variation is very high for genetic polymorphisms. This means that individuals from one 'race' may be overall more similar to individuals in one of the other 'races' than to other individuals in the same 'race'.

In this review, we focus on the biogeographical distribution of genetic variation and address whether or not populations cluster according to the popular concept of 'race'. We show that racial classifications are inadequate descriptors of the distribution of genetic variation in our species.

The picture that begins to emerge from this and other analyses of human genetic variation is that variation tends to be geographically structured, such that most individuals from the same geographic region will be more similar to one another than to individuals from a distant region. Because of a history of extensive migration and gene flow, however, human genetic variation tends to be distributed in a continuous fashion and seldom has marked geographic discontinuities19, 42. Thus, populations are never 'pure' in a genetic sense, and definite boundaries between individuals or populations (e.g., 'races') will be necessarily somewhat inaccurate and arbitrary.

(2) I agree that we need to address the racist science of a small group of academics in the article. I do not agree that this represents anything like mainstream opinion. Minority racist theories should be given a small place in the article, as befits their minority status. biological determinism is an old, tired and quite frankly discredited concept. The eugenicists who promoted it are mostly dead, a small number of right wing idealogues who still promote "racial purity" do not represent the mainstream. A thousand citations doesn't seem like a great deal for a paper that you claim is seminal and mainstream, especially when you consider it's forty years old. Having a great deal of citations may make it notable, it does not necessarily make the theories contained therein mainstream does it? As you point out yourself many of the citations will be people citing it to debunk it. (3) I'm not sure of your "credentials" and quite frankly I don't care. Misplaced Pages doesn't care either, you cannot claim authority here, you can only cite reliable sources. (4) Crick can believe what he likes, so can Watson. Neither is an anthropologist and neither is an expert in population genetics or "intelligence". They represent non-expert opinion when it comes to "race and IQ". Both Watson and Crick are the product of a generation where "race" was considered to be a biological reality, it is not surprising that they echo the social constructs of their generation. Anthropologists and modern genetics have thoroughly debunked the "race" myth, all that is left are folk theories of "race" that seem to be the product more of faith than fact. (5) Why is it "attacking a straw man"? Pointing out that most people who know what they are talking about reject the concept of "race" is highly relevant. (6) Nonsense, both alleles would be present in both populations, as anyone with even a basic understanding of genetics would know, and the allele that provided superior intelligence would be selected for differentially in both populations. Do you even know the difference between selection and drift? Alun (talk) 08:05, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

(1) I find Neil Risch's arguments most compelling, and think that most people's view about 'race' are more motivated by political than scientific considerations, but that's basically beside the point. (2) Then I'm not sure what we're debating. AFAIK, fringe views aren't allowed in Misplaced Pages, but notable views are compulsory. I'm not sure I've ever read anything from Jensen about "racial purity" or the like. I would think that neo-Nazi type views would be fringe and wouldn't belong in this article. Perhaps the disagreement is that you think neo-Nazi's and Jensen are indistinguishable, whereas I can't fathom that idea. (3) Good. (4) Only practicing anthropologists and population geneticists can understand race and IQ? Watson's research includes the genetic determinants of schizophrenia. Jensen's research is extensively related to race and IQ, but he isn't an athropologist or pop geneticist by affiliation. IMO, most anthropologists stopped doing science decades ago, but I wouldn't try to say they were fringe. (5) Which concept of race does Jensen use? (6) I must not have been clear. In the simplified model I presented, both alleles (of all 1000 loci) are present in both populuations (but selection, perhaps, has pushed the frequencies apart in a non-random fashion such that they all tilt towards one population). -- I think you're point is that you really strongly believe certain things are true. Fine, but that doesn't have anything to do with being unbiased in writing an article or in minimizing the views of those you disagree with. --Legalleft (talk) 09:00, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

(1) So what? Your opinion's are irrelevant, we do not publish the views of editors here. Neil Risch's views are somewhat odd, he can't even define what he means by "race" when he is asked.(A concept without a clear definition is not scientific. Neil Risch says Scientists always disagree! A lot of the problem is terminology. I'm not even sure what race means, people use it in many different ways.(emphasis added)) (2) Claiming that one so called "race" is superior to another so called "race" is not mainstream. (4) I didn't say that did I. Address what I say please. I said that experts in genetics and anthropology reject the concept of "biological race" because it does not accurately represent the distribution of human diversity on the planet. Jensen does not seem to realise this and uses "folk" concepts of "race" to support his thesis. Your opinion about anthropologists is irrelevant. Please stop giving your opinion, it is not relevant to Misplaced Pages. See my response to (3) above. You might also like to acquaint yourself with molecular anthropology as you appear to be uninformed about how much science anthropologists actually do. (5) That's what I'd like to know, given that he claims a biological difference between socially constructed groups, which just goes back to his "race" theories not being mainstream. (6) My point is that you have to provide evidence that in certain environments there is no selection in favour of genes that promote "intelligence", an absurd claim without foundation or merit. As I said previously all human environments will promote "intelligence" because our environments are social, but see Montague and Dobzhansky for more on this. Indeed it is this unfounded claim that is derived from a desire to "believe". Well Jensen can "believe" that there is environmental selection in favour of "intelligence genes" in some environments that does not occur in others, but this is neither notable nor a mainstream. Environment selects, we see sickle cell disease not in "racial" groups but in malarial regions. We see light or dark skin colour not distributed by "race" but distributed by the intensity of UV light a region receives. Likewise if it were the case that some environments selected for "intelligence" more than others then we would see intelligence in those environments and not in others, but we would not see them selected by "race" but by environment. Indeed Indigenous Australians live in one of the most challenging environments known to humankind, odd then that it is not this group that is claimed as the "most intelligent" by people like Jensen. One might almost think they had predetermined point of view to push. Clearly Jensen's views on "race" are not notable or mainstream. Alun (talk) 10:08, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

This doesn't seem to be getting anywhere. I suggest that you are not actually familiar with Jensen's work, and are ascribing opinions to him that he does not express. His scholarship is notable as scholarship and for its impact on the debate, and while people with fringe political views may write about his work, this does not make his work itself fringe. Basically, you've picked the wrong person to blame. William Shockley might more closely fit your descriptions of a racist lunatic. Secondarily, you're reasoning about the evolution of intelligence is, IMO, incorrect. The factors that drove the evolution of intelligence in the last 10k years are likely related to settlement and agriculture. Economist Greg Clark's recent book provides an example of the kind of situation which could have acted to increase intelligence during recorded history. Also, world wide IQ scores do appear to have a geographic cline (see the infamous Templer and Arikawa paper). --Legalleft (talk) 10:27, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

You're wasting your time trying to discuss things with Alun. He's good at repeating what he reads in books though. --Jagz (talk) 12:42, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't think I've called anyone a "racist lunatic", I have said that Jensen does not appear to realise that our understanding of human genetic variation has left his ideas about "race" far behind, he is relying on mid 20th century ideas of "race" when those ideas have been disregarded by other scientists studying humans. Your characterisation of the debate is biased, you accuse me of making ad hominem attacks when I have done no such thing. Your second point is even more off the mark. I have not given "my reasoning", that would be wrong, I cannot include my reasoning here in Misplaced Pages. I have generally provided sources to support what I say (specifically Montague and Dobzhansky (1973) for why human envrionments all select in favour of intelligence, this essay is printed in the aptly named volume "Race and IQ"), and where I have not I can easily do so. Clearly you believe that an economist and a psychologist are better qualified to discuss human evolution, genetics and population genetics than geneticists and anthropologists. Obviously you are entitled to believe this if you so wish, but it really does smack of cherry picking your sources to support an opinion you already have regarding socially constructed groups. Alun (talk) 11:20, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

I have addressed this above. There are no beliefs, there are scientific theories. A theory is not a belief. A belief relies on faith, a theory relies on evidence, and evidence can disprove a theory. Please don't bring your beliefs here, we need reputable sources and not beliefs based on faith. Misplaced Pages does not "respect views", Misplaced Pages is an encyclopaedia, it is about knowledge, specifically presenting knowledge as the consensus in any particular field sees it. If there is a dispute in any branch of knowledge, then clearly all points of view need to be presented (whether we "respect" them or not). But it is clearly a policy that all points of view do not need to be presented equally, for the sake of neutrality we present points of view proportionate to their support by reputable experts. Biological determinism is an old fashioned and rather discredited idea, if we are to include the theories of a few tired old racists who are still banging the eugenicist drum, then we need to give them an appropriate amount of space. Besides what has any of this got to do with the quote you posted at the start of this thread? It seems to be completely irrelevant to group differences in IQ. Alun (talk) 07:25, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

I see no point in trying to discuss anything with you. --Jagz (talk) 14:15, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

The concepts you're looking for are heritability and norm of reaction. Some background here: http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00002084/01/austin-online.doc --Legalleft (talk) 07:38, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Alun -- I've read the Misplaced Pages:Fringe theories page several times now and I don't see how your arguments support the claim that Jensen's views are "fringe". That's my point and the discussion that followed was aiming to make that point, albeit circuitously. --Legalleft (talk) 03:17, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

This person reproduced 12 chapter from Jensen's 1998 book -- http://home.comcast.net/~neoeugenics/jen12.htm -- I can't be certain that there are no transcription errors but paging through quickly that looks like the actual text (without the footnotes, equations, tables and figures). That should help editors who only know Jensen's views from secondary accounts. --Legalleft (talk) 08:09, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

too long, no?

This talk page contains some, err... interesting debate, but isn't the main problem that the article is too detailed? An encyclopedia article doesn't need to be comprehensive. Most readers aren't capable of understanding the technical details of the scientific debate -- as the content of the talk page suggests :). It seems that about 6 to 10 solid paragraphs, after the summary, plus some well chosen diagrams would suffice. The temptation would be to add just one more thing or to put in your favorite argument -- stick to the most commonly discussed topics and use the most commonly cited examples. --Legalleft (talk) 18:51, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

I really like that idea. It should be clear that different races (as the term 'race' is generally understood) score differently on intelligent tests (as the term 'intelligence' is generally understood), since much of the public still thinks that issue is unresolved. We can then discuss how most scientists believe the differences to be environmental, but some claim a genetic component as well. Aron.Foster (talk) 00:27, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

But you fall into the trap of claiming that the term "race" is "generally understood", whereas there is no "generally understood" definition of "race", please see the article Race (classification of human beings) for further details. "Race" is an arbitrary socially constructed phenomenon, and as such different societies construct it differently. Alun (talk) 06:39, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

It would be hard to shorten this article if you couldn't gloss details that are fully covered by other articles. And it seems pretty important to do some shortening.--Legalleft (talk) 07:06, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

"Race" is a generally understood social construct. I agree that there is no definitive definition of race, but there is a difference in scores on intelligence tests between those who identify themselves as black and white, and hispanic and asian to a lesser extent. You're missing the forest for the trees; yes, race hasn't been scientifically defined, but that doesn't mean everything comparing races is bunk. Affirmative action and racial quotas are important social issues, and modern Western governments don't seem too hesitant to use the term. Aron.Foster (talk) 07:41, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Agreed, as long as we are clear that we are discussing a social construct defined by self identity. Really it's ethnicity and not "race". Alun (talk) 07:44, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Ha, ok, so who's up for an article on ethnicity and race? It might be more helpful to the casual and semi-serious Misplaced Pages reader than this one. Aron.Foster (talk) 08:04, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

To avoid getting into an argument over semantics, I suggest we just look at the literature on diferences in IQ score between self-identifying social groups. Then we can use whichever word is used most commonly in this literature (race or ethnicity) and define it the way this literature defines it. For a start, I excerpted an essay on Flynn's book, which speaks precisely to this topic. I proposed we discuss how to incorporate that material into this article (or, as I have suggested several times, we can create a separate article on SES and IQ scores), but so far there has been no discussion. If you guys really want to address this issue, may I propose that Alun and Aron begin by reading the excerpt of the article I quoted and begin discussing the best place and way to fit this kind of research into Misplaced Pages? Slrubenstein | Talk 17:35, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

I believe it is best to focus on improving the existing contents of the article as discussed numerous times already before adding new material. It's good that you are discussing ways to possibly improve the article though. --Jagz (talk) 18:00, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Flynn's book is mostly about intergenerational differences (and his theory to explain them) and not race. Flynn's recent work on race is published in the primary literature and has been expanded in several public talks. http://www.brookings.edu/views/papers/dickens/20060619_IQ.pdf (This paper includes a giant regression of IQ scores on race, age, and test date.) It's not infeasible to work a discussion of the Flynn effect into a general discussion of how IQ scores are multidimensional (in that intergenerational changes vary depending on the dimensions being measured), which is relevant to this article in that racial gaps vary depending on the dimensions being measured. The notable result about the intersection of those two issues is that intergenerational changes have a different pattern than interracial differences, such that interracial differences look a lot like interindividual differences, whereas intergenerational differences are quite different. --Legalleft (talk) 02:29, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

There seemed to be overall positive comments to this thread, no? Do we agree, at least in principle, that the current article is too long (and hence too detailed) to be useful? I did a word count and found >11k words, including figure legends and tables. It seems to me that maximally there should be 5k words or so. That's a lot of deleting, rewriting, or footnoting. --Legalleft (talk) 07:11, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Greg Clark

Above, Legaleft wrote, "Economist Greg Clark's recent book provides an example of the kind of situation which could have acted to increase intelligence during recorded history." Can you tell us more about this book? Is it based on any empirical evidence? What kind of research did he do? On its face, I find it hard to take a book by an economist seriously - they are not trained, and tomy knowledge have never done, research on genetics or intelligence. I suspect a typical "just so" story but maybe I am wrong - I'd like to give Legaleft an opportunity to explain the argument and its basis. Just the other night I saw a TC show on recent research that chimpanzees are far superior than humans when it comes to working memory. The argument of the researchers is that there are many components of intelligence, and different forms, and different species have the kind of intelligence best suited for their niche. The human species is characterized by generalization and there are plenty of documented cases of hunter-gatherers becoming agriculturalists, and agriculturalists becoming hunter-gatherers, and I know of know evidence that one way of life requires "more" intelligence than the other; what is important is the ability to think symbolically and to negotiate complex social interactions, and this is required (and expressed) in all societies, albeit in strikingly different forms. Slrubenstein | Talk 12:50, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

What does this have to do with shortening the article? --Jagz (talk) 13:31, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

In dusty archives, a theory of affluence. Not much about genetics or intelligence as far as I can see. Indeed it claims

What was being inherited, in his view, was not greater intelligence — being a hunter in a foraging society requires considerably greater skill than the repetitive actions of an agricultural laborer. Rather, it was “a repertoire of skills and dispositions that were very different from those of the pre-agrarian world.”

Seems to be discussing a change in behaviour and educational levels that allowed the industrial revolution to occur, rather than anything else. Behaviour is not determined at the genetic level, we are a sentient animal, we can reason, learn and understand, and modify our behaviour appropriately. This is based on social and cultural shifts in behaviour rather than natural selection. Alun (talk) 14:14, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Slrubenstein -- The book is called A Farewell to Alms. Clark is a historical economist. His finding is, briefly, that there was a period of Malthesian population dynamics in agricultural societies that wasn't escaped until the industrial revolution. Clark says that caused changes in behavior, such as decreases in interest rates. He says he doesn't know whether the effect was genetic, cultural, or both, but he demonstrates differential reproduction by wealth. I don't mean to imply that Clark says there was a eugenic effect on intelligence, but rather than Clark says that there were non-trivial selective pressures acting during historical times. No one really knows what causal factors were in play or what role selection played, and if you read the book you'll be quite disappointed that Clark didn't do any back-of-the-evelope calculations to estimate the effect sizes. If you take his numbers, there was enough selection to increase a "money making" trait by about 1 standard deviation in Europe. --Alun, there are heritable behavioral differences within human populations on a range of traits. If there is/was selection, then those traits would change. Quantitative, not categorical changes. My point being that you seemed to be insisting that the evolution of group differences was impossible/implausible, whereas there's no reason to believe it couldn't have happened. As Gould wrote, "Human Equality Is a Contingent Fact of History." --Legalleft (talk) 19:28, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Actually the "evolution" (whatever you mean by that overused and usually misunderstood word) of so called behavioural "group" differences is clearly an argument without any sort of support. Behaviours may be selected for in societies, but this has got absolutely nothing to do with biology and everything to do with social norms, which can shift and change over time. Societies and cultures change, with this change bahavioural norms change. For example trying to claim that we do not burn witches at the stake any more due to genetic changes is ludicrous (ah, that witch burning gene must have been selected against eh?). You appear to view every human trait through the tired old biologcial determinism "theory", this is at least a century out of date, we are not slaves to our genes, we do not behave in certain ways because our "genes" dictate that we do, the differences in culture between ethnic groups are not due to "genetic" differences between these groups, and the differences in culture between us and our recent ancestors is not due to selection at the "genetic" level. Socially and culturally I lead a very different life than my parents did, and they lead very different lives to their parents, my great grandparents lived during Victorian times, the vast differences between the society I live in and the behavioural norms of my time, and the norms of their time has got bugger all to do with "genetic selection". There is no evidence that the so called "mercantile class" that is supposed to have replaces the lower classes according to Clarke, was genetically any different (except on the individual level) to the lower classes in the first place. If the argument is that there were behavioural and educational differences between the labouring classes and the trading classes, and that the social and cultural norms of the trading classes seeped down to the workers due to downward drift of these ideas, then I can see no fault with this analysis. But to claim that the mercantile class was somehow "genetically different" to the people from which it was derived is ludicrous. The fact is that there has been far too much migration of humans between geographical regions (and I use the term migration in the population genetics sense) for any idea that there exist clearly defined "biological groups" to be meaningless. Indeed this is obvious from Clark's theory, the "mercantile class" were part of the working class from a population genetic point of view, with massive migration (both ways) between these social groups occurring according to Clark's own theory. I don't think anyone is arguing that all individuals are identical with regards to intellectual ability, but the problem is that some people are too eager to misrepresent this fact as if it applies equally to socially constructed groups, as if these groups had some basis in nature. To see everything in terms of "biological determinism" is to be blind to modern science and to see "races"/populations as discrete and distinct "biological groups" is to be ignorant of modern genetics and anthropology. Alun (talk) 07:20, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Alun, I appreciate you taking the time to reply, but we're just wasting each other's time with these comment threads that don't directly address the article. We clearly have very different interpretations of the science. --Legalleft (talk) 07:45, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

I agree, Greg Clark's book is clearly totally irrelevant to the concepts of both "race" and "intelligence" and is primarily about a socio-cultural change. Alun (talk) 09:44, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

I have not read that book, but I am familiar with the transition from the Malthusian regime to the Industrial revolution and I can tell you that genes are not invoked. Any economist who uses "race" is not mainstream by a large margin... Most important in this context are the increased profitability of human capital and the demographic transition. These topics are fascinating but, not directly related to this article. Brusegadi (talk) 04:29, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Apparently the relevant details are here Gregory Clark (economist). --Legalleft (talk) 04:55, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

African American history: move proposal

I propose that the section "African American history" be moved to the article African American history. A summary of the information and link to the African American history article can remain, like what was done with the stereotypes in the media section. --Jagz (talk) 19:39, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Insofar as the history is, according to one notable point of view, an explanation for IQ differences, it needs to be fully explained here. Slrubenstein | Talk 22:32, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

I think you're talking about The Bell Curve? Also, there is a historical dispute within the United States regarding the possible relative development of "black" versus "white" intelligence. As such, I think that it probably does more clearly qualify for inclusion in this article, which deals with race's impact, if any, on intelligence, than in the general "African American history" article, which would I think more fully deal with the general history of the "blacks" (including any that might qualify as "African pre-African Americans" or whatever) in America than in a now often largely disputed theory that has little if anything to do with the real "history of African Americans" per se. John Carter (talk) 02:17, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

There is no longer an African American history section. --Jagz (talk) 06:59, 5 February 2008 (UTC) There is no longer a section named African American history. --Jagz (talk) 07:55, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

There is now. You do not have the authority to do this alone. Both editors above think the African American history section should stay, and so do I. So there are three editors against a single editor. This is certainly not a consensus for change. Any more editing like this and I will report you for pov-pushing and editing against consensus. Please also do not engage in edit waring, wait untill this discussion has a clear consensus in favour of your proposal before making the changes. A statement on intent is not sufficient. Alun (talk) 07:07, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

The information is still there. It is just reorganized. I changed the name to African American history and then back to History. --Jagz (talk) 07:13, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Well don't untill others agree with you. This is a difficult article and making changes without consensus is very damaging to the community. Alun (talk) 07:15, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

The proposal to move the section to a new article was rejected. I did not move the section. --Jagz (talk) 07:55, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

History

I propose that a history section be added to the article to give it a historical perspective. The section could have a worldwide view to the extent possible and not focus only on African Americans. --Jagz (talk) 22:47, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

If you can provide relevant sourced information, I honestly can't see any objections provide WP:Undue weight isn't violated. The problem might be in finding reliable sources for the information, though. John Carter (talk) 02:18, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

I wasn't suggesting that I write the history section personally. I am seeking comment on the idea of adding such a section. --Jagz (talk) 02:27, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Proposal to rename article

I propose that the article be renamed "Race and intelligence in the United States". The article is USA oriented. --Jagz (talk) 02:31, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

That's true. But there is research on world-wide IQ scores that could be included. Lynn and Vanhanen's numbers and the international PISA and TIMSS test scores have been analyzed in more scholarly articles than I can count at this point. That research can / should be described. Secondarily, if you're not also proposing to create a new article called "Race and intelligence", then this one should suffice without the extra specificity in the title. --Legalleft (talk) 05:16, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Actually, maybe that's not a bad idea. Due to its length and detail, this article is almost incomprehensible / unusable to the average web user. This article could become the detailed review of race and intelligence in the united states and the new article could be the much briefer summary I described above. --Legalleft (talk) 05:40, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

I reject this proposal as being nothing more than another attempt to produce a pov-fork by Jagz, a notably pov-pushing editor. There is already a proposal to change the article. Slr has proposed that we create two articles, one called Heritability and IQ and the other called Socioeconomic status and IQ. This article is poor because it includes the word "race" in it's title, the concept of "race" is completely undefined so it can mean anything to anybody (as I show above, geneticists and anthropologists have comprehensively destroyed the idea that "races" represent anything like identifiable discrete biological groups), and so just about any half baked idea can be included in this article. Likewise "intelligence" is an even more poorly defined and less well understood concept. As for Tatu Vanhanen's racist nonsense, even his own son (Matti Vanhanen, our prime minister here in Finland) has distanced himself, and Vanhanen was investigated for incitement to racial hatred by the Finnish police. Why not include the work of Joseph Mengele given your predeliction for unreconstructed racists. Vanhanen and Lyn's so called "research" has been comprehensively debunked again and again, they are racists who have been shown to have used biased statistical analyses to get the results they want. Maybe include their ludicrous "research" in the article on scientific racism. As the Noam Chomsky says, we need to question the motives of people who conduct such pointless "research" A possible correlation between mean IQ and skin colour is of no greater scientific interest than a correlation between any two other arbitrarily selected traits, say mean height and colour of eyes. The empirical results, whatever they might be, appear to have little bearing on any issue of scientific significance. In the present state of scientific understanding, there would appear to be little scientific interest in the discovery that one partly heritable trait correlates (or not) with another partly heritable trait...the zeal and intensity with which some pursue or welcome it cannot be reasonably attributed to a dispassionate desire to advance science, it is even more important when they are prepared to use biased data sets and analyses to get the result they want. Science articles should be named after concepts that are well defined and scientifically quantifiable, such as IQ, heredity and socio-economic status, then we can produce something a lot better. Alun (talk) 06:55, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

No one wants to read all this crap. --Jagz (talk) 07:07, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

What you mean is you do not want to read anything that does not agree with your prejudice. What it must be to be so enlightened. Alun (talk) 07:09, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

It's obvious that you are not as bright as you pretend to be. --Jagz (talk) 07:16, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Trading insults isn't very productive. --Legalleft (talk) 08:05, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Alun, that's a non-starter. First, the heritabilty of IQ within groups and the relationship of IQ and SES are interesting, but don't substitute for a discussion of race and intelligence. Second, race and racial labels are ubiquitous in social science research. Even if the mapping of an individual's racial labels to their underlying biology is fuzzy and directed in part by social convention, it doesn't make it wholly uninformative and certainly doesn't make it irrelevant. Besides that, as I understand Misplaced Pages policy, you can't redefine the debate as a corrective to preceived inaccuracies. You just report the views as you find them. I've read extensively in this area, and I can't disagree more with your characterization of what ideas are / are not part of the scholarly debate. You need to look no further than Mainstream Science on Intelligence to find 52 professors who pubically wrote that "Most experts believe that environment is important in pushing the bell curves apart, but that genetics could be involved too." Note they are not saying that they believe that, but more importantly they are saying that they believe that most experts believe that genetics could be involved too. Lastly, if the world wide IQ numbers were debunked then they wouldn't be used in so many primary research articles -- see just the latest issue of the jounral Intelligence for the most recent examples. --Legalleft (talk) 08:05, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Here's the TOC of that journal -- http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/01602896 -- and here are the titles of the papers from the latest issue:

• Temperature and evolutionary novelty as forces behind the evolution of general intelligence
• IQ and fertility: A cross-national study
• The decline of the world's IQ
• Secular declines in cognitive test scores: A reversal of the Flynn Effect
• Relevance of education and intelligence at the national level for the economic welfare of people
• Effects of age and schooling on intellectual performance: Estimates obtained from analysis of continuous variation in age and length of schooling
• ACT and general cognitive ability
• The measurement of visuo–spatial and verbal–numerical working memory: Development of IRT-based scales

You can see the large number of studies looking at world-wide IQ scores. Here's the abstract of one of the papers that uses PISA and TIMSS in addition to Lynn and Vanhanen's scores:

Cognitive abilities are important for the economic and non-economic success of individuals and societies. For international analyses, the collection of IQ-measures from Lynn and Vanhanen was supplemented and meliorated by data from international student assessment studies (IEA-Reading, TIMSS, PISA, PIRLS). The cognitive level of a nation is highly correlated with its educational level (r = .78, N = 173). In international comparisons, it also shows a high correlation with gross domestic product (GDP, r = .63, N = 185). However, in cross-sectional studies, the causal relationship between intelligence and national wealth is difficult to determine. In longitudinal analyses with various samples of nations, education and cognitive abilities appear to be more important as developmental factors for GDP than economic freedom. Education and intelligence are also more relevant to economic welfare than vice versa, but at the national level the influence of economic wealth on cognitive development is still substantial.

--Legalleft (talk) 08:20, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

• if the world wide IQ numbers were debunked then they wouldn't be used in so many primary research articles

Nonsense, citing something doesn't display support for it. Scholars must cite something when they are debunking it. I can cite Jensen, but it doesn't mean that this supports the validity of his research does it? Besides I don't think I made the claim that the "IQ numbers" had been debunked did I? I said that the statistical treatment and validity of these numbers had been debunked. The numbers themselves are just that, numbers, it is their contextual treatment that has been criticised. I also don't think that I have ever claimed that Jensen's work should not be included in this article, I have only stated that it should not be given undue weight. Your responses do not actually make reference to what I am saying. You can whitter about "race" all you like, but as far as I can see you have categorically failed to explain what Jensen means by "race". You claim it is about "hereditary" but "race" is not a very good predictor of ancestry, whereas hereditary is specifically about ancestry. To conflate concepts of "race" with concepts of "hereditary" is to ignore the vast swathes of data that have been available for decades that categorically show that "heredity" derives from one's ancestors whereas "race" is a construct applied by societies. "Recent studies of human population genetic variation show that while race captures some information about genetic ancestry, particularly in US populations, it often fails to account for admixture and population structure....Geographical origin and explicit genetic data are more accurate predictors of ancestry than race." So It would be nice if these data actually included genetic ancestry information instead of "racial" information. Alun (talk) 08:49, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

The papers I'm referring to use the IQ values as you would use any other kind of data -- they're not debunking it -- they are expanding the research. See the list of papers I created above. See especially the work using PISA and TIMSS along with the IQ numbers. For Jensen on race, read Jensen (1998). But few arguments with Jensen center on debates about race, so that doesn't seem very relvant. I responded to your Bamshad citation on your talk page. Yes, asking the race/ethnicty of your four grandparents will better identify admixed people, and yes, adding genotyping data will fruther shrink the CIs for admixture estimation, but per Tang et al, in the US, there are hardly any people for whom race misinforms (rather than underinforms) about ancestry. Moroever, these arguments just aren't that germane to this article. Even if (picking numbers randomly) race captures ancestry only half as well as a genetic test, that doesn't make race unassociated with ancestry at a population wide level (which should be obvious). --Legalleft (talk) 09:01, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Tang et al is a paper very familiar to me. They do not claim that African Americans have no European ancestry. If they had sampled West African populations as well as the African American population their results would have been strikingly different. Your claims for this paper are overblown and far greater than the claims the paper makes. Tang were doing an excersise to identify if genetic clustering conforms to self identified race/ethnicity (SIRE), unsurprisingly they found that SIRE formed non-discrete clusters, but clustering analyses can only differentiate between the input data, and this paper does not use groups outside of the USA, as I say the inclusion of West African samples would have made a huge difference to their results. Alun (talk) 11:20, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

On the details of race, I'm not sure we're saying anything different except in semantics and your suggestion about West African samples. Surely someone has looked at the Perlegen African American samples and compared them to the YRI HapMap samples. Also, HGDP has a lot more African genotype data. FYI -- you can download all the ethnically identified genotype data you want from a number of sources in order to conduct your own study -- were that I had any time, I'd be interested to try that (I've got the data on disk but no time for that analysis). You could publish in PLoS One or a BMC journal and advance the field a bit. However, all of this discussion of the details of race is really distracting from the problems of this article, which is not a lack of detail but a lack of clarity (and comprehensiveness from a worldwide perspective). --Legalleft (talk) 23:02, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

And here's that paper -- http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1828730 -- almost exactly the analysis i suggested in a BMC journal --Legalleft (talk) 23:55, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Alun, what would you think of the title Ethnicity and intelligence in the United States? Aron.Foster (talk) 05:29, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

If the article is changed to "Ethnicity and Intelligence in the US" would it still make claims about the heritability of IQ? If so, it does not solve the problem. I do not think the problem is the word "race," and I do not think the problem would be solved by changing the word "race." I think the problem is that the article mixes up debates about the heritability of intelligence and race. As long as these two things are kept separate, I have no problem with using the word race. Slrubenstein | Talk 13:41, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

From what I understand of your positions, Alun is primarily concerned about this article not addressing the lack of a clear scientific definition of race, and SLRubenstein is primarily concerned about this article giving undue weight to those who support a genetic component to the race/IQ gap. Both legitimate concerns, but they can be addressed regardless of a US/World split of the article. I'd argue that the race/IQ gap is a bigger issue in America than much of the rest of the Western world because of the large percentage of (self-identified) blacks and the larege difference in their average intelligence scores from whites. We should consider that a large portion of our audience is only concerned about the black/white difference in the US. Aron.Foster (talk) 02:56, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Proposed new structure of History section

History

Charles Darwin wrote in his Descent of Man (VII, On the races of Man): "The races differ also in constitution, in acclimatisation and in liability to certain diseases. Their mental characteristics are likewise very distinct; chiefly as it would appear in their emotional, but partly in their intellectual faculties."

The opinion that there are differences in the brain sizes and brain structures of different racial and ethnic groups was widely held and studied during the 19th and early 20th centuries. During this time period, research on race and intelligence was often used to show that one race was superior to another, justifying the poor status and treatment of the "inferior race". The scientific debate on the contribution of nature versus nurture to individual and group differences in intelligence can be traced back to at least the mid-19th century.

The writings of Sir Francis Galton, a British psychologist, spurred interest in the study of mental abilities, particularly as they relate to heredity and eugenics. Galton estimated from his field observations in Africa that the African people were significantly below Anglo-Saxons' position in the normal frequency distribution of general mental ability; findings that continue to spark controversy in academia today.

====Early testing====

Average ethnic and racial group differences in IQ were first directly observed in the United States when analyzing the data from standardized mental tests administered on large scales during World War I. For example, in this test "Southern Whites", scored below "Northern Negroes." These results inspired the first theories of environmental influences on intelligence. An early advocate of these ideas was Ruth Benedict, who in her book, The Races of Mankind challenged the idea that people of different races had different inherent intelligences.

The difference arose because of differences of income, education, cultural advantages, and other opportunities. --Ruth Benedict

Lewis Terman wrote in The measurement of intelligence in 1916

Dorthy Roberts writes that the history of the eugenics movement in America was strongly tied to the older scientific racism used to justify slavery. Roberts writes that paralleling the development of eugenic theory was the acceptance of intelligence as the primary indicator of human value. Eugenicists claimed that the IQ test could quantify innate human ability in a single measurement, despite the objections of the creator of the test, Alfred Binet.

Beginning in the 1930s, race difference research and hereditarianism — the belief that genetics are the primary cause of differences in intelligence among human groups — began to fall out of favor in psychology and anthropology after major internal debates. In anthropology this occurred in part due to the advocacy of Franz Boas, who in his 1938 edition of The Mind of Primitive Man wrote, "there is nothing at all that could be interpreted as suggesting any material difference in the mental capacity of the bulk of the Negro population as compared with the bulk of the White population." The hereditarian position was challenged by Boas' claim that cranial vault size had increased significantly in the U.S. from one generation to the next, because racial differences in such characteristics had been among the strongest arguments for a genetic role.

Inspired by the American eugenics movement, Nazi Germany implemented the T-4 Euthanasia Program in which roughly 200,000 mentally and physically disabled Germans were killed, and about 400,000 sterilized. The association of hereditarianism with Nazi Germany created a modern academic environment that has been very skeptical of suggestions that there are racial or ethnic differences in measures of intellectual or academic ability and that these differences are primarily determined by genetic factors.

• This is my proposal for the reorganization of the History section. --Jagz (talk) 07:30, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

The order isn't really chronological, not that it has to be. --Legalleft (talk) 08:07, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

This is a mess that makes no sense. This is really three sections: a history of IQ testing, a history of research on race, and a history of black-white relations in the US. Now, each of these three histories make sense: in an article on "race and IQ" a considerable part of which involves test differences between Blacks and Whites in the US, it makes sense to have a section on "race" including a history of research on it, a section on IQ including a history of research, and a historiy of Black-White relations. But they should be kept separate not merged into one hadge-podge chronology. Slrubenstein | Talk 11:40, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

You may be right but the History section that is in the article now is a mess. You can't polish a turd. It needs to be reoriented to put the focus more on the History of the field of race and intelligence overall. One section heading is "Slavery and colonialism" but does not discuss colonialism. The other section heading is "Immigration and segregation" but doesn't really discuss immigration. There is information such as eugenics discussed in "Immigration and segregation" that should not be in that section; the inclusion of such material in that section could be considered original research because it appears that an editor has "connected the dots" in a way not supported by the sources. Also, there have been East Asians in the USA for a long time and it is not mentioned once. The section is also too oriented towards the USA; the USA is not the center of the universe. --Jagz (talk) 13:39, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

It's not "original research." It's a standard telling of the history of this topic in the US. Multiple sources cover it. futurebird (talk) 18:24, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Then it needs to be rewritten. One section heading is "Slavery and colonialism" but does not discuss colonialism. The other section heading is "Immigration and segregation" but doesn't really discuss immigration. There is information in the "Immigration and segregation" section that should not be in that section or at least the reason for its inclusion is not clear. The reason for the inclusion of Galton in the section "Slavery and colonialism" is not clear. There seems to be an attempt to link the whole issue of race and intelligence throughout human history to African Americans and that is simply not the case. --Jagz (talk) 19:36, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Jagz, I like your proposed revision of this section, but I don't think that graph adds anything to the History section. I do think it adds a lot of clarification to the Test data section, so I moved it there. Community thoughts? Aron.Foster (talk) 03:27, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Article cleanup

Now is a good time to cleanup the article as it is unlocked. --Jagz (talk) 16:59, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Can I suggest that this article simply go through a simple editing process? I haven't looked at it in a while, but the major problems do not seem to have changed. There is very little flow to the actual piece and much of what is included is particularly repetitive. It reads as though a large number of people have simultaneously cropped and inserted facts without much thought about the usefulness or importance of these facts to the topic. As well, many of the titled sections include irrelevant or off topic information, much of which does not seem to support any actual idea.

Overall , it seems to me that this is occurring because authors are trying to push too much information into a single article. I think that a skilled editor could easily reduce, eliminate or link a majority of this extraneous information within about 2 hours time. Not only would this simplify the article to the point of providing informative material for readers, but it would also help with reducing problems with POV and invalid information from future edits.

I would offer to do this myself, but I really am not interested in getting involved in such a divisive topic. I am sure that amongst the numerous editors who have already spent considerable time working on this paper there could be a single person willing to spend a few hours making this page look legitimate.

Frank0570618 (talk) 05:24, 11 February 2008 (UTC)Frank0570618

Contemporary issues

I recommend that the "Contemporary issues" section be expanded and the "Research" section be reduced in size because it is unencyclopedic. Some of the information from the Research section could go into the Contemporary issues section. The Contemporary issues section can cover what are currently considered to be the mainstream and non-mainstream viewpoints regarding race and intelligence. --Jagz (talk) 15:26, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Some kind of reorganization is needed. First, I see a lot of redundancy -- the same thing said in multiple places. Second, the order in which things are discussed is not fully logical. I tried rewriting some of the paragraphs in the research section where I could see the point that previous authors were trying to make had been lost. I think it's more coherent now, but the sections I didn't edit are still a jumble of sentences. --Legalleft (talk) 18:09, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Why is a Racial Debate in this article?

This article is about race and IQ. It is not about whether or not race exists. That would be a separate article, and people who wanted to read that article can click on a link to get to it. Feel free to put such a link in this article. However, people who want to read about race and IQ should not be forced to wade through all these irrelevant racial debate articles. It only obfuscates the true purpose of this article. JettaMann (talk) 18:08, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Agreed, it just makes the article too long. --Jagz (talk) 22:42, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

I also agree, but it's an important enough issue where it should at least be mentioned and linked in this article. One or two sentences... I'm at a loss on where to put them in the current article. Aron.Foster (talk) 00:53, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Maybe if you put it in the introduction to the article it will keep it from expanding in the future. --Jagz (talk) 17:55, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Actually JettaMan this article is not about race and IQ, it is about Race and intelligence. Intelligence and IQ are not the same thing, whatever certain psychometricians want to claim, after all there is no doubt that psychometricians do not represent an uninterested party when it comes to conflating IQ and intelligence. Indeed your other claim that the article is not about whether "race" exists is rather odd, if one is going to have an article called "race and intelligence" then it is clearly within the scope of the article to cover human variation and whether ideas of "race" are accurate descriptors of the variation that does exist, just like it is within the scope of the article to discuss the concept of "intelligence" and that many scientists are sceptical that IQ really does measure intelligence. Likewise it is within the scope of the article to discuss the fact that heritability is a measure of variance and that gene-environment interactions are not independent. Currently the article is extremely biased and only wants to give a very watered down discussion of the massive amount of evidence against the simplistic and rather pathetic "nature-nurture" attitude of certain so called "scientists". Indeed the article hardly covers the huge amount of the literature against the "hereditarians", including the volume "Race and IQ" edited by Ashley Montague compiled in direct response to Jensen's 1969 diatribe, it's not mentioned once in the appropriate section. Indeed there seems to have been a conscious effort on the part of right wing idealogues recently in this article to remove information that does not support their eugenicist point of view. Alun (talk) 07:05, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

No. --Jagz (talk) 10:54, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

The article should mention controversies with the definitions of 'race' and 'intelligence', and link to their respective pages. I also liked when the article mentioned that most studies concerning race/intelligence assumed that 1) race, or at least ethnicity, exists and 2) g exists and measures intelligence. But this isn't the place to fully explore those issues. Aron.Foster (talk) 11:55, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

I added a sentence to the article's introduction. --Jagz (talk) 13:36, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

When it comes to race and IQ, race is a marker for socio-economic status. If the article simply explored the relationship between race as a social status and variation in IQ, I would have no problems. But Arthur Jensen, a notable although very much a minority view in this debate, has suggested that race is best understood as a biological group (although Jensen has no training in biology). We now have the mainstream and a minority view, and they disagree. The article has to provide some account of this disagreement, and a context for understanding the mainstream and minority views. Slrubenstein | Talk 13:53, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm really quite certain that the two main views regarding the causes of the observed differences -- ignoring questions of minor / major -- are that race is a marker for "racism" vs "biology" (both very broadly construed). From there, there's some debate about the importance of SES factors in the racism thesis. However, you won't find, for example, Flynn saying that SES is the explanation -- or rather any sense of SES as it is typically defined. The reason for this is quite simple: the children of the wealthiest, best educated parents living in the most socially progressive towns in the U.S. still have a race-gap issue. Obgu and Sowell, two black social scientists, both have particular environmental theories to address these issues, but they don't involve SES. Likewise, Steele's work and Fryer's work to address the issue (again two black social scientists) doesn't focus on SES. --Legalleft (talk) 17:42, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

• the children of the wealthiest, best educated parents living in the most socially progressive towns in the U.S. still have a race-gap issue.

So what? There is a social gap however "progressive" the town is supposed to be. The social gap is not due to wealth, it is due to socio-cultural factors. There is no such thing as "equality" even when economic factors are equal. Thsi is "socioeconomic" and not just "economic" or "educational" factors. The social factors that present the gap in wealthier populations are due to 500 years of historical and continuing white supremacism. You can't model for that. Alun (talk) 17:48, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Hence, SES as it is commonly understood in terms of class, education and income isn't what people think is involved and something more analogous to "racism" is what they think is involved. This SES vs racism issue is important to people in the field because it tells you where to look for the cause. --Legalleft (talk) 17:51, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

material from Race and genetics

I just cut this from the Race and genetics article because it's really appropriate here and not there (no need to concentrate so much on two particular genes, and their interest is really only the intelligence angle). If you would like to integrate it please do. (And remember to indicate in the edit summary the article it came from.) Thanks! Calliopejen1 (talk) 22:26, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Recently the New York Times reported the discovery of two genes, microcephalin and ASPM that are associated with brain size, people who lack functional copies of these genes are born microcephalic. A new version (allele) of the microcephalin gene is thought to have arisen about 37,000 years ago, this new version of the gene is found in about 70% of Europeans and Asians but is rarer in Africans. A new ASPM allele is thought to have arisen about 5,800 years ago, this new allele occurs in about 50% of Middle Eastern and European people, but is rare in East Asia and Africa. The rapid spread of these new alleles may indicate positive selection. The new microcephalin allele coincides with Upper Paleolithic transitions in Europe and the ASPM allele is about concurrent with the start of agriculture, but the researchers claim there is no clear connection. It should be noted that the New York Times article also states

Even if the new alleles should be shown to improve brain function, that would not necessarily mean that the populations where they are common have any brain-related advantage over those where they are rare. Different populations often take advantage of different alleles, which occur at random, to respond to the same evolutionary pressure, as has happened in the emergence of genetic defenses against malaria, which are somewhat different in Mediterranean and African populations.

Following the release of the study websites promoting racism quickly seized on the evolutionary findings. One magazine called the discovery "the moment the antiracists and egalitarians have dreaded". In an article in the National Review Online, John Derbyshire wrote that the research implied that "our cherished national dream of a well-mixed and harmonious meritocracy may be unattainable."

Consequently the study by Bruce Lahn began to attract considerable controversy. Many scientists criticized Lahn stating that he overinterpreted and sensationalized his findings. One of the co-authors, distanced herself from the study saying that she was bothered how the paper drew a link between the genetic changes and the rise of civilization. She felt that it was too early to reach any conclusions about why the changes spread and said it is "very simplistic" to imagine that a single gene could have a major effect on complex cultural traits. Richard Lewontin stated that the two papers were egregious examples of going well beyond the data to try to make a splash. Lahn would later concede that there was no real evidence natural selection had acted on cognition or intelligence through these genes. Subsequent studies by other scientist have failed to find any relationship between these genes and intelligence or brain size.

nature vs nurture section

the text alun added is somewhere between trivially true (and hence could simply be given in the definition of heritability should we desire to define it) and irrelevant (as in not important to this article). lewontin's argument isn't an argument but a statement of the definition of heritability -- it's about population level variance, not the "causes" that are necessary and sufficient at an individual level. heritability is just ANOVA on the phenotypes of related (and unrelated) individuals with a certain ANOVA model. --Legalleft (talk) 18:03, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

1. http://www.charlesdarwinresearch.org/Race_Evolution_Behavior.pdf, pg. 10
2. http://www.charlesdarwinresearch.org/Race_Evolution_Behavior.pdf, pg. 22
3. Template:AYref, Template:AYref, Template:AYref, Template:AYref, Template:AYref, Template:AYref
4. Social Darwinism, Scientific Racism, and the Metaphysics of Race Rutledge M. Dennis The Journal of Negro Education, Vol. 64, No. 3, Myths and Realities: African Americans and the Measurement of Human Abilities (Summer, 1995), pp. 243-252
5. Template:AYref; Template:AYref
6. Eugenics: America's Darkest Days
7. Francis Galton:British Psychologist
8. Outcome-Based Tyranny: Teaching Compliance While Testing Like A State IQ tests administered to the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) in World War I. Anthropological Quarterly - Volume 76, Number 4, Fall 2003, pp. 715-730
9. Porteus, Stanley. The Psychology of a Primitive People, 1931.
10. Racial Inequality: Fact or Myth W. O. Brown, The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 16, No. 1. (Jan., 1931), pp. 49
11. Alexander Thomas and Samuell Sillen (1972). Racism and Psychiatry. New York: Carol Publishing Group.
12. Samual A. Cartwright, "Diseases and Peculiarities of the Negro Race", DeBow's Review—Southern and Western States, Volume XI, New Orleans, 1851
13. A History of Race/ism Produced By: Tim McCaskell Toronto District School Board
14. Jalata, Asafa 1954- "Race and Ethnicity in East Africa (review)" Africa Today - Volume 48, Number 4, Winter 2001, pp. 134-136 Indiana University Press
15. The Invention of the White Race By Chantal Mouffe, Theodore (Theodore W.) Allen
16. Media, Stereotypes and the Perpetuation of Racism in Canada by James Crawford

    Indians were seen as a homogeneous group of savages despite the fact that individual groups varied extensively and had several well developed social systems. Black people were also portrayed as savage, uncivilized and having low intelligence. By creating these social constructs, expansion into North America was justified.

17. Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty by Dorothy Roberts. Page 63. December 1998 ISBN 0679758690
18. According to historian of psychology Graham Richards there was widespread critical debate within psychology about the conceptual underpinnings of this early race difference research (Template:AYref). These include Estabrooks (1928) two papers on the limitations of methodology used in the research; Dearborn and Long’s (1934) overview of the criticisms by several psychologists (Garth, Thompson, Peterson, Pinter, Herskovits, Daniel, Price, Wilkerson, Freeman, Rosenthal and C.E. Smith) in a collection they edited and Klineburg, who wrote three major critiques, one in 1928, and two in 1935. Richards also notes that with over a 1000 publications within psychology during the interwar years there had been a large internal debate. Towards the end of the time period almost all those publishing, including most of those who began with a pro-race differences stance, were firmly arguing against race differences research. Richards regards the scientific controversy to be dead at this point, although he also suggests reasons for its re-emergence in the late nineteen sixties.
19. Template:AYref
20. Template:AYref; Template:AYref, pp. 45–54
21. Brain May Still Be Evolving, Studies Hint
22. scientists study of brain gene sparks a backlash
23. Brain Man Makes Waves With Claims of Recent Human Evolution
24. The ongoing adaptive evolution of microcephalin and ASPM is not explained by increased intelligence
25. Normal variants of Microcephalin and ASPM do not account for brain size variability

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