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view · edit FAQ Is there really a scientific consensus that there is no evidence for a genetic link between race and intelligence? Yes, and for a number of reasons. Primarily: No evidence for such a connection has ever been published. A statement signed by 143 senior human population geneticists states categorically that genetics research in no way supports the view that "recent natural selection has led to worldwide differences in I.Q. test results". (See this, this, and this for context.) As understanding of the human genome and the science of population genetics advances, it has become increasingly clear that race is not a biologically meaningful way to categorize human population groups. See for example this statement by the American Association of Physical Anthropologists. Even if we take ancestral population groups to be proxies for race, most subject-matter experts agree that cognitive differences between such such groups are unlikely to exist. A group of prominent geneticists explain why here. Extensive evidence has been published which indicates that observed differences in IQ test performance between racial groups are environmental in origin. A group of leading psychologists summarizes some of these findings here. Most researchers view the idea of a genetic connection between race and intelligence as scientifically obsolete. See e.g. this statement by the editorial board of Nature. Isn't it true that different races have different average IQ test scores? On average and in certain contexts, yes, though these differences have fluctuated and in many cases steadily decreased over time. Crucially, the existence of such average differences today does not mean what racialists have asserted that it means (i.e. that races can be ranked according to their genetic predisposition for intelligence). Most IQ test data comes from North America and Europe, where non-White individuals represent ethnic minorities and often carry systemic burdens which are known to affect test performance. Studies which purport to compare the IQ averages of various nations are considered methodologically dubious and extremely unreliable. Further, important discoveries in the past several decades, such as the Flynn effect and the steady narrowing of the gap between low-scoring and high-scoring groups, as well as the ways in which disparities such as access to prenatal care and early childhood education affect IQ, have led to an understanding that environmental factors are sufficient to account for observed between-group differences. And isn't IQ a measure of intelligence? Not exactly. IQ tests are designed to measure intelligence, but it is widely acknowledged that they measure only a very limited range of an individual's cognitive capacity. They do not measure mental adaptability or creativity, for example. You can read more about the limitations of IQ measurements here. These caveats need to be kept in mind when extrapolating from IQ measurements to statements about intelligence. But even if we were to take IQ to be a measure of intelligence, there would still be no good reason to assert a genetic link between race and intelligence (for all the reasons stated elsewhere in this FAQ). Isn't there research showing that there are genetic differences between races? Yes and no. A geneticist could analyze a DNA sample and then in many cases make an accurate statement about that person's race, but no single gene or group of genes has ever been found that defines a person's race. Such variations make up a minute fraction of the total genome, less even than the amount of genetic material that varies from one individual to the next. It's also important to keep in mind that racial classifications are socially constructed, in the sense that how a person is classified racially depends on perceptions, racial definitions, and customs in their society and can often change when they travel to a different country or when social conventions change over time (see here for more details). So how can different races look different, without having different genes? They do have some different genes, but the genes that vary between any two given races will not necessarily vary between two other races. Race is defined phenotypically, not genotypically, which means it's defined by observable traits. When a geneticist looks at the genetic differences between two races, there are differences in the genes that regulate those traits, and that's it. So comparing Africans to Europeans will show differences in genes that regulate skin color, hair texture, nose and lip shape, and other observable traits. But the rest of the genetic code will be essentially the same. In fact, there is much less genetic material that regulates the traits used to define the races than there is that regulates traits that vary from person to person. In other words, if you compare the genomes of two individuals within the same race, the results will likely differ more from each other than a comparison of the average genomes of two races. If you've ever heard people saying that the races "are more alike than two random people" or words to that effect, this is what they were referring to. Why do people insist that race is "biologically meaningless"? Mostly because it is. As explained in the answer to the previous question, race isn't defined by genetics. Race is nothing but an arbitrary list of traits, because race is defined by observable features. The list isn't even consistent from one comparison to another. We distinguish between African and European people on the basis of skin color, but what about Middle Eastern, Asian, and Native American people? They all have more or less the same skin color. We distinguish African and Asian people from European people by the shape of some of their facial features, but what about Native American and Middle Eastern people? They have the same features as the European people, or close enough to engender confusion when skin color is not discernible. Australian Aborigines share numerous traits with African people and are frequently considered "Black" along with them, yet they are descended from an ancestral Asian population and have been a distinct cultural and ethnic group for fifty thousand years. These standards of division are arbitrary and capricious; the one drop rule shows that visible differences were not even respected at the time they were still in use. But IQ is at least somewhat heritable. Doesn't that mean that observed differences in IQ test performance between ancestral population groups must have a genetic component? This is a common misconception, sometimes termed the "hereditarian fallacy". In fact, the heritability of differences between individuals and families within a given population group tells us nothing about the heritability of differences between population groups. As geneticist and neuroscientist Kevin Mitchell explains: We need to get away from thinking about intelligence as if it were a trait like milk yield in a herd of cattle, controlled by a small, persistent and dedicated bunch of genetic variants that can be selectively bred into animals from one generation to the next. It is quite the opposite – thousands of variants affect intelligence, they are constantly changing, and they affect other traits. It is not impossible for natural selection to produce populations with differences in intelligence, but these factors make it highly unlikely. To end up with systematic genetic differences in intelligence between large, ancient populations, the selective forces driving those differences would need to have been enormous. What’s more, those forces would have to have acted across entire continents, with wildly different environments, and have been persistent over tens of thousands of years of tremendous cultural change. Such a scenario is not just speculative – I would argue it is inherently and deeply implausible. The bottom line is this. While genetic variation may help to explain why one person is more intelligent than another, there are unlikely to be stable and systematic genetic differences that make one population more intelligent than the next. What about all the psychometricians who claim there's a genetic link? The short answer is: they're not geneticists. The longer answer is that there remains a well-documented problem of scientific racism, which has infiltrated psychometry (see e.g. and ). Psychometry is a field where people who advocate scientific racism can push racist ideas without being constantly contradicted by the very work they're doing. And when their data did contradict their racist views, many prominent advocates of scientific racism simply falsified their work or came up with creative ways to explain away the problems. See such figures as Cyril Burt, J. Phillipe Rushton, Richard Lynn, and Hans Eysenck, who are best known in the scientific community today for the poor methodological quality of their work, their strong advocacy for a genetic link between race and intelligence, and in some cases getting away with blatant fraud for many years. Isn't it a conspiracy theory to claim that psychometricians do this? No. It is a well-documented fact that there is an organized group of psychometricians pushing for mainstream acceptance of racist, unscientific claims. See this, this and this, as well as our article on scientific racism for more information. Isn't this just political correctness? No, it's science. As a group of scholars including biological anthropologists Agustín Fuentes of Princeton and Jonathan M. Marks of the University of North Carolina explain: "while it is true that most researchers in the area of human genetics and human biological diversity no longer allocate significant resources and time to the race/IQ discussion, and that moral concerns may play an important role in these decisions, an equally fundamental reason why researchers do not engage with the thesis is that empirical evidence shows that the whole idea itself is unintelligible and wrong-headed". These authors compare proponents of a genetic link between race and IQ to creationists, vaccine skeptics, and climate change deniers. At the same time, researchers who choose to pursue this line of inquiry have in no way been hindered from doing so, as is made clear by this article: . It's just that all the evidence they find points to environmental rather than genetic causes for observed differences in average IQ-test performance between racial groups. What about the surveys which say that most "intelligence experts" believe in some degree of genetic linkage between race and IQ? These surveys are almost invariably conducted by advocates of scientific racism, and respondents to these surveys are also almost exclusively members of groups that promote scientific racism. In short, they are not representative samples of mainstream scientific opinion. These surveys tend to have very low participation rates, and often consist of fewer than 100 respondents. Many of the surveys suffer from methodological flaws, such as using leading questions. This leads to an increase in responses from those who agree, and a decrease from those who disagree. Generally speaking, the better the methodology of the survey, the lower agreement it shows with the claim of a genetic link between race and intelligence. Even the most poorly structured surveys, conducted among members of groups that are dominated by advocates for scientific racism, show much doubt and difference of opinion among respondents. The vast majority of respondents have absolutely no qualifications to speak on genetics. Is there really no evidence at all for a genetic link between race and intelligence? No evidence for such a link has ever been presented in the scientific community. Much data has been claimed to be evidence by advocates of scientific racism, but each of these claims has been universally rejected by geneticists. Statistical arguments claiming to detect the signal of such a difference in polygenic scores have been refuted as fundamentally methodologically flawed (see e.g. ), and neither genetics nor neuroscience are anywhere near the point where a mechanistic explanation could even be meaningfully proposed (see e.g. ). This is why the question of a genetic link between race and intelligence is largely considered pseudoscience; it is assumed to exist primarily by advocates of scientific racism, and in these cases the belief is based on nothing but preconceived notions about race. What is the current state of the science on a link between intelligence and race? Please see the article itself for an outline of the scientific consensus. What is the basis for Misplaced Pages's consensus on how to treat the material? Misplaced Pages editors have considered this topic in detail and over an extended period. In short, mainstream science treats the claim that genetics explains the observable differences in IQ between races as a fringe theory, so we use our own guidelines on how to treat such material when editing our articles on the subject. Please refer to the following past discussions: RfC on race and intelligence Race and IQ: "no evidence" for genetic component? RfC: What sources should we use to establish notability and relative balance of different viewpoints? No "direct" evidence for a genetic component RfC on racial hereditarianism

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Wanting To Revert Occam's Changes

I find myself wanting to revert all of Occam's recent changes. But, if I am the only one that feels that way, then obviously I shouldn't. It just seems that, in aggregate, they represent everything that is wrong with this article, and much of Misplaced Pages in general. (Much of this opinion is based on my recent education by MathSci.)

• This is an encyclopedia article not your personal take on the academic research. Use secondary sources as much as possible. Consider a representative change:

A 2009 meta-analysis by Jelte Wicherts found evidence of significant publication bias in 55 studies of stereotype threat and its effect on IQ, in which those that found a strong effect were more likely to be published than those which did not. Reviewing both the published and unpublished studies, Wicherts found that stereotype threat did not have an effect on all test-taking settings in which a difference in average scores is observed between races, and therefore was not an adequate explanation for the racial IQ gap.

What is this sentence doing here? I am not denying that we have a reliable source nor that this is a fair summary of Wicherts' views. But this is an unpublished working paper that has, at best, a tangential relationship to the topic of Race and Intelligence. I understand that it may be, at times, important to use and cite a primary source. But are there no limits?

• We need to pay attention to WP:SIZE and Occam's recent additions come close, depending on the exact measure used, to violating it. Consider another specific change:

The comparison of Jews and Arabs, for example, is based on a news report that, in 1992, 26% of Jewish high school students passed their matriculation exam, as opposed to 15% of Arab students.

Again, I am not denying that this is a true statement from a reliable source. But what is it doing in this article? And, moreover, if such a statement does belong here, then I don't understand what grounds we could possibly use for excluding any other similarly well-sourced statement. Soon, we will be make where we started, with a 25 page article that includes 300 references (each correct and well-sourced) but which, taken as a whole, is absolutely useless to any reader.

So, if it were me, I would just revert all these changes and then have a detailed discussion about them on the talk page. Some are reasonable, but the entire pile just has too much junk relative to what is reasonable and needed. But if I am the only one who feels that way . . . David.Kane (talk) 19:27, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

As I said before, if there’s specific material that you want to remove or change, please go ahead. I made the best decisions that I could, based on both what other users were requesting and what we agreed on during mediation, but I’m sure they weren’t perfect. However, I would hope that you don’t regard all of the changes I made as useless. I also tightened the wording of several sections, and added some data (particularly racial admixture studies and data about education) whose addition seems hard to argue with. --Captain Occam (talk) 19:50, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

This structure is closer to the mediation plan, using VA's idea of sectioning variables. I think it will be more stable this way. This structure seems clear and adaptable.

I agree it can be narrowed down. For example 'Reliability of Test Scores'. The test scores are generally considered reliable for any population by the psychometric community. Reading that section, imagining you know nothing of the topic, what does it make you think about the reliability? It's synth. As David said: This is an encyclopedia article not your personal take on the academic research. mikemikev (talk) 20:08, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

@Mikemikev - well, that is a non-sequitor. The section contains significant views from reliable sources. NPOV requires us to include different views, including minority views. You are just arguing that only one view (that of psychometricians) be included in the article. That simply won't fly. You can't ask us to violate a core policy. Slrubenstein | Talk 20:16, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

@ David Kane: I certainly agree that in all cases we need to adhere to WP:RS. As for length, I do not agree with David Kane. Just as individual IQs can be much lower or higher than the group average, some Misplaced Pages articles will be much smaller or larger than the average - this is a necessary and positive consequence of having an encyclopedia that is not paper, and that is able to have articles on topics not included in other encyclopedias. I think the length of an article should reflect the amount of literature (in this case scholarly literature, but I mean "reliable source" containing "significant views") out there, which is often an index of how controversial a topic is. This is not the article on string beans, and we should not be surprised that an article on racial differences and intelligence scores will be a lot longer than the article on string beans. What is important is that it represent all significant views, and explain complex issues clearly. For example, the Israeli-Arab quote is just one example - but it makes it very clear how diverse the data is that people are relying on. We can't just deal with abstractions, some readers need concrete examples and I understand that. In the past David and Captain Occam have asked Muntuwandi to raise specific problems on the talk page for discussion. If that is fair of Muntuwandi (or mathSci) it is fair to ask this of me or David Kane. I am not saying Captain occam's version is perfect; I really would like Aprock and Varoon Arya to weigh in. But I think we will make more progress by discussing the overall structure, and individual sections, separately, than be constant reverting. But if Three other editors who were active in the mediation agree with David Kane, I'll shut up. Slrubenstein | Talk 20:16, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

@Slrubenstein: A 'non-sequitor'? Don't be ridiculous. I think you'll find the synth violation is achieved by cherry picking from psychometricians, so what you say is absurd; just the usual meaningless spiel. mikemikev (talk) 20:23, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

@Slrubenstein: My mistake! I was looking at Mathsci's version. Occam's is fine. I apologise. mikemikev (talk) 21:04, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

Apology accepted! Slrubenstein | Talk 21:40, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

@David.Kane: I too am very concerned about size. There is a great deal to recommend a smaller article that samples the range of opinions more so than one that comprehensively covers everything written on the topic. An encyclopedia reader wants to be introduced to the topic, not overwhelmed by it. The consideration of WP:UNDUE helps motivate this all the more. --DJ (talk) 07:12, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

Richard Lynn?

Captain Occam appears to be adding improperly sourced statements that directly contradict previous and subsequent statements in the article concerning the research of Richard Lynn. Could he please explain why he is doing so? Mathsci (talk) 01:25, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

The paper by Heiner Rindermann seems to be accurately described: --DJ (talk) 01:39, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

Mathsci, you've made this removal four times within the space of less than 24 hours, which is a violation of 3RR. You also haven't yet made any attempt to justify it, other than claiming in your edit summary that it's original research, and not replying when I ask you to justify this claim. Everything in that paragraph is properly sourced, and is supported by the sources that it's using. Are you going to make any attempt to justify this removal, or are you going to just keep removing it while refusing to cooperate with our attempts at discussion about it?

Captain Occam, please put talk concerning the article History of the race and intelligence controversy on the talk page of that article, not this one. Also, when you want to refer to an edit dif, please provide a link to the actual edit dif and not to the page history, it is unclear what you are talking about (which edit, specifically). Slrubenstein | Talk 16:42, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

At the moment, the second paragraph of the "Comparative data outside of the USA" section is a mess. There's no apparent organization, other than to just list a collection of criticisms of international IQ comparisons, while excluding all information about their predictive validity. It's a perfect example of this. Since Mathsci is the only user here who's pressing for the information he doesn't like to be excluded from this section, and he isn't making any effort to justify his claims that this information is original research, there's no reason for this part of the article to stay in this state. DJ, David.Kane, Mikemikev: let's fix this. --Captain Occam (talk) 12:09, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

I certainly think the second paragraph is critically important to the article. If you think that the section (and we should look at the whole section, not just one paragraph) can be better organized, well, that is certainly a reasonable concern. If it can be improved, well, sure, why not try? But I would strongly object to removing any of the content. If you want to propose a more effective way to organize all of this information, I'd love to see it, but none of the information, certainly nothing from the secon paragraph, should be removed. Slrubenstein | Talk 16:35, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

This isn’t about the history article, it’s about this one. Mathsci has now reverted it five times in the past day and a half: . Each time, he’s removed the same paragraph describing predictive validity of IQ in Sub-Saharan Africa, and each time he’s been unwilling to explain why except to claim that it’s original research. When other users have asked him what there is in this paragraph that isn’t in the source material, he hasn’t responded.

I have tried to improve this section, according to the compromise you and I came up with about it, and when I do Mathsci just reverts it while refusing to participate in any of the discussion about it. Multihussain is doing this also, although unlike Mathsci he doesn’t appear to have violated 3RR over this yet. The paragraph they keep removing is one that you and I discussed when we came up with the outline for this section, and you seemed to agree that NPOV policy required that the article include it, although you disagreed with me about which section of the article it should be in. I’m not trying to remove any content here; I just want to add back the paragraph that Mathsci keeps removing. If you think I ought to try improving this section again, what do you think I should do if Mathsci just continues to revert my edits while refusing to participate in any discussion about them? --Captain Occam (talk) 18:51, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

Captain Occam, you cannot criticize MathSci for edit warring at the History of the race and intelligence controversy article, provide a link to that page, and then tell us that you are not talking about the "History of the race and intelligence controversy" article. And yes, you DID accuse mathsci of edit warring there. You did it in this sentence: "Mathsci, you've made this removal four times within the space of less than 24 hours, which is a violation of 3RR." which I have simply cut and pasted from your 12:09 edit, above. You wrote it. What are you trying to say? What do you mean, "This isn't about the history article?" If it is not about the history article, then why did you write an entire paragraph referring to the history article? Are you not capable of following your own link? Slrubenstein | Talk 18:59, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

captain o, excuse me but are you blind? i added a line or two + a reference to baumert & co. this was reverted by your friend mikemikev for no reason at all. i reverted back and added another line + a reference to flynn. this was also reverted by your friend mikemikev. at the end i didn't revert, i just added baumert and flynn (again!!). and now dj has removed almost everything! this is preposterous! mustihussain 19:11, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

The level of detail in this section is WP:UNDUE for this article. It could be easily reduced to a few sentences and still achieve the same effect because there are appropriate pages to link out to. Thoughts? --DJ (talk) 18:18, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

As an interim step I replaced the controversial text with what I hope is a non-controversial quote. We can subsequently replace that with a neutral summary when one is written. --DJ (talk) 18:49, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

I think this is a good starting point. I hope Mathsci can agree with this also, and not continue edit warring over it. --Captain Occam (talk) 19:05, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

no! this is not a good starting point! i find it quite disturbing that a spa like you have hijacked the article. and do you really think that you're the only one who can play the spa game?

now, do you? mustihussain 19:19, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

I agree that the section can be shortened. I think DJ did a fair job in summarizing much of the material. However, i think that it is essential that three things DJ left out be put back in. First and second, the parts about Luria and Reuning - they are critical because they explain why many researchers think that data collected would be inappropriate for comparison. Third, there are several negative reviews of Lynn's book, including two extended quotes from Mackintosh. Again, I think the reasons for the negative reviews, including the fact that several researchers question Lynn's credibility, should go in. I think there is a way to do this without taking up all the space Mathsci's version took up. I suggest a sentence saying several reviewers have criticized Lynn's book, and then pick just one of the two Mackintosh quotes. I think that would be a reasonable compromise. (When it comes to defensing the validity of cross-cultural comparisons, I think this already is covered in the article. If lynn ever defended himself against the specific accusations levelev by Mackintosh I am sure we could include a one or two line summary of his defense ... although it gos without saying that he disagrees with his critics.

Also, DJ, while I agree, the "alas" is editorializing and should go. Slrubenstein | Talk 19:20, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

• Let's try to rewrite this section on the talk page. I think it will produce a better product. Rapid, unorganized editing creates an unorganized product.
• What I added to the article was not my own text but rather a quote from Wicherts, who is perhaps the most cogent and recent critic of Lynn, writing in what appears to be a good NPOV fashion.
• Let's be sure to keep Wicherts' main points in what we re-write, while adding additional points if needed. Here are those 4 points with references removed for clarity:

1. It is important to note that an observed IQ score does not necessarily equal a particular level of general intelligence or g, as it is necessary to consider the issue of validity in interpreting an observed score as an indication of the position on a latent variable such as g.
2. Several authors have questioned whether the IQ scores of Africans are valid and comparable to scores in western samples in terms of g.
3. Some reject the very possibility of obtaining a valid measure of g in Africa with western IQ tests, while others consider it relatively unproblematic.
4. The psychometric issue of measurement invariance is crucial to the comparability of test scores across cultural groups in terms of latent variables, such as g. ... the number of studies addressing measurement invariance is small.

--DJ (talk) 19:45, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

@Slrubenstein - (1) You would include the details from Luria and Reuning to provide examples of why "Some reject the very possibility of obtaining a valid measure of g in with western IQ tests", correct? I didn't see the need for the examples when we can just point the generality. The key reason for not using them is that they seem to trivialize the general nature of the problem by pointing to small populations when the key concern is about the whole of sub-Saharan Africa. (2) You would add the review from Mackintosh? It's a perfectly valid source, but I would suggest going with the 2010 Wicherts papers because they have the value of being peer reviewed and offer a coherent alternative hypothesis to Lynn rather than just a few criticisms. Lynn has a follow-up comment to Wicherts which can be cited for his counter-argument. That could close out the section. --DJ (talk) 20:24, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

Sources to draw from:

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• Attention: This template ({{cite doi}}) is deprecated. To cite the publication identified by doi:10.1016/j.lindif.2009.12.001, please use {{cite journal}} (if it was published in a bona fide academic journal, otherwise {{cite report}} with |doi=10.1016/j.lindif.2009.12.001 instead.

--DJ (talk) 20:35, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

Debate assumptions and methodology

The proposed experiments described by Rowe 2005 (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15641922) may be more appropriate to present in the "Debate assumptions and methodology" section than what is currently given. Any objections? --DJ (talk) 08:44, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

What makes it more appropriate? Slrubenstein | Talk 10:18, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

I can't find any supporting citations for the material in the paragraph beginning with "In theory". It may be WP:OR. --DJ (talk) 17:36, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

I say dump it, as it's awkward and not very realistic. Instead:

As with many variables in social science (e.g., sex, age, marital status, etc), race cannot be randomly assigned to research subjects. All race and IQ data are therefore correlational in nature and do not permit causal inferences. Researchers instead use statistical techniques and other types of control to infer whether or not a third variable (e.g., income or education) can "explain" the race gap on IQ scores. -Bpesta22 (talk) 22:31, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

No worries on deleting the "In theory" section. But can't cite Loehlin for something that is not there. So, I just deleted whole thing. The more that we can edit out extraneous material, especially material not correctly cited to a specific source, the better. No objection if someone wants to use Rowe (2005). David.Kane (talk) 23:17, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

The IQ distribution curve for American Whites and for US-resident Blacks can be approximated by these normal distribution functions:

WIQ = exp{−(x−103)²/537.92} / √(2π)

BIQ = exp{−(x−85)²/307.52} / √(2π)

The averages (103 for American Whites, 85 for US-resident Blacks) are from "Thirty Years of Research on Race Differences in Cognitive Ability," by J. Philippe Rushton and Arthur R. Jensen, published in Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 2005, Vol. 11, No. 2, pp. 235-294. The standard deviations in IQ, which are 16.4 for Whites and 12.4 for Blacks, are from a 1963 study by Kennedy, Van De Riet, and White.

The fraction of each race that has an IQ above a specified minimum can be found by integrating the appropriate function from the minimum IQ to about IQ 300, after where, for all practical purposes, there is no further accumulation of area under the curve. It's interesting to notice how the ratio, of the fraction of Whites to the fraction of Blacks exceeding various minimum IQs, changes as the minimum is increased.

Only one US-resident Black in nine has an IQ above 100, whereas about 57.3% of American Whites do. In the United States, Whites outnumber Blacks by a ratio of slightly more than six, so, on the average, there will be about 30 qualified Whites for each qualified Black for jobs having a required minimum IQ of 100.

For intellectually demanding jobs requiring a minimum IQ of 140 for satisfactory performance, there will be 2620 qualified Whites for each qualified Black, if the populations of Whites and Blacks in the pool of persons available to be hired are equal. There will be about 16000 qualified Whites for each qualified Black, on the average in the United States, for jobs having a required minimum IQ of 140.

On the very low end of the IQ distribution, the higher standard deviation for American Whites causes a leftward catch-up. There is no significant gap between these two races for the per capita rates of idiocy. The racial gaps in IQ appear toward the middle of the distributions and become ever-larger in proportion as higher IQ ranges are considered. Jenab6 (talk) 18:35, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Mikemike's reverting me

I changed the sentence in the section on IQ outside of the US to "Richard Lynn and others" because the sentence's sources - those footnotes at the end - mention Lynn. Now Mikemikev accuses me of changign it to sneak in some "fringe" claim? You are accusing me of making the edit to push a point of view? I consider this a personal attack. How dare you accuse me of sneaking in some claim about Fringey whatever. Revert me using an attack my integrity again you little turd and I will take it to AN/I. You don't like my edit? Take it to this talk page before you screw around with things you do not understand.

NPOV states that we should attribute views, especially when controversial. I am not claiming that any view is fringe, but the section of the article itself says that this is a controversial area. So policy requires us to attribute views when possible. I attributed this view to lynn because he wrote the book cited in the same sentence. You want to add a line saying that "All psychometricians think this" Mikemikev? Well, go find a reliable source from a significant author or professional organization that says so. The add the source and then you can add the attribution.

But stop trying to violate Misplaced Pages policy. Misplaced Pages presents views, not truths. And the views we present have to be verifiable. This particular view is verified by reference to a book by Lynn. All that I am doing here is what I did in the History of the R&I controversy article. Go ask Mathsci and Captain Occam. I partially reverted an edit Mathsci made, and restored an attribution Captain Occan had placed in there. That is all I am doing here. And you have the audacity to accuse me of POV pushing, when you are just an NPOV-pushing SPA? Slrubenstein | Talk 15:54, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

NPOV-pushing? mikemikev (talk) 16:41, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

The central problem is that, by allowing/encouraging extensive edits without pre-discussion in Talk, we are headed down the road to madness. Am I the only one that sees that? You, I, mikemev, others were able to thrash out our differences in the History and Assumptions section in Talk, resulting in, at least a few days, of stability for those sections. We should go back to doing things that way. With regard to this specific point, I don't agree with Mikemikev's accusation, but I see no reason to delete the reference to Mackintosh. If an excellent secondary source asserts that "X is true," and no other secondary source denies that "X is true", then you do not need to write: "Richard Lynn believes X." David.Kane (talk) 16:12, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

The reason I deleted the other reference was because it was referring to IQ differences discussed in the previous section, not this section. It is also important not to take quotes out of context. Mackintosh has a view, and it is accurately represented in this section. Lynn has a view, and it is accurately represented in this section. Nothing in the section says that Misplaced Pages takes Lynn's side, or mackintosh's side - which is how it should be. Slrubenstein | Talk 16:46, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Please correct me if I am wrong, but I thought that standard Misplaced Pages practice in the use of secondary sources (like Mackintosh) is that, if a secondary source says "X is true" --- and no secondary source disputes that X is true --- then we should write the article like "X is true." We should not write "Author of secondary source and others claim that X is true." David.Kane (talk) 16:49, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Not quite. It may just be that no one has had time or bothered to challenge a way-out claim. Slrubenstein is probably more of an expert on NPOV than anyone else here, so it's worth asking him though. Stephen B Streater (talk) 17:00, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

(ec) Buddy (meaning David, although Stephen can be my buddy too!), I am afraid you are wrong. Misplaced Pages is most defintiely not about "truth," ever. it is about verifiable views, not truth. But perhaps you misread what i wrote above. mackintosh is referring to IQ differences between Blacks and Whites in the US. Mathsci reverted Captain Occam several times because of SYNTH violations, and Captain Occam protested that Mathsci did not esxplain the SYNTH error. But I just explained it. Mackintosh makes a claim about IQ differences between whites and blacks in the US. Then this reference is put next to a reference to a book about IQ differences in other countries, and suddenly you think Mackintosh is a secondary source describing some "truth" that there are IQ differences between races worldwide. That is SYNTH!!!!!!!!!!! You cannot combine two sources that say different things and then present YOUR (or Captain Occam's, or Mikemikev's) conclusions as if they are "truth." This is a violation of each of Misplaced Pages's core content policies: NPOV because you are presenting a view as truth; V because although you provide the citation you are not attributing the view to the person whose view it is, and NOR, because of SYNTH. You've hit the trifecta. Congratulations, but I am undoing your re-revert.

And I repeat: the section presents Lynn's views, and they present Mackintosh's views, on the subject of IQ scores outside of the US, and that is just as it should be.Slrubenstein | Talk 17:06, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

I think we need to re-read Mackintosh because I think the source probably doesn't support the text (in that section). If so, this is a much simpler problem of checking the source. OTOH, we should probably try to read further to see if anyone else has made any generalizations about this question. --DJ (talk) 17:11, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

"Mackintosh makes a claim about IQ differences between whites and blacks in the US." No. That is wrong. I am holding a copy of Mackintosh in my hands and pages 148 to 150 are not restricted to the US. He provided a table of similar results for Britain, for starters, and makes reference to "North American blacks" as well as "European prejudice." He notes, correctly, that the vast majority of the work has been done in the US, but that the result is not limited to one country. David.Kane (talk) 17:35, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Without commenting on the content aspect of this, I'd like to point out that I think Slrubenstein seriously needs to make more of an effort to avoid personal attacks against other users. Referring to another editor as "you little turd" is a pretty obvious violation of WP:NPA. I brought up this problem from Slrubenstein at AN/I a few weeks ago, and several other editors there agreed that administrators should hold themselves to a higher standard of behavior than this. Slrubenstein, the fact that you think Mikemikev's edits were erroneous isn't an excuse for this sort of name-calling. --Captain Occam (talk) 17:14, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

It is clear that Mackintosh is not talking about third world countries or Africa which is the main focus of this section (which at one point was called "IQ in Africa"). The arguments that IQ data normally used in these studies would not apply to third world countries makes it pretty clear that we are not talking about England. So as far as I am concerned my point stands. Mackintosh 150 is not referring to the Lynn book that is refered to in that sentence, or to the data from the lynn book used in that paragraph. SYNTH, SYNTH, SYNTH. I am not the first person to raise these concerns, of presenting one POV as if (to use David Kane's words) it is the "truth." In addition to Mathsci, Mustaffa and Muntuwandi have raised NPOV concerns. NPOV is non-negotiable and I will defend it without compromise until I either get tired of Misplaced Pages, or am banned. Slrubenstein | Talk 18:09, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

There is a third option - that you help educate editors so that they understand the policy ie they spread the word themselves and you can work on other aspects of articles. IMO, it's one of the hardest to internalise, though SYNTH is also a natural inclination. And please don't be rude to people - we're all on the same side, ultimately. Stephen B Streater (talk) 19:41, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

The current revision states "Racial differences in IQ scores are observed around the world. A commonly-cited review by Richard Lynn lists IQ scores for East Asians (105), Europeans (99), Inuit (91), Southeast Asians and Amerindians (87 each), Pacific Islanders (85), South Asians/North Africans (84), Non-Bushmen sub-Saharan Africans (67), Australian Aborigines (62) and Bushmen (54)". This statement implies that these test scores are reliable and uncontroversial for all groups. Furthermore, are some of these groups referred to as "races". Are Southeast Asians, North Africans and Bushmen referred to as races.

I believe Lynn's publication is cited frequently, not because it is accurate, but because it is possibly the only study that has attempted to compile global IQ data. There are likely to be others, but they are probably less well known. Unless Lynn's data is replicated multiple times by independent studies, and secondary sources attest to this, Lynn's data should not be considered factual and should be attributed to Lynn as suggested by Slrubenstein.Unsigned comments by Muntuwandi

I agree that many these "global IQ scores" of Lynn are not accepted in the academic world; in fact the contrary seems to be the case, according to the book reviews, at the moment one of the only ways to gauge academic reaction. (Side comment: his coauthor Tatu Vanhanen, father of the current Finnish prime minister Matti Vanhanen, has got into trouble in Finland over some of this material.)

Returning to Mackintosh. David.Kane seems to be quoting quite selectively. Mackintosh fairly and squarely addresses the problems of measurement of intelligence in underdeveloped countries and communities untouched by industrialisation. As he says on pages 180-181:

Finally, it is important to remember that most of the discussion of ethnic group differences in IQ has concerned different groups living in Britain or the USA. Even these comparisons are fraught with problems: as numerous commentators have argued, many of these groups have probably created different sub-cultures, and probably differ in their access to the culture of the white majority. Differences in their test scores may, therefore, reflect differences in their values, attitudes, and beliefs. When we turn to comparisons between different nationalities, North American whites against Australian aborigines or illiterate peasants in sub-Saharan Africa, these problems surely become insuperable. It is not just that, as I have argued, we do not properly know how to translate a vocabulary or information test into a foreign language. We have no grounds for assuming that the modes of thought or reasoning, that we take for granted as evidence of intelligence in Western industrial societies, will be the same as those to be found in an illiterate peasant society. The concept of intelligence is, in part, a social or cultural construct, as Sternberg amongst others has insisted. Mary Smith may be more intelligent than her brother John, but the way in which this difference manifests itself would probably be quite different if they lived in the Kalahari desert as hunter-gatherers, or were Amazonian Indians, rather than middle class Americans.

He then goes on to amplify this for another page. Thes statements do not support what David.Kane is claiming. The same points of view are expressed in the CUP book edited by Berry et al. Lynn was going out on a limb it seems. Mathsci (talk) 15:13, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

That belongs under debate assumptions. Nobody questions Lynn's IQ data. You're setting up a straw man: A) These are Lynn's IQ figures. B) Lynn is unreliable because of X, Y, Z. But the IQ data is solid. There may be some small nitpicks and errors, but it's collated from many independent studies, agreeing with each other with a 0.95 correlation. Do you really think that if it was possible to prove these figures wrong it wouldn't have been done by now? Face it, these are the IQ scores for the nations. Whether or not those IQ scores are appropriate is a different question. Mathsci's Mackintosh quote above is irrelevant. mikemikev (talk) 16:31, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

That's not correct. At least two book reviews have queried these figures. The review of Mackintosh and the review of Thomas Volken . What evidence do you have that any serious academic has accepted these figures? Has somebody written that somewhere or is it something you imagine to be true, despite the negative book reviews and the articles of Wichert et al? The books mostly seem to be cited by a small circle of hereditarians or the occasional critic. Do you have other sources showing that they have been widely accepted? Mathsci (talk) 01:04, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

As I understand it, very little to none of the IQ data is Lynn's. In that sense it's correct to say that no one questions the data. However, there are lots of questions about Lynn's apparent cherry picking of IQ data. Thus when Lynn presents data, it's perfectly reasonable to question where he got it, why included some, but not other data, and how he "normalized" it. Refer to the work of Wicherts for more detail. A.Prock (talk) 06:08, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

That is perfectly correct. All of the data was compiled from previous studies. The reviews make it clear that some of the data was chosen selectively. Some countries in Africa had no data available, so an estimate was made based on neighbouring countries, Sometimes the samples were small - I vaguely remember isolated villages in Kenya - possibly too small and unrepresentative to compute a meaningful average. Since Wicherts et al did an exhaustive literature survey for sub-Saharan African countries fairly recently, I agree that that's the place to look for at least one informed view. Mathsci (talk) 07:49, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

It seems like we have a consensus - Mathsci and AProck, can you review the section and make sure that it reflects this consensus? Length is an issue, but I deleted some material Mathsci originallyput in. I thought ti was redundant but please make sure I did not cut anything really important. Thanks, Slrubenstein | Talk 15:46, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

A lot of this drama could have been posted on user talk pages instead of the article talk page. --120 Volt monkey (talk) 17:26, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Reviewing that section, The section is full of internal contradictions, and places Lynn's flawed analysis as the main content. Reading some of the reviews of Lynn's work makes it clear that there are enough methodological problems to make the conclusions very tenuous at best, and racist at worst. I would suggest replacing it with a discussion of some of the main problems with comparing IQ scores across cultures. It's important to remember that this is article is about Race and IQ, not culture and IQ. When comparing the IQ performance of Blacks in Africa vs Whites in the US, the performance difference may be much more due to radical cultural differences, not racial difference. A.Prock (talk) 18:28, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

The national IQs are estimates based on educational achievement within countries (standardized test scores, mostly). In most cases, the IQs were estimated directly (test scores were available for the country). In fewer cases, Lynn estimated them based on IQs for neighboring countries. The indirect estimates are indeed sloppier (contain more error) but are not invalid in the psychometric sense (I'd argue that have predictive and construct validity).

At least one recent paper, for example, shows that national IQ estimates predict religious beliefs and certain outcomes related to health:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6W4M-4WNWW6F-1&_user=10&_coverDate=10%2F31%2F2009&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1315537588&_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=f9569544dda093d92fb7cdb03b5e4bc2

It might be more proper to call these values educational achievement and not IQ, but one could also argue these are basically the same thing at the aggregate level. -Bpesta22 (talk) 02:55, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

@Aprock - A refactoring might be possible. The US data on European, African, East Asian, Latino and Native Americans (including Alaska Natives) can be covered in the US context. That leaves one small and one big debate. The small debate is global IQ variation in industrial countries. The big debate is sub-Saharan African IQ scores. --DJ (talk) 04:59, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

There seems to be an agreement here that this section needs to be improved, but nobody’s making an effort at actually improving it. DJ, would you like to take a shot at this yourself? --Captain Occam (talk) 10:13, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Well, the section is in something of a local NPOV maxima, and improving it would require considerable effort to get it to a new maxima. I'd like to see more discussion first. --DJ (talk) 16:37, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Eyferth study

One of the things that we agreed on during mediation was that when we discuss the Eyferth study in this article, we ought to mention the most common criticism of it, which is that the parents of the children in this study weren’t a representative sample of IQ distribution among blacks and whites because they were selected for IQ when they joined the army. (During World War II, the army wouldn’t accept people with an IQs below a certain level because they were too difficult to train; I think their cutoff line was at 85.) Now that the article is providing more information about the Eyferth study, I think it ought to mention this criticism of it also. Does anyone mind if I edit the article to add this? --Captain Occam (talk) 12:32, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

I suggest creating a separate article for the study, but the title "Leistungern verscheidener Gruppen von Besatzungskindern in Hamburg-Wechsler Intelligenztest für Kinder (HAWIK)" doesnt lend itself to being an article now. Probably Eyferth study is enough. The citation for that criticism is Loehein et al (1975), which is reiterated by Hunt and Carlson (2007): "In their excellent review of findings on racial/ethnic differences up to the mid 1970s, Loehlin, Lindzey, and Spuhler (1975, p. 126) describe a study by Eyferth (1961) of the IQs of German children who had been born to German women and either African American, French African, or White U.S. soldiers. The Black and White children had equivalent IQs. Loehlin et al. point out that in order for the study to be interpretable we would have to know the IQs of Black and White soldiers who consorted with German women during the post-World War II occupation. These scores would not necessarily have been the same as the IQ scores of all Black and White soldiers serving at the time.". --DJ (talk) 16:16, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

I was intending to cite the criticism to Jensen 1998, since in that book he specifically mentions the fact that the soldiers had been selected for IQ. (Perhaps Loehlin mentions this also; if he does then I guess it would be fine to cite this to him rather than to Jensen.)

I'm not sure if I agree that the Eyferth study is notable enough to deserve its own article here, but as long as it's part of this article, do you agree that this criticism of it ought to be included? --Captain Occam (talk) 17:12, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

I recommend editing the entire section in talk space first. If you're going to add interpretation of Eyferth, add it for the other studies as well. If consensus is reached on the talk page, only then commit the changes to the main article. This will permit a bold re-edit in the face of the existing local NPOV maxima :) --DJ (talk) 17:41, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

I know very little about how the Moore and Tizard studies. What other interpretations of them would you suggest adding? --Captain Occam (talk) 18:06, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

It looks like ImperfectlyInformed added the information about criticism of the Eyferth study himself. Thanks for adding this, II. What would you think of adding some additional information about the the Moore and Tizard studies also? --Captain Occam (talk) 01:40, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

tags

The article tags were added by Hipocrite (talk · contribs). Are they still appropriate? If so, what are neutrality and/or accuracy issues? --DJ (talk) 18:12, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

I think they can go. mikemikev (talk) 18:58, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

If I recall correctly the tags were placed because of concerns the article was biased in favour of the hereditarian viewpoint, and the factual accuracy concerns have to do with the article accepting the assumptions of the hereditarian position (that race and IQ has a biological basis) without question. I don't think those issues have been resolved yet, although we did come a bit of way towards it.·Maunus·ƛ· 03:37, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Okay. On the latter point, my understanding is that the Nisbett and Flynn (to point to two examples) each believe that race and IQ are individually related to biology but that as an empirical matter genetic differences are not the cause of racial differences in IQ. Thus, the distinction should be at two levels of analysis. There's the position exemplified by Rose vs Ceci at one level of analysis, and then for example Ceci vs Jensen at the other level of analysis. Most of the article is about the Ceci vs Jensen analysis, which makes sense because the Rose vs Ceci debate doesn't go very deep. --DJ (talk) 03:47, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

I Can see that some of the problem stems from the fact that those who reject the validity of even looking for a correlation between the two categories already on the level of assuptions - this makes the arguments "not go very deep". Those who engage in "deep" discussion are those who acknowledge some of the points e.g. validity of race or some degree of heredibilioty of iq. But the other positions also exist and should be included. There are also those who argue that the research should be entirely avoided because it is inherently unethical. I wrote a section trying to include those points of view as well as some of the historical context (eugenics generally lost its appeal post wwII )that makes a lot of people uneasy about the research. David Kane then rewrote it - removing a lot of the material I found to be important, and now even David Kane's version (it had great quotes by Rose and Sternberg) which to me was acompromise that could be accepted (although reluctantly) is gone from the article. That leaves me with the concerns I had in the first place. Here is a dif showing what I wrote. David Kane's version is at his talk opage I think.·Maunus·ƛ· 04:06, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm too tired to analyze the details, but in the broad outline I think your content should be added back. Let me attempt to summarize the distinction one more time to be sure we're thinking similarly. First, there's the question of whether this investigation is ethical or not. Second, if you consider the question "how much do genetic factors contribute to race differences in intelligence?" there's a view that that's not a well formed question. Then, third, there's are those that accept that the topic is ethical to study and well formed, but which disagree on the empirical answer to the question "how much do genetic factors contribute to race differences in intelligence?". Does that sound right? --DJ (talk) 04:11, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I think that it would help very much if those three main types of exceptions to the hereditarian viewpoint were at least represented in the article - the weighting can be discussed.·Maunus·ƛ· 04:17, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Useful quote from Hunt and Carlson (2007):

The investigation of racial differences in intelligence is probably the most controversial topic in the study of individual differences. Contemporary proponents can be found for each of the following positions:

a. There are differences in intelligence between races that are due in substantial part to genetically determined differences in brain structure and/or function (Rushton, 1995; Rushton &Jensen, 2005a).

b. Differences in cognitive competencies between races exist and are of social origin (Ogbu, 2002; Sowell, 2005).

c. Differences in test scores that are used to argue for differences in intelligence between races represent the inappropriate use of tests in different groups (Ogbu, 2002; Sternberg, Grigorenko, & Kidd, 2005).

d. There is no such thing as race; it is a term motivated by social concerns and not a scientific concept (Fish, 2004; Smedley &Smedley, 2005).

--DJ (talk) 04:27, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

That looks very good to me. Now, ideally, each of those viewpoints should receive due weight in the article, but for now merely including them would be a step in the right direction.·Maunus·ƛ· 04:30, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Not that we need to discuss it now, but it's my understanding that the (a) vs (b) debate is getting what would otherwise be undue-relative-to-head-count coverage here is largely because there are other articles where (c) and (d) are covered in detail. To the immediate fix, do we want to explicitly use that formulation from H&C(2007)? Race_and_intelligence#Debate_assumptions_and_methodology touches on this but in a less direct fashion, which tends to diffuse the point. --DJ (talk) 04:35, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Other minor POVs

• Charles Murray, author of The Bell Curve, says that the BW IQ difference is "intractable" regardless of its etiology (Murray 2005).
• Peter Singer (1993), author Practical Ethics, says that it is irrelevant whether BW IQ differences have a partly genetic etiology in regard to our ethical obligation to one another: "what would be the implications of genetically based differences in IQ between different races? I believe that the implications of this supposition are less drastic than they are often supposed to be and give no comfort to genuine racists"; "Equal status does not depend on intelligence"; "the genetic hypothesis does not imply that we should reduce our efforts to overcome other causes of inequality between people". --DJ (talk) 04:51, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

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