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Discussion at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard#RFC on sourcing in relation to race and intelligence

You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard#RFC on sourcing in relation to race and intelligence. Generalrelative (talk) 00:34, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

On Consensus About Heritability of IQ

Flogging of ye olde dead horse
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

The article claims that there is a "consensus" about genetics not playing a role in racial differences in IQ, however, none of the sources cited demonstrate data from several surveys of experts that claim that there is a consensus that this is the case. In fact, numerous reliable surveys and sources who that this NOT the case. Rindermann, Becker, and Coyle (2020) emailed 1237 researchers who had either published intelligence-related work in an academic journal or who were a member of an organization related to the study of individual differences in intelligence and found that 49% of the Black-White IQ gap was caused be genes. Only 16% of these experts believed that none of the Black-White IQ gap was due to genes, and only 6% believed that the gap was entirely due to genes.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289619301886

Similarly, Snyderman et al. 1987 emailed 1,020 academics in this literature, and the results were as such: 45% of respondents said the Black-White IQ gap was due to genes and the environment, 24% said there wasn’t enough data to say, 17% didn’t respond, 15% said it was due only to the environment, and 1% said that it was due entirely to genes.

http://lepo.it.da.ut.ee/~spihlap/[email protected]

It is usually advised not to use primary sources, but not a single source that is either cited in the article or that exists claims that there is a "consensus" that the black-white IQ gap is only due to the environment based on any data from surveys, which is what we would need in order to establish the claim that there is a consensus surrounding this topic. This is why I am giving primary sources as evidence to show that what is claimed in this article is not the case.

Furthermore, there are several secondary sources as well that claim that there is not a consensus. Here is a massive literature review on the heritability of racial differences in IQ which found that the group differences are between 50 to 80% heritable.

https://benthamopen.com/contents/pdf/TOPSYJ/TOPSYJ-3-9.pdf

Another massive review of the literature and meta-analysis concluded that genes account for between approximately 50% and 70% of the variation in cognition at the population level.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4006996/

A review published by the Journal of Philosophy of Science similarly shows no consensus regarding this matter:

https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/392856

Ad nauseum, ad nauseum.

In general, Wikipedia should work to establish reliable and neutral sources for claims, as opposed to simply stuffing poor ones that agree with a given narrative. I understand that a lot of people come on Wikipedia in order to push their political agenda which doesn't usually have any form of scientific backing, but we have to be committed to WP:NPOV and WP:RS. There is only one consensus on this topic and it is that there is no consensus on this topic, and any honest expert will attest to this. Dashoopa (talk) 00:54, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

Just in case anyone needed a real-time example of why we need ECP on this talk page.... Generalrelative (talk) 01:16, 1 May 2021 (UTC)
Just in case anyone is impressed by these citations...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289619301886 There were only 72 respondents used, and the ISIR (a walled-garden group) and the ISSID (a group founded by a heavily discredited wall-gardener) were specifically asked to answer. This looks like a deliberate attempt to misportray the consensus. Which makes sense, seeing as how it was published in Intelligence.
http://lepo.it.da.ut.ee/~spihlap/[email protected] Not only is this from 1984, but...

Forty-five percent believe the difference to be a product of both genetic and environmental variation, compared to only 15% who feel the difference is entirely due to environmental variation. Twenty-four percent of experts do not believe there are sufficient data to support any reasonable opinion, and 14% did not respond to the question. Eight experts (1%) indicate a belief in an entirely genetic determination.

I would like to point out that the "mixture" group would explicitly include many whom we would consider "environmentalists", as even a statistically insignificant percentage of the delta between racial groups (the most cited amount) would constitute a "mixture" I would also point out that there were almost twice as many respondents saying "fully environmental" as there were saying "fully genetic".
https://benthamopen.com/contents/pdf/TOPSYJ/TOPSYJ-3-9.pdf Rushton and Jensen. Fringe source.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4006996/ Doesn't address this question at all, let alone the existence or nature of the scientific consensus on this question.
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/392856 From the abstract:

Philosophers of science widely believe that the hereditarian theory about racial differences in IQ is based on methodological mistakes and confusions involving the concept of heritability.

Ad nauseum, ad nauseum. I absolutely agree that the repetition of this bullshit is nauseating. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 01:32, 1 May 2021 (UTC)
Ok, so the first study did include only 72 participants, but my point was that this was earlier research which was later corroborated by research later to that.

As per the second study, the mixture group contradicts the claim that race is merely a product of environment.

As per the third study, this was from a well-respected journal so it falls within WP:RS.

As per the fourth study, he outlines many philosophers of science, himself, included which disagree with that meaning that there is not a consensus.

Try again. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Dashoopa (talk) 02:01, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

Dashoopa, Such a well-respected journal it was on Beall's List. MrOllie (talk) 02:06, 1 May 2021 (UTC)
Note that this new editor has claimed over at Talk:Heritability of IQ that they are already fully aware of past discussions on this talk page. That would mean that they are fully aware of how many times these claims have been debunked. I would suggest that it is best to WP:DENY at this point, since this is clearly not a productive way for any of us to spend our time. Generalrelative (talk) 02:10, 1 May 2021 (UTC)
@Generalrelative: That "new user" has claimed not to even be a new user. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 02:13, 1 May 2021 (UTC)
@MjolnirPants: True. But their account is only a month old, and I hadn't seen them here before. Assuming good faith I suppose this could be a long-time IP who decided to finally create an account.... But of course there are other possibilities as well. Perhaps we'll never know. Generalrelative (talk) 02:18, 1 May 2021 (UTC)
Note that these claims were never debunked as every single survey on race and IQ of experts have established that there is no consensus on this topic. I am fully aware that Generalrelative likes to peddle debunked propaganda over and over again while never responding to actual sources that are given which show that that is wrong. I don't even need to have given these sources. I can simply cite many different academics that disagree with the claim. Look at Charles Murray, Richard Herrnstein, Steven Pinker, etc. Even in the "Heritability of IQ" article, it states and I quote: "Twin studies of adult individuals have found a heritability of IQ between 57% and 73% with the most recent studies showing heritability for IQ as high as 80%. IQ goes from being weakly correlated with genetics for children, to being strongly correlated with genetics for late teens and adults. The heritability of IQ increases with age and reaches an asymptote at 18–20 years of age and continues at that level well into adulthood." That would suggest that there is a genetic component to IQ and thus there would be differences in IQ between black and white people which have a genetic component. Now, of course, I don't really expect you to care since you're obviously quite averse to scientific evidence, but this is the claim from your very own article. Dashoopa (talk) 18:40, 1 May 2021 (UTC)
Nobody here cares what you think, because you demonstrate a complete lack of familiarity with the most basic fundamentals of the subject every time you argue. By the way, here's a Stephen Pinker quote for you: "My own view, incidentally, is that in the case of the most discussed racial difference – the black-white IQ gap in the US – the current evidence does not call for a genetic explanation.". ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 20:25, 1 May 2021 (UTC)
"That would suggest there is" [a need to accommodate foundational myths of colonial nomad's descendants], "thus" [sciencey data supporting hegemony and 'former greatness' is going to turn out to be valid]. We should get some authentic white fellas to apply their superior intelligence in sorting this article out. ~ cygnis insignis 20:34, 1 May 2021 (UTC)
Try again. Why? Literally everything you said here is already addressed in my first response. The fact that you can't or won't recognize that is not really my problem. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 02:13, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

RfC on racial hereditarianism

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
Closing per WP:SNOW. Following substantial participation, there is a very strong (and near unanimous) consensus to affirm the result of the early 2020 RfC: the theory that a genetic link exists between race and intelligence is enough of a minority viewpoint in the scientific consensus that it falls under Wikipedia's definition of a fringe theory. Editors overwhelmingly believed that the scientific consensus continues to support that outcome. It follows that any presentation of this theory in articles should comply with that guideline. There was some discussion on how this decision translates into formulations of prose. As there were no specific proposals to that end made in this discussion, that falls outside the scope of this RfC. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 16:01, 11 May 2021 (UTC)


Is the following statement correct (vote "yes") or incorrect (vote "no")? The theory that a genetic link exists between race and intelligence is enough of a minority viewpoint in the scientific consensus that it falls under Wikipedia's definition of a fringe theory. NightHeron (talk) 20:24, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

Discussion

Several editors have suggested that last year's RfC on race and intelligence (see [1]) should be revisited. As the OP of that RfC, I'm fine with that, provided it's done with the EC-protection that this talk-page has. The wording of the above formulation is taken from the closing of last year's RfC. NightHeron (talk) 20:24, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

  • I'd rather there was more significant planning before this RfC was opened, though I guess opening it now means that a rush of fresh accounts can't extended confirmed status prior to the closure of the RfC. I don't see why we need another RfC when the result last time was pretty definitive once the SPA's had been discounted. Hemiauchenia (talk) 20:48, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
Sure. But from what's been going on at WP:RSN it was clear that the choice was between a straightforward, neutrally stated RfC that revisits last year's RfC, or else a complicated, tendentiously worded RfC at a non-EC-protected forum. Hopefully, this way it won't be such a time sink for all of us. NightHeron (talk) 21:48, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
I do think that such a quick re-opening of an RfC, esp. when there wasn't clear consensus on what venue would be appropriate is... ill-advised for creating a solid consensus in the future. I think a FTN thread would have been better. —Wingedserif (talk) 22:18, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
The RfC at WP:RSN was closed on the grounds of improper venue, as well as non-neutral formulation. Meanwhile, several editors had commented on starting a new RfC elsewhere. One editor suggested FTN, and several editors, apparently including the closing admin, favored this talk-page. In any case, we don't need to go through an RfC on where to hold an RfC, I hope. NightHeron (talk) 22:32, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
The closing admin mentioned the talk page as an option, as well as NPOVN; their summary was not a mandate or a recommendation. This formulation of the RfC will not end the issue, as we can at best create WP:LOCALCONSENSUS. I think this was hasty, but here we are now. —Wingedserif (talk) 22:41, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
According to WP:LOCALCONSENSUS, a local consensus is a consensus among a limited group of editors. I've just finished putting notifications of this RfC on the talk-pages of all editors (except for SPAs, IPs, and editors with edit-count less than 500) on both sides in last year's RfC, over 40 editors. I've also put notices at Talk:Scientific racism, Talk:Nations and IQ, Talk:Heritability of IQ, WP:RSN, and WP:FTN. I'd be happy to put notices wherever else you suggest, in particular, at any relevant WikiProjects you can think of. I agree that it's important to invite broad participation. NightHeron (talk) 23:25, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
Agreed. I will also note that the ongoing grumbling at RSN is going on against the advice of the closing admin, who stated: I would HIGHLY suggest you hold this discussion on the article talk page rather than here, which is what I stated in the closure I made above. [2] That seems pretty unambiguous to me. Generalrelative (talk) 23:36, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
The full, correct quote was I would HIGHLY suggest you hold this discussion on the article talk page rather than here, which is what I stated in the closure I made above, or at NPOVN as you noted. Please do not hold it here, immediately after the above discussion. I agree that the previous RfC was malformed and am glad to see that a wide range of editors will be notified. I was tbh suspicious of the RSN RfC deciding to not notify previously involved editors. —Wingedserif (talk) 23:53, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
Aha, my apologies. I was looking at the original diff [3] not the amended comment [4]. Thanks for the correction! Generalrelative (talk) 23:56, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
No worries! I had to recheck because I was confused by the sentence structure the first time anyway. —Wingedserif (talk) 23:59, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
Seems like an attempt to pre-empt an ongoing discussion at the RS noticeboard about a more carefully worded RFC. Seems invalid, so I won't vote. tickle me 01:28, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
At RSN, an opponent of last year's RfC started an RfC with a lengthy and highly partisan statement. After the ensuing discussion, in which several editors objected and called for a brief and neutral RfC, an uninvolved admin mercifully closed that RfC. Then another opponent of last year's RfC proposed a complicated, multi-tiered RfC statement that was also rejected not supported by most editors. Meanwhile, I and several other editors were arguing for a policy-compliant RfC to be started on this talk-page. There is no Wikipedia policy that says that we have to wait for the second long discussion at RSN to be closed before starting such an RfC. However, there is a Wikipedia policy that says that an RfC statement must be brief and neutral. NightHeron (talk) 09:30, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
The proposal for a new RfC at RSN was not "rejected by most editors" as you claim—that is a blatant falsehood. You are the only one who expressed opposition (and one other editor suggested that the discussion be held elsewhere). In contrast, numerous editors have expressed concerns about the validity of this RfC as being disruptive, hastily constructed, etc. As the OP of the new proposed RfC at RSN explained: The entire point of starting a new RFC was to address the issues of WP:RS and WP:V that have arisen over the past year. Your RFC question ignores those issues, and just rehashes the question from last year's RFC. An RFC that ignores those issues won't be able to resolve anything useful, no matter which way the outcome goes. Stonkaments (talk) 19:13, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
You and Alaexis were the only ones to support AndewNguyen's proposal, and Alaexis also supported the opening of this RfC (kindly thanked me for doing it). Jayron32, Guy, Aquillon, and I had objections. But you're right about my word choice: rejected is too strong, so I've changed it to not supported. NightHeron (talk) 19:55, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Yes per the clear consensus of the previous RfC, which I don't see the justification for revisiting. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:01, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Yes per the previous discussion, per the sources used to support the text in the article: The scientific consensus is that there is no evidence for a genetic component behind IQ differences between racial groups. and per the facts that the vast majority of sources and arguments used in the countless previous discussions to contest this have been that there is a genetic component, not that the scientific consensus is that there is a genetic component, and that those few sources which address the actual consensus provided have been of quite low quality. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 21:32, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Yes, definitively. Beyond My Ken (talk) 21:37, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Yes No change in clear scientific consensus. We can't keep revisiting this nonsense every year. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 22:14, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Yes. This is a careful and accurate statement of fact that summarises a complex question about as simply as we can manage in line with scientific accuracy. There's a lot of prior discussion about the specifics but it boils down to: IQ is not culturally neutral; evidence of a racial component to IQ is thoroughly confounded by that fact. It's also exactly the correct question when we consider the wider issue of long-term advocacy by proponents. Science says: wrong measure, also, no, because racism. That doesn't make every advocate of a racial component to intelligence a racist, but the racists sure as hell think it does, so we should be seriously careful about that. Guy (help! - typo?) 22:26, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Yes per the above. See this 2020 statement by a group of prominent scholars including biological anthropologists Agustín Fuentes of Princeton and Jonathan M. Marks of the University of North Carolina, which discusses the question of why we see so few actual geneticists publishing research on the topic of race and IQ: [W]hile 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. [5] For anyone who is skeptical as to whether this view represents a true scientific consensus, I'd suggest running a 20-year search of "race and intelligence" at Nature and Science. You will find plenty that agrees with this 2019 Nature editorial titled "Intelligence research should not be held back by its past" (coordinated to comment upon a meta-analysis in Nature Genetics published on the same day): Historical measurements of skull volume and brain weight were done to advance claims of the racial superiority of white people. More recently, the (genuine but closing) gap between the average IQ scores of groups of black and white people in the United States has been falsely attributed to genetic differences between the races. [6] (see also [7], [8], [9] and [10]). But you will find nothing that affirmatively supports a genetic connection between race and intelligence. The most you will find are a couple which entertain the possibility that connections between cognitive abilities and race-like genetic clusters may be discovered in the future (see [11] and [12]). Even where the ethics of researching links between race and intelligence are defended ([13]), it is clearly stated that There is an emerging consensus about racial and gender equality in genetic determinants of intelligence; most researchers, including ourselves, agree that genes do not explain between-group differences. Generalrelative (talk) 22:32, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
Thanks for providing sources. I am not sure that they support your conclusion. To take this Nature article as an example, the language they use is much more circumspect "There is broad consensus across the social and biological sciences that groups of humans typically referred to as races are not very different from one another. Two individuals from the same race could have more genetic variation between them than individuals from different races. Race is therefore not a particularly useful category to use when searching for the genetics of biological traits or even medical vulnerabilities, despite widespread assumptions." It is neither explicitly stated nor obviously follows logically from this that the opinion that there is some genetic component to the variation is fringe. Unless I missed something in the article. Alaexis¿question? 06:05, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
@Alaexis: It is neither explicitly stated nor obviously follows logically from this that the opinion that there is some genetic component to the variation is fringe. You are incorrect.
Consider this: everything we know about the genetic difference between different races boil down to a collection of traits, the combination of which is more or less unique to each race, even though none of those traits is unique to any ethnicity (a biologically meaningful term to describe ancestral lines). None of those traits have ever been shown to be related to brain structure.
So let's say a person is defined by 5 traits A-E, 3 of which are strongly hereditary and the other two are weakly hereditary, we might get a picture of a person that looks like this: A:1 B:7 C:2 D:9 E:5.
Now, we can say that traits A-C are strongly hereditary, and then define their race based on those. If a person has traits A:1 B:9 C:1, they're considered Black, whereas if they have traits A:9 B:1 C:7, they're considered white. That seems clear enough, until you ask about a person who has traits A:4 B:4 C:3, who's somewhere in the middle.
This is why these frequent, forceful statements about how biologically meaningless racial categorizations are undermine the claim that there's a genetic link between intelligence and race. But that's not the whole problem.
There's another issue in that, the only trait that we can clearly and positively associate with intelligence is E, such that a person with E:1 has a 30% chance of having an IQ less than 70, and a person with E:9 has a 10% chance of having an IQ greater than 130.
But there's a problem, in that there's this weird fact that people with D:3 have a 10% chance of having an IQ over 150, but people with all other D traits are perfectly normal. Oh yeah, and they can't find anyone with E:7 with an IQ over 110, even though people with E:6 and E:8 are over-represented in the 110+ IQ group.
That's the state of genetic research on intelligence right now. There's literally no evidence that there's any genetic link between race and intelligence, and there's good reason to believe that the two aren't even remotely related, as the genes involved don't seem to interact. And given the size of the differences measured between races, any genetic component that we did find evidence for is far more likely to be a simple artifact of the normal hereditary nature of intelligence (which is estimated to explain about 50% of an individual's IQ), as any amount which can be attributed to genetics which is less than the clear majority of the difference would be statistically meaningless; less than the expected difference between the same person taking the same IQ test (with the tasks randomized) on different days. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 13:27, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
I don't know enough about genetics to assess how close your toy example is to the actual state of the science. To the extent that I do know, your reasoning appears valid (except that I don't think IQ is a good measure of intelligence except maybe for low IQ range). The differences between races are indeed small compared to inter-personal or even same-person-at-different times variability. My point was that the source you provided does not say explicitly that this is a fringe theory. By way of analogy, now the scientific consensus is that the Universe is about 14 billion years old. If a scholar publishes an article arguing it's in fact 16 billion years old we would not automatically say it's a fringe view and would use normal notability guidelines to decide if and how to mention it.
Can you point to an article in a journal of the caliber of Nature/Science where it's written in a more explicit way? Not necessarily using the word fringe. Alaexis¿question? 14:44, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
@Alaexis: I think the statement by the editors of Nature, in an editorial paired with a huge meta-analysis on the genetics of intelligence, stating that attributing the black-white IQ gap to genetics is "false" is a pretty strong sign. In response to your initial comment, note that I provided those "see also" links for context on what you will find when you run a a 20-year search of "race and intelligence" at Nature and Science. You are responding to one of those, and they are not key to my argument. The key point is that real geneticists largely eschew the whole idea of a genetic link between race and intelligence as unintelligible and wrong-headed. I also wanted to keep my !vote as brief as possible, but if you'd like more sources which might persuade the persuadable, see "Why genetic IQ differences between 'races' are unlikely" by the geneticist Kevin Mitchell [14] and "Race, genetics and pseudoscience: an explainer" by the geneticists Ewan Birney, Jennifer Raff, Adam Rutherford and Aylwyn Scally: [15]. Neither of these are peer-reviewed publications, let alone published in Nature or Science, but they are both by respected subject-matter experts (especially Birney, who is a pretty big deal). Unlike the opinions of psychometricians as to what is likely genetic, the opinions of real geneticists should carry weight per e.g. WP:SELFPUB. Generalrelative (talk) 14:59, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
Okay, so out of three sources you mentioned, there is one source that is indeed very direct (More recently, the (genuine but closing) gap between the average IQ scores of groups of black and white people in the United States has been falsely attributed to genetic differences between the races) and two that use a more measured language (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, In reality for most traits, including IQ, it is not only unclear that genetic variation explains differences between populations, it is also unlikely. Alaexis¿question? 16:14, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
That seems like a rather selective reading. The piece by Birney et al., for example, states that claims about the genetic basis for population differences [in IQ], are not scientifically supported. They then go on to explain why it is also unlikely that such a basis will be discovered in the future. And in the end they make it very clear that the reason they need to explain these things at all is that they feel it is incumbent on them to counter a vocal fringe of race pseudoscience. Though they do not call out "hereditarian" figures like Rindermann and Lynn by name, it would be a stretch to read the entire piece and come away with any ambiguity as to whom they're referring to here. I'm tempted to quote at length, but really, the whole thing is not very long. I would encourage anyone who is skeptical about this issue to read it: [16] Generalrelative (talk) 16:36, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
Generalrelative You wouldn't find sentences like 'Earth is unlikely to be flat' or 'Fossil fuels are likely to contribute to the global warming', so it feels that it's less fringe-y. Alaexis¿question? 06:50, 6 May 2021 (UTC)
@Alaexis: A closer analogy would be to the claims that extraterrestrials have abducted humans, or that Bigfoot exists, or that there are humanoid forms of life on Mars. We can't say that science has proved that all are false. We can say that there is no scientific evidence for any of them and that it's unlikely that evidence for any of them will be found in the future.
It's sometimes hard or impossible for science to prove a negative. Thus, it's theoretically possible, though unlikely according to scientific consensus, that some day a barely detectable genetic link between the nebulous and ill-defined concept of race and the nebulous and ill-defined concept of intelligence will be found. As mentioned in an earlier discussion, one recent source[1] pointed out that if such an unlikely event were to occur, it's just as likely that the advantage in intelligence would turn out to belong to people of African ancestry as to people of European ancestry. NightHeron (talk) 11:57, 6 May 2021 (UTC)
+1 to this. Generalrelative (talk) 14:54, 6 May 2021 (UTC)
@Alaexis: Quite frankly, you are dead wrong about how we would treat such a work in your hypothetical. We would (and should) treat it as a fringe view, and our general notability requirements would only determine whether we mention it at all.
In addition, you have been shown sources that explicitly state that the genetics view is unsupported by science, including some that go so far as to call it "wrong-headed". You've also had plenty of opportunity to examine the sources used in the article, one of which is a 1995 publication commissioned by the APA specifically to address the question of what the scientific consensus is, which reaffirms that that mainstream science sees the genetics view as unsupportable. At this point, arguing that you've seen no source which explicitly calls it "fringe" looks more like a semantics game than a reasonable objection. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 15:28, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Yes per Generalrelative, scientific consensus on this issue has only become clearer since we analyzed it last year. Levivich harass/hound 22:35, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Yes. The consensus of the RfC was clear and was nicely expressed by the closing administrator. The grounds for that consensus were solid, and nothing about them has grown weaker in the past year. --JBL (talk) 22:38, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Yes. There have been no new sources provided to indicate that scientific consensus has changed since the time of the last RfC. —Wingedserif (talk) 22:43, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Yes. I have followed research in this area for several years and there has been no change in the lack of seriously accepted evidence asserting a genetic cause for differences in intelligence between racial or ethnic groups among humans. Onetwothreeip (talk) 22:49, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Yes I intend to expand upon this later, but we are assessing what the mainstream concensus of scientists is, rather than whatever one individually views to be correct. The number of statements affirming that the idea that the differences between IQ of different racial groups is not genetic in origin is overwhelming and firmly puts the "hereditarian" idea into fringe theory territory. Hemiauchenia (talk) 22:50, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose. It seems highly inappropriate that the editor rushed to start this RfC while there is discussion ongoing at RS/N about how best to word it, and where to hold it. The OP was well-aware of this discussion[17], and even acknowledged that "It would be bad form for me to be the OP, since I was the OP last year", but still chose to start the RfC here anyway. Stonkaments (talk) 22:57, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
    Exactly this - this RfC is not carefully crafted - it doesn't even present sources on either side, and it was rushed by an editor to try and push something through without due consideration. This is, quite simply, a POINTy RfC that cannot form any consensus for or against because it ignores the actual argument presented in the RSN and doesn't even try and summarize it. This should be closed as out of process as multiple editors expressed a desire to craft an RfC to present each side adequately so people can make an informed consensus. I'll also note that this editor has been doing some borderline canvassing to try and bring people to this discussion - and failed to mention that they opened this prematurely and out of process. This is disruptive. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 23:04, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
I did not engage in canvassing, borderline or otherwise. As I explained above, I notified all EC-eligible editors on both sides of the debate, as well as relevant talk pages and noticeboards, and I would welcome any suggestions of additional places (such as WikiProjects) where a notification would be appropriate. NightHeron (talk) 23:30, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
Why on earth would it be appropriate to presented the argument of the OP at the RSN RfC or try and summarize it? That RfC was improper precisely because it was tendentiously formulated (among other reasons discussed at length). Why would this RfC list sources in its question? You are, of course, welcome to discuss sources here, but the idea that this RfC is improper because it doesn't even present sources on either side is almost perfect in its wrongheadedness. Generalrelative (talk) 23:13, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
Also: it was rushed by an editor to try and push something through without due consideration. Sounds like you must be a mind reader. That's gotta come in handy IRL, though we typically refrain from characterizing other editors' imagined motivations here. Generalrelative (talk) 23:27, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
And to Stonkaments' comment on "bad form": That's called changing one's mind upon reflection. [18] You might try it sometime. Generalrelative (talk) 23:15, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
No mind-reading; OP was very clear that their intention was to preempt the ongoing collaboration towards a new RfC on RSN: ...from what's been going on at WP:RSN it was clear that the choice was between a straightforward, neutrally stated RfC that revisits last year's RfC, or else a complicated, tendentiously worded RfC at a non-EC-protected forum...[19] Stonkaments (talk) 23:36, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
Hmm, I think I'm detecting a rather tendentious logical leap from the one to the other. But perhaps you have superior insight into the meaning of words or something. Generalrelative (talk) 23:40, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
WP:Call a spade a spade. Stonkaments (talk) 01:29, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
That's exactly what Generalrelative just did. Jumping from from what's been going on [..] non-EC-protected forum to without due consideration is a tendentious logical leap, so he called it a tendentious logical leap. --Hob Gadling (talk) 02:14, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Yes, the result of last year's RfC was solid, and nothing has come along in the interim to suggest that it needs to be revisited. XOR'easter (talk) 23:24, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Yes, Per Generalrelative's summary and the excellent sources already cited in the article in the section 'Research into possible genetic influences on test score differences'. If anyone evaluating this RFC is still uncertain about how this can be a fringe concept given that the heritability of IQ exists between individuals, This article by William Saletan, who has been on both sides of the issue, is a decent introduction to the problems inherent in making the leap from individual to group differences. - MrOllie (talk) 23:35, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Comment - The consensus prior to about 1700 was that the universe gyrated around Earth.` Sure, Archimedes reported on Aristarchus's theory from 230 BC that Earth spins around the Sun; but during Copernicus' and Galileo's life, and in fact, long after their deaths in 1543 and 1642, their ideas were considered fringe by the bien pensant. So much so that both Tycho in 1587 and Kepler in 1609 published major works based on geocentrism. In fact, geocentrism was the "scientific consensus" so much so that in 1959 Arthur Koestler wrote that Copernicus was a coward for being reticent to publish his fringe ideas challenging geocentrism, which he had already developed by 1514, until the very year of his death. But hey, so what if a minority of subject matter experts have been bravely un-Copernican and have dared publish that there is a genetic component to intelligence? They are fringe and must be verboten as a legitimate debated subject by the bien pensant on Wikipedia! Burn the witches! E pur si muove, is all I can say. XavierItzm (talk) 23:41, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
We are not discussing whether there is a genetic component to intelligence. We are discussing whether the contention that observed differences in IQ test performance between racial groups have a genetic component is currently a fringe view. If you're confused as to why those are separate questions, please see Heritability of IQ or the piece cited by MrOllie above. Generalrelative (talk) 23:45, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
@XavierItzm:, you do realize that you could take any theory currently considered fringe and make exactly the same argument about it, right? This logical fallacy even has a name: it's called the Galileo gambit. The French Wikipedia has a fuller article on it. Apaugasma (talk|contribs) 00:53, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
Not only "could" you use the same argument for any other fringe theory, it probably has been used for every other fringe theory. When you cannot find a good reason for your position in one conflict, you talk about another conflict instead and claim that your position is somehow similar to the position that turned out to be right in that one; it is a form of red herring, avoiding the actual evidence. One can almost ignore all the Yes reasoning, look at the No reasoning desperately scraping the bottom of the barrel like that, and come to the conclusion that Yes is very likely the right answer. Almost. --Hob Gadling (talk) 01:58, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
Kepler's 1609 published work Astronomia Nova was not based on geocentrism, and the RfC doesn't say what to change in the article.Peter Gulutzan (talk) 22:46, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Yes All my reasons have already been covered by others. HiLo48 (talk) 01:08, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Yes. The only thing that has changed since the last such RfC is the names of the SPAs opposing it. --Hob Gadling (talk) 01:58, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Ugh. Such a landslide that I'm just going to play Devil's advocate. There are differences that are widely recognized, but they likely have more to to with "intelligence" than they do with race. If I design a test in English, people who only speak Spanish are quite likely to fail it. Intelligence is at best either an abstraction or a reification. In the abstraction, yes. In the reification, no. GMGtalk 02:26, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
Honestly, you didn't do a good job as a devil's advocate. You did a great job spitting some facts, however, but you really need to work on that devil's advocacy. Damnit, GMG, I expected better of you. [FBDB] ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 03:02, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Yes with a caveat. The RfC as stated is true, because the various attempts to argue for such a link, mostly importantly that of Jensen, have fallen apart on closer inspection, and because the folk conception of race has been shown to rest on misconceptions. I don't think, though, that the stronger claim, that there is a consensus that there is no such link, is true. If you like, my reading of what consensus there is, is that it holds there is an absence of published evidence for such a link, not that there convincing evidence of absence of any such link. — Charles Stewart (talk) 06:23, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
    At some point, though, the absence of evidence, despite the diligent efforts of so many definitely-not-racists, becomes evidence of absence. Guy (help! - typo?) 22:13, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Yes The Climate change and Covid-19 are consensus, the Flat earth and the genetic link between race and intelligence are fringe. --Rsk6400 (talk) 07:05, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Yes. The arguments otherwise are invariably from a relatively small number of sources and their supporters, generally published in journals devoted to scientific racism. See eg. [20][21][22][23][24][25] - the last one is particularly relevant, since it directly discusses hereditarian efforts to claim their beliefs have more support than they have, going into detail on the deceptive tactics they use, why they do so, and how little support their beliefs actually enjoy in the scientific community. As the last source notes, most hereditarians, while trying to claim illusionary support by playing tricks such as narrowing the definition of who qualifies to only include hereditarians, simultaneously implicitly concede that their theories are fringe (hence their false narrative of oppression, which is needed to explain why it has continuously remained on the fringes despite decades of effort by dedicated, well-funded fringe journals devoted entirely to pushing them.) EDIT: One small thing I do want to add, however - the firm rejection of the Hereditarian argument as fringe does not necessarily mean that there is a scientific consensus that observed differences are therefore environmental in origin, as the article currently says. That is falling into a false dilemma which is often pushed by Hereditarian literature, as [26] points out. For the most part the modern rejection of Hereditairanism focuses a lot more on the fact that their racial categories are largely social and cultural in origin (and to lesser extent disputes over measures of intelligence, especially as they apply to such hazy social categories) rather than arguing, as Hereditarians sometimes try to falsely imply their opponents believe, that intelligence is not heritable at all. --Aquillion (talk) 08:26, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
Just for clarification, earlier in the sentence you quote from in the article it's made clear that differences means differences in IQ test performance between racial groups, which is a totally separate issue from the differences between individuals. Hereditarians do sometimes claim that their opponents reject any link between genetics and individual variation, and that's untrue. NightHeron (talk) 21:42, 9 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Yesish I am not sure that (sorry for being a bit Platonic) that intelligence is sufficiently understood for us to say what it really even is. Different races do seem to react in different ways to different things, but that does not mean they are "less intelligent" rather that their intelligence is not the same kind of intelligence. Like a man who can fix your car, but cannot fix your body. Whether that is genetic or cultural however is not a given. So lean towards Yes.Slatersteven (talk) 08:34, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
    • Slatersteven, the question being debated is not whether we as editors consider the theory to be or or not to be without merit, but only whether or not it we judge it to be a wp:fringe theory because there is a strong scientific consensus that has concluded that the theory is meritless pseudoscience. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 14:15, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
      • As I said I am unsure as to whether or not intelligence is so well defined that we can even draw any clear racial distinctions. But I am also aware that some (even in ethnic minority communities) have tried to argue that there are different kinds of intelligence. But (as I said) we do not really have any meaningful way of messing intelligence that does not have serious cultural issues. Now I have said we should treat it as a fringe theory, what more do you want?Slatersteven (talk) 15:11, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
While it's true that the only thing IQ measures is IQ, it's also true that IQ correlates rather strongly with a number of signifiers that are widely considered indicative of intelligence. IQ is not intelligence, but the two are well correlated.
That being said, your statements are correct, and most psychometricians agree that there are numerous different types of intelligence, some of which are exceedingly difficult to test (it's worth noting that IQ is comprised of tests intended to grade multiple types of intelligence, as well).
Your statement is, in fact, fully compatible with a "Yes" !vote, and not compatible with a "No" !vote. The scientific consensus, as I have come to understand it after following this subject for a number of years, is that intelligence is too difficult to rate in a repeatable and accurate way, and race too difficult to define in a biologically meaningful way to make any claims about a genetic link between the two. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 15:38, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
That's definitely part of it: the absence of any agreed, objective, culturally neutral measure of intelligence, and of course the biological fact that race is very close to irrelevant in terms of the human genome, makes the question itself a pointless exercise. Guy (help! - typo?) 22:15, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
I don't believe anyone is suggesting we include that statement in the article. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 19:00, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
That is fine, but then I am not really sure what the RfC is trying to achieve. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 19:09, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Over the course of the year, opponents of last year's RfC have raised objections both to the RfC itself and to the edits that were made after the RfC to remove false balance. Hopefully, some of them will explain this in the course of this RfC. Any editor who believes that something relevant in the sources has changed over the last year also could enter the discussion and explain what it is. The purpose of this RfC is to give them the opportunity to make their case and if, as I believe is likely, it turns out to be a very weak case, then last year's RfC will be reaffirmed, hopefully putting the matter to rest, at least for the near future. NightHeron (talk) 19:29, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
  • @Emir of Wikipedia (talk · contribs) Regardless of people's stated intentions, this will certainly result in the sentence "The theory that a genetic link exists between race and intelligence is a fringe theory" being inserted on Wikipedia articles, in Wikipedia's voice, existing opposing scholarly articles notwithstanding. Enjoy. XavierItzm (talk) 19:37, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Possibly, but not necessarily. I’m happy (much happier than I was when I first encountered this article and its discussions in 2006) with “Today, the scientific consensus is that genetics does not explain differences in IQ test performance between racial groups, and that observed differences are therefore environmental in origin.” in the article’s lead, and with “The scientific consensus is that there is no evidence for a genetic component behind IQ differences between racial groups.” in the main body, further below. Your suggestion, that this sentence be included in the article, is premature, unless sources phrase just that. It’s a meta-comment, regarding these theories' due weight, editorially, in this article, not something that should be included. —Sluzzelin talk 19:52, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
Agreed. But I believe that XavierItzm's intention was to cynically predict an undesirable outcome rather than to advocate for the inclusion of this statement. Generalrelative (talk) 20:04, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
Thanks, there is indeed a fine line between WP:AGF and faux-naïf. ---Sluzzelin talk 20:07, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
I agree (about the statement not going in the article). Another reason for not including that statement in the article is that fringe has a well-defined meaning in Wikipedia. In the outside world it's not so clear how such a word would be interpreted. In the article Climate change denial the word fringe is used only when attributed, never in wikivoice. I'd hope that the same goes for the R&I article. Note that at present the word fringe does not occur in the R&I article. NightHeron (talk) 20:10, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Bad location for this RfC and Leaning no (Update: Very weakly leaning no). I have (as I recently expressed on another board) strong opposition to opening RfC's on extended-confirmed pages when we are seeking input from the community on topics of controversy. That being said, since the RfC is here and this has drawn significant comment anyway, I'll take part. It's not clear to me that it should be considered fringe when peer-reviewed publications continue to publish systematic reviews that reject the Scarr-Rowe hypothesis and question even if the Scarr-Rowe interaction exists; the systematic review suggests that the extent to which intelligence is hereditary does not vary by race. The review argues that while it is not always explicitly stated in the literature, by the same logic, the finding of similar heritabilities across advantaged/disadvantaged groups supports the genetic difference hypothesis. This appears to be the minority opinion, with the same review noting that Scarr-Rowe has general acceptance. However, the existence of the meta-analysis study (and additionally the studies listed therein) shows that the view is not so narrowly held that it qualifies for WP:FRINGE. — Mikehawk10 (talk) 20:24, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
Lots of fringe and outright wrong stuff gets published in peer-reviewed journals, especially stuff that is easily to stastically fudge like psychology and biomed. This is why WP:MEDRS doesn't allow the citation of individual clinical trials. Hemiauchenia (talk) 20:57, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
The Scarr-Rowe effect is literally but one of many proposed environmental factors. You could prove it definitively wrong tomorrow, and that would still not prove your case. In fact, it would barely even contribute to the case you're arguing here. In further fact, it is quite possible (likely, even) that a large number of the authors of those publications would agree with the stated consensus here. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 21:30, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
MPants at work, Well, maybe not Emil Kirkegaard, who has recently been writing for a white supremecist magazine called the American Renaissance. - MrOllie (talk) 21:37, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
Intelligence is the only "peer-reviewed" journal that will touch anything from Emil, mostly due to the fact that he can't even properly read a scientific work, let alone write one. Hell, the guy spent most of the 2000's self-publishing his shit because even before he was known to be about as useful and worthwhile as a half-eaten colostomy bag, he was utterly incompetent at doing science. Look him up on RationalWiki if you want to know more about why no-one should ever take him seriously, or take seriously anyone who does, but I don't recommend it if you've eaten recently, or are within punching range of anything that might break.
P.S. I hadn't checked that provided source, but was referring to hypothetical sources which Mikehawk might provide to show that there's academic pushback against the Scarr-Rowe effect. Now that I'm looking at it, this source is not that. I'll add it to the growing pile of sources which were blatantly misrepresented by the people citing them to argue this particular position. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 21:58, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
I hadn't even picked up on that. Why in the ever living fuck would any remotely reputable journal publish anything written by Emil? I initially thought JzG's reaction to Intelligence at RSN was harsh, but I totally understand now. Hemiauchenia (talk) 22:30, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
@Hemiauchenia: and @MPants at work: The authors of the provided source (linked by Mikehawk), in addition to Emil O. W. Kierkegaard, include Brian Pesta and John Fuerst, reviewers and contributors at the fringe journal OpenPsych ((https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenPsych). It would seem to be an example of a product of the "walled garden" spoken of earlier. Skllagyook (talk) 22:52, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
That's what a lot of people who are unfamiliar with the Race and Intelligence topic area don't understand. You'd automatically think that a journal published by Elsevier would be legit, but when you look under the surface you can see how murky it is. Hemiauchenia (talk) 23:06, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
I'm seeing a lot of pushback on the source on the basis of the author's external biases (which are worrying given the topic). At the same time, typically to get into a peer-reviewed journal, you need to go through a peer review process and the paper has to be accepted by editors, which if done rigorously would eliminate fabrication in the content of the journal article itself. Are there issues with the peer review in this Elsiever-published journal, in particular? I'm not super familiar with how the community has handled this journal in the past, though I had assumed it was a reliable journal due to its publisher's reputation. — Mikehawk10 (talk) 23:54, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
@Mikehawk10: Intelligence is a truly odd duck; most of us familiar with it treat it akin to WP:SELFPUB: if the author of an article an acknowledged expert, it's generally okay, but not ideal. If the author is a questionable source, it's no good. Stuff that advances scientific racism tends to sail right through their "peer review" process. To be fair, they do give a fair shake to stuff that contradicts their racist science, but they've already poisoned the well, so I, for one, don't consider their peer review process to have any weight when it comes to reliability.
And to be clear: Emil Kirkegaard is a straight-up White Supremacist, first and foremost. All of his "intelligence research" is done specifically to justify his racist beliefs. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 00:45, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
+1 to MPants's description of Intelligence. You can see their editorial board here: [27]. For the past five years the editor has been Richard J. Haier, who was a signatory to the infamous "Mainstream Science on Intelligence" letter back in 1994. The board consists of many other members of the hereditarian "walled garden" such as Heiner Rindermann, a contributor to the white-supremacist journal Mankind Quarterly, whose antics trying to fake a counter-consensus on race & intelligence are described quite well here: [28] (see Aquillion's !vote above).
And to respond to Mikehawk's point about fabrication in the content, the issue is not so much with the data being fake as with the interpretations of that data being fallacious or the standards of data collection being lax. Such methodological shortcomings are harder to call people out on or definitively prove than outright falsifying data, which is kind of the root of the issue here. Richard Lynn is the godfather of this strategy (his data was the basis for The Bell Curve) with later generations of hereditarians refining his approach. Generalrelative (talk) 02:20, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
That makes sense. I guess my bigger qualm is not whether the view is a minority (it is), but whether it is such a small minority view that it is WP:FRINGE. Sources like this seem to suggest the notion that there is an open debate on whether racial differences in intelligence will close, and sources like this at least seem to show that there is a substantial current of relevant researchers who are biological hereditarians in some capacity. My reading of sources is that it's a minority view that is not in line with a rough scientific consensus, but it's certainly a sizeable minority view and it's not clear to me that the debate is closed. I don't think that relegates it to being fringe, though I don't think that it's appropriate to present it on an equal weight with non-hereditarian views in articles where the two would be relevant. I'm not quite sure how to articulate an "it's almost fringe but isn't quite there with the current state of research" view except to say it like that, but that is where I think I am standing when I exclude results published in Mankind Quarterly and Intelligence. — Mikehawk10 (talk) 03:04, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
I find the argument in that article unconvincing, but don't take my word for it: Here's a deconstruction of Edwards' critique, which the article you linked accepts uncritically. Or look to what some geneticists actually say about it in Genetics. The confidence with which the author of the article you linked picks a side seems undue, though I don't deny that there's still arguments going on. It's just arguments between the mainstream and a... well... fringe competitor. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 03:28, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
I'm also not convinced by the argument in the article that attempts to persuade us that hereditarianism is correct (especially considering how race is often constructed owing to phenotypes and historical geography rather than genotypes, which calls into question the statistical method validity). That being said, I don't feel comfortable calling hereditarianism to be on the fringes based upon my own view of the source's statistical methods; it's clear that there is a prevailing view (hereditarianism is not true) and a sizeable minority view (hereditarianism is true), but it appears that the minority view is held widely enough by relevant scholars that I don't feel comfortable calling it fringe. It feels on the borderline to me, but if our job is to reflect what is written across scholarly sources owing to their relevant prevalence, then I don't think that this is something that is evidently fringe (though it is certainly a minority view). — Mikehawk10 (talk) 18:54, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
You're confusing two things: (1) genetic component in individual variation, which agrees with scientific consensus, and (2) genetic component in differences between races, which goes against scientific consensus - ©Nightheron, 10:30 5 May (below). --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 19:18, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
@John Maynard Friedman: I think you've misread Mikehawk, as his opening sentence is agreement with the mainstream about how human races are constructed, and the rest of his comment is simply expressing his own (perfectly valid) reading of the sources he's been exposed to. He and I are only apparently in disagreement about how prevalent the minority view is, and whether or not it's a small enough minority to consider it fringe. I, for one, am content at this point to leave Mike to his views, as he's justified them sufficiently that I'm not able to construct an argument to undermine them, even though I don't find them persuasive enough to change my mind on the subject. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 19:37, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
@MPants at work: I am not sure I have. Hereditarianism still has its adherents and a logical though simplistic basis, which is why it is broadly considered outdated. A given person's IQ is likely to correlate with their parents' IQs, though to what extent that is a function of nature v nurture is off-topic here. The leap of faith (or, more accurately, prejudice) is to extrapolate from the particular to the general, to construct a myth called race and to attribute to it hereditarian concepts. Hereditarianism is a minority view but not a fringe view and Mikehawk is not totally off the wall in giving it credence. Unlike so-called racial hereditarianism, it does not start from an answer and then try to shoe-horn other analyses and cherry pick evidence to support it. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 20:04, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
I agree with all that you said here, though I don't see how it applies to what Mikehawk said, unless you've misread him. That being said, I've no interest in starting another argument about that, so I won't push the matter. Mikehawk is, after all, better able to elucidate his own thoughts than I am, and it could be me that's misreading him. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 20:08, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
I believe that MPants at work is reading me correctly here. I agree that there is a difference between individual genetic variation (which enjoys scientific consensus) vs group genetic variation (which gets a lot more dicey for the reasons that groupings in these sorts of studies do not generally appear to be done in a genotypic way, but than in a phenotypic way). Individual genetic variation in g doesn't logically demonstrate that groups that have historically had large environmental factors that affect intelligence. (Think of a moving average model where the means are the same but the immediately proximate terms are the same, and let the time series t represent generations of people born. The long-run mean between two groups can be the same and still have different current measurements, and if this particular model actually were to reflect the underlying truth, then it would allow for a rejection of Scarr-Rowe while also rejecting hereditarianism. This is all WP:OR, though, so I don't think it should hold water in this sort of discussion.)
My issues is more that, based off my reading of reliable sources, a very large minority of intelligence research that is reflected in reliable journals argues that either there is some hereditarian difference or that the question is open. I could provide my own analysis based off of what I think is true regarding logical claims made in papers (as I did in parentheses above) and what I think is statistically robust, but ultimately the call on whether acceptance of a hypothesis is fringe shouldn't involve my own analysis as an editor on the merits of the science. Instead, it should involve a reading of reliable and relevant academic sources to see how they provide coverage of the topic, and to reflect the coverage of the topic in a manner that gives due weight to each hypothesis in line with how the hypotheses are covered in reliable sources (and avoids the undue weight of describing hereditarianism as being equal footing with its negation owing to its status as a minority view). Again, hereditarianism is certainly a minority view, but I don't think it's quite so small of a minority view to be considered fringe (though it's certainly close).— Mikehawk10 (talk) 21:26, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
That was what I was driving at: the RFC is not about 'pure' hereditarianism (which we agree is a minority view but is not fringe); it is about racial hereditarianism, which is a whole other kettle of rotten fish. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 22:55, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
@Mikehawk10: Like MPants I respect the nuanced reasoning behind your position even if I disagee. I will try one more approach before conceding that I can't persuade you though. What do you make of the fact that roughly 100% of racial hereditarians are psychologists rather than geneticists? If the question were, e.g. about the construct validity of IQ, psychologists would surely be the relevant experts we would look to when determining the scientific consensus. But when the issue hinges entirely on genetics, isn't it rather geneticists whom we should be consulting? You might know something I don't, but I've been trawling through the literature on this topic for the last year and I cannot point to a single racial hereditarian of the current generation with a university position as a geneticist or biological anthropologist.
I think the closest thing would be David Reich, who caused a stir by suggesting in a 2018 NY Times Op-Ed that it might be possible in the future to discover genetic causes behind racial differences in behavior, and drew a forceful rebuke in the form of an open letter signed by, among many others, geneticists Joseph L. Graves Jr. and Erika Hagelberg, biologists Anne Fausto-Sterling and Robert Pollack, and biological anthropologists Jonathan M. Marks, Agustín Fuentes and Alan H. Goodman. The signatories state: Reich’s claim that we need to prepare for genetic evidence of racial differences in behavior or health ignores the trajectory of modern genetics. For several decades billions of dollars have been spent trying to find such differences. The result has been a preponderance of negative findings despite intrepid efforts to collect DNA data on millions of individuals in the hope of finding even the tiniest signals of difference. [29] (In a follow-up, Reich clarified that, while he believes that very modest differences across human population in the genetic influences on behavior and cognition are to be expected [...] we do not yet have any idea about what the difference are. [30] So it's clear that even he is quite far removed from the racial hereditarian position that the black-white IQ gap is explained by a genetic advantage that white people have over black people.)
Marks and Fuentes, who both have backgrounds in genetics, were also signatories of the other letter I quoted above, which states that empirical evidence shows that the whole idea [of a genetic race-IQ connection] itself is unintelligible and wrong-headed and explains that this is a fundamental reason why most researchers in the area of human genetics and human biological diversity no longer allocate significant resources and time to the race/IQ discussion. [31] For more in this vein, see the two pieces I recommended to Alaexis above: "Why genetic IQ differences between 'races' are unlikely" by the geneticst Kevin Mitchell [32] and "Race, genetics and pseudoscience: an explainer" by the geneticists Ewan Birney, Jennifer Raff, Adam Rutherford and Aylwyn Scally. [33] As I mentioned above, the latter of these is rather emphatic, noting that claims about the genetic basis for population differences [in IQ] are not scientifically supported and stating that their motivation for writing is to counter a vocal fringe of race pseudoscience (my emphasis). Though they do not call out "hereditarian" psychometricians by name, it is clear from the context whom they're referring to here. And then there's that Nature editorial, which was coordinated to appear alongside a huge meta-analysis on the genetics of inteligence, which flat-out states that attributing the black-white IQ gap to genetics is "false" and characterizes it definitively as an idea which should be relegated to the past. [34]
I could go on but this is already quite lengthy. And I won't keep hammering this if you still disagree. I just think that what we're looking for when we say in the scientific consensus should be the relevant scientific consensus. Which is why I think it's important to note that, while racial hereditarianism is a minority view among psychometricians today, it appears to be a truly negligable view among geneticists. Generalrelative (talk) 03:22, 6 May 2021 (UTC)
Thank you for the long and well-thought out reply. You definitely bring up a point that I had not been responding to well, notably that the sources that tend to hold some sort of racial hereditarianism tend to have a background in psychology or psychometrics rather than genetics. And, as I continue to pour through google scholar, the only other sources I can find that hold some form of racial herediatrianism are indeed written by psychologists. I'm torn a bit, since psychometricians seem to be the right field for making claims about intelligence while not necessarily having expertise in specific genetic mechanisms, while geneticists also don't necessarily have experience in psychometry. The claim falls at the intersection of the two fields, and it appears to be extremely widely rejected in one of the two fields while it is accepted by a large minority in the other. I'm also seeing some works that refer to Intelligence as a "mainstream" journal even when attacking it for its choice to publish certain studies on race and intelligence, so I'm really stuck here on how to evaluate it in a WP:USEBYOTHERS context. It feels odd to call this particular form of hereditarianism fringe from a standpoint of the publications in the field of psychometrics. From the standpoint of genetics it seems simple and clear that it's fringe. The only way around this would be for there to be some non-genetic thing that would provide for a mechanism of racial hereditarianism, and I haven't seen any proposed. At the same time, we see psychologists (and even sociologists) use genetics more and more within their respective fields, and this practice seems to be accepted as generally fine when we aren't speaking in a racial context (which brings into the discussions a context of genes not aligning well with race writ large). This is all to say, I think I'm not confident that the answer is a clear "it's fringe" but also I'm feeling less and less that this is a large enough minority view across the relevant fields that it isn't fringe. I still very weakly lean no, largely owing to the psychometriticians view on it, but it's right up against the threshold for me.— Mikehawk10 (talk) 21:06, 6 May 2021 (UTC)
Fair enough! I very much appreciate your thoughtful engagement. Generalrelative (talk) 22:39, 6 May 2021 (UTC)
There was a long AfD debate just over a year ago, see Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Race_and_intelligence_(4th_nomination), which closed as keep. I agree that it is a notable topic though, and hopefully with ECP this article can be substantially improved. Hemiauchenia (talk) 23:06, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
Ta for the link. I see ways greatly improving this article, rather than a rejoinder to those who believe in, or profit from, doubt-mongering, and the other one about an earnest "debate" that got a bit out of hand. I won't though, trying to remember that these talk pages and their article are shit museums, you know, look but don't touch. ~ cygnis insignis 00:16, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
I didn't get far before seeing there is an article History of the race and intelligence controversy. Thanks again. ~ cygnis insignis 00:26, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Yes Per previous RfC. There's no new evidence that would challenge the reasoning behind that consensus. –dlthewave ☎ 02:34, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
  • No, the exclusion is overstated. Avoiding the political and just speaking to science, consensus, and RFC wording. The line seems not scientifically correct as stated, not supported by evidence of a scientific consensus, and does not seem to reflect the prior RFC and recent concerns. Think it needs to look for stating a limited inclusion.
Scientifically, my limited perception is scientists generally think it is Nature *and* Nurture, that genetics *is* a factor but disapprove of the extremes of Hereditarian Determinism or Societal Determinism and allows for individual cases to vary outside either influence as just not deterministic or well understood. So to me it seems FRINGE to totally *not* allow mention as it would be FRINGE where it portrays heredity as the sole or dominant determinant.
There really doesn’t seem evidence of scientific consensus provided here in the form of multiple scientific bodies making official statements of scientific fact. Criticisms for some works or some non-science misuse sure - but not more. I would tend more to see that broad and vaguely phrased statements of the phrasing shown above are not the style for scientific bodies. Specific bits about a specific measure such as GCSE results are more amenable to a study.
The prior RFC ... whichever of the threads I followed ... did not seem to use the phrasing above. And I am not seeing really neutral statements of science and positions here. That seems to reflect it has been brought up repeatedly.
Cheers Markbassett (talk) 05:57, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
You're confusing two things: (1) genetic component in individual variation, which agrees with scientific consensus, and (2) genetic component in differences between races, which goes against scientific consensus. Also, does not seem to reflect the prior RFC makes no sense. The wording is taken verbatim from the close of last year's RfC.NightHeron (talk) 10:30, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
Nope, you’re not seeing the contradicting there. By stating (1) you seem to be saying a link to genetics does exist is the consensus and that is inconsistent with the phrasing of RFC here that such is fringe. The RFC as stated simply goes too far. About hereditarian determinism extreme would be one thing but simply “a link” I believe is scientifically accepted. I did not see the phrasing of this RFC at the prior discussion closes, but I may have missed it in all that, please link to where you think it says those words verbatim. And again, I do not cites to statements by multiple scientific bodies as evidence that an actual “scientific consensus” is shown, so I think that claim is also simply overstating things, and I am dubious that scientific bodies would deal in broad statements on vague items like “race”. Simple links could prove the case, lack of such evidence leaves it unsupported. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 03:00, 6 May 2021 (UTC)
NightHeron is right, you are confusing 1 (individual variation) with 2 (differences between races). The RfC is about 2. There is no point in explaining it any further, since you did not take the time to try to acknowledge, let alone understand, the difference in the first place. This is WP:CIR territory. --Hob Gadling (talk) 10:51, 6 May 2021 (UTC)
Again, show me the links to support the way the RFC is phrased and I think lack of links leaves it gone too far. This is strongly and vaguely phrased that “theory that a genetic link exists between race and intelligence” has “minority viewpoint in the scientific consensus” calling for a strong LABEL judgement of FRINGE. I think there needs to be limited and precise phrasing of what “scientific consensus” is or a strong LABEL, that the combination of claims and banning should require strong support, and feel this phrasing is actually misrepresenting scientific views. My general impression is the scientific views are that both nature and nurture are influences rather than deterministic, plus that ‘intelligence’ and ‘race’ are vague societal and not scientifically used phrasings — that studies make use of more precise items in more limited ways. A response back about missing a distinction is contradicting against a broad and strong RFC statement, and is still showing a lack of a RS scientific body statement. I think a narrower exclusion about science for hereditarian determinism is doable, or about both terms “race” and “intelligence” being not scientifically correct. Instead a claim science has consensus using those terms seems outside where science actually is, plus the call for judgement is asking a lot on no attached support. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 11:54, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Yes Current tests for measuring intelligence lack validity, because they measure test taking skills and "impress the professor" skills instead of actual intelligence which is vastly broader than measuring such superficial skills. "Race" is a powerful sociopolitical notion but not a valid scientific concept. The idea that people of Norwegian ancestry or Russian ancestry or Greek ancestry or Spanish ancestry are all "White" to be lumped together, and those of Nigerian ancestry or Ethiopian ancestry or Sudanese ancestry or Zulu ancestry are all "Black" to be lumped together is an utterly unscientific concept based only on skin color. This bizarre concept is spurious but deeply rooted in U.S. culture because the early history of that country was based on enslaving and dehumanizing and torturing people for considerable profit based only on the darkness of their skin. Other cultures engaged in similar dehumanization for similarly spurious reasons. So now we have communities subjected to brutal and ugly discrimination, and a coterie of fake academics who build dubious careers spreading the hate. These people thrive on arguing that the darker a person's skin is, the stupider they are. The entire "race and intelligence" construct is illegitimate and repulsive, and must be rejected by Wikipedia editors. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 07:24, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
you seem to be saying we should avvoid areas because they are controversial. As I understand our purpose, it's pretty much the opposite--the proposition that there is a connection has been extensively discussed both in the past and the present, and this means that it's appropriate to cover here. If t at either or both terms are ill-defined, that's no different from most of the rest of social science. Whether or not current test for intelligence lack value is a matter for discussion, based on the sources, not rejection. They seem to have some value by your own statement: they predict success in the traditional school system. I think actual studies nowadays use somewhat more precise definitions. That race depends only on skin color is outmoded, and I don't think anyone seriously believes that literally, but uses it as a shorthand, (though it may have been seriously used as a plain fact in the past--and is still used this way in the US and elsewhere today). "black" is not literally a race, but in the current discourse it normally means Afro-Americans. (I think it means other things elsewhere) But race almost certainly has a number of more complicated meanings, and they needs discussion.. In both cases I don't mean discussion by us. That's not what we're here for--it means presentation of the various views in the past and continuing. Having readthem, he reader can decide. Not having read them the reader is either left in ignorance that there ever was a controversy, or--much more likely in the present world, unfortunately,--left to rely upon their prior prejudices.
Most academics think that a substantial number of those in other fields are talking through their hats--it's a cliché dating back to Plato. Most non-academics, at least in the US, seem to think that all academics are doing that. I don't think I want to make that sort of judgment, and I do not see on what basis you do. What is correct, from the point of view of science, morality, or social policy, is something that neither you, or me, or any of us individually or collective are entitled to determine here. None of us writes as experts in any of these fields. What we do have the right and obligation is to report accurately on what others have said. If you should be an expert, you should write instead in a peer-reviewed venue. Hee, all you can rightfully do is give the opinion of others, without judging them.
Speaking at a admittedly more personal level, I assume that you, and I, and essentially everyone here, hates prejudice based on "racial" or other grounds. If we do, what are we to do about it here? What we can do is only give information, and report what at various times has passed for information--and misinformation. . Then those of us who wish to take action, as I suppose many of us do, and the much greater number of people in the world outside WP who want to do also, will have knowledge they can use. They don't need only knowledge about their already formed opinions; if they don't know what the uninformed think, they are not likely to make much of an impression on them. Even more bluntly, if they do not even admit that there is an opposition, that there are in fact racists, they're setting themselves up to be victims.
Prejudice in favor of justice is a good thing. It is only meaningful if it also talks about injustice. DGG ( talk ) 08:16, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
I don't think Jim is arguing that we should avoid this because it's controversial. I read his comment as saying that we should not promote this because it's racist. That's different. We document, without endorsing, white supremacy, neo-Nazism and all manner of other nonsense. This is no different. This discussion has been going on here for over a decade, and the superficial controversy is in fact sustained by a tiny number of highly motivated advocates who flatly refuse to accept any consensus that goes against them.
Wikipedia should not "teach the controversy" in areas like this, where a small self-referential group deliberately create an appearance of scholarly endeavour, in effective isolation from mainstream thought. It's like the studies purporting to find out how homeopathy works, when the consensus is that it doesn't, and can't, and there's no reason to suppose it should. Race is a bogus concept, and there's no objective culturally neutral way of measuring intelligence, so piling up studies of non-neutral measures based on the assumption that race is a thing, meets the definition of pseudoscience.
Added to that, the principal motivation underlying its promotion and amplification is racism. It's not a coincidence that the most disruptive presence on this article is a neo-Nazi. Guy (help! - typo?) 08:42, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
DGG, by no means am I saying that Wikipedia should avoid the controversy. I was responding to a specific proposition: "The theory that a genetic link exists between race and intelligence is enough of a minority viewpoint in the scientific consensus that it falls under Wikipedia's definition of a fringe theory." I answered "yes" because I believe that it is a fringe theory. I then tried, briefly, to explain why. Nothing at all about avoiding controversy. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 17:03, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
I agree it is presently a minority view. But your argument above seems to be saying that the reason it is fringe is because you think it wrong. And the reasons you think it wrong seem to be based upon long outdated versions. In general, people who want WP to reflect their own judgment either have coi, which does not apply here, or else bias. The more one is committed , the stronger the likelihood of bias. I recognize that this applies to myself also, so I do not judge views I oppose as fringe because I oppose them. DGG ( talk ) 02:34, 6 May 2021 (UTC)
I'm very pleased to see this statement, the elephant in the room is post-colonial societies and the mechanisms that maintain hegemony: South Africa, Australia, the United States (in no particular order). Racism permeates society on every level, received wisdom impressed on the psyche before a child can formulate a sentence. ~ cygnis insignis 14:23, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Yes, based on the previous Rfc discussions. Idealigic (talk) 15:39, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Yes. You can argue it's not a fringe theory based on how ordinary people use the phrase "fringe". Many people of varying political persuasions believe this, and there is certainly evidence that supports it; why are there more Jews and Asians at Harvard, and fewer Blacks and Latinos? The actual scientific research points out problems with that argument; there are cultural and environmental factors to consider as well, you can't assess average IQ based on outliers, and most world-wide IQ studies are too problematic to even consider. I'm not confident you can reliably measure a 10 point IQ difference between individuals, though a 50 point difference is certainly meaningful. I would not go so far as to say that there is evidence that "racial hereditarianism" is false; however, the claims that this theory is proven true (as opposed to being something that is unclear) is clearly fringe by Wikipedia's definition. Not one participant has presented evidence in support of the claim; even the book The Bell Curve does not claim that such a link is proven. User:力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 19:42, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
But the correctnes of the theory is not for us to decide. Myself I personally don't like to rely on staaticical evidence; I want biochemically demonstrable mechanisms. Just as theory must be proven by observations, observations by themselves only make sense when there is theory behind them, to show that they're not mere correlation. I don't know what will be found in the future, so the only safe course is to leave the question open. DGG ( talk ) 02:34, 6 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Comment. Yes, claiming that a direct "genetic link exists between race and intelligence" (as in the RfC) would be incorrect. If that is what specific authors say (I am not sure), then their work would be "fringe". But one should be careful here. For example, studing the genetic differences among ethnic groups] would be very much mainstream. The importance of Human genetic variation, including chromosome abnormalities as an extreme example, in definining human phenotype (including mental capabilities), is also undeniable. My very best wishes (talk) 03:12, 6 May 2021 (UTC)
    My very best wishes, of course. There are a lot of studies of heritability for example among Ashkenazi people (e.g. Tay–Sachs disease) and African-Americans (sickle-cell anaemia). The issue is narrowly one of the study of "intelligence", however that might be measured, and "race", whatever that might mean, and I hope there is no suggestion that it would be interpreted any more broadly than that. Guy (help! - typo?) 11:26, 6 May 2021 (UTC)
Sure, I am just saying there is nothing wrong with studies of Human intelligence, Human genetics, Human evolutionary genetics or even Genetics of human intelligence. I also think this page and Race and genetics are well written, and do not see any point in conductiong this RfC. My very best wishes (talk) 16:07, 6 May 2021 (UTC)
My very best wishes, the RfC is required because a handful of highly motivated advocates will not accept a consensus that goes against them. Guy (help! - typo?) 17:01, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
@JzG and My very best wishes: No, this RfC was opened in order to preempt and disrupt the formulation of a more productive RfC―discussion of which was ongoing at RSN prior to this RfC being started. A productive RfC would have actually addressed the pertinent issues (namely sources potentially being excluded from the article, and claims that arguably fail WP:VERIFIABILITY), rather than wasting everyone's time reconfirming last year's RfC. Stonkaments (talk) 17:20, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
@Stonkaments: in order to is speculating about the motivations of other editors, it is also the opposite of WP:AGF and wasting everyone's time. --Rsk6400 (talk) 17:58, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
Stonkaments, false. There was no RfC at RSN. It was not formatted as an RfC (it did not pose a short and neutral question) and it was a trojan horse, pretending that the question of what weight to give fringe sources was actually about their reliability.
Analogy: There are papers in superficially reliable sources advancing the idea of excited delirium, a condition that only ever seems to be diagnosed in the death of people being physically restrained by cops. Mainly (I know you'll be socked) Black dudes. The mainstream medical profession does not accept that it is a thing. It doesn't help that it has its origins in a diagnosis made by a white pathologist in a series of deaths of Black prostitutes, who later turned out to have been suffocated by a serial killer.
Same here. A small walled garden of self-referential researchers writing papers that are referenced only by other believers. This is not a WP:RS question, it's a WP:UNDUE question. So this RfC is exactly on point. First, is it actually a fringe view; and if it is, second, how do we represent it. That's the right way to do it.
ECP is also necessary for reasons that are blindingly obvious. At least three new socks of permabanned neo-Nazi troll Mikemikev have been blocked this week around exactly this topic. Guy (help! - typo?) 18:23, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
Please read more carefully; I said there was ongoing discussion about the formulation of a more productive RfC (found here, which you closed, coincidentally), not that there was another RfC ongoing. The questions surrounding sourcing and verifiability have been at the crux of many recent debates on this article's talk page, and this RfC does nothing to address them.
And OP was very clear about their intentions to preempt that proposal by opening the RfC here[35]. Stonkaments (talk) 18:39, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
Guy's points also apply to the post-close RSN discussion. The possibility of "sources being potentially excluded" is not a surprising consequence of finding a theory to be fringe. I challenge you to find a single Yes !voter that doesn't expect that sources promoting the fringe view will be mostly excluded from Wikipedia. If you feel the !voters are uninformed, you are welcome to paste in the big list of sources from the pseudo-RFC. Firefangledfeathers (talk) 20:49, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
Stonkaments, why would there need to be ongoing discussion around formulation of an RfC, when this is the first step, and any RfC will necessarily depend on the outcome of this. Guy (help! - typo?) 13:52, 9 May 2021 (UTC)
Why would we want to formulate a constructive RfC that could actually address the recent issues on this article, rather than simply rehash the RfC from last year which won't solve anything? Seriously? Stonkaments (talk) 15:43, 9 May 2021 (UTC)
The RfC last year solved a lot, allowing the editors who wished to bring the article into accordance with the mainstream view to do so. Recently problematic and/or single-purpose editors have re-initiated attempts to move the article away from the mainstream view, and rehashing the last RfC will almost certainly solve that problem. Perhaps what you mean is that it is unlikely to produce an outcome you desire, but that's a rather different thing. (If there really is a fundamental issue not addressed by this RfC, then this RfC does not prevent someone from opening a proper RfC to address it.) --JBL (talk) 17:10, 9 May 2021 (UTC)
Stonkaments, why would you assume that this systematic approach is not that? First: is it fringe (current indication is yes); second, how do we represent the fringe. Guy (help! - typo?) 17:53, 9 May 2021 (UTC)
In case anyone here missed it, AndewNguyen has initiated yet another RfC, this one at NPOVN. They even quoted JBL's comment above to justify it (If there really is a fundamental issue not addressed by this RfC, then, this RfC does not prevent someone from opening a proper RfC to address it). Seems like it would've been nice to get this one closed first, but in any case I thought y'all might like to know. Generalrelative (talk) 19:28, 9 May 2021 (UTC)
As I noted below, AndewNguyen's RfC statement is tendentious in the extreme. NightHeron (talk) 19:36, 9 May 2021 (UTC)
In any case it's been preemptively closed. Generalrelative (talk) 20:01, 9 May 2021 (UTC)
I would like to copy here the comment I made there (after closure): Because it is implied in the above that I endorse opening this RfC, I would like to observe that the implication is totally dishonest; that this RfC is obviously tendentious; and that the closure is appropriate. --JBL (talk) 20:08, 9 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Well, I am just not sure what the consequences of admittting the theory is fringe would be. Per WP:FRINGE, Wikipedia article should not make a fringe theory appear more notable or more widely accepted than it is., and so on. Yes, sure, but I think it is already described as such on our pages. Simply following WP:NPOV produces an appropriate description of this and other similar subjects. My very best wishes (talk) 19:03, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
Yes the article currently describes racial hereditarianism in a way that is consistent with WP:FRINGE. This RfC demonstrates the community support enjoyed by those of us who have been laboring –– under heavy opposition and a near-constant rain of personal attacks –– to keep it that way. That's why it's important. Sure, certain editors are likely to continue claiming that the consensus is ideologically driven [36] and that its defenders simply can't handle the truth [37], but this RfC makes it clear at least that we are not alone. Generalrelative (talk) 19:20, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
+1 to this. I'd also like to add that you've made the point multiple times that there isn't any appeciable support for this theory from geneticists, and in fact, geneticists and anthropologists frequently compare this claim to such classic pseudosciences as creationism and climate change denial. That point has been thoroughly ignored by those accusing us of being ideologically driven. Furthermore, the claim higher up on this very talk page that the Mackintosh 1998 source doesn't support the article's claim about the consensus has become laughable since I dug up my old copy of Mackintosh 1998. If I were to describe the tone of that textbook when it discusses the notion of a genetic link between intelligence and race, I'd have to go with "disgusted". ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 19:49, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
@My very best wishes: It might be instructive to compare this old version of the page: it predates the first RfC, and if you look at the editing of the article since then what you see is that opponents of the current RfC preferred something like that version, while the proponents of the RfC prefer something like the current version. The "yes" view in this RfC is essentially an endorsement of the status quo. --JBL (talk) 20:10, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Yes, theories that link race, as commonly understood, with intelligence are fringe theories. Intelligence is known to have a large heritable component, and so is heritable within groups. Efforts to establish a linkage across groups, especially across groups as large as those normally considered racial, have either been sloppy, or have been affected by pre-existing racial discrimination, or have had fraudulent aspects. The circumstances under which this RFC has been rushed out to the Wikipedia community seem also to be affected by an ulterior, possibly racist agenda. Theories that link race to intelligence are fringe theories. Robert McClenon (talk) 16:17, 6 May 2021 (UTC)
@Robert McClenon: The circumstances under which this RFC has been rushed out to the Wikipedia community seem also to be affected by an ulterior, possibly racist agenda. For context you might want to see the tendentiously worded RfC that was launched last week on RSN. I would agree with your characterization if it were applied to that one. Note the closing admin's statement: Some have suggested starting a properly formatted, neutrally worded RFC on the article talk page instead. NightHeron, who implemented this suggestion, has been a truly stalwart defender of the view you (and so many others here) have expressed. Generalrelative (talk) 16:30, 6 May 2021 (UTC)
Comment to User:Generalrelative - Yes. I may have been imprecise in my wording. I had seen the version of the RFC at RSN, and I wasn't adequately distinguishing between the two RFCs. The topic was rushed out to the community for racist reasons. This version of the RFC, by User:NightHeron, was then moved out to the community in a hurry in order to squash the offending prior RFC. An RFC is a content forum, and we are not discussing whether to topic-ban the original proponent. My language was sloppy as to who I was criticizing. Robert McClenon (talk) 16:59, 8 May 2021 (UTC)
@Robert McClenon: Thanks for clarifying. More precisely, the poorly formatted RfC started by Ferahgo had already been closed before I started this RfC, but AndewNguyen had proposed starting a differently worded RfC that still was not either brief or neutral. The no-!voters on last year's RfC also wanted to hold the RfC on a non-EC-protected site, which in practice would guarantee the participation of SPAs and socks. Although AndewNguyen got little support for their proposal, it was leading to another long discussion on the wrong venue (RSN), and the no-!voters seemed determined to start a tendentious RfC one way or another. I (after consulting with Generalrelative on our user talk pages) decided to start this neutrally worded, EC-protected RfC before they started their tendentious one. NightHeron (talk) 17:31, 8 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Yes. We've been over this many times before. The short version is that some primary research papers purport to show very narrow findings of heritabilty of minor but quite variable skews in certain aspects of cognition. These are primary sources. Even if validated later, they would translate neither to "intelligence", which doesn't really have a firm definition in the first place, nor to "race", which doesn't either. See also WP:R&E. WP cannot support any such notion that "intelligence" is heritable much less a "racial" characteristic unless an overwhelming preponderance of highest-quality secondary sources in the related fields (i.e. systematic reviews) came to this conclusion. This is not SpeculationPedia.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:51, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Yes. As far as I can tell, the idea that race itself is a genetic category (rather than a social category based on selective grouping of biological traits) is itself widely considered fringe, so the idea that race and intelligence are genetically linked is necessarily also fringe. Loki (talk) 18:45, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Yes. "Race" is an ill-defined and scientifically worthless concept, and only survives as a group-identity token in strongly segregated societies (e.g. the United States). Grafting research out of such an objectively meaningless concept is per se fringe, and from its very beginning, "Race-and-intelligence"-related research has been linked to suprematist ideologies. It's as fringe as research about "Infidels and fornication", an article which per WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS is overdue after every AfD of "Race and intelligence" has failed. –Austronesier (talk) 18:52, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Yes Theories on the genetic link between race and intelligence are a minority viewpoint in the scientific consensus that they fall under Wikipedia's definition of a fringe theory. BristolTreeHouse (talk) 05:19, 9 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Please note: AndewNguyen just started an RfC at NPOV [38] that essentially repeats the one that was closed last week as improperly formatted and non-neutral. Namely, AndewNguyen's RfC statement asks editors to read Ferahgo's summary of the issues and then vote. This seems to be a blatant violation of the neutrality requirement for RfC statements. This is the third time in two weeks that either Ferahgo or AndewNguyen has tried this stunt. Am I being too harsh in saying that this conduct is disruptive? NightHeron (talk) 19:20, 9 May 2021 (UTC)
I definitely agree, though I'd suggest that we should be dicussing conduct issues elsewhere than on the article talk page. In any case, now that today's RfC attempt has been preemptively closed, we can at least hope that everyone will take this as an opportuity to drop the stick and move on. Generalrelative (talk) 20:59, 9 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Yes - And thanks to Generalrelative for highlighting some sources. Fringe: IQ is an accurate measurement of (latent) intelligence, "human race" is an objective biological concept (other than Homo Sapiens), average group IQ results are due to heredity/genetics. Non-fringe: IQ is a useful metric, extant humans are all Homo Sapiens with minor variation, "human race" as discussed here is a human concept, average group IQ can vary and tends to change over time especially when general health changes with the Flynn effect pointing at evidence for environmental factors playing an important role, genetics may play a small individual role in IQ scores, there is more individual variation than group variation. There is indeed a scientific consensus that it is not useful to seriously consider the falsified hypothesis that heredity and genetics could play a major role in group IQ score variation in extant humans. —PaleoNeonate – 07:59, 11 May 2021 (UTC)
references

References

  1. ^ Bird, Kevin A. (2 February 2021). "No support for the hereditarian hypothesis of the Black-White achievement gap using polygenic scores and tests for divergent selection". American Journal of Physical Anthropology. doi:10.1002/ajpa.24216.
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Discussion at Talk:Nicholas Wade

You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Nicholas Wade. Generalrelative (talk) 15:08, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

There is now a formal RfC at this talk page: Talk:Nicholas Wade#RfC about suggested statement. You are invited to participate. Generalrelative (talk) 00:00, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

FYI FAQ

To all participating here: I've started work on a potential FYI for this talk page at User:MjolnirPants/RnI FYI. I'd like to know what everyone thinks and invite you all to suggest changes. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 01:42, 14 May 2021 (UTC)

The FYI has been through a few rounds of edits, along with a bit of discussion about them, and I believe it is ready for inclusion here. Would love to hear from others about it. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 23:17, 23 May 2021 (UTC)

After another few rounds of editing, the FAQ is looking better than ever. I intend to add it to this page very soon. If anyone believes discussion would be helpful, then now is the time to get it going. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 15:52, 30 May 2021 (UTC)

Awesome, thank you! I have a few additional points:
  • I'd suggest that the question What do other scientists have to say about the question of a genetic link between race and intelligence? should either be eliminated or substantially altered. Not all sources (including those we reference in the FAQ) agree that the question is fundamentally unintelligible. Many think that such a link is indeed possible but highly unlikely to exist. And since the current version of the FAQ is visually quite cluttered, we might want to err on the side of fewer items.
  • I'd suggest that What is the evidence for a genetic link between race and intelligence? could be rephrased to make it clear without clicking through that there is no such evidence (or we could consider cutting this question altogether). Otherwise it appears to contradict the premise of the first question.
  • I'd suggest that What is the current state of the science on a link between intelligence and race? can be eliminated to avoid clutter, since it simply directs the reader to read the article.
Generalrelative (talk) 14:51, 1 June 2021 (UTC)
Note that I've gone ahead with my first suggestion here, as well as altered the question substantially to read Isn't this just political correctness? Happy to be reverted and discuss if others disagree with these changes! Generalrelative (talk) 16:58, 1 June 2021 (UTC)
Also: upon reflection I wonder if we really need three Q&As on "is race really socially constructed?" These are well written but I wonder if they represent a bit of a tangent in this context. Perhaps we can just direct skeptics to the main article Race (human categorization) and to the essay WP:Race and ethnicity? Just a thought. Generalrelative (talk) 17:05, 1 June 2021 (UTC)
They speak to the fundamentals of the issue: people who assert this genetic link invariably assert a biological origin to racial classifications, and deny the well-proven social origin. I mean, the question of a genetic link between race and IQ is "unintelligible" precisely because of the nature of human racial differences as nothing more than a loose and inconsistent collection of unrelated traits.
As for the other stuff you mentioned: Regarding your first point and the edits you made, I approve. I just addressed your second point with an edit. I'm agnostic on your third point. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 18:08, 1 June 2021 (UTC)
I don't see any problem with finishing with an encouragement to go read the article and judge for yourself. I think it should stand. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 18:23, 1 June 2021 (UTC)
Cool, thanks to you both! Generalrelative (talk) 18:28, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

The FAQ is really shaping up well. I have questions about two of the Q-and-As:

  • The answer to Q7 is very long. The first paragraph is hard to follow ("clear evidence for selective pressure", "dedicated genetic module...that can be acted on independently by natural selection...often negatively" etc.) and does not explain what the fallacy is. Perhaps after the first sentence we could put in: "A quick explanation of this fallacy is given in the last paragraph of the "Heritability within and between groups" section of the article and the accompanying picture." I'd suggest removing the rest of this paragraph after the first sentence, but keeping the block quote, which is clearly written.
  • I also wonder if the 6th bullet-point in the 4th-to-last question is really needed. (In such surveys, the average percentage of the measured delta (about 15 points between the highest average racial score and the lowest average racial score) estimated to be explained by genetics is 1-5%; less than half the delta expected between two identical IQ tests taken by the same person on different days. In other words: statistically meaningless.) First, it uses technical language "measured delta". Second, it's not clear what average is being taken. Third, I'm not sure that it's accurate. Hunt estimated 3%, and he was among the relatively moderate members of the ISIR crowd. Fourth, if the IQ tests taken by the same person were identical, of course one would expect performance the second time to be significantly better than the first time ("practice makes perfect"). Fifth, given all the problems with the surveys, why should anyone care about this statistic? NightHeron (talk) 20:29, 1 June 2021 (UTC)
    NightHeron, First, it uses technical language "measured delta". Good point. I agree on rewording this.
    Second, it's not clear what average is being taken. Also a good point.
    Third, I'm not sure that it's accurate. Hunt estimated 3%, and he was among the relatively moderate members of the ISIR crowd. Well, 3% is pretty close to the median of 1-5%. I'm not sure what you mean, here. I've seen 1% and 5% given, though Hunt is the only one who's opinion has been brought up on WP about it, that I've seen. If you think we should quote Hunt on this, I'm fine with that.
    Fourth, if the IQ tests taken by the same person were identical, of course one would expect performance the second time to be significantly better than the first time ("practice makes perfect"). This needs clarification: when giving a person an IQ test repeatedly, the problems are usually randomly chosen from a pool of problems of similar complexity, to avoid precisely this. The answer needs to be clarified.
    Fifth, given all the problems with the surveys, why should anyone care about this statistic? The best direct answer I've got is: It shows that even if one accepts that their research is 100% accurate, their hypothesis is still meaningless. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 20:43, 1 June 2021 (UTC)
Thank you for your prompt response. Where did the 1-5% figure come from? If we give it, we should first be certain that it's correct. I didn't mean to suggest that we should quote Hunt. I think there's a potential problem in saying that 1-5% is statistically meaningless because of random fluctuation that's greater than that when an individual takes the IQ test multiple times. The racial hereditarians claim that 1-5% (or whatever percent they're claiming) is consistently in one direction. This has to be rejected, not called "statistically meaningless". (Two examples showing the problem with the "statistically meaningless" claim: (1) Suppose that Jane and John each take IQ tests 5 times, and Jane's average score is 10 points higher than John's. Suppose the variation in each case over the 5 times went up and down an average of 15 points, so both were averages of 15-point fluctuations. Wouldn't we still conclude that Jane has significantly higher IQ than John? (2) The batting performance of baseball player A varies tremendously from game to game, and the same for player B. Nevertheless, if A's batting average is .350 and B's is .250, that difference is highly significant even though it's less than the game-to-game fluctuation.) I don't think we should be saying anything to the effect that "even if their research is 100% accurate it's a small difference anyway", just as we wouldn't say "even if the climate change deniers are right that whatever change is occurring is caused naturally rather than by humans, we should still be concerned and do something about it." NightHeron (talk) 21:50, 1 June 2021 (UTC)
NightHeron, Where did the 1-5% figure come from? Honestly, it's WP:SYNTH (arguably WP:CALC) from various such surveys I've read over the past few years. I like the point it makes, but I'm not married to it. We can remove it, if we want to hold the FAQ to the same standards as an article (I didn't see it that way, but I understand the case for it).
The racial hereditarians claim that 1-5% (or whatever percent they're claiming) is consistently in one direction. This has to be rejected, not called "statistically meaningless". From where I sit, there's no difference there.
(1) Suppose that Jane and John each take IQ tests 5 times, and Jane's average score is 10 points higher than John's. Suppose the variation in each case over the 5 times went up and down an average of 15 points, so both were averages of 15-point fluctuations. Wouldn't we still conclude that Jane has significantly higher IQ than John? Yes, but those are two individuals, not populations. And individuals tend to have stable IQs over time, whereas populations do not (not only the Flynn effect, but the fact that the difference are shrinking over time, as well).
(2) The batting performance This analogy is very problematic, as batting performance is much more objective and empirical than IQ.
I don't think we should be saying anything to the effect that "even if their research is 100% accurate it's a small difference anyway", That's an opinion I can understand.
just as we wouldn't say "even if the climate change deniers are right that whatever change is occurring is caused naturally rather than by humans, we should still be concerned and do something about it." That's not. I think you missed a clause, there, in which the deniers also assert that the consequences of not doing anything are negligible.
Just to reiterate: It seems like there might not be a consensus to keep that point, which is okay by me, even though I like that point. I strongly disagree with your criticisms of it (unless you want to critique the lack of sourcing on the 1-5%: that's valid), but it's a "parting shot" as it were, and not really necessary for the overall point. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 15:05, 2 June 2021 (UTC)
Clarification of the climate denier analogy: it's saying "Even if the climate change deniers are right that whatever change is occurring is caused naturally rather than by humans, they're wrong that there's no reason to be concerned and do something about it." I think it's a very weak type of argument to say that even if we concede the main point, there's still a subsidiary point that would be valid. To give another analogy, it's what lawyers do when they say "even if my client did commit the murder, it was not premeditated so you should convict him on a lesser charge." NightHeron (talk) 15:26, 2 June 2021 (UTC)
NightHeron, Clarification of the climate denier analogy: it's saying "Even if the climate change deniers are right that whatever change is occurring is caused naturally rather than by humans, they're wrong that there's no reason to be concerned and do something about it." Yeah, that's a better phrasing that I can get behind.
To give another analogy, it's what lawyers do when they say "even if my client did commit the murder, it was not premeditated so you should convict him on a lesser charge." I see it more like "Even if my client did commit the murder, there's no evidence that it was premeditated," which is a valid point.
But GR agreed with you and Alaexis about this, so I'll get behind removing it. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 15:35, 2 June 2021 (UTC)
@NightHeron: I think you're right. I probably got carried away trying to cram a bunch of additional info into that item. I'll put it back the way it was. Generalrelative (talk) 20:59, 1 June 2021 (UTC)
Okay I've mostly restored it to the way it was, but I've also tried to address your concern about defining the "hereditarian fallacy". Generalrelative (talk) 21:11, 1 June 2021 (UTC)
I also cut the final chunk of text here, which I realized dealt with a slightly different topic. That can be turned into its own item if necessary (but I suspect it is not necessary). Generalrelative (talk) 21:47, 1 June 2021 (UTC)
I concur with NightHeron that the statement about 1-5% is problematic. If the difference is statistically significant then it contradicts the main premise that there is no evidence for such difference. On the other hand, if the difference is not statistically significant, then, tautologically, these numbers are insignificant and should not be mentioned. The comparison with the variance of IQ scores of the same person is irrelevant. Alaexis¿question? 10:51, 2 June 2021 (UTC)
Alaexis, If the difference is statistically significant then it contradicts the main premise that there is no evidence for such difference No, it wouldn't. These numbers are speculations by the psychometrists involved, not hard data about the differences. They aren't evidence.
On the other hand, if the difference is not statistically significant, then, tautologically, these numbers are insignificant and should not be mentioned. I agree with the statement that the the numbers are insignificant, but I disagree that they shouldn't be mentioned, because they would be insignificant (per the comparison to the variance of a single person) even if there were evidence that some of the difference was genetic.
That being said, I'm not married to it. If the consensus here is that they should go, then I'm (a little reluctantly, but still) okay with that. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 14:48, 2 June 2021 (UTC)
I don't think we want to be put on the defensive concerning 1-5% if a racial hereditarian POV-pusher challenges it, claims the average is much higher, and drags us into a debate about what the white supremacy percent would be (according to the racial hereditarians) if there were white supremacy in intelligence. That would be diversionary, to say the least. NightHeron (talk) 15:32, 2 June 2021 (UTC)
Generalrelative, What do you think of the point about "even if the racists are right, the amount of difference they ascribe to genetics is meaningless" bit? It's the one that mentions 1-5%.
NH and Alaexis don't like it. If you don't either, then we should remove it. I like it, but I've nothing vested in it. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 15:06, 2 June 2021 (UTC)
@MPants at work: Thanks for asking. I find your rationale compelling, but it is rather a lot to cram into a single bullet point, resulting in a lexically dense bit of text. In my case I had to read it several times before understanding what it was saying. So I imagine it would probably generate more questions than it resolves, and for that reason I'd tend to agree that it's probably best to leave it out. Generalrelative (talk) 15:30, 2 June 2021 (UTC)
Generalrelative, Okay, let's do that. If you don't remove it in the next few minutes, I'll do it. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 15:31, 2 June 2021 (UTC)
  • I removed the bit about the speculated amount of difference. I'm considering replacing it with "Even if these survey were meaningful, the amount of the difference speculated to be genetic in origin is so small as to be meaningless." which is much more succinct, simple, and addresses some (but not all) of the criticisms here. Let me know what you think, I don't plan to be bold about it. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 15:41, 2 June 2021 (UTC)
But even if your earlier statement about averages is correct, this simplified statement is not, because certainly some of the racial hereditarians surveyed do claim that there are meaningful differences. NightHeron (talk) 15:49, 2 June 2021 (UTC)
NightHeron, Right. They insist there's a difference, then when asked to quantify it, basically admit there's no difference. I think wording that conveys that would be best, but I can't think of any off the top of my head. It's probably not worth it. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 16:17, 2 June 2021 (UTC)
  • I think the answer about political correctness is wrong. There is clearly serious resistance and taboo involving any research into race and intelligence, as discussed in Nature[39][40] ("Whereas our 'politically correct' work garners us praise, speaking invitations and book contracts, challengers are demeaned, ostracized and occasionally threatened with tenure revocation.") and elsewhere[41][42][43]. Even the quote provided acknowledges that "...moral concerns may play an important role in these decisions...". Stonkaments (talk) 00:50, 3 June 2021 (UTC)
Stonkaments, would you say that these pieces meet the special sourcing requirements for this article? –dlthewave ☎ 01:48, 3 June 2021 (UTC)
Dlthewave, I'd actually be okay writing something for the article using these, myself. Of course, I don't think Stonkaments would like me pointing out that their first two links are actually evidence that the scientific community is perfectly willing to discuss this kind of research (I mean, it's a couple of editorials in Nature, it really doesn't get more mainstream science than that), that Noah Carl got shitcanned for doing shitty research for racist reasons, that Nathan Cofnas explicitly confirms the existence of that scientific consensus Stonk spent a couple of weeks fighting to prove doesn't exist, and that that Guardian link not only doesn't say what they seem to think it does, but also argues that people only want to pursue said research because they're already racist, and that the only reason they haven't died off is because other racists support them.
I also think it's kinda funny that the argument here is that these "hereditarians" are an oppressed minority, as we collaborate on the first big change here since Stonk and crew spent a couple weeks arguing that they were the majority of scientists. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 02:17, 3 June 2021 (UTC)
Yes, these are absolutely reliable sources in this context. The Nature articles have been discussed here before. The Guardian article is a summary of a book from a reputable publisher, and the others were published in peer-reviewed papers. Additionally, you can look at the numerous other examples that "The Mythical Taboo on Race and Intelligence" purported to refute: Miele, 2002; Woodley of Menie et al., 2018; Ceci & Williams, 2009; Cofnas, 2016; Gottfredson, 2010; Sesardic, 2005; Rushton & Jensen, 2008; Kourany, 2016; Sternberg, 2005; Gottfredson, 1994, 2009, 2010; Warne et al., 2018. There is an abundance of sources claiming that there are issues of taboo/political correctness in this line of research; it violates WP:NPOV for the FAQ to argue otherwise by favoring the few sources that dispute this. Stonkaments (talk) 02:28, 3 June 2021 (UTC)
1) Ceci & Williams is a fine source for flat assertions (i.e. they helpfully state that there was in 2009 an "emerging consensus" about racial and gender equality in the genetic determinants of intelligence). They are real scientists, and their views can be considered fairly representative at least of one end of the spectrum of mainstream ideas. However nothing they say goes much beyond bare assertions based on personal experience. If that were the best source we could find for characterizing the academic environment, okay fine, but it's not. The Jackson & Winston article, on the other hand, is a piece of peer-reviewed research published in an APA journal, full of nuance and detail. And it addresses Ceci & Williams' claims, among many others, head-on. For that reason it is far more convincing as a source, and in the context of this Q&A the appropriate one to look to.
2) Of the "numerous" other sources you cite, most appear to be fringe POV-pushers themselves. The three whom you link to in your first comment here, Noah Carl, Nathan Cofnas and Gerhard Meisenberg (with regard to the latter, I presume his quotation about "political correctness" is why you linked the Guardian piece by Saini), are certainly not legitimate sources for anything. At this point it should be clear that their views hold no weight at all when it comes to scientific matters, including the question of whether their ostracism from mainstream academic circles is merited. I'm not sure if any of the other pieces you link here would fare any better under scrutiny, and frankly the onus is on you at this point to show that you're not just wasting our time by throwing spaghetti at the wall.
3) Finally, it kind of blows my mind how you mention Saini's Guardian article as though it supports your case. Yes it quotes Meisenberg but it does so in such a way as to make clear both how wildly repugnant his ideas are and how far he is outside of the scientific mainstream. Doesn't that give you pause at all? Doesn't it make you stop and wonder whether maybe you've been barking up the wrong tree this whole time? I'd like to believe that somewhere inside you there is that glimmer of recognition. Generalrelative (talk) 03:28, 3 June 2021 (UTC)
Sigh. You're dismissing nearly 20 sources describing an environment of taboo and political correctness as fringe POV-pushing, even though you would readily consider many of them to be reliable sources in other contexts. You can't have it both ways. Stonkaments (talk) 18:19, 3 June 2021 (UTC) 19:03, 3 June 2021 (UTC)
Could you pick a prime example? One source that is definitely not from a fringe POV-pusher but is used as reliable source in other contexts? Firefangledfeathers (talk) 18:22, 3 June 2021 (UTC)
Ceci & Williams (2009)[44] was cited heavily in recent discussions about the scientific consensus, and is cited twice in the Wikipedia article. They are clearly not fringe POV-pushers; they argue that environmental, not genetic, factors cause the racial differences seen in IQ. Regarding political correctness, they observe:

Yet the spectre of Lysenkoism lurks in current scientific discourse on gender, race and intelligence. Claims that sex- or race-based IQ gaps are partly genetic can offend entire groups, who feel that such work feeds hatred and discrimination. Pressure from professional organizations and university administrators can result in boycotting such research, and even in ending scientific careers.

. Stonkaments (talk) 18:36, 3 June 2021 (UTC)
@Stonkaments: I suggest that you strike your comment above as a misrepresentation of other people, which is a violation of talk page guideline listed at WP:TALKNO. My statement was very clear in distinguishing the legitimate views of Ceci and Williams, whom I have indeed cited in other contexts, from fringe POV-pushers like Carl, Cofnas and Meisenberg, whose views hold no weight here. I'm pretty sure I have not approvingly cited anyone else you list here as supporting your position (unless you actually count Saini, in which case I'd be concerned about your basic reading comprehension), yet you state that I readily consider many of them to be reliable sources in other contexts. That really doesn't seem like a good-faith representation of past discussions or editing behavior. And yes I'm sure you can find "nearly 20 sources" from within the walled garden of fringe racialist pseudoscience. That's not going to change the balance of NPOV here. Jackson & Winston's peer-reviewed paper, published in an APA journal, is more than enough to establish the fact that race-and-intelligence research continues to be funded despite the fact that it is scientifically bankrupt. Generalrelative (talk) 18:47, 3 June 2021 (UTC)
@Stonkaments: Your insertion of the word "would" in your comment above is a start but is not nearly enough to allay my concern about the way you've misrepresented me. First off, how do you know what I would accept? But the main issue is that you completely ignore / mischaracterize what I say about Ceci and Williams in 1), making it seem as though I were lumping them in which racialist pseudoscientists like Carl, Cofnas and Meisenberg, when I took care to explicitly state that this was not the case (i.e. They are real scientists, and their views can be considered fairly representative at least of one end of the spectrum of mainstream ideas). Generalrelative (talk) 19:16, 3 June 2021 (UTC)
Stonkaments, You might want to go back and read past the first sentence of my comment before you agree with me too hard. All but one of those sources undermines what you're claiming here, in one way or another. A couple of them could be used to argue that the authors have claimed there's a taboo against this research and that these researchers are unfairly ostracized (of course, one of those authors was quite fairly ostracized for doing shit work and this would need to be pointed out per WP:GEVAL), but one of them straight up argues that yes, these people are in fact racist, and they deserve what they get, and they'd have all been run off long ago if it wasn't for the even worse racists propping them up.
If you want the FAQ to have a Q&A that reads:
Isn't there a taboo against researching race and IQ?
Well, some scientists claim so, such as Noah Carl, whose work was heavily criticized as "poor scholarship" which violated standards of academic integrity and was widely considered to be of poor methodological value. Carl would go on to be dismissed from his position due to his "selective use of data and unsound statistical methods which have been used to legitimise racist stereotypes about groups". Other writers, such as Barry Mehler argued that researchers into race and IQ are "riding the wave of populism" at present, and debates on whether to "permit" such research have made their way into the editorials of Nature. Meanwhile, nonprofits such as the Pioneer Fund continue to fund such research and journals such as Mankind Quarterly continue to publish it.
If that's the sort of Q&A you think we need to add, I'll add it myself. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 03:33, 3 June 2021 (UTC)
I appreciate where you're coming from here, MjolnirPants, but if we were to add such a section it would have to be much longer to include all the bogus claims by wannabe scientists scrambling to get a piece of that sweet, sweet Pioneer Fund, and all the ways in which they have been rightly rejected by the mainstream academy for attendant piss-poor methodological choices. Instead I suggest that we keep the language the way it is since the existing Jackson and Winston reference details these matters very clearly. Any reader who's curious to learn more can easily click through. Generalrelative (talk) 03:52, 3 June 2021 (UTC)
Generalrelative, You raise a good point. I rescind my offer, and have changed my mind. Let's keep it the way it is. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 03:56, 3 June 2021 (UTC)
MjolnirPants Well cheers then! Generalrelative (talk) 03:58, 3 June 2021 (UTC)
Generalrelative, per your edit summary:
SUWEE!!!
Sorry. I'm from the South. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 04:01, 3 June 2021 (UTC)
Lol, I'm just well traveled enough to get the reference :) Generalrelative (talk) 04:12, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

I wonder if an entry about how this topic was viewed in the past would be helpful? The answer could be along the lines that every attempt to study or prove this in the past was based on racist motivations? I don't have sources handy at the moment, but I think some historical framing to this topic could be helpful. There's the obvious examples from Nazi doctors and then experiments with African Americans during the Jim Crow era. Mr Ernie (talk) 15:01, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

Mr Ernie, The Guardian source Stonkaments wanted to use to evince his claim that these researchers are ostracized would seem to support that statement. I rather like the idea of outlining the history here, and am curious what other editors think. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 15:10, 3 June 2021 (UTC)
I agree, as long as we can include thus quote from Saini's piece:

When Rushton’s book Race, Evolution and Behaviour was published in 1995, psychologist David Barash was stirred to write in a review: “Bad science and virulent racial prejudice drip like pus from nearly every page of this despicable book.” Rushton had collected scraps of unreliable evidence in “the pious hope that by combining numerous little turds of variously tainted data, one can obtain a valuable result”. In reality, Barash wrote, “the outcome is merely a larger than average pile of shit”.

Generalrelative (talk) 15:42, 3 June 2021 (UTC)
Generalrelative, I absolutely adore that quote and wholeheartedly concur. I'm considering getting it tattooed on my rib cage. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 15:44, 3 June 2021 (UTC)
We'll be twinsies then because I already got it as a tramp stamp. Generalrelative (talk) 16:49, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

Discussion at Talk:Who We Are and How We Got Here

You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Who We Are and How We Got Here.

FYI the relevant content dispute begins at comment #4 of Talk:Who We Are and How We Got Here#WP:DUE. Generalrelative (talk) 16:02, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

Revert

NightHeron can you clarify how the reverted passage violates WP:NPOV? Is the journal where the referenced study has been published not good? Ping Ekpyros Alaexis¿question? 12:24, 14 September 2021 (UTC) Added diff link –dlthewave ☎ 12:34, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

@Alaexis: Russell Warne is a polemicist, blogger, and promoter of racial hereditarianism. A strong consensus of Wikipedia editors has determined, most recently in the RfC on this talk-page a few months ago (see [45]), that racial hereditarianism is a fringe view. This means that it must be treated as such, and we must avoid FALSEBALANCE. That's why I reverted your the edit. NightHeron (talk) 13:04, 14 September 2021 (UTC)
Just FYI Alaexis is asking a follow-up but didn't make the edit. That was Ekpyros. Generalrelative (talk) 16:57, 14 September 2021 (UTC)
Agreed. Also please note that Russell Warne is a psychologist at Utah Valley University with no professional expertise in genetics. For statements on controversial topics we look to relevant subject matter experts, not just anyone with a "Dr." in front of their name who believes passionately one way or the other. Generalrelative (talk) 14:57, 14 September 2021 (UTC)
NightHeron, as Alaexis notes, you reverted my GF edit in which:
  1. I clarified that Block's example uses randomly distributed seeds (it's clearly in Block's source and important to understanding the analogy)
  2. I removed the overly broad and thus inaccurate claim that the analogy "shows how heritability works"
  3. I added that analogy was popularized by Lewontin
  4. I included criticism that the analogy misleads by using random groups as stand-ins for non-random racial groups
  5. I attributed the figure to Block (to clarify any confusion as to why he's mentioned by Chomsky in the following quote)
  6. I added a Wikilink to the article on Block
I am undoing your reversion, since I find it exceedingly hard to accept—and your reply above doesn't support—that every single one of the six above changes "makes the article clearly worse". How, for example, did attributing the diagram to Block or clarifying that it uses randomly selected seeds "clearly harming" the article? And unless all six did do clear harm, your wholesale reversion patently violated WP:MASSR. I'd further note the warning that those "with past involvement in an article have a natural prejudice in favor of the status quo"—given that I see no editor "involved" in the article as much, or as passionately, as you seem to have been.
I'd add that neither your claim of WP:NPOV nor WP:PROFRINGE has any merit; indeed the opposite would seem true, given that the latter's guidance clearly states that: "The neutral point of view policy requires that all majority and significant-minority positions be included in an article." Warne's summary of longstanding criticism of the corn analogy has indeed "received critical review from the scientific community"—it was published in a reputable peer-reviewed journal, and as far as I am aware (although I'm happy to be corrected), no one has challenged it. I see nothing about his critique of the analogy that's controversial or not obviously true—let alone a "fringe theory" about "racial hereditarianism". He simply points out that analogizing randomly selected corn seeds is misleading when talking about human races, which no one argues are genetically random.
Nor is including criticism of the corn-seed analogy WP:FALSEBALANCE—unless you're arguing that the criticism of the analogy is itself some "fringe theory". You've confused the guidance in WP:BALANCE, which states that Wikipedia shouldn't promote fringe views, with your personal opinion that an individual has promoted a "fringe theory", then further erred by extrapolating from that to conclude that simply citing that individual's valid criticism of an analogy therefor must have violated WP:BALANCE. It does not, since Warne's criticism of the seed analogy is not "the theory that a genetic link exists between race and intelligence".
As to your claims about Professor Russell Warne, I'm aware of no RS who has described him as a promoter of "fringe theories"—that claim would appear to be your WP:OR based on your Rfc, which doesn't mention him at all. It's irrelevant that he's not a geneticist, just as it's irrelevant that the source of the analogy in the article, philosopher Ned Block, isn't one either—the latter fact being something that seems, oddly, not to have occurred to, let alone troubled Generalrelative or any other editor.
Last, I've read the Rfc you linked to—which, indeed, you created and are clearly very passionate about!—but fail to see how it in any way applies to my edit. Frankly, your statement seems hopelessly vague and designed to censor even obviously legitimate "viewpoints"—which, I'd note, are quite different from scientific "theories". No serious scientist of whom I'm aware has argued that IQ differences between groups have been proven to be entirely the result of either genetics or environment (and of course genetics and environment interact and shape each other), leaving the question of whether there is any genetic contribution to the differences unanswered. The obvious fact—that the question hasn't yet been settled by science — is in no way a "fringe theory", since it's not a theory at all. Nor is the the "viewpoint" that genetics may play some, as-of-yet undetermined role.
Thanks! Elle Kpyros (talk) 21:30, 15 September 2021 (UTC)
@Ekpyros: There is no consensus here on the talk-page in favor of your edits. I'm not going to debate your WP:WALLOFTEXT defending your POV that disputes Lewontin's explanation of the fallacy of going from genetic variation between individuals to genetic differences between groups. You have a right to your passionate opinion on the subject, but according to WP:NOR the only relevant issue is the quality of your two sources. Russell Warne is the author or lead author of both, and he's a promoter of fringe racial hereditarianism who has no expertise in genetics. NightHeron (talk) 21:46, 15 September 2021 (UTC)
@NightHeron: What is the problem with identifying Ned Block as the source of the analogy image? Or linking to his article? Or adding that the seeds are randomly selected? None of those has anything to do with Russell Warne, do they? Elle Kpyros (talk) 23:42, 15 September 2021 (UTC)
@Ekpyros: Instead of reinserting your original edit, which is sourced to Russell Warne and is contrary to consensus, why don't you propose here on the talk-page a brief edit sourced to Ned Block that does what you just outlined? Then we can see what other editors think about it. NightHeron (talk) 23:52, 15 September 2021 (UTC)
I second this suggestion. Perhaps cite the relevant piece by Richard Lewontin too since he was, ya know, an actual evolutionary biologist? Generalrelative (talk) 00:09, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
@NightHeron:, something is sideways with the Wikipedia editing process on this article.
  1. Are you serious in suggesting that I "propose" what I "just outlined" regarding Block? It was in the edit you reverted—and I listed it in the edit summary, then again above in points 1, 2, 5, and 6. You're clearly not even aware what was in the edit, which is precisely you shouldn't have reverted it. You tell me: what was objectionable about the edits I made regarding Block that caused you to revert them?
  2. Again, please do kindly familiarize yourself with WP:MASSR and only revert the portions of an edit you disagree with. Crying "no consensus" is never a valid reason for reversion, per WP:DRNC, and Wikipedia has a bias that favors editing, not the status quo. I don't need to "propose" anything—I made an edit, and it is on you to revert only the parts that obviously harm the article. I I've done you the favor by beginning the "discussion" you say you want with what you refer to as a "wall of text"—I'd call it a well-organized list of points—and you've failed to substantively respond. To you and MrOllie: I see no prior "consensus" on criticism of the corn-seed analogy, which is what my edit concerned. The issue here is not some purported "fallacy of going from genetic variation between individuals to genetic differences between groups"—unclear what that means—but rather something far more narrow than you apparently imagine and describe it to be.
  3. The Archives of Scientific Psychology is a peer-reviewed journal published by the APA, the premiere association of US psychologists. What RS has ever suggested it publishes "fringe racial hereditarianism"? Or that Russell Warne "promotes" any such "fringe theories"? Just because some Wiki editors once signed onto your Rfc claiming that "the theory that a genetic link exists between race and intelligence"—whatever that mouthful of mush might mean—is a "fringe theory" doesn't make it so, nor does it mean that you can violate WP:BLP by maligning a respected researcher based on nothing but your personal opinion. What's most relevant is that Warne is indisputably a published expert on myths and misconceptions regarding the study of intelligence and how that subject is taught—which is the capacity in which I've cited him. Even more pertinently, his paper is 100% a RS by Wikipedia standards, and I encourage you to provide any RS that disputes his points which I've included.
  4. Most importantly: which of Warne's specific points about the analogy that I included do you claim to be false, and what is your reliably-sourced basis for doing so?
Thanks! Elle Kpyros (talk) 12:50, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
Except for a brief, unsourced reference to Block, the main part of your edit was an attempted refutation of Lewontin's point, sourced to Warne. The basic claim in your attempted refutation was the assertion that individual genetic differences (in intelligence, since that's what the article is about) must lead to intergroup genetic differences: interracial differences must be at least partly the result of individual genetic differences. Thus, the main point of your edit was to directly contradict the consensus reached at two recent RfC's that this is a fringe POV and so must be treated in accordance with WP:PROFRINGE, avoiding FALSEBALANCE. There was nothing "sideways" about reverting your edit. NightHeron (talk) 13:41, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
The corn stalks analogy is now sourced to Ned Black, who is not a geneticist either (and not a scholar, for that matter). If we want to use this analogy in the article, we should add the criticism too, unless it can be shown that this criticism is refuted by the majority of scholars in this field.
Regarding the sentence about the interracial differences, I agree with you that a single article cannot overturn the consensus and therefore it should not be added. Alaexis¿question? 19:48, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
Reading Ned Block's BLP, I see that he has a PhD in philosophy from Harvard, has been a professor at MIT, and since 1996 has been a professor (or professor emeritus) at NYU. As a professional philosopher, he has standing to comment on the illogicality of the claim that the existence of a genetic role in individual differences implies a genetic role in intergroup differences. NightHeron (talk) 20:56, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
I'm not saying he doesn't, this was a response to Generalrelative's characterisation of Russel Warne (a psychologist at Utah Valley University with no professional expertise in genetics. For statements on controversial topics we look to relevant subject matter experts, not just anyone with a "Dr." in front of their name who believes passionately one way or the other.). Alaexis¿question? 21:07, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
Generalrelative also made the suggestion of including a citation to Richard Lewontin, who was a geneticist and who popularized Ned Block's observation because he thought it was valid and important for people to understand. NightHeron (talk) 22:00, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
Yup. If, as Ekpyros has asserted, Lewontin is responsible for popularizing the analogy, it shouldn't be hard to cite Lewontin and leave it at that. For the record as well:
1) I'd support getting rid of the Chomsky quotation which mentions Block. I don find it particularly helpful here. We can also cut the one sentence which cites Block as its source. It's true that neither of them are subject-matter experts, which is the standard we should abide by.
2) This section really is incomplete, only not at all in the way Ekpyros seems to believe. Indeed, there is zero controversy among population geneticists today about the fact that the heritability of traits at the individual level tells us nothing about between-group difference. That's population genetics 101. See e.g. "Heritability in the genomics era — concepts and misconceptions" by Visscher et al. in Nature Reviews Genetics (2008): [46]. We can definitely do a better job of presenting this. Whether the corn analogy should stay or go is an open question, as far as I'm concerned, but what we must not do is misrepresent the state of scientific consensus regarding the difference between individual- and group-level heritability.
3) The entire first paragraph of the section is, in my view, hopelessly garbled and off-topic. The section could easily be improved by simply removing it.
Generalrelative (talk) 23:41, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

For those without institutional access, here’s the money quote from Visscher et al.:

Box 2: Misconceptions regarding heritability [...] Heritability is informative about the nature of between-group differences –– This misconception comes in two forms, and in both cases height and IQ in human populations are good examples. The first misconception is that when the heritability is high, groups that differ greatly in the mean of the trait in question must do so because of genetic differences. The second misconception is that the observation of a shift in the mean of a character over time (when we can discount changes in gene frequencies) for a trait with high heritability is a paradox. For IQ, a large increase in the mean has been observed in numerous populations, and this effect is called the Flynn Effect, after its discoverer. The problem with this suggested paradox is that heritability should not be used to make predictions about changes in the population over time or about differences between groups, because in each individual calculation the heritability is defined for a particular population and says nothing about environments in other populations. White males born in the United States were the tallest in the world in the mid-19th century and about 9cm taller than Dutch males. At the end of the 20th century, although the height of males in the United States had increased, many European countries had overtaken them and Dutch males are now approximately 5cm taller than white US males, a trend that is likely to be environmental rather than genetic in origin.

Including a summary of this, and perhaps a bit of quotation as well, could certainly improve the section we’re discussing. Generalrelative (talk) 23:57, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

Generalrelative, I'd be happy to get rid of the corn analogy, which everyone knows is weak sauce—but from judging by the completely uninformed and histrionic response I got for simply describing its well-known and well-sourced shortcomings in a minor edit—good luck with that! Elle Kpyros (talk) 04:31, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
I would be careful about what appears to be a pattern of projecting your own behavior onto others re. "completely uninformed and histrionic", "weak sauce". NightHeron is both very measured and very well informed on this topic, and has the support of a broad consensus for the work he does to protect this article from racialist POV-pushing. That doesn't mean he never makes a mistake. We all do. But reacting as though you're being persecuted when you get reverted is incompatible with the values of this project. If others are not persuaded by your arguments, perhaps they're simply unpersuasive? Generalrelative (talk) 04:37, 17 September 2021 (UTC)


NightHeron—you have utterly missed the point of what I wrote, which in no way said that all interracial differences—let alone those in intelligence—must be the result of individual genetic differences. Just that in groups with non-random genetics, some differences must be the result of individual genetics. In other words, we know that genes create differences, and we know that human races have genetic distinctions—therefor those genetic distinctions must create differences between races. Whether racial IQ differences are genetically caused remains to be seen—and you'll note I made no claims about the subject. My edit pointed out solely that Lewontin's analogy only proves that between-group differences in corn height are 100% environmental, because the corn is genetically random—and since human races decidedly are not, his analogy fails when extrapolating to interracial differences. His analogy would only apply to IQ differences between identical twins, or other genetically matched groups.
Get it? Once you do, you will realize why your accusation that my edit promoted some "fringe theory"—or said anything about whether interracial differences in intelligence are caused by genetics—was entirely false, caused by your failure to understand what I'd written, and why your reversion was unwarranted. Curious: did you even bother to read Warne's material which I cited? Elle Kpyros (talk) 03:55, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
As I stated above, there is zero controversy among population geneticists about the fact that the heritability of traits at the individual level tells us nothing about between-group difference. Neither your original reasoning nor that of Warne –– who is not (for all the hot air he spews on the topic) a subject-matter expert –– will change that. And please, try not to throw stones in the glass house of "failure to understand". Generalrelative (talk) 04:30, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
Generalrelative Kindly show me where I have suggested the heritability of a trait at the individual level suggests a genetic cause for between-group differences in that trait. Let alone having suggested that in the context of racial difference in intelligence. Thanks! Elle Kpyros (talk) 05:16, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
BTW: "did you even bother to read..." is a typical question of proponents of fringe theories. --Rsk6400 (talk) 04:58, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
When an editor suggests adding something to an article they've just reverted—and does so in a thread about their reversion—it seems an eminently fair assumption that they didn't read what they reverted. And characterizing something I've written as a "typical of fringe theorists" isn't just puerile and asinine—it's an obvious concession that I haven't actually put forth any such theories. Elle Kpyros (talk) 05:22, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
I don't think it was suggested that anyone is a fringe theorist. What Rsk6400 said was "...proponents of fringe theories". I believe there is a difference. One is labeling and the other is more about editing. A proponent edits in such a way as to support a fringe theory or a set of fringe theories. And fringe view is simply a minority viewpoint. However, a fringe view could also have no support. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 06:13, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
NightHeron This is beyond parody:
  1. Ned Block attributes the corn-seed analogy to Lewontin—not the other way around. You're proposal would completely misrepresent the facts. This is inexcusable, given that it's right there in the cited source, which you obviously didn't even bother to consult before suggesting further editing. The reason I wrote that the latter "popularized" it is because he didn't come up with it any more than Block did, and indeed appears possibly to have plagiarized it. In other words, I was correcting the (implied) misattribution to Block. But you reverted my edit about Block—again, because you've not the foggiest idea what you're blathering on about.
  2. This is especially rich: I did cite Lewontin as having popularized the analogy, as you claim GeneralRelative wants to do… in my edit which you wholesale reverted. The fact that you that you apparently don't even realize this reveals how thoughtlessly you're running roughshod over this article, while treating it as your private fiefdom. Unbelievably enough, it appears that you didn't even read, let alone understand what you reverted.
You've not only revealed yourself to have been clueless regarding every part of my 6-item edit you blanket reverted—it's now abundantly clear that you didn't make the slightest effort to try to understand what you were reverting, such as by actually consulting the cited RS. Instead, you ignorantly believed that I was claiming race differences in IQ are genetically caused (see my other reply), and simply wholesale reverted the other 5-odd edits I'd made, while blathering on about "fringe theories" and your pet Rfc. You made an ad hominem attack on the author of a source you never read—or if you did, never comprehended in the slightest. I very seriously believe you should not be editing this article at all, given that you're going around hair-trigger reverting stuff you haven't read and/or can't be bothered to try to understand. It's shambolic, an utter betrayal of the responsibility of building an encyclopedia, and a perfect disgrace. Elle Kpyros (talk) 05:12, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

@Ekryros: In thinking that Ned Block was the source of the corn analogy and Lewontin popularized it, I was responding to what you wrote above: What is the problem with identifying Ned Block as the source of the analogy image? and later: that analogy was popularized by Lewontin. From this I assumed that Ned Block was the source of the corn analogy, and Lewontin popularized it. Sorry -- from what you now say, I guess we both got it backwards. I didn't check the citation to Block because there was no citation to Block; that part of your edit was unsourced.

Above I specified which part of your edit endorsed the fringe theory that, as you put it in your edit, interracial differences must be at least partly the result of individual genetic differences. According to geneticists, there is zero evidence that interracial differences in performance on intelligence tests are partly the result of individual genetic differences. The reason why the claim in your edit relates to intelligence (and so is covered by the two recent RfCs) is that you put your edit in an article titled "Race and intelligence".

I don't appreciate your litany of personal name-calling, which violates WP:NPA and could result in sanctions against you if you continue. You have called me uninformed, histrionic, blathering, clueless, ignorant, puerile, asinine. Wikipedia is not some kind of social media platform where insults and name-calling are accepted. Please stop this behavior immediately. NightHeron (talk) 12:29, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

NightHeron, I'm not sure why you're still not getting it:
  1. Yes, you got it backwards; no, I did not. I never suggested Block was the original source of the analogy; I'm well-read in this area and have long-known the analogy is commonly referred to as "Lewontin's" (although it appears not to have originated with him either, which is why I wrote "popularized"). I identified Block as the source of the image in the article, because he was; I didn't write the Wikipedia article or cite Block and didn't see any need to change the image to the one Lewontin previously used, as I assumed (perhaps mistakenly) that the editors who did write the article had some familiarity with the subject matter. Again, if you'd bothered to read the cited material before reverting, you wouldn't have been confused about this—Block introduces the analogy by stating "Richard Lewontin responded a year later with a graphic illustration…" Is it really too much to ask that an editor make a basic effort to understand another's edit before they revert it?
  2. I sincerely don't understand why this is so difficult for you to grasp. I never wrote that all racial differences are the result of genetic differences, let alone the black-white intelligence gap. I noted that human races are not genetically identical groups, therefore some of their differences must be genetic—not all differences or some part of each and every difference. Again, the analogy was the subject of my edit. If you failed to understand all this, all you had to do was look at the cited source. My edit stands without that sentence—again, if you objected to it based on a misunderstanding, all you had to do was ask, or even edit that portion which you found objectionable. The simplest attempt to familiarize yourself with what you reverted, plus an assumption of good faith, would have led to a very different result.
  3. What I find so grating is your refusal to follow or even acknowledge basic reversion guidelines. This would have been a simple matter if, rather than wholesale reverting my edit, you had properly reverted only the portion you believed harmed the article, and explained specifically why you believed that part did so—which is exactly what I've been asking you to do. Instead, it has taken this long for you to simply identify the sentence you objected to and to explain why. Now that you've actually articulated your objection, it's easy for me to respond as to why you're mistaken. Instead, you immediately accused me of POV-pushing and fringe-theory-promotion for, in part, identifying Ned Block as the source of the image in the article or pointing out that the corn seeds in the analogy were genetically random—just totally indefensible editing.
  4. I didn't "name-call". I pointed out, for example, that you were uninformed on the topic you're editing—which you've acknowledged—not an uninformed or stupid person, broadly. Nor did "puerile" or "asinine" refer to your actions, unless you're also Rsk6400. If I've hurt your feeling, I of course apologize unreservedly—I assure you everything I've written was entirely in regards to your poor editing here, not any sort of broader observation of you as a person.
  5. Last but hardly least, in terms of moving forward: was there anything in my multipartite edit other than that sentence that you found objectionable? Or which you still don't understand?
Thanks, Elle Kpyros (talk) 15:31, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
Since NightHeron and I are not the same person, you might also want to apologize to me. --Rsk6400 (talk) 16:05, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
Rsk6400, perhaps you can explain the utility of your claim that "'did you even bother to read...' is a typical question of proponents of fringe theories"—because to me, it reeks of WP:NOTHERE. Even if we posit that your claim is true—how does it in any way help to advance this article? If I understood it to be constructive, I would of course wholeheartedly apologize for having characterizing it—again, not you—as puerile and asinine. Thanks! Elle Kpyros (talk) 17:46, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
@Ekpyros: My mistake -- I didn't notice that the insulting words "puerile" and "asinine" were directed at another editor, not at me. That actually makes your conduct worse, since it means that you've been insulting two editors, not just one.
I'll also respond to your misapplication of WP:MASSR (which, by the way, is an essay, not a policy). I did not do a massive reverting. Your edit was a short one, and except for a small, unsourced addition about Ned Block, about 90% of it consisted of an attempted refutation of the corn analogy based on a statement you wrote that directly contradicts what geneticists say and also violates WP:NPOV and WP:PROFRINGE. You used wikivoice to falsely suggest that scientists have refuted the Block/Lewontin argument: Subsequent scientists have pointed out that the corn-stalk analogy...can be misleading:...individual humans are not randomly sorted into racial groups. Due to differing evolutionary histories and shared ancestries, racial groups have inherited genetic differences, and thus interracial differences must be at least partly the result of individual genetic differences. It harms the encyclopedia to insert an edit that promotes the theory of genetic superiority of certain races over others in intelligence. NightHeron (talk) 19:24, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
Just to be clear, referring to any other editors as: uninformed, histrionic, blathering, clueless, ignorant, puerile, asinine and so on contradicts WP:NPA and could ultimately lead to a block. Saying it is about editors' actions does not change how it is viewed on Wikipedia. "Comment on content, not on the contributor. Personal attacks harm the Wikipedia community and the collaborative atmosphere needed to create a good encyclopedia". Also, aspersions (personal attacks) may be removed from the page per WP:NPA. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 20:45, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
If you have a problem with an editor generalizing or mentioning that proponents of fringe typically ask a certain question - that proponents tend to edit in this way - then it is best to simply say so - that there is a perceived problem with that. Countering with personal attacks does not help with the discussion. In fact, it could drive other editors away. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 20:57, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

Merger discussion at The Bell Curve

Your participation is welcome in the discussion at Talk:The Bell Curve#Merger proposal concerning merging the article Cognitive elite into The Bell Curve. NightHeron (talk) 22:10, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

Moved from user talk page

Putting the socks away. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 14:59, 16 November 2021 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.


You reverted my edit on the article "race and intelligence", explaining it by implying that the edit was based on personal analysis. However, it is the scientific consensus that intelligence is influenced by genetics (hope we both agree on that, so that I don't have to provide citations, but can do if needed) on an individual level. It is then a direct logical implication that the mean level of intelligence in groups of individuals is influenced by genetics - it's just that this influence is smaller by a factor equal to the number of people in the groups (assuming natural intelligence is distributed normally). There is no personal analysis at all.

In anticipation of a likely mention of WP:SYN, I will mention WP:SKY. We don't need a citation for the fact that, due to genetic mutations, there is natural variability in not only intelligence but every human trait - the only uncertainty that exists is in the variability of said trait. Maxipups Mamsipupsovich (talk) 13:16, 19 June 2021 (UTC)

The Race and intelligence article has been the subject of considerable controversy. It is currently subject to Discretionary sanctions, and accordingly, making a significant change to the first sentence of the lede without prior discussion is inadvisable. If you wish such a change to be agreed to, you will do best to discuss it on the article talk page, where other contributors will be aware of the discussion. Accordingly, beyond advising you to read the article itself and the article talk page archives, and to read WP:SYN and WP:SKY again more carefully, I'm not going to discuss the matter here. THat is what article talk pages are for. AndyTheGrump (talk)

It's funny that you say that "making a significant change to the first sentence of the lede without prior discussion is inadvisable" given the sentence that I made changes to was added as a result of a discussion that I initiated. But okay, noted. Talk page it is. I'm a bit disappointed you didn't actually provide any reasons for why you felt reverting my edit was the best course of action, but I guess someone on the article's talk page will explain. Maxipups Mamsipupsovich (talk) 15:40, 19 June 2021 (UTC)

Andy did, in fact, provide an explanation for his revert. Your assertion to the contrary makes no sense, as the explanation is right there in his edit summary for everyone to read.
As for the substance of your edit summary: You should read the FAQ on the article talk page, as it explains exactly why the OR justification you provided is wrong.
Your comment about WP:SKY above indicates that you're likely not fully familiar with the subject of race and genetics. Fortunately, the FAQ I mentions provides a brief primer on that, enough info to show that your argument regarding WP:SKY is based on an inaccurate-but-common-among-the-laity belief about genetics and race. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 16:18, 19 June 2021 (UTC)
@MjolnirPants: I'll have you know that I have read the entire FAQ, with all the sources provided in it, from start to finish. I can only assume that you either haven't done the same or have misinterpreted what I'm saying, as, if anything, some of the sources provided support my initial intuition, with none refuting it. Although having read such a large amount of text, I can't hope to find the exact citations, I do recall some of the sources saying something along the lines of "any plausible genetic differences in intelligence between populations are due to the random fluctuations in the intelligence of individuals, and are hence negligible", and "if there are genetic differences between populations, the direction of the mean difference could favor Africans or Europeans with equal likelihood". In fact, this intuition is not only not refuted/supported by these sources, it is also self-evidently true and implied from the clearly established consensus that intelligence on an individual level is influenced by genetics ─ and it would be such even if I was completely unfamiliar with the field of genetics. Maxipups Mamsipupsovich (talk) 02:17, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
I can only assume that you either haven't done the same MjolnirPants literally wrote the FAQ. Leijurv (talk) 03:27, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
@Maxipups Mamsipupsovich: Here is a clear explanation as to why your "self-evidently true" supposition is false. It's from the Nature article "Heritability in the genomics era — concepts and misconceptions" (ref #2 under the Heritability of IQ section in the FAQ). In a list of "misconceptions regarding heritability" it lists as false the assumption that "Heritability is informative about the nature of between-group differences" and goes on to explain why in detail:

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

An open-access vrsion of the article is here. I hope that's informative. Generalrelative (talk) 03:34, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
Doesn't mean that they read all of the sources cited in the FAQ from start to finish. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Maxipups Mamsipupsovich (talk • contribs) 13:34, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
Oooo, spooky goalposts, moving from one place to another! And new responses go to the bottom and need to be signed. --Hob Gadling (talk) 14:16, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
Comment about goalposts struck. I have read the entire FAQ, with all the sources provided in it, from start to finish and I can only assume that you either haven't done the same together show that that was part of the goalposts from the start. --Hob Gadling (talk) 06:28, 21 June 2021 (UTC)
Do people really not understand what I'm saying? None of what Generalrelative has cited has anything to do with the point that I'm making. I'll try to put it in different words. Let's say the variance in the genetically determined intelligence of a single person is . From the definition of variance, it follows that the variance of a sample mean of a group of people is , where n is the number of people in the group. Since this variance is non-zero, and since intelligence is a continuous (not discrete) quantity, it is then implied that the probability of two sample means ─ even if taken from the same parent population ─ of being exactly the same is zero. So it is in fact impossible for there not to be any genetic differences between any two groups of people. Once again, this conclusion is trivially true and follows directly from the assumption that intelligence is a continuous quantity. One doesn't need any knowledge in genetics to reach this conclusion. Maxipups Mamsipupsovich (talk) 12:32, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
I think we understand quite well what you're saying. You're saying that for statistical reasons between any two sets of people there will be a genetic difference in average intelligence. For example, let X be the set of people whose last names begin with the odd-numbered letters A,C,E,G,..., and let Y be the set of people whose last names begin with the even-numbered letters B,D,F,H,.... So, according to you, it must be the case that either the X people are genetically superior to the Y people in intelligence, or else the Y people are genetically superior to the X people in intelligence? NightHeron (talk) 13:24, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
Terms like "genetically superior" are not very rigorous. In rigorous terms, the average innate/genetic intelligence of the X people is higher than that of the Y people, or vice versa. And that's not according to me ─ that's according to some very basic statistics. Maxipups Mamsipupsovich (talk) 14:00, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
And the fact that what you call "very basic statistics" leads to an absurd, obviously wrong conclusion when applied to NightHeron's example does not bother you? Maybe your understanding af basic statistics is wrong? This happens to people, you know.
I think we should just keep using WP:RS instead of your WP:OR. --Hob Gadling (talk) 14:16, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
Given that I'm a statistician by profession, yeah, I clearly should book up on basic statistics. Would you be willing to share your immaculate statistical understanding with me? Maybe you can teach me how to, in cases where mathematically provable results contradict our intuition, claim that maths is wrong and that it's our intuition that's right? Is that the secret to statistics that has evaded me for so long?
In all seriousness, I'd like to hear why you think my conclusion is "obviously wrong". It seems pretty intuitive. Maxipups Mamsipupsovich (talk) 14:25, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
The result was that the first letter of my last name is genetically connected to my intelligence.
Now is the time to tell us what you actually mean by "genetic differences". Is it just the unavoidable statistical fluctuations? Essentially, "different numbers are different"? Measurements of the X and Y IQs yield slightly different numbers, but the difference gets tinier and tinier with increasing sample size? Then, yes, you are right! Everybody here agrees! Clap. Clap. Clap.
Or do you mean "genetic differences based on a real, measureable, reproduceable effect with real-life consequences, well outside the white noise"? In that case, you will need more than trivially true statements. --Hob Gadling (talk) 14:43, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
The bottom line is that the statement "genetics does explain the intellectual differences between X and Y, and these differences are hence environmental in origin" is a complete falsity. As you said, everybody here agrees with this, right? So then why is this exact statement in the article, and the moment that I tried to change it to make it not trivially false, my edits got immediately reverted? I must be missing something major here. Maxipups Mamsipupsovich (talk) 14:50, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
@Maxipups Mamsipupsovich: Yes, you seem to have gotten the consensus position precisely backwards here. It is as geneticist / neuroscientist Kevin Mitchell says (quoted in the FAQ): "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." Assuming that individual genetic differences in intelligence imply the existence of group-level genetic differences in intelligence is a fallacy, which was the point of the bit I quoted for you above. The FAQ cites several other RSs which state this explicitly, so if you've read them all already you should be familiar. Generalrelative (talk) 15:55, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
@Generalrelative: As much as like to keep my tone respectful, this is getting a little bit frustrating. Did you bother reading anything that I've written after your initial reply? Clearly I am not advocating that systematic genetic differences are likely. My argument is that random fluctuations in the mean level of intelligence mean that, in any two groups at any given time, the mean level of intelligence will necessarily be different. So, for example, the average genetic difference in IQ between Americans and Nigerians might be 0.001 now; in a couple of generation's time, it might be -0.002; and 200 years ago, it might have been 0.003. For a thousandth time, this statement is not a matter of personal opinion or consensus ─ it's a trivially true fact that is logically implicit from the assumption that genetics influences intelligence at an individual level (which we all agree it does). How can I make my point any clearer? Tell me? Which part of what I said is confusing or ambiguous? Maxipups Mamsipupsovich (talk) 16:31, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
If what you say is true, it tells us precisely nothing about any relationship between race and intelligence. It is a statement about statistical noise. AndyTheGrump (talk) 16:38, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
But it does make the statement "genetics does not explain differences in IQ test performance between racial groups, and observed differences are therefore environmental in origin" false. Maxipups Mamsipupsovich (talk) 16:48, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
Wikipedia articles are not an exercise in sophistry. AndyTheGrump (talk) 16:54, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
@Maxipups Mamsipupsovich: No it does not. Just to unpack a bit: the scientific consensus is that even if such random fluctuations exist they are not detectable by any means that have yet been tried, and therefore they explain nothing (whether even minute fluctuations are likely to exist at all is a matter of controversy among geneticists, but there is strong consensus that current evidence gives no indication what they might be if they do exist). This means that the statement in question –– i.e. "the scientific consensus is that genetics does not explain differences in IQ test performance between racial groups" –– is not a falsity as you claim but rather an accurate description of the case. The bit about "environmental in origin" is summarizing another part of the article's main body. Please refer to WP:NOTSYNTH and MOS:LEAD if you are curious about why these statements are fused into a single sentence in the lead. Generalrelative (talk) 16:53, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
In other words, if we haven't detected something, that necessarily implies that this something has no explanatory power. Is this an accurate analysis of what you're saying here? Maxipups Mamsipupsovich (talk) 16:59, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
@Maxipups Mamsipupsovich: You might think of it this way (leaving out lots of nuance and context for the sake of simplicity):
1) There is a statistically significant observed gap in average IQ test performance between e.g. Black and White Americans.
2) Even the most advanced genetic arguments advanced by racial hereditarians fail to show that White Americans are more likely to enjoy a genetic advantage in IQ than Black Americans; indeed, both groups are equally likely to enjoy such an advantage, if such an advantage does exist, based on all currently available information. [47] Some geneticists, notably David Kaiser, believe that small yet detectable differences in cognitive ability may be found in the future, but crucially even he makes clear that we have absolutely no clue which groups will be found to be genetically favored. [48] Those hereditarians who have claimed to detect a positive signal favoring White people have been roundly debunked on both theoretical and empirical grounds by genetics professionals.
3) Thus, if Black Americans are just as likely to be genetically favored in terms of IQ test performance as White Americans, genetic differences do not explain the observed difference in IQ test performance between these groups. And you don't have to take my word for it. Here's Ewan Birney et al.: "In reality for most traits, including IQ, it is not only unclear that genetic variation explains differences between populations, it is also unlikely." [49] And here's Stephen Ceci and Wendy Williams: "There is an emerging consensus about racial and gender equality in genetic determinants of intelligence; most researchers, including ourselves, agree that genes do not explain between-group differences." [50]
4) Note that this argument runs parallel to another, similar argument about the potential scale of such differences, which all genetics professionals agree must be very small if they do exist, i.e. much smaller than observed group-level differences in IQ test performance.
Generalrelative (talk) 18:42, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
Maxipups Mamsipupsovich, it's clear to me that you're not doing OR here. Instead, you're discussing an aspect of genetics from the standpoint of statistics and in doing so, missing some important considerations. Your reasoning is sound enough, but you're not following it through before you arrive at a conclusion. You're just working out the statistics and then completely ignoring all the genetics.
The bottom line is that the statement "genetics does explain the intellectual differences between X and Y, and these differences are hence environmental in origin" is a complete falsity. Absolutely nothing you have argued here supports this claim, and there is no evidence which supports it, and quite a bit of evidence which (as I've already pointed out) directly contradicts it.
My argument is that random fluctuations in the mean level of intelligence mean that, in any two groups at any given time, the mean level of intelligence will necessarily be different. We're all in agreement on that point. The problem is that this article is about the differences between racial groups, not the differences between any arbitrary group. We have to contrast the subject of this article with the expected delta between arbitrary groups in order to stay on topic. Nobody's arguing that the range of human intelligence is not caused by genetics. The research, as well as the consensus of both the scientific community and the Wikipedia community is that the differences between the delta of racial groups and the delta between arbitrary groups is not genetic.
Also, for the record, I have, in fact, read and made sure I understood each and every reference used in that FAQ, as well as the large majority of sources used in this article, many of which I have purchased over the past 5 years in order to fully understand the subject. I first read this article believing some very different things about the subject than I now know to be true, and the FAQ is the direct result of the years-long deep dive I took into this. So your continual insistence that I don't understand the FAQ which, again, I wrote is not only a remarkably stupid line of argumentation, it's a violation of our behavioral guidelines to continue to insist that I must not know what I'm talking about if I disagree with you. I strongly advise you to drop it, because all it's accomplishing is reflecting poorly upon your attitude and understanding.
Now, I've said my piece. I won't continue to argue with you. It's quite clear that you don't have consensus for your edits. You can accept that, or you can continue to litigate it, which will very quickly become disruptive. I advise you to do the former. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 17:19, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
@MjolnirPants: I'll start off by saying that I appreciate your generally respectful tone. What I appreciate slightly less is your putting words in my mouth and claiming that I not only opined that you don't understand the FAQ, but insisted (!) on this ─ given I have never expressed such a sentiment to begin with (read carefully ─ I said that you either didn't study all the sources in the FAQ or misinterpreted what I was saying; it turns out it was the latter). But that's okay.
Anyway, I'm still far from convinced. Since we're all in agreement that at least some (even if a minute amount) of the differences in IQ test performance are genetic, to me, this renders the phrase "observed differences [in IQ test performance] are therefore environmental in origin" at least partially untrue. These observed differences are predominantly or almost entirely environmental, but they can never be 100% such. Equally, genetics (random idiosyncratic genetic mutations) will always explain at least some tiny percentage of these differences.
If I may, I'll explain why I'm so fussed about this seemingly insignificant detail. It is already a pretty popular opinion out in the public that, since Wikipedia can be edited by anyone, it can't at all be trusted and is very unreliable ─ it is especially popular among conservatives, whose views often conflict with the scientific consensus and are hence criticised on Wikipedia. The amount of public trust in science (at least among conservatives) is also low. People will routinely say stuff like "those scientists you speak of say nothing became something and exploded, how can you trust those idiots?". For people like that, a single notable case of bad logic is sufficient to sway them from a place of moderate trust in science and a reasonable degree of scepticism towards Wikipedia articles to complete devotion to conspiracy theories/pseudoscience and fanatical rejection of Wikipedia. They'll see the sentence in the lede that I keep referring to and think "wait, but that's literally impossible, those scientists will come up with anything to justify their liberal bias! If they can't even get basic logic right, how could I possibly trust them on matters that involve more complex logic?" ─ or they'll think the same and instead come to the conclusion that it's not the scientists who cannot be trusted but Wikipedia. There's every chance something like this might have already happened ─ likely many times over. I would not at all be surprised to learn that this single sentence has already created thousands of fanatical anti-Wikipediists or subscribers to the idea that IQ differences between populations are mostly genetic. That's why I think we need to be very careful with such strong statements as the one that I'm challenging. Maxipups Mamsipupsovich (talk) 02:00, 21 June 2021 (UTC)
Maxipups Mamsipupsovich, Your logic only works if the group genetic differences are large enough to be observed with an IQ test. If a given test is good to (for example) 3 significant figures, and the genetic difference is somewhere out in the 5th or 6th digit, then it would not contribute to the observed differences. MrOllie (talk) 02:10, 21 June 2021 (UTC)
@Maxipups Mamsipupsovich: Are you suggesting as an alternative wording like "Differences large enough to be measurable are entirely environmental in origin" or "Environmental factors explain the entirety of differences that are observable with IQ tests" or some such? Leijurv (talk) 02:45, 21 June 2021 (UTC)
you [..] misinterpreted what I was saying is usually followed by a clarification of the obviously ambivalently worded statement that has been misinterpreted.
I find your statement we're all in agreement that at least some (even if a minute amount) of the differences in IQ test performance are genetic confusing. The FAQ does not say it is just a minute amount, and Heritability of IQ says IQ differences between individuals have been shown to have a large hereditary component.
But you keep omitting the crucial part of the sentence you claim to be false again and again. I highlighted it here: Extensive evidence has been published which indicates that observed differences in IQ test performance between racial groups are environmental in origin. (Unless you mean a different sentence. I cannot tell.)
These observed differences are predominantly or almost entirely environmental, but they can never be 100% such Are you really saying the equivalent of "it is false that the earth is round, it is a geoid"?
When people misunderstand what I say, I try to say it a different way. And, instead of providing a longish justification talking about the low trust idiots have in Wikipedia because it tells them things they do not want to believe (we already knew that, and there is no way to change that, except turning the idiots into half-idiots), you should rather say exactly what you want to change into what. For that purpose, it is very helpful to use exact quotes instead of paraphrasing. I looked up your reverted changes to the FAQ, but could not find any connection to what you are saying in this section. --Hob Gadling (talk) 06:28, 21 June 2021 (UTC)
Hob, I advice leaving this. This editor is clearly determined to ignore anything we say. There's a clear consensus here, no point in handing this fellow fresh sticks long after the horse is dead. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 13:05, 21 June 2021 (UTC)
You are probably right. But at least I got a new variation on the dead horse thing out of it: "handing this fellow fresh sticks". --Hob Gadling (talk) 13:25, 21 June 2021 (UTC)
"Fresh sticks! Get ya pipin' hot fresh sticks heeya!" ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 13:38, 21 June 2021 (UTC)
@MPants at work: Nice passive aggression there, Mjolnir. It seems like my compliment of your respectful tone came too soon. I don't understand how I could possibly take this as an insult haha. I think it was a good explanation Yeah, clearly I'm determined to ignore everything you say. Because the only way that other people can disagree with you is if they're stubborn douchebags who will never change their minds about anything. Right. I'll just remind you that neither you nor Hob has presented a single coherent argument against my proposal beyond pedantry (like Hob's entire last comment) and unhelpful assumptions (like your accusation of my insisting on you not understanding the FAQ, despite me never having done so). Neither of you have said anything of substance on this thread that I could possibly listen to. The only user who has even attempted to point out flaws in my reasoning is Generalrelative (and even their point, while fair and one I haven't considered, does not adress the crux of my argument, which is that there is a possibility that observed differences in IQ between racial groups are explained in some small part by genetics ─ whether this possibility is certain or has an only 50% chance of being true). Given your suggestion that the horse that is this thread is dead, I am not going to reply to either them or you (or Hob, for that matter), but rest assured that I am willing to listen to anyone who makes a good point and am very happy to change my mind about anything. I still find the fact that even something as overtly obvious as the point that I'm making is being resisted here on Wikipedia a bit ridiculous and, frankly, quite worrying, but oh well. I'll take your advice, accept that controversial topics on Wikipedia will never stop being a problem, and move on. Maxipups Mamsipupsovich (talk) 14:24, 21 June 2021 (UTC)
I see you've decided to add to the list of WP:ASPERSIONS you've been throwing. I, personally, wouldn't take that route, but you go right ahead and see how that works out for you. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 14:27, 21 June 2021 (UTC)
I, personally, wouldn't take that route *Cough* That's[1] *cough* debatable[2] *cough* to say the least[3] *cough*. That's at least as many aspersions as I have ever cast on anyone here on Wikipedia in my one year of editing. I'm sure that if casting aspersions is really an issue, you're in more danger than I am. That said, if you've got any genuine suggestions as to how I can improve as an editor, I'm willing to listen. It would be silly of me not to, given you presumably know this place ─ and how things work around here ─ much better than I do. Maxipups Mamsipupsovich (talk) 19:26, 21 June 2021 (UTC)
lol That's hilarious.
Here's a genuine suggestion: Accept that you're wrong. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 21:11, 21 June 2021 (UTC)
Thanks, that's very helpful. I'm sure it's very genuine, too. Just what I have asked for. Maxipups Mamsipupsovich (talk) 22:13, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ "all it's accomplishing is reflecting poorly upon your attitude"
  2. ^ "is not only a remarkably stupid line of argumentation, it's a violation of our behavioral guidelines"
  3. ^ "This editor is clearly determined to ignore anything we say"

FAQ edit

More socks. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 17:34, 16 November 2021 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

I made this edit on the FAQ page, as well as this one. Both edits got immediately reverted by user:NorthBySouthBaranof without explanation; naturally, I asked them for one on the talk page, but they haven't responded yet, and I thought I'd get a quicker response here. The first of my edits addresses the fact that the current version is slightly misleading, as it is written in such a way which is likely to mislead the reader into thinking that IQ is not a valid measure of any form of intelligence (especially by answering the question "doesn't IQ measure intelligence" with "not exactly"). It is generally agreed upon that this is not the case, and that IQ does actually measure some types of intelligence ─ just not all (as is actually explained by one of the sources provided in the FAQ). So my edit cleared up this confusion without changing the character of the answer, which conveys that IQ is not an all-encompassing measure of intelligence. The second edit replaced a dubious, America-centric example of Native Americans having the same features as Europeans (even though their phenotype is arguably more similar to that of East Asians) with a much clearer, more global example of North Indians, who actually came from the same Indo-European population as Europeans, so their connection to Europeans is unmistakable. Do people agree with NBSB's decision to revert both of these edits? Maxipups Mamsipupsovich (talk) 12:57, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

Your first edit was not an improvement over the earlier text, because how accurately or reliably IQ measures any aspect of intelligence is open to debate. As with other tests, performance on IQ tests depends on many factors other than what the test was designed to measure. We cannot state as a fact that they're "valid and reliable". Your rationale for the second edit is very weak. "America-centrism" was not a problem in the text. The only America reference in the passage is to Native Americans. When people complain of Wikipedia having disproportionate coverage of the US, they're not talking about coverage of the indigenous population that was displaced by European colonialism. NightHeron (talk) 13:13, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
I don't think that's true. From the article on IQ, "While IQ tests are generally considered to measure some forms of intelligence, they may fail to serve as an accurate measure of broader definitions of human intelligence inclusive of creativity and social intelligence". And, from one of the sources described in the FAQ as a statement by a group of prominent geneticists, "Critics often assert that it is an oversimplified metric applied to a far-too-complex set of behaviours, that the cultural-specificity of tests renders them useless, or that IQ tests really only measure how good people are at doing IQ tests. Although an IQ score is far from a perfect measure, it does an excellent job of correlating with, and predicting, many educational, occupational, and health-related outcomes. IQ does not tell us everything that anyone could want to know about human intelligence – but because definitions of “intelligence” vary so widely, no measure could possibly meet that challenge".
Furthermore, the reliability of IQ tests is known to be very high and is certainly not up to debate. Once again, I direct you to the article on Intelligence quotient, where this is explained in more detail.
All in all, that IQ tests are valid and reliable predictors of the types of intelligence associated with e.g. educational attainment and financial success is a well-documented fact that is barely disputable.
As to my second edit, I don't really understand why my rationale is weak. Surely it's uncontroversial that North Indians resemble Europeans more than Native Americans do, given that Native Americans descended from Asia, while North Indians descended from the same population as Europeans?
That America-centrism wasn't a problem in the text is a sentiment that you have (as an American?), but I, as a non-American, don't share it. Most people outside of the US will not be familiar with what Native Americans look like, while the same cannot be said about North Indians, whose appearance more people around the world are likely to relate to. However, America-centrism wasn't even the main issue that I was addressing ─ that would be the fact that Native Americans really don't have similar features to Europeans, with North Indians being a far closer match. Maxipups Mamsipupsovich (talk) 14:18, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
As to my second edit, I don't really understand why my rationale is weak. Surely it's uncontroversial that North Indians resemble Europeans more than Native Americans do, given that Native Americans descended from Asia, while North Indians descended from the same population as Europeans? Listen, this is not an insult. I'll explain in as much detail as you need if you would like, but this quote right here demonstrates very conclusively that the you just completely missed the point of that answer.
The examples were chosen carefully: Yes, North Indians do resemble Europeans in terms of facial structure more than Native Americans, and yes, that's precisely because they're more closely related. But the whole point of the sentence was to show that there's a range a facial features that remains mostly constant across a large swathe of racial groups, which in turn helps illustrate how random and disconnected the traits that define race are.
As to your first edit: I don't really have a problem with it. It's accurate enough. It's approaching the answer from a different direction, but it's not a complete 180° turn, so it's not really undermining the overall character of the FAQ. I don't think it's really an improvement mind, but if you prefer it, and you can convince a few other editors to support it, I'll certainly not contest it. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 17:32, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
I don't understand how I could possibly take this as an insult haha. I think it was a good explanation. If the point was that, even given completely different genetic lineages, the facial features can still be similar, I can understand why Native Americans are a better fit than North Indians. Although I still think that saying that Native Americans have similar facial features to Europeans a bit of a stretch, and indeed that Generalrelative's aboriginal Australian example is much better (yes, it is also in the FAQ), I understand now why my second edit wasn't helpful. Maxipups Mamsipupsovich (talk) 02:07, 21 June 2021 (UTC)
Although I still think that saying that Native Americans have similar facial features to Europeans a bit of a stretch, As a person of mixed European and Native American ancestry; I disagree, and my family photo albums do, as well. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 13:06, 21 June 2021 (UTC)
(ec) The statement in wikivoice that IQ tests are "valid and reliable" is very misleading without many caveats and qualifications. Given many assumptions about the people taking the tests and the circumstances, perhaps. But that doesn't mean that the statement is true in the real world. It's well known that performance on IQ tests depends on many things not related to cognitive ability, such as whether one is in good health or sick at the time, whether one is well fed or malnourished, whether one had a good night's sleep the night before or suffered from insomnia, whether one is highly motivated to do well (e.g., it's being used to screen candidates for a job) or has no particular motivation to do well, whether one is distracted or able to concentrate, whether the test is given in one's mother tongue or in a 2nd or 3rd language, whether one has had a lot of prior experience taking IQ type tests or whether this is the first multiple-choice test one has ever taken.
As far as which racial or population groups have facial appearances close to other groups, I think the point of the FAQ is that this is subjective. Race is a social construct, and people are often classified by self-identification. It's not surprising that there can be disagreement on who looks like whom. A large proportion of the population is of mixed ancestry. Concerning your proposal to replace "Native American" by "North Indian", this is the first I've heard that "North Indian" is a term for a racial group. Do you have RS that use that term in racial classifications? In any case, you haven't made a convincing argument that referring to "Native Americans" is an example of Wikipedia's excessive coverage of the US. NightHeron (talk) 18:00, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
Yes and.... Just to throw out another explanatory example: Australian Aboriginal Peoples have notable phenotypic similarities with many Sub-Saharan African Peoples (dark skin, broad noses, curly hair) which are in no way indicative of an especially close phylogenetic relationship. Indeed, Australian Aboriginal Peoples are more closely related to Norwegians phylogenetically than either are to, say, Bantu-speaking populations in Africa. Generalrelative (talk) 18:57, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
I think (unless someone changed it) this is even mentioned in the FAQ. Same question, or the next one. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 19:12, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
Just a note that Maxipups Mamsipupsovich has been blocked as a sockpuppet of the banned User:Oldstone James. I've struck his comments; it might be worth going over his edits for anything problematic per WP:BLOCKEVADE. --Aquillion (talk) 16:52, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
I'm shocked, I tell you.
Not by the fact that a sockpuppet decided to try to make sweeping changes to this article without regards for the sources, but by this nine volt battery I just can't stop licking.
It's so tingly! ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 20:35, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
The objections to the reliability and validity of IQ tests above—"whether one had a good night's sleep the night before or suffered from insomnia", and so on—along with such broad claims as "how accurately or reliably IQ measures any aspect of intelligence is open to debate" surely apply to all psychological testing. But "reliability" and "validity" have specific meanings in statistical contexts, and elsewhere Wikipedia states with confidence both that "[p]sychometricians generally regard IQ tests as having high statistical reliability" and that "clinical psychologists generally regard IQ scores as having sufficient statistical validity". WP:BALANCE certainly supports the statement in Wikipedia voice that "IQ tests are statistically valid and reliable", no? Elle Kpyros (talk) 21:11, 27 August 2021 (UTC)
To rehash a lot of the arguments when the FAQ was made: historically, there are a lot of problems with the use and interpretations of IQ results—it's not clear what element of intelligence it measures, even if the results for a person are consistent. (Also, since the "Intelligence quotient" page is not a WP guideline in itself, WP:LOCALCONSENSUS on this page doesn't have to follow the consensus on that page.) —Wingedserif (talk) 21:24, 27 August 2021 (UTC)
Yes, and... it's worth pointing out that nothing in the FAQ contradicts what's written at Intelligence quotient#Reliability and validity. The bit that the recent OP left out, "...for many clinical purposes", is a crucial caveat. This appears to be a non-issue. Generalrelative (talk) 21:42, 27 August 2021 (UTC)
The only thing an IQ test measures is one's ability to take an IQ test. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 11:44, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Mixing "observable" and "visible" traits?

The Q&A seems to confuse "observable" and "visible" traits. Differences in behaviour or cognitive abilities can be observable, although they are not physical. Therefore the claim that "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." Seems nonsensical. How could we find non-observable differences? Is IQ not an "observable trait/characteristic"?

2A00:23C7:EE82:7701:1906:630D:E828:D194 (talk) 17:27, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Please see the above. I'm not sure why you'd want to start an entirely new heading for this but in any case your concerns have been addressed. Generalrelative (talk) 17:59, 16 November 2021 (UTC)
My question is that does the Q&A gives an impression that "observable traits" are visible traits, whereas it also includes observable behavioural differences? So does the Q&A mean to say that there is a genetic base in behavioural differences, or only visible differences?
I do not understand what "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." is trying to say? It seems to imply that differences are limited to physical differences, otherwise it makes no sense to me that it can only show differences that are observable?
2A00:23C7:EE82:7701:CCBA:1BC:2A3D:90D4 (talk) 19:30, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Should the Q&A section have sources?

For example the claim "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." I would be interesting to learn what sources the claim that difference in genes between Africans and Europeans are limited to observable traits is based on.

Similarly there are many other claims there that read more like opinions rather than facts. What are the editing guidelines that apply to the Q&A?

2A00:23C7:EE82:7701:90A2:E3C3:BD92:E870 (talk) 22:11, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

The procedure is pretty simple. You suggest specific changes to the FAQ and then establish a consensus here on the talk page by persuading others. Typically that's done by referencing high quality reliable sources and Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Be aware, however, that this is one of the most contentious topic areas on the whole encyclopedia, with 103 talk page archives for this page alone. Until recently only extended-confirmed users could even comment here due to a long history of disruption. Many of us have been over these issues again and again and again, so you will sometimes reach the limit of people's patience relatively quickly, especially when you can find out the answers to your questions on your own by reading through the archives or doing some basic research on Google.
All that said, I'll assume that you're asking in good faith and will direct you to, e.g. this rather straightforward explanation: [51]. And if you're looking for something a bit more on the peer-reviewed scientific paper side of things, see e.g. [52] or [53]. I hope that's helpful.
Also, many of the answers in the FAQ are full of citations. I'd be more than happy to work with anyone who'd like to add pertinent references to the others. Generalrelative (talk) 04:53, 16 November 2021 (UTC)
Thanks Generalrelative, I do not have a subscription to National Geographic, but I did read the two studies you linked. However, I must have missed the part where they mention that the differences are limited to observable traits. Hope you can quote me where in those sources such claim is made? Its contrary to what I have been taught in my own professional sphere.2A00:23C7:EE82:7701:1906:630D:E828:D194 (talk) 11:36, 16 November 2021 (UTC)
I suggest going back to the first study and everywhere it says "phenotype" understand that by that the authors mean "observable traits" because that's what the term means. Both studies support the scientific consensus that there is no genetic basis for grouping humanity into natural population groups as can be done with other species because of the extraordinarily high degree of interrelatedness that is evident in the human genome, despite the outward differences that would seem to suggest otherwise like skin color and hair type. Again, I hope that's helpful. Generalrelative (talk) 13:55, 16 November 2021 (UTC)
Possibly there is some confusion because of the ambiguity of the term "observable traits." In the phenotype article they are defined as "the set of observable characteristics or traits of an organism. The term covers the organism's morphology or physical form and structure, its developmental processes, its biochemical and physiological properties, its behavior, and the products of behavior" while in the Q&A it seems to refer to visible traits only. Alaexis¿question? 14:40, 16 November 2021 (UTC)
Ah, thanks Alaexis. I see what you mean, and I'd support adding "susceptibility to certain diseases" or something like that for clarity. The key thing I wouldn't want to lose sight of here is the principle of some astonishment, in this case that despite the outward differences which would seem to suggest otherwise we are far too interrelated to be meaningfully sorted into genetically distinct population groups. Generalrelative (talk) 14:56, 16 November 2021 (UTC)
Thanks Alexis! So observable traits include not just physical characteristics, as the Q&A seemed to suggest, but also observable differences in behaviour and cognition?
2A00:23C7:EE82:7701:1906:630D:E828:D194 (talk) 17:13, 16 November 2021 (UTC)
This is the definition from the phenotype article. I have no idea what the sources that were used for the Q&A meant by "observable traits." Alaexis¿question? 17:31, 16 November 2021 (UTC)
By the way you might want to register. There has been a history of problematic editing here... Alaexis¿question? 17:34, 16 November 2021 (UTC)
In this case no, not cognition, since there is a clear consensus that no evidence exists to support the contention that group-level differences in cognition have a genetic basis. That's the key point which the FAQ exists to rebut, and which the recent RfC unquestionably established. Generalrelative (talk) 17:55, 16 November 2021 (UTC)
The current version gives an impression it only refers to physical characteristics, so maybe good to mention that phenotype also includes observable behavioural differences? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A00:23C7:EE82:7701:CCBA:1BC:2A3D:90D4 (talk) 22:35, 16 November 2021 (UTC)
Nope, no evidence exists that group-level differences in behavior have a genetic basis either. Generalrelative (talk) 03:43, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

How is Rothman & Snyderman survey not representative of the mainstream

The Q&A states that surveys on intelligence experts "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."

How is Rothman and Snyderman survey not representative sample of scientific opinion? The 1020 experts in the survey were chosen randomly from the following organisations:

American Educational Research Association (120) National Council on Measurement in Education (120) American Psychological Association: Development psychology division (120) Educational psychology division (120) Evaluation and Measurement division (120) School psychology division (120) Counseling psychology division (60) Industrial and organizational psychology division (60) Behavior Genetics Association (60) American Sociological Association (education) (60) Cognitive Science Society (60)

How are these not mainstream scientists?

You omitted "not representative samples of". Please consult statistics books for beginners to find out how little you understand the problem. --Hob Gadling (talk) 20:37, 16 November 2021 (UTC)
Is your comment the sort of discussion encouraged in Wikipedia? I do not understand how the criticism in the Q&A towards surveys of intelligence experts is in anyway applicable to the Rothman & Snyderman survey. These organisations seem to represent mainstream science, no?
2A00:23C7:EE82:7701:CCBA:1BC:2A3D:90D4 (talk) 20:49, 16 November 2021 (UTC)
Referring to any other editors as uninformed contradicts WP:NPA.
2A00:23C7:EE82:7701:CCBA:1BC:2A3D:90D4 (talk) 20:52, 16 November 2021 (UTC)
Actually no, referring to other editors as uninformed when they have shown themselves clearly to be uninformed does not violate WP:NPA, especially when they have been given ample warning about the nature of this topic area and the norms of contributing here –– as I provided in my first response to you above –– and have failed to read carefully what they aim to criticize. We always assume good faith and that people are coming at this with a reasonable amount of competence, but at some point when people show that they do not possess that competence there is nothing to be done but point that out to the person and, if one wants to go above and beyond as Hob Gadling has done, point them toward a way in which can educate themselves. Of course some people are so caught up in an image of themselves as very knowledgeable that they will react negatively to this, but there is only so much we can do without further disrupting the project. This is all summed up nicely in the explanatory supplement WP:CIR. Generalrelative (talk) 03:51, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
In this case questions arose largely because the Q&A has no references. I understand that possibly the justifications for each item are somewhere in these 103 archives, but wouldn't it be easier for everyone to provide them explicitly? Alaexis¿question? 06:36, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
I'm afraid, questions of this kind will always be repeated by those uninformed people who Generalrelative described so well in their comment above. Look at the "contributions" of that IP, the only one to main space (here) was quite horrible, it was quickly reverted, and justly so. A time sink. --Rsk6400 (talk) 08:35, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
Does anyone want to get the extended confirmed protection restored? Hemiauchenia (talk) 23:10, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
@Hemiauchenia: I wouldn't be opposed, but FYI MrOllie recently raised the issue with Dennis Brown, the admin who issued the EC protection previously. His reply was that the level of disruption here is not yet sufficient to warrant restoration, but he asked to be kept posted if disruption continues. Generalrelative (talk) 05:21, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

Adding the polygenic scores

Regardless of whether the IP from Milan was in good faith, the addition of the polygenic scores does seem relevant and justified given that it meets all of Wikipedia's criteria. 2800:484:877C:94F0:8544:9078:3A8A:4A27 (talk) 22:28, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

It has been explained again and again, both here and at Talk:History of the race and intelligence controversy, why this content will not be added: it violates WP:RS and WP:OR. Generalrelative (talk) 00:23, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Like, I am fine with saying Intelligence is not a reliable source, but then we would need to remove all the references to it from this article then, in order to be consistent. 2800:484:877C:94F0:A4C1:8C1A:84BF:EC33 (talk) 04:23, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

According to Wikipedia policy, a source that is not reliable for the purpose of determining scientific consensus may nevertheless be reliable for determining the opinions of the authors, which of course must be attributed to them. For example, the article contains references to work by Jensen, Rushton, etc., not because they're reliable as a scientific source, but because their writings were highly influential in promoting a fringe viewpoint, and so their views need to be mentioned in the article. NightHeron (talk) 13:04, 3 December 2021 (UTC)


Ok, so let us mention the polygenic scores based on that criterion. Not because they represent scientific consensus, but because they are being put forth as evidence for a fringe view point. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 191.106.148.198 (talk) 14:04, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

In accordance with WP:FRINGE, WP:FALSEBALANCE, and WP:UNDUE, we don't include detailed argumentation for fringe viewpoints. NightHeron (talk) 14:41, 3 December 2021 (UTC)


Ok, but there is a whole section in this article dedicated to research into possible genetic influences, should we delete it then? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 191.106.156.142 (talk) 15:07, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

The talk page at Talk:History of the race and intelligence controversy had to be semi protected to curtail this repetitive POV pushing. Do we have to request that be done here as well? - MrOllie (talk) 15:10, 3 December 2021 (UTC)
Given the type of the pseudo-scientific racist rant (that I have just reverted per wp:NOTFORUM) being attracted, unfortunately yes, it seems that we do. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 16:16, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

There is nothing "psuedoscientific" about this. The genetic hypothesis is a scientific hypothesis, just like any other, and it makes very specific predictions, including that these polygenic scores will be different. The only reason these polygenic scores are not being added, is because they constitute very powerful evidence in favour of a genetic component to racial gaps in IQ, and you guys want to suppress and hide this information from the public. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2800:484:877C:94F0:4863:BF9C:825:FDE9 (talk) 17:24, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

|}

What is the point I do not get?

Ok guys, these polygenic scores either support hederitrianism, or they do not. If the American Journal of Physical Anthropology (a reliable source as far as I can tell) says they do not, do you not think this is an important development in this field that should be included? Unless the point I do not get is that you guys just want to hide this information from the public. I am looking for an argument, not another sudden closing or the discussion please. 2800:484:877C:94F0:78E7:361E:A26D:7647 (talk) 21:18, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

We're not going to keep having this conversation over and over. MrOllie (talk) 21:20, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

We have had it for the reliability of the sources in Intelligence and MDPI, and FINE, I conceded that. But no one has called into question the reliability of the American Journal of Physical Anthropology. As far as I can tell, not argument has been given for not including the paragraph that says that the polygenic scores do NOT support hereditarianism. Especially since it is right in line with modern scientific consensus.

Why you do not want to include that second paragraph has not been discussed yet. 2800:484:877C:94F0:1D0E:83AF:628:E99 (talk) 21:26, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Maybe instead we can turn this around and you can explain to the rest of us what mentioning this study would add to the discussion of race and intelligence? It would seem to me rather that it refutes fringe claims which are undue for inclusion. Note that if you accuse this community of attempting to "hide information from the public" ever again you will not get another second of consideration from me, and will likely have your comment removed as a violation of talk page guidelines. Generalrelative (talk) 00:14, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

Well, the field of genetics has advanced enormously over the last few years. If there is new, direct genetic evidence that the Black-White IQ gap, for example, is not genetic, then that would seem a substantial development in this very field, would you not agree? And since there definitely is an almost universal scientific consensus against racial hereditarianism, should we not present to the public the strong, cutting edge, direct genetic evidence that adds to the mountain of support there already is for this consensus? after all, the last sentence in the introduction says "In recent decades, as understanding of human genetics has advanced, claims of inherent differences in intelligence between races have been broadly rejected by scientists on both theoretical and empirical grounds." But fails to provide any examples of this. How about we include this very study as a shining example of that claim? 2800:484:877C:94F0:9CB:E91:4744:EDCC (talk) 01:22, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

The article as written actually includes lots of examples to support that statement. So I'm not buying your premise here. Generalrelative (talk) 01:44, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

I was speaking of the introduction, which maybe could include a few citations at that point at least. But let us look at the section "Genetics of race and intelligence",

First it says: a review of candidate genes for intelligence published in Deary, Johnson & Houlihan (2009) failed to find evidence of an association between these genes and general intelligence, stating "there is still almost no replicated evidence concerning the individual genes, which have variants that contribute to intelligence differences".

Then it says: A 2005 literature review article by Sternberg, Grigorenko and Kidd stated that no gene has been shown to be linked to intelligence, "so attempts to provide a compelling genetic link of race to intelligence are not feasible at this time.

And there are a few other sentences to the same effect in the section. Now honestly, that section is out of date, we now know of thousands of genetic variants that are associated with Educational Attainment now. Do you not think that section needs to be updated?

2800:484:877C:94F0:D503:EAD8:E165:4323 (talk) 03:07, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

If you want to discuss whether citations belong in the lead, that would be another conversation. Per MOS:LEAD we cannot describe something in the lead which is not discussed at greater length in the article body. In any case, there are in fact lots more examples in the article than the few you describe here. And to your final point, as has been explained numerous times before, making the leap from educational attainment to intelligence would be WP:OR unless the sources themselves do so explicitly. And even if they do, unless they explicitly discuss these statements about intelligence in terms of race then they do not belong in this article. After considering these issues there is a final filter: are they primary sources (such as a single study) or are they secondary sources (such as e.g. a literature review)? We can use primary sources only to support statements that are made notable by inclusion in reliable secondary sources. The secondary sources are the guide to what we consider encyclopedic. Generalrelative (talk) 03:38, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

Nature explicitly says: generates polygenic scores that explain 11–13% of the variance in educational attainment and 7–10% of the variance in cognitive performance. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41588-018-0147-3

So it is not OR.

Stanford picked up, not the more recent larger study, but a previous smaller one that also pinned down a few hundred SNPs with genome wide significance for EA: https://cepa.stanford.edu/content/genetics-success-how-snps-associated-educational-attainment-relate-life-course-development

That is your secondary source.

None discussed this specifically in terms of race, but they do make all of those statements in the "Genetics of race and intelligence" section, outdated. They are:

1) Current studies using quantitative trait loci have yielded little success in the search for genes influencing intelligence.

2) Several candidate genes have been proposed to have a relationship with intelligence.[158][159] However, a review of candidate genes for intelligence published in Deary, Johnson & Houlihan (2009) failed to find evidence of an association between these genes and general intelligence, stating "there is still almost no replicated evidence concerning the individual genes, which have variants that contribute to intelligence differences".

3) A 2005 literature review article by Sternberg, Grigorenko and Kidd stated that no gene has been shown to be linked to intelligence, "so attempts to provide a compelling genetic link of race to intelligence are not feasible at this time."

4) "Almost no genetic polymorphisms have been discovered that are consistently associated with variation in IQ in the normal range."

Come to think of it, statements (1) and (2) do not explicitly discuss these statements about intelligence in terms of race, given that and that they are clearly outdated, maybe they should be deleted.

Finally, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33529393/ Does discuss in terms of race. Not picked up by any secondary sources yet, but you could add it as "Kevin A Bird has found that the distribution of these genetic variants lends no support to the hereditarian hypothesis" or something like that.

2800:484:877C:94F0:D503:EAD8:E165:4323 (talk) 04:56, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

It sounds like you've worked out why the stuff you've proposed doesn't belong in this article. As to whether 1) and 2) should be cut, that's a separate conversation, and I invite you to start a new thread to discuss that if you'd like. Generalrelative (talk) 05:05, 8 December 2021 (UTC)
I just did a simple IP lookup and saw that you are very likely to be the same user as IP 191.106.144.142, who, from their single comment, is clearly WP:NOTHERE to build an encyclopedia per WP:NOFUCKINGNAZIS. Honestly I regret having devoted any time to engaging with you in an effort to assume good faith. Instead I should have checked your IP immediately. Generalrelative (talk) 05:36, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

I am Jewish. 2800:484:877C:94F0:C026:2849:7482:9EF6 (talk) 20:26, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

Long and proud, 17 generations, Sephardic Jewish pedigree, on my mother's side, going back at least until the early 1400s. Not that that is relevant but still. 2800:484:877C:94F0:C026:2849:7482:9EF6 (talk) 20:33, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

Removing outdated material

The section on "Genetics of race and intelligence" has many sentences to the effect that no genetic variants affecting intelligence in the normal range have been discovered. That is not longer true. We should remove that.

2800:484:877C:94F0:C026:2849:7482:9EF6 (talk) 20:36, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

Adding a section on the high European Jewish average IQ

This is one of the more interesting areas of Race and Intelligence that is not explored at all in this article.

2800:484:877C:94F0:C026:2849:7482:9EF6 (talk) 20:36, 8 December 2021 (UTC) |}

Making clear the polygenic scores do NOT support hereditarianism

Profoundly WP:NOTHERE. Generalrelative (talk) 00:27, 9 December 2021 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.


In recent years scientists have found thousands of the SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms) associated with educational attainment (a close proxy for IQ) in what are known as genome-wide association studies. Collectively, these SNPs account for about 10% of the variance in educational attainment in European populations.[1][2] The distribution of these genetic variants across races does not support the hereditarian hypothesis for observed racial differences in IQ scores.[3]

Let us add this. The second sentence is straight from the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, the paragraph is right in line with modern scientific consensus. We have to add it now. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2800:484:877C:94F0:FD2A:567D:EA90:669A (talk) 15:14, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

Thoughts? 2800:484:877C:94F0:8099:F3B9:18C1:D346 (talk) 21:15, 6 December 2021 (UTC)
I think my time is being wasted. Firefangledfeathers 21:19, 6 December 2021 (UTC)
Do you disagree with that paragraph? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2800:484:877C:94F0:410F:1804:8F60:40B4 (talk) 17:46, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ https://www.nature.com/articles/mp2014188
  2. ^ https://www.genomeweb.com/genetic-research/analysis-11m-people-ties-more-thousand-snps-educational-attainment
  3. ^ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33529393/

Adding the latest genetic research

Relentless parade of WP:BLUDGEON, WP:FORUMSHOP and WP:ASPERSION. Generalrelative (talk) 00:30, 9 December 2021 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.


How about we add the polygenic scores on educational attainment SNPs for the relevant races. https://www.mdpi.com/2624-8611/1/1/5 Please do not say we cannot add them because the author on the paper has said mean stuff on twitter btw. 93.149.193.190 (talk) 19:37, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

You guys REALLY don't care if this is true or not right? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.149.193.190 (talk) 22:02, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

There is also the article in the journal Intelligence [1] Given that the journal Intelligence is cited over a dozen times in this article, there should not be a problem with it right? (apart from the fact that the facts hurt your feelings that is) 93.149.193.190 (talk) 22:18, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

(apart from the fact that the facts hurt your feelings that is) Thanks for making it clear you're not here in good faith. clpo13(talk) 22:24, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ https://www.researchgate.net/publication/308783343_A_review_of_intelligence_GWAS_hits_their_relationship_to_country_IQ_and_the_issue_of_spatial_autocorrelation

Latest evidence against hereditarianism

Why was this reverted?

In recent years scientists have found thousands of Single-nucleotide polymorphisms associated with intelligence. The distribution of these genetic variants across races can be summarized in polygenic scores. These scientific developments have provided no support for the hereditarian hypothesis for racial differences in cognitive ability.[1] — Preceding unsigned comment added by Fq90 (talk • contribs)

A short stroll through recent discussions on this talk page (and its archives) will demonstrate that there is a clear consensus against including this content. Edit warring it back into the article after being reverted is disruptive, and such behavior will not result in the content being included. Generalrelative (talk) 17:35, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

Having looked at the archives I saw there was clear consensus against the addition of a statement to the opposite effect, on the basis that the Journal Intelligence and MDPI were not reliable sources, but I have not seen a consensus or any reason given to exclude the above paragraph, which says exactly the opposite of what the paragraph that was shut down by the consensus of the editors. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Fq90 (talk • contribs) 17:40, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

Without assuming bad faith, I'd like to know whether you are the same editor who was posting in those above discussions as an IP. Your language style and reasoning appear to be identical. Generalrelative (talk) 17:43, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

No clue what you are talking about. Removing the most up to date and accurate information from an encyclopedia entry is also disruptive. Users who come to the article and read the section on "Genetics of race and intelligence" are going to go home thinking that no genetic variants contributing to variation in intelligence in the normal range have been found yet, and that is not the current state of the science. Do you not think this is problematic? Fq90 (talk) 17:45, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

If you have no clue what I am talking about then you have not done the work of familiarizing yourself with previous discussions of this topic. Generalrelative (talk) 17:52, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

I have, I only meant to say that I am not the user you mentioned. So is it problematic in your view that the readers of Wikipedia are going home thinking this encyclopedia has given them the most up to date and accurate information when as a matter of fact it has not? Fq90 (talk) 18:02, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

This has been rejected again and again, there is obviously no consensus for inclusion. MrOllie (talk) 18:37, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
I have to admit I'm confused as to why we'd not include this stuff in general as it's clearly relevant to the topic. The piece cited by Fq90 is literally cited in our FAQ on this apge. EvergreenFir (talk) 18:46, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
@EvergreenFir: I'm not seeing it. Firefangledfeathers 19:00, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
@Firefangledfeathers: It's in "Is there really no evidence at all for a genetic link between race and intelligence?", the "[9]" link. EvergreenFir (talk) 19:19, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
Thanks. Ctrl-F failed me. Firefangledfeathers 19:22, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
@EvergreenFir: The reason is that it's not clear that the views this study refutes are notable for inclusion in the article. If there were multiple reliable independent sources like this refuting those views then the situation would be different. The recent history is that an overtly racist IP argued for adding it after their more direct strategy of POV-pushing failed. It seems they figured they could use this study as a Trojan horse to justify presenting hereditarian arguments in more detail or something of that nature. Regardless, the basic issue is that this study does not appear to be DUE for inclusion when the views it refutes have so far not been considered to be. Further, if it were to be included, it would need to be presented in much more detail than the OP has done in order to avoid facile misreading. And it's not at all clear that such a detailed presentation would be DUE. Generalrelative (talk) 19:10, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
@Generalrelative: Okay, that makes more sense. I don't know enough about the topic to assess DUE and don't have the time to look into it. EvergreenFir (talk) 19:21, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
@Generalrelative: Lots of things lend themselves to facile misreadings. For example, suppose someone who knows a few thousand genetic variants associated with intelligence have been discovered already comes to this Wikipedia article and only finds information from 10 years ago saying none have. That person is bound to ask themselves why this information has not been included, some might even be inclined to think that the editors are making an effort to hide this information from them. We would not want that would we?Fq90 (talk) 23:44, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

@EvergreenFir: Exactly, like, it is 2022 already, the last reference in the "Genetics of race and intelligence" is from 10 years ago. The section needs updating.Fq90 (talk) 19:02, 19 January 2022 (UTC)


Are there any recent secondary sources that discuss SNPs in the context of race and intelligence? Firefangledfeathers 19:05, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
[W]hile 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. [54] Generalrelative (talk) 19:34, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

@Firefangledfeathers: I do not know, what worries me is what I have been saying, the readers of the encyclopedia are coming here expecting us to give them up-to-date and accurate information, and they are going home with the more-than-10-years-ago-no-longer-true state of the science. What further worries me is that no one here seems to think this is a problem. Fq90 (talk) 23:23, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

  • Up-to-dateness is not such a high priority for us and is in tension with both accuracy, especially in technical areas and controversial ones, and neutrality, which are more important. We do not need to cover novel findings that have not yet been discussed and evaluated in reliable sources. — Charles Stewart (talk) 00:04, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

Ok, forget mentioning the polygenic scores, focus on merely mentioning that thousands of genetic variants that contribute to variation in intelligence have been discovered already. Would you not say that this is up-to-date, accurate, neutral and uncontroversial, and that these findings have been widely discussed in reliable sources? Further would you not say that the current state of the article, which says that no such genetic variants have been discovered is simply, objectively inaccurate?

As I said, forget mentioning the polygenic scores and its implications, I would be quite happy if we simply add this:

A 2018 study found 1,271 genome-wide significant Single-nucleotide polymorphism that collectively explain 11–13% of the variance in educational attainment and 7–10% of the variance in cognitive performance.[2] Fq90 (talk) 02:35, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

Wikipedia is based on secondary sources, we generally do not report on single studies. Especially for biomedical information because the state of the art tends to fluctuate quite a bit. - MrOllie (talk) 02:38, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
@MrOllie: There is actually secondary material on this. See this 2017 meta-analysis in Nature genetics [55] and the accompanying editorial in Nature [56]. The number is smaller than reported in the 2018 study Fq90 mentions, and the conclusions are more tentative: The meta-analysis identifies 18 genomic regions associated with intelligence, and candidate genes that are highly expressed in the brain. The associations, the study suggests, could explain up to 4.8% of the variance in intelligence across these cohorts. But it's true that there is decent evidence that some specifically identifiable genomic regions contribute a non-zero amount to individual differences in IQ. It's also worth emphasizing that the editorial states explicitly that this provides absolutely no evidence for group-level differences in innate intelligence. I would be okay with removing any content in the existing article which contradicts this. I would not however support adding anything to the article, such as a reference to the meta-analysis itself, which does not discuss race and intelligence, since doing so would clearly be SYNTH. Generalrelative (talk) 02:56, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
I went ahead and made some WP:BOLD edits along these lines. Anyone is of course free to revert (barring 1RR violations of course) and discuss here. Generalrelative (talk) 03:35, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ "No support for the hereditarian hypothesis of the Black–White achievement gap using polygenic scores and tests for divergent selection". American Journal of Physical Anthropology. 175 (2).
  2. ^ "Gene discovery and polygenic prediction from a 1.1-million-person GWAS of educational attainment". Nature Genetics. 2018.

Discussion of polygenic scores in AJP

Given past discussion, this doesn't seem to be a good faith question. User:Fq90 is free to create a new RFC or abide by the current one. Guettarda (talk) 16:41, 25 January 2022 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

Why was this removed now? the American Journal of Psychology is one of the most respected academic journals in the world.

Some researchers have argued that the polygenic scores derived from this research provide evidence for a genetic component to the racial gaps in IQ.[1] — Preceding unsigned comment added by Fq90 (talk • contribs)

Short answer: WP:FRIND. Generalrelative (talk) 16:05, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

I hardly see how this is "fringe" if it is discussed in the American Journal of Psychology. However, here is a secondary source that discusses the polygenic scores as well: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/09/13/can-progressives-be-convinced-that-genetics-matters — Preceding unsigned comment added by Fq90 (talk • contribs)

(edit conflict)The first issue, I think, is that you keep adding content without discussion. Another issue is your word choice: Some researchers have argued is precisely the kind of phrasing discouraged in MOS:WEASEL. Guettarda (talk) 16:10, 25 January 2022 (UTC)
Here is the determination: Talk:Race and intelligence/Archive 103#RfC on racial hereditarianism. Also, sign and indent your comments. Generalrelative (talk) 16:12, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

Ok, change the wording, but at this point not discussing the polygenic scores is encyclopedic negligence. Fq90 (talk) 16:15, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

You know everyone else who's commented disagrees with that. Just repeating that (and edit warring beside) is disruptive editing. - MrOllie (talk) MrOllie (talk) 16:18, 25 January 2022 (UTC)
No. Guettarda's point touched on wording and procedure. Mine was about content. The RfC linked above determined that the POV you are seeking to add is WP:FRINGE. Any discussion of this fringe POV in the article will need to be consistent with WP:FRIND. Generalrelative (talk) 16:19, 25 January 2022 (UTC)
Fq90 is free to propose wording (and sourcing) additions here and to work to build consensus. Obviously the RFC needs to be taken into account. The first step is to stop edit warring. I think the second step needs to be for them to delve into the archives of this page. Then work to build consensus. Guettarda (talk) 16:23, 25 January 2022 (UTC)
Please see above where they claim to be fully aware of past discussions. This is not their first rodeo, and at this point the repetitive WP:BLUDGEON is disruptive. Generalrelative (talk) 16:28, 25 January 2022 (UTC)
Ah, thanks Generalrelative. Then maybe this section is worth archiving? Guettarda (talk) 16:38, 25 January 2022 (UTC)
@Fq90: Just a brief comment/addition: The New Yorker source you linked on geneticist Kathryn Paige Harden does not attribute any views to her on a connection between cognition-related genetics and race, and she has in fact argued against such a connection. Her work focuses on individual differences.Skllagyook (talk) 16:23, 25 January 2022 (UTC)
I think the New Yorker article makes it clear that even Harden's (far more limited) positions aren't quite in the mainstream. Guettarda (talk) 16:25, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

OK, here is a quote from another article discussing the polygenic scores:

While polygenic prediction has been demonstrated to work best for discovery and target samples of matching ethnic background [42, 49], as in the present study, the availability of large-scale discovery samples for other ancestries, e.g., of African or Asian populations, would be indispensable for the comparative analysis of polygenic contribution to cognition in different ancestries and cultures.[2]

That should meet the WP:FRIND criterion right?

Fq90 (talk) 16:38, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ Russell T. Warne. "Between-Group Mean Differences in Intelligence in the United States Are >0% Genetically Caused: Five Converging Lines of Evidence". The American Journal of Psychology. 134: 480–501.
  2. ^ "Polygenic Scores for Cognitive Abilities and Their Association with Different Aspects of General Intelligence—A Deep Phenotyping Approach". Molecular Neurobiology.

References

Section on academic freedom and freedom of inquiry

WP:SOCK drawer. Generalrelative (talk) 01:50, 27 January 2022 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

This section was removed on this basis:

(Removing per WP:FRINGE. Most of these figures(e.g. Rushton, Carl, etc.)are WP:FRINGE, as racial hereditarianism has been determined to be here per an rfc, see the Talk page. Also, much of the presentation is misleading and WP:POV(e.g. Bruce Lahn's variants were found to be unrelated to IQ).)

But the section did not endorse the views of Rushton and Carl, it simply discussed issues relating to academic freedom. Regarding Bruce Lahn, we can add that variants were found to be unrelated to IQ, however as a section on academic freedom, what is relevant is that at the time people thought this research did have implications for race and IQ and that Lahn stopped doing his research as a result. Fq90 (talk) 13:13, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

@Fq90: Your addition presents the idea that racial hereditarian views (e.g. those of fringe figures such as Rushton, Carl, and Murray) are not/were not accepted because of academic or ideological bias (rather than due to the scientific objections/disagreements of the mainstream based on merit - when the views of those researchers have in fact been heavily criticized based on their merits). This is a common hereditarian claim and part of hereditarian narrative which the section endorses - i.e. that of a fringe group, implying that its views have more merit than than the mainstream claims/accepts. And it seems to portray hereditariansm as unjustly persecuted/suppressed. Thus WP:PROFRINGE. Skllagyook (talk) 13:23, 22 January 2022 (UTC)
Not at all, these two propositions could be true at the same time. It could be true that hereditarianism is rejected by the academic community on its merits, while also being true that advocates of the position have faced censorship and social reprisal. This section does not endorse hereditarianism, it simply points to ethical issues with firing, cancelling, shutting down, and physically assaulting people who advocate it.Fq90 (talk) 13:27, 22 January 2022 (UTC)
This is largely dealt with at Scientific_racism#After_1945, we should not have a section like this on this article as well. MrOllie (talk) 13:31, 22 January 2022 (UTC)
@Fq90: The section you added begins with the following:
"Scientists and scholars who have argued in favor of the hereditarian position have faced considerable censorship and social and professional reprisal from both the general public and the academic community."
This strongly suggests that the academic community (and thus the mainstream) is biased and thus its opinions are unreliable. It, and the section paints fringe figures as unjustly persecuted. I find it difficult to see the point of including such section in an article on race an intelligence other than to portray scientific racists as persecuted (and perhaps sympathetic) and the mainstream as biased and untrustworthy. (Also, I would also mention that incident with Watson does not concern actual adademic research conducted by him but rather an opinion he expressed). Skllagyook (talk) 13:38, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

@Skllagyook: "Scientists and scholars who have argued in favor of the hereditarian position have faced considerable censorship and social and professional reprisal from both the general public and the academic community."

Honestly, do you disagree with that?

Not at all, Ben Stein argued the same thing about scientists who happened to be creationists for example, and I would agree they are treated with derision in the academic community. This does not mean they are right, or that the academic community's consensus about evolution is biased or unreliable, or that it is unjust to fire them if they bring their fringe views into the class room.

However, academic freedom is important, as you go through each of the examples listed in the section, do you not find them galling? That a scholar like Turkheimer for example explicitly argues that your abhorrence for a racist hypothesis should trump your commitment to academic freedom? or that the father of modern genetics is ostracized from the academic community for expressing an opinion? or that Sam Harris claims to have reputable scientists in his inbox who agree with hereditarianism but will not say so publicly out of fear?. Fq90 (talk) 13:59, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

Go take your soapbox somewhere else. AndyTheGrump (talk) 14:04, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

Issues pertaining to academic freedom and freedom of inquiry

copy of disputed content
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

Scientists and scholars who have argued in favor of the hereditarian position have faced considerable censorship and social and professional reprisal from both the general public and the academic community.

The Canadian psychologist J. Philippe Rushton faced weekly student protests outside his class that called for his dismissal. [1] In his 1989 debate with geneticist David Suzuki, Suzuki claimed that “There will always be Rushtons in the world and we must always be prepared to root them out and not hide behind academic freedom”, and also called for him to be fired. [2] Rushton then said that he was disappointed that Suzuki’s presentation focused on the politics of the issue under debate more than on the scientific arguments. At the end of the debate Suzuki invited the audience to question the idea that it is the right of an academic to “simply give you the truth” because you saw the pain coming out in the questions of the audience and the conclusions Rushton was coming to affected people’s lives and their children. [3]

In 2006 Chinese-American geneticist Bruce Lahn claimed to have found evidence that genetic variants associated with increased brain size had faced positive natural selection outside of sub-Saharan Africa. Lahn stopped doing his research in this area as it was, in his words, “getting too controversial”. [4]

In 2007 American geneticist, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine awardee, and co-discoverer of the structure of DNA James Watson drew significant controversy when he said he was inherently gloomy about the prospects for sub-Saharan Africa because all the social policies directed at helping it assumed its population was just as intelligent as that of Western Countries, an assumption he disagreed with. [5] In response, some UK venues canceled his appearances for a scheduled tour,[6] and he canceled the rest of his tour.[7][8][9][10] An editorial in Nature said that his remarks were "beyond the pale" but expressed a wish that the tour had not been canceled so that Watson would have had to face his critics in person, encouraging scientific discussion on the matter.[11] Because of the controversy, the board of trustees at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory suspended Watson's administrative responsibilities.[12] Watson issued an apology,[13] then retired at the age of 79 from CSHL from what the lab called "nearly 40 years of distinguished service".[14][15] Watson attributed his retirement to his age and to circumstances that he could never have anticipated or desired.[16][17][18] In 2008, Watson was appointed chancellor emeritus of CSHL.[19][20] In a BBC documentary that year, Watson said he did not see himself as a racist.[21] In January 2019, following the broadcast of a television documentary made the previous year in which he repeated his views about race and genetics, CSHL revoked honorary titles that it had awarded to Watson and cut all remaining ties with him.[22][23][24] Watson did not respond to the developments, having been ill since a car accident in October 2018.[25]

In July 2012, American Physicist Stephen Hsu was named vice president for research and graduate studies. At the time, Inside Higher Ed and Lansing State Journal described the appointment as controversial, due to Hsu's comments endorsing research into using genetic modification to increase human intelligence, and his blog posts describing human race categorization as biologically valid.[26][27] On June 10, 2020, the MSU graduate student union began calling for Hsu to be removed from the administrative position. The MSU student association also called for his removal, and multiple petitions were circulated, including a counter-petition.[28][29] As of June 17, petitions for removal had 700 and 470 signatures, while the counter petition had over 970 signatures.[30] On June 19, 2020 MSU President Samuel L. Stanley announced that Hsu had resigned as Vice President, returning to a tenured faculty position.[30][28] Hsu made clear that President Stanley requested his resignation, and that he did not agree with Stanley's decision.[31]

In December 2018, British sociologist Noah Carl was awarded the Toby Jackman Newton Trust Research Fellowship, a 3-year fellowship at St Edmund's College. More than 500 academics signed a letter opposing Carl's appointment to the fellowship, stating their “deep concern” that “racist pseudoscience is being legitimised through association with the University of Cambridge."[32]. Carl was dismissed following an investigation by the college. [33]

In 2017 political scientists and author of The Bell Curve, Charles Murray was scheduled to speak at Middlebury College. The students at the college organized a protest and prevented Murray from speaking. Murray and Stenger, the professor that invited him, were also physically assaulted when exiting the hall where the talk was supposed to take place. Stenger was later diagnosed with a concussion and a neck injury as a result. [34]

American Neuroscientists and author Sam Harris hosted Murray on his podcast to discuss Murray’s views and the events at Middlebury College. Although Harris largely agreed with Murray’s views on race and human intelligence, he remained agnostic about his social policy prescriptions and questioning Murray’s motivation for doing research in this field in the first place. Harris’ interview with Murray drew significant criticism. [35] American news website Vox published an article claiming Murray and Harris misrepresented the state of the science and that their views were socially pernicious.[36] When discussing said article with Vox’s editor in chief, Ezra Klein, Harris expressed concern that he had spoken to scientists who are experts on the subject, whose names are well known to the public, and who have stellar reputations, who agree with Harris that there is plausibly a genetic component to racial IQ gaps, but who are afraid of speaking publicly about it because of fear of social reprisal. [37]

University of Virginia professor of psychology Eric Turkheimer was one of the authors of the Vox article. Turkheimer was interviewed on the David Pakman Show in June 2018. When asked about whether he thought scientists who investigated the possibility that the racial IQ gaps had a genetic component were racists he said he did not, but he did think they were “putting their commitment to academic freedom and freedom of inquiry above their abhorrence of racist hypotheses”, and that he thought this was a mistake.[38] In this same interview, Turkheimer also said that he thought there was no evidence that the racial IQ gaps had a biological origin, but that in principle the hypothesis could be proven if genes associated with IQ were found, the mechanisms they used to affect IQ were understood, and they were shown to be more common among certain races.[39]

References

  1. ^ "She was the only Black student in one of J. Philippe Ruston's classes. She never got an apology".
  2. ^ JP Rushton and David Suzuki debate at the University of Western Ontario, February 8th, 1989. 46:55 minutes in.
  3. ^ JP Rushton and David Suzuki debate at the University of Western Ontario, February 8th, 1989. 1:43:50 minutes in.
  4. ^ "Scientist's Study Of Brain Genes Sparks a Backlash".
  5. ^ "Fury at DNA pioneer's theory: Africans are less intelligent than Westerners". October 17, 2007.
  6. ^ "Museum drops race row scientist", BBC, October 18, 2007. Retrieved October 24, 2007.
  7. ^ Syal, R. "Nobel scientist who sparked race row says sorry— I didn't mean it", Times Online, October 19, 2007. Retrieved October 24, 2007.
  8. ^ "Watson Returns to USA after race row", International Herald Tribune, October 19, 2007. Retrieved on November 10, 2007
  9. ^ Watson, James (September–October 2007). ""Blinded by Science". An exclusive excerpt from Watson's new memoir, Avoid Boring People: Lessons from a Life in Science". 02138 Magazine: 102. Archived from the original on October 24, 2007. Retrieved November 28, 2007. As we find the human genes whose malfunctioning gives rise to such devastating developmental failures, we may well discover that sequence differences within many of them also lead to much of the observable variation in human IQs. A priori, there is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our desire to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so.
  10. ^ Jerry A. Coyne, "The complex James Watson", Times Literary Supplement, December 12, 2007
  11. ^ " Watson's folly", Nature, October 24, 2007. Retrieved September 27, 2008.
  12. ^ Watson, J.D. "James Watson: To question genetic intelligence is not racism", Independent, October 19, 2007. Retrieved October 24, 2007
  13. ^ van Marsh, A. "Nobel-winning biologist apologizes for remarks about blacks", CNN, October 19, 2007. Retrieved October 24, 2007.
  14. ^ "Dr. James D. Watson Retires as Chancellor of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory" (Press release). Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. October 25, 2007. Retrieved August 31, 2011.
  15. ^ "Announcement by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory". New York Times. October 25, 2007. Retrieved December 5, 2013.
  16. ^ Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. October 18, 2007. Statement by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Board of Trustees and President Bruce Stillman, PhD Regarding Dr. Watson's Comments in The Sunday Times on October 14, 2007. Press release. Retrieved October 24, 2007. Archived September 10, 2010, at the Wayback Machine
  17. ^ Wigglesworth, K. DNA pioneer quits after race comments, LA Times, October 26, 2007. Retrieved December 5, 2007
  18. ^ "Nobel prize-winning biologist resigns.", CNN, October 25, 2007. Retrieved on October 25, 2007.
  19. ^ "Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory James D. Watson". cshl.edu. 2013. Archived from the original on May 24, 2013. Retrieved June 12, 2013.
  20. ^ WebServices. "CSHLHistory – About Us". Retrieved June 29, 2015.
  21. ^ Video: BBC 2 Horizon: The President's Guide to Science Archived May 31, 2010, at the Wayback Machine, September 16, 2008, see 28:00 to 34:00 mark
  22. ^ "Statement by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory addressing remarks by Dr. James D. Watson in "American Masters: Decoding Watson"". Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. January 11, 2019. Retrieved January 13, 2019.
  23. ^ "James Watson: Scientist loses titles after claims over race". BBC News. January 13, 2019. Archived from the original on January 13, 2019. Retrieved January 13, 2019.
  24. ^ Harmon, Amy (January 11, 2019). "Lab Severs Ties With James Watson, Citing 'Unsubstantiated and Reckless' Remarks". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved January 12, 2019.
  25. ^ Durkin, Erin (January 13, 2019). "DNA scientist James Watson stripped of honors over views on race". The Guardian.
  26. ^ Miller, Matthew (October 7, 2012). "From 2012: New MSU VP for research has start-up experience, but controversial views concern some". Lansing State Journal. Retrieved June 18, 2020. The concerns HoSang laid out in his letter went beyond the BGI project. They were equally about positions Hsu had taken in his blog years earlier: that race is "clearly" a valid biological concept, that whether there are more-than-superficial differences between groups (in areas such as cognitive ability, personality and athletic prowess) is an open question.
  27. ^ Flaherty, Colleen (May 29, 2013). "Quest for 'Genius Babies'?". Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved June 28, 2020.
  28. ^ a b Guzman, Wendy (19 June 2020). "Michigan State VP of Research Stephen Hsu resigns". The State News. Retrieved 20 June 2020.
  29. ^ Lyons, Craig (15 June 2020). "Petition seeks removal of MSU VP of research over controversial comments, research". Lansing State Journal. USA Today. Retrieved 20 June 2020.
  30. ^ a b "MSU VP of Research resigns after calls to be removed". WLNS.com. No. 20 June 2020. Nexstar. Retrieved 21 June 2020.
  31. ^ "Resignation". infoproc.blogspot.com. Retrieved 19 June 2020.
  32. ^ Lally, Catherine (7 December 2018). "Cambridge dons revolt over 'racist' fellow's role". The Times. Retrieved 7 December 2018.
  33. ^ Bradbury, Rosie; Cook, Joe (30 April 2019). "Controversial research fellow Noah Carl dismissed by St Edmund's". Varsity Online. Retrieved 2 May 2019.
  34. ^ "The Charles Murray Event at Middlebury College".
  35. ^ Waking Up With Sam Harris #73 - Forbidden Knowledge with Charles Murray.
  36. ^ "Charles Murray is once again peddling junk science about race and IQ".
  37. ^ am Harris DEBATES Ezra Klein from VOX on Charles Murray and Race. 55:40 minutes in.
  38. ^ IQ Expert: Race Not the Cause of IQ Gap. 22:30 minutes in.
  39. ^ IQ Expert: Race. Event occurs at 16:00.

semi-protection

I've indef semi-protected the talk page due to serious signal to noise ratio issues and disruption. This is logged under the Arbitration log as an enforcement issue, a continuation of the previous AE case. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 00:33, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

That sounds like a good idea. --Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 21:40, 24 February 2022 (UTC)

Inclusion of Race and intelligence on Template:Evolutionary psychology

@Generalrelative: Well, hello again! I noticed that you reverted my addition of the Evolutionary psychology navigation box to this article. I most certainly do not dispute that the theory that ethnic and racial differences in intelligence are biologically based is an argument that falls under WP:FRINGE but it was based upon assumptions related to group selection, while contemporary evolutionary psychology as proposed by Leda Cosmides and John Tooby is based upon the selfish-genetic view of evolution as proposed by George C. Williams, W. D. Hamilton, John Maynard Smith, and Richard Dawkins in the 1960s and 1970s which was formulated explicitly in rejection of group selection. See Tooby and Cosmides in their 2015 interview with Reason.tv where they note that the principal subject of interest in their field are cultural universals. Cosmides and Tooby initiated the line of research related to the Wason selection task in the 1980s and 1990s that demonstrated that general intelligence itself is more related to non-arbitrary and evolutionarily familiar problems rather than to arbitrary and evolutionarily novel ones in line with longstanding observations made by other critics of the theory such as Thomas Sowell, James R. Flynn, and Richard E. Nisbett (as noted in the Evolution of human intelligence article section about Social exchange theory). I would argue that because Cosmides and Tooby helped formulated the framework that helped displace the racialist theory with one that is still consistent with the mainstream of evolutionary theory warrants its inclusion in the Related topics list of the navbox along with the other articles listed in the parentheses after Unit of selection. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 00:55, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

Hello CommonKnowledgeCreator. This is all very interesting, but it still seems to me that the article topic is quite a bit too tangential to the category to merit inclusion. Of course if others agree with you then I will not stand in the way. Generalrelative (talk) 01:46, 23 February 2022 (UTC)
Very well. I'll remove until and unless there is consensus on the talk page. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 02:19, 24 February 2022 (UTC)
This article is about a pseudo-scientific subject. Science only comes in indirectly, via the refutation of the pseudo-scientific theory. Since the navigation box is about science, IMHO it should not be added here. Rsk6400 (talk) 07:12, 24 February 2022 (UTC)
Does it fit in with evolutionary psychology though, regardless of it is scientific or pseudo-scientific? The navigation box is in it current forms about the wider topic not just science on it. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 20:51, 3 March 2022 (UTC)
Does the navbox include homeopathy, dowsing or lizard people? If so, go ahead and add even more nonsense. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 00:09, 4 March 2022 (UTC)
Those are clearly not the same, but if there were appropriate navigation boxes then I would say go ahead and put them there. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 19:29, 5 March 2022 (UTC)
As far as I can see, that infobox doesn't have a line for pseudoscience topics. Phrenology is another obvious candidate for such a line since obviously one can tell how evolved an ethnic group are from the shape of their skulls. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 20:12, 5 March 2022 (UTC)


Discussion of Polygenic Scores

Another WP:SOCK AndyTheGrump (talk) 13:35, 18 March 2022 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

I have added a paragraph that discusses racial differences in the polygenic scores with references to four reliable sources that talk about them specifically in the context of race. I think this should be enough to meet the criterion of WP:FRIND, laid out by Generalrelative in a previous discussion.

Here it is: As scientists have begun to uncover genetic variants that have genome-wide significant associations with intelligence, they have been able to summarize the distributions of these variants across a wide range of populations using polygenic scores. These polygenic scores may provide evidence of a partial genetic link for differences in intelligence between racial groups in the United States, as traditionally defined.[1][2] However, it is still unclear whether differences in the average incidence of these genetic variants arose as a result of natural selection. [3]Moreover, it is still unclear whether these polygenic scores have the same predictive power across races, as most genome-wide association studies are done in racially homogeneous samples."[4]

LucaCapobianco (talk) 04:21, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

Synthesis. AndyTheGrump (talk) 04:31, 18 March 2022 (UTC)
Would you please explain how any of this is Synthesis?, it seems to me each sentence in the paragraph stands on its own, and is in every article linked to each of them almost verbatim. LucaCapobianco (talk) 04:36, 18 March 2022 (UTC)
  • Per this RFC, the theory that a genetic link exists between race and intelligence is WP:FRINGE. Russell T. Warne, who has been an outspoken hereditarian for a long long time, is therefore not a particularly good source - obviously he is going to breathlessly declare every single thing that happens to be proof for his outlandish beliefs, but he isn't independent in the way WP:FRIND requires. The other sources are... a highly-specific isolated study, unusable per WP:SCHOLARSHIP's bit about isolated studies in fields like these, and absolutely not worded in a way that supports the sweeping claims you're trying to use it for, and two papers discounting Warne's breathless conclusions, establishing that, yes, the beliefs he's advocating here are still fringe despite his strident claims. In practice you are trying to put Warne's fringe advocacy in the article with only his own opinion as a relevant source, which is the sort of nonsense that has been discussed here at length (and was part of the reason we had said RFC to begin with.) The point of WP:FRIND is that you need to find acknowledgment of hereditarian claims from people who are not part of the movement, and I'm not seeing that here. --Aquillion (talk) 07:24, 18 March 2022 (UTC)
In addition, the single study (on Jews and Lutherans) is coauthored by the researcher Emil Kirkegaard, one of the founders of the fringe journal OpenPsych. Skllagyook (talk) 09:08, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ "Polygenic scores mediate the Jewish phenotypic advantage in educational attainment and cognitive ability compared with Catholics and Lutherans". Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences. 13: 366–375.
  2. ^ "Between-Group Mean Differences in Intelligence in the United States Are >0% Genetically Caused: Five Converging Lines of Evidence". The American Journal of Psychology. 134: 480–501.
  3. ^ "No support for the hereditarian hypothesis of the Black–White achievement gap using polygenic scores and tests for divergent selection". American Journal of Physical Anthropology. 175: 465–476.
  4. ^ "Polygenic Influence on Educational Attainment: New Evidence From the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health". AERA Open. 1.

Does the FAQ above this talk page need more citation?

I think the FAQ above this talk page need more citation. GUT412454 (talk) 10:42, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

Quillette article

Pretty fun. https://quillette.com/2022/07/18/cognitive-distortions/ - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 04:30, 26 July 2022 (UTC)

See the section above. --Hob Gadling (talk) 05:55, 26 July 2022 (UTC)

Short description

Our article's prior short description was: "Discussions and claims of differences in intelligence along racial lines."

I edited it to to read: "Differences in average intelligence between races."

My explanation: "Per WP:VIA WP:VAI, replaced vague, unhelpful, and musteline short description… Removed "discussions of" as this is an encyclopedia article. Removed "along racial lines" as it's unnecessarily vague. Removed "claims of" in accordance with WP:NPOV, MOS:DOUBT, and MOS:CLAIM—while the cause(s) may remain controversial, expert consensus has long acknowledged significant differences, as measured by IQ."

Three minutes later, my edit was summarily reverted, with the sole explanation: "nope - we don't assert as fact minority-opinion claims." The reverting editor initiated no discussion on the Talk page, offered no explanation of what these "minority-opinion claims" might be, and blithely ignored the guidance in WP:REVONLY while wholesale reverting my tripartite edit and explanation.

As I'd written in my explanation, the fact that there are differences in average tested intelligence between racial groups is the majority, consensus view. The text of our article makes this abundantly clear:

  • "In the US, individuals identifying themselves as Asian generally tend to score higher on IQ tests than Caucasians, who tend to score higher than Hispanics, who tend to score higher than African Americans."
  • "...differences in average test performance between racial groups were observed…"
  • "A 2001 meta-analysis of the results of 6,246,729 participants tested for cognitive ability or aptitude found a difference in average scores between black people and white people of 1.1 standard deviations. Consistent results were found for college and university application tests such as the Scholastic Aptitude Test (N = 2.4 million) and Graduate Record Examination (N = 2.3 million), as well as for tests of job applicants in corporate settings (N = 0.5 million) and in the military (N = 0.4 million)."
  • The article cites the Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns report to establish the "consensus" that differences in intelligence between races exist: "Regarding group differences, the report reaffirmed the consensus that differences within groups are much wider than differences between groups." The report itself is specific about those differences: "African American IQ scores have long averaged about 15 points below those of Whites, with correspondingly lower scores on academic achievement tests."

Indeed, the entire article is about, as I succinctly summarized: "Differences in average intelligence between races." While much of the article is devoted to deconstructing the terms and meanings of "race" and "intelligence" while promulgating a minority view that none of the differences in average intelligence between races could possibly be genetic in origin—nowhere does our article reference any consensus that differences in average intelligence between racial groups do not exist or that their existence is merely a "minority-opinion claim". Indeed, the exact opposite is true.

I welcome input regarding our short description—but the mealy-mouthed one that is there now serves our article poorly, and contradicts a host of Wikipedia guidance. Thanks! ElleTheBelle 16:32, 7 August 2022 (UTC)

Test results are not the same as intelligence. Your edit summary made it seem like a difference in intelligence really existed. And we already had this discussion about three or four hundred times on this talk page, so other editors with more patience may reply to you again, but I won't. Rsk6400 (talk) 16:55, 7 August 2022 (UTC)
First, my error above: I meant WP:VAI (not WP:AVI), and in the context of WP:SDESC—guidance over which the current short description runs roughshod.
Second, if you read my "edit summary", you know that I wrote: "...expert consensus has long acknowledged significant differences, as measured by IQ." That said, can you point me to some of the more significant of these 400-odd discussions of the WP:SDESC for this article?
Third, the expert consensus is that intelligence tests measure human intelligence—that's hardly a "minority-opinion claim", but rather the long-accepted scientific view. Quibbling over what "intelligence" means doesn't change that simple fact. That being said, I have no problem with "Racial groups differ in average intelligence, as measured by intelligence tests." The last clause is superfluous, as intelligence tests are the only scientifically accepted method for testing and comparing intelligence—so it seems an odd thing on which to insist. And if one really believed in the distinction, wouldn't one advocate for the article to be titled "Race and intelligence-test scores"? Nevertheless, perhaps that's a reasonable compromise which comports with WP:SDESC? Thanks! ElleTheBelle 22:25, 7 August 2022 (UTC)
The article is more than about average differences in intelligence between racial groups. Onetwothreeip (talk) 22:02, 7 August 2022 (UTC)
What else is it "about", exactly? Thanks! ElleTheBelle 22:27, 7 August 2022 (UTC)
The article is also about the lack of intrinsic differences in intelligence between racial groups, and the controversy of theories regarding differences in intelligence between racial groups. Onetwothreeip (talk) 09:43, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, there is precisely zero chance that you are going to persuade the community to allow you to present WP:RACISTBELIEFS in Wikivoice. There is no scientific rationale for defining intelligence as "what IQ tests measure" any more than there is for defining the intrinsic worth of a human being in terms of their Net worth. The consensus is that IQ measures some aspects of intelligence, but if you think that translates into a consensus that some races are more or less intelligent than others then you are simply, profoundly mistaken. Generalrelative (talk) 01:17, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

Asian Intelligence in the US

Sock drawer. Generalrelative (talk) 14:59, 8 August 2022 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

I think in the section on test scores we should differentiate between South Asians and East Asians. The term Asian is way too broad. For example, the section speaks about the average scores for Asians and Caucasians, but South Asians are technically Caucasians. TheHaberProcess (talk) 22:43, 7 August 2022 (UTC)

Per the Caucasian race article, there is nothing technical about "Caucasian" as a term to describe people unrelated to the Caucasus region. The article that this talk page discusses should be more precise and rely less on subjective and outdated terms. Onetwothreeip (talk) 09:47, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

If the heritability of IQ is mentioned at all it should mention the scientific consensus on heritability

I'm not necessarily arguing that heritability has to be mentioned at all, but it is currently mentioned in the article. If the article is going to mention that environmental factors play a major role, it should be clear that IQ in adults is mostly hereditary. The article currently gives the impression that environmental factors are more important, or at least as important as hereditary factors, which may mislead a reader. The current state of this section of the article either needs to be removed entirely or added to as to not be misleading.Thespearthrower (talk) 20:03, 18 September 2022 (UTC)

1RR and a technicality

Explanation has been given, consensus has been established. Nothing more to discuss here. Happy (Slap me) 17:45, 19 September 2022 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

I stated in my edit summary here that I would "go through and put back any helpful subsequent edits in a moment". However while I was attempting to do so, Thespearthrower came in and restored a sentence they had just added. Typically "one revert" is understood to include related reverts in sequence, but since that sequence has been interrupted I don't think I can fulfill what I said I'd do without running afoul of 1RR. In any case, the only additional thing I saw to do was to cut the extraneous "therefore" in the final sentence of the first paragraph. I'll take care of that after 24 hours has elapsed unless someone else beats me to it. All other constructive edits subsequent to the major WP:BLOCKEVASION edit appear to have been cleanup.

I ask Thespearthrower to self-revert and seek consensus on the talk page for the sentence they would like to add. I do not agree that this sentence is due for inclusion in the lead of the article. See e.g. WP:HOWEVER for perspective. Generalrelative (talk) 20:21, 18 September 2022 (UTC)

They are obviously related. The lead says that IQ testing's validity is disputed. When making contentious claims like this, it should be clear to the reader that the scientific consensus is that IQ testing is valid. IQ testing not being valid is a WP:Fringe theory. It should not be given undue weight. Thespearthrower (talk) 20:50, 18 September 2022 (UTC)
IQ is generally understood to be a good measure of some aspects of intelligence, but it does not measure intelligence per se. You can read a bit of background here, though much more could be said. One could get quite into the weeds untangling the distinction between criterion validity, which IQ tests appear to demonstrate, and content validity, which they appear to lack (largely because intelligence has no essential definition other than the circular one "that which is measured by intelligence tests"). Generalrelative (talk) 21:05, 18 September 2022 (UTC)
Wikipedia, as per Wikipdedia, is not a reliable source. Multiple surveys of cognitive experts show that the scientific consensus is that IQ tests are valid for measuring intelligence. [1]
Definitions of intelligence:
From Dr. Sternberg: "Intelligence is the ability to learn from experience and to adapt to, shape, and select environments."
From Oxford languages: "The ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills."
From Merriam-Webster: "The ability to learn or understand or to deal with new or trying situations."
In the field of cognitive psychology intelligence has a pretty universally recognized definition (though of course not absolutely unanimous, fringe theories will always exist). Thespearthrower (talk) 21:59, 18 September 2022 (UTC)
1) I pointed you toward the "Validity" section of our article on IQ because I was assuming good faith, that you might wish to learn more about the issue we're discussing. If you had looked you would have seen a number of reliable sources cited there which bear out what I have said.
2) As NightHeron just pointed out in his edit summary when you were reverted for the second time [57], Heiner Rindermann's surveys are not considered reliable here. This has already been discussed extensively.
3) When I say that IQ tests appear to lack content validity largely because intelligence has no essential definition other than the circular one "that which is measured by intelligence tests", I'm not saying you will find a big blank or a circular definition when you look up the word "intelligence" in a dictionary. The issue is that it's not at all clear that IQ tests measure what these dictionary definitions are talking about. This is something that actual scientists who study this stuff are circumspect about, and Wikipedia reflects that. Generalrelative (talk) 23:01, 18 September 2022 (UTC)
1.) I am arguing in good faith. Wikipedia is not a reliable source, and is not a reasonable source to use in factual discussion.
2.) Like I said, there are tons of surveys on the opinions of experts in the field of cognitive psychology. Take your pick, no survey has ever indicated anything besides overwhelming consensus for the belief that IQ testing validly measures several different subsects of intelligence and general intelligence accurately. Here is a survey with over 1000 cognitive scientists that has been cited 400 times: http://www.stafforini.com/docs/snyderman_&_rothman_-_survey_of_expert_opinion_on_intelligence_and_aptitude_testing.pdf
3.) It is clear that IQ testing does accurately measure intelligence (the ability to learn and reason) to the vast majority of experts in a relevant field. Some people disagree with this, but some people also believe humans don't affect Earth's climate. These people are against a huge consensus of scientists and nearly all evidence that has been found. You can IQ test a child and using the results of the test fairly accurately predict what their level of education will end up being.[2] IQ scores predict scores on achievement tests requiring crystal knowledge better than grades do. [3] Thespearthrower (talk) 10:16, 19 September 2022 (UTC)
It's clear to me that we are now talking past one another. If others feel the need to reopen this discussion, that's fine, but I think I've done all I need to do to explain the situation to you. Generalrelative (talk) 15:39, 19 September 2022 (UTC)
I'm not talking past you, I addressed your points in a polite and factual manner. If you can't defend your points, concession is the proper way to end the debate.

Thespearthrower (talk) 16:07, 19 September 2022 (UTC)

The objections you raised have been discussed at length before, and other editors don't want to relitigate it. For more information about that, please see the FAQ at the top of this page. Concerning your "tons of surveys" and your example of supposedly one of the best of them, it's a survey from 35 years ago. NightHeron (talk) 16:16, 19 September 2022 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

References

  1. ^ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4804158/
  2. ^ https://slate.com/human-interest/2015/09/iq-and-success-can-a-test-score-determine-later-outcomes-in-life.html
  3. ^ https://bold.expert/can-iq-tests-and-grades-predict-life-outcomes/

Information without source must be removed or sourced properly

@AndyTheGump: I don't think I can revert due to 1RR but if you see material misrepresenting the claim of its alleged source, you have to remove/modify it. Given that you realized the source doesn't correspond to the claims made in the article whatsoever, you should have removed the content or found a fitting source. Unless somebody has done so, I will be removing the material tomorrow, as per policy.-Thespearthrower (talk) 17:12, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

You altered data concerning the year 2017–2018, apparently based on data from the source cited, which now shows data for 2020-2021. Do you have access to the 2017–2018 data? Because otherwise, I can't see any evidence that anyone was 'misrepresenting' anything. AndyTheGrump (talk) 17:30, 20 September 2022 (UTC)
I've found the 2017–2018 data. [58] I'll correct the link. AndyTheGrump (talk) 17:38, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

Thank you! Thespearthrower (talk) 17:55, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

Ashkenazi intelligence

Ok, so I read this pathetic outpour in the 'net about how wikipedia is wrong and blahblah. And also that it censores science. I wouldn't want to see Wikipedia censor science, so I decided to take a look.

In a deletion discussion (one of many), there was one very sound argument for deleting it: the same could be covered by Race and Intelligence, and should be, since not every fringe theory deserves its own page. All good. HOWEVER, this page doesn't mention the theory at all! So, on to find if the scientific sources listed in a late version of the article are found, here's four that seem prominent (peer-reviewed, published): [1] [2] [3] [4]

I think it would serve Wikipedia well to critique these sources, and salvage into this article what can be salvaged, about the clearly existing and notable "exceptional Ashkenazi genetic intelligence" theory.

-- Sigmundur (talk) 12:37, 19 July 2022 (UTC) Sigmundur (talk) 12:37, 19 July 2022 (UTC)

You have linked a discussion from 2007, which closed as no consensus. I suggest you read the latest AfD discussion instead. [59]. AndyTheGrump (talk) 12:54, 19 July 2022 (UTC)
The Quillette article you linked is, at the very best, dishonest. At worst, it's a steaming pile of bullshit used to advocate racism. Happy (Slap me) 13:12, 19 July 2022 (UTC)
  • Quillette, per WP:RSP, is not a reliable source for facts. Obviously we're not going to change our articles in response to their opinions. The sources you've published are largely fringe - the first one is a book review that specifically describes the book as unreliable and controversial, summarizing its argument as limited and biased. The second barely intelligence, and only in passing. The third is the very book that your first source dismisses as trash. The final one is... Richard Lynn, most notable for his work at Mankind Quarterly, the journal of scientific racism. This is the sort of unreliable, unscientific nonsense you get when you search for sources to back up a culture-war-trash source like Quillette. If that's all you can drudge up in support of their nonsense, it's certainly not notable. --Aquillion (talk) 18:32, 7 August 2022 (UTC)
    This is an example of gaming the standard for and meaning of "Reliable Source". RS isn't relevant here because the article wasn't being used as a source, it was shared with editors here because it's criticizing the handling of this entry. This "demonize and exile the source" mentality is exactly what the article was talking about.
    Further, RS needs to be applied to each topic and article individually - the concept of reliable source whose every article is blessed is a joke. Anyone can clearly see that the Quillette article is making easily checkable claims (specifically that the contents of this article have changed) and the burden of proof is vastly different than if someone was trying to use them as a primary source to prove the existence of UFOs. Less than perfect sources can be used, with consensus approval, when they're in a more reliable topic or when the material makes only trivial claims (ie about Wikipedia history).
    Wikipedia rules should not be quoted to shut down discussion but in a helpful manner that assumes good faith.
    InverseZebra (talk) 19:36, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
    Are there any changes to the article you would like to propose? Onetwothreeip (talk) 22:04, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
    I'm suggesting changes to talk page behavior and how non-editors are treated by editors. Proposed changes are supposed to be discussed in good faith and people clearly aren't doing that here. InverseZebra (talk) 17:04, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

Oh god, I came here to talk about this very thing and it looks like someone was already doing it. Does anyone know why there is no mention of Ashklenazi Jews in this article? Also, in the section on test scores, I think we should differentiate between South Asians and East Asians. Asian is a term that is too broad, it encompasses everyone from Syrians to Koreans.TheHaberProcess (talk) 18:11, 7 August 2022 (UTC) striking WP:BLOCKEVASION. Generalrelative (talk) 15:05, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

Maybe you should not just check that somebody is discussing this but also read what they write? They write that the sources are crap. Without useable sources, we cannot mention the subject. The same holds for Asians. --Hob Gadling (talk) 18:51, 7 August 2022 (UTC)
Just noticed that this was a bit unfair since the last contribution saying the sources are crap was newer than the "oh god" contribution. Still, there you have the reason. --Hob Gadling (talk) 19:01, 7 August 2022 (UTC)
When I added it I added it with this source[5]. It looks OK to me. I also found it odd the article does not mention Ashkenazi Jews at all because our are widely debated by people who study this.striking WP:BLOCKEVASION. Generalrelative (talk) 15:05, 8 August 2022 (UTC)
That's a passing mention in a book review (again). These sorts of sources just don't support the assertion that this is an important aspect of the subject. --Aquillion (talk) 20:34, 7 August 2022 (UTC)
Originally I cited Forbes, I did not quite understand why it was not reliable in this context. But there is a plethora of sources, forgive me, I just put the links because proper formatting is too much work, but :
Vox: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/12/30/21042733/bret-stephens-jewish-iq-new-york-times
AEI: https://www.aei.org/articles/the-2011-nobel-prize-and-the-debate-over-jewish-iq/
NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/27/opinion/jewish-culture-genius-iq.html
Also, it is important that we talk about Ashkenazi Jewish intelligence, because there are so many anti-semitic conspiracy theories out there based on the overrepresentation of the Jews high positions, but that is shown to be bonkers once you simply control for IQ. — Preceding unsigned comment added by TheHaberProcess (talk • contribs) 20:48, 7 August 2022 (UTC)striking WP:BLOCKEVASION. Generalrelative (talk) 15:05, 8 August 2022 (UTC)
Please read Wikipedia:Reliable sources. For content concerning scientific topics, we don't cite Vox, the American Enterprise Institute, or op-eds in the NYT. And no, it isn't even remotely necessary to 'control for IQ' to refute antisemitic conspiracy theories, any more than it is necessary to 'control for the non-existence of shape-shifting lizards' to refute similar theories concerning the New World Order, the Illuminati, or mind-control through 5G WiFi. AndyTheGrump (talk) 21:05, 7 August 2022 (UTC)
But Vox and NYTimes are already cited in this article. And I think your example proves my point, it is precisely because shape-shifting lizards do not exist that those conspiracy theories are bonkers. I think your example is more about the fact that most people already know that those lizards do not exist, so there is no need to even mention it to show to most people those theories are silly. In the case of Ashkenazi Jewish intelligence, this is well known among ourselves, but the public at large is not so well informed. If they were though, they would have a retort when some nutjob comes to them talking about how X or Y percent of the bankers are Jewish. TheHaberProcess (talk) 21:37, 7 August 2022 (UTC)
Here is just another couple of examples of how salient this topic is, among psychologists, and among ourselves.
Jordan Peterson: https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/right-wing-personality-on-jewish-question-ashkenazim-have-high-iq-547159
Stephen Pinker: https://newrepublic.com/article/77727/groups-and-genes
TheHaberProcess (talk) 21:46, 7 August 2022 (UTC)striking WP:BLOCKEVASION. Generalrelative (talk) 15:06, 8 August 2022 (UTC)
This article does not exist to refute conspiracy theories, especially ones unrelated or tangentially-related to intelligence, and it is an insult to our intelligence that editors would believe that is the reason it is proposed to include content about the intelligence of Ashkenazi Jews. Onetwothreeip (talk) 22:06, 7 August 2022 (UTC)
I still do not understand why you guys are against inclusion of this content. The topic has been discussed in a wide range of sources, a lot of which seem very OK to me, some of whom are cited in this very article. And the topic is not tangentially-related, it is at the core of the issue. An article about race and intelligence should mention the most intelligent race, just as an article about dog breed intelligence would be remiss if there was no mention of the border collie.TheHaberProcess (talk) 22:22, 7 August 2022 (UTC)striking WP:BLOCKEVASION. Generalrelative (talk) 15:05, 8 August 2022 (UTC)
Jewish culture is focussed on learning, thinking and discussing. It is known that actually using your brain increases your competence at using it, and therefore the consensus is that any higher intelligence of Ashkenazi already has a very good explanation.
The Pinker source you quote says, This does not imply that differences between groups are also genetic, since one group may experience a difference across the board, such as in wealth, discrimination, or social and cultural capital and CH&H's evidence is circumstantial and But all the hypotheses would have to be true for the theory as a whole to be true--and much of the evidence is circumstantial, and the pivotal hypothesis is the one for which they have the least evidence. So, you claim Ashkenazi Jews are the most intelligent race, but the very source you quote regards this as highly dubious. (I did not check Peterson because he is a crappy source - most psychoanalysts do not understand how science works, and Peterson definitely does not. He talks a lot of Dunning-Krugerish nonsense about evolution too.)
It is not enough that sources seem very OK to you. They must also seem very OK to the people here who are familiar with the subject, and the subject needs to be relevant enough. They have tried to explain why. --Hob Gadling (talk) 06:29, 8 August 2022 (UTC)
I agree, I think the relevant factor is Jewish moms, have you heard you are only Jewish if your mom is Jewish? The status of the father is irrelevant. I can get the ref for you if you like, but I heard Paul Bloomn in his psychology lectures saying that the fact that IQ seems to vary more by social conditions, like, whether you were born to a Jewish mother or father, as an argument against hereditarianism. It is not what you would expect if it were genetic, given you get half genes from mom and dad. I am not endorsing Pinker's or Peterson's or Bloom's views on anything for that matter, I am just saying the topic is salient enough for lots of high profile psychologists and even geneticists to discuss it.
I am thinking of Adam Rutherford: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/a-book-that-could-save-lives-adam-rutherford-s-how-to-argue-with-a-racist-reviewed
It is therefore worth mentioning TheHaberProcess (talk) 07:07, 8 August 2022 (UTC)
Paul Bloom speaks about it from 47:00 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=piDznzrNymE&list=PL6A08EB4EEFF3E91F&index=13 TheHaberProcess (talk) 07:23, 8 August 2022 (UTC)
I suggest we phrase it like this, just after the first paragraph in "test scores":

The evidence is less comprehensive for other groups in the US. According to a number of secondary sources, Ashkenazi Jews are have an average IQ that is between a half and a full standard deviation above the mean for white gentiles.(sources) However, the primary research on the topic is wanting and said advantage seems to be more associated with how individuals are regarded rather than their genetic make up.(Bloom source here) Indian Americans are also a group with high average educational and occupational attainment. There is some preliminary evidence that their average IQ is roughly on a pair with that of Ashkenazi Jews.(if not Forbes, maybe this book: US-India Forward Leap—The Partnership Building - Page 140, or both) This may be because only individuals with high educational and occupational status can migrate from India to the U.S. TheHaberProcess (talk) 07:45, 8 August 2022 (UTC)striking WP:BLOCKEVASION. Generalrelative (talk) 15:05, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

Surely after the mountains of previous discussion on this topic, is there really anyone who knows the first thing about the topic who is still mistaking performance on IQ tests with actual intelligence? Or that the class of people who choose to leave their ancestral home to pursue opportunities elsewhere, are a true random sample of that population? --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 09:03, 8 August 2022 (UTC)
Do you have any content you propose to include in the article? Onetwothreeip (talk) 09:42, 8 August 2022 (UTC)
I am not sure how those two last comments are relevant to my proposed addition. The second half of Maynard's comment is right in that Indian Americans are a highly selected population. Perhaps we can mention that in the paragraph? Regarding the comment by Onetwothreeip, if it was addressed to me, then yes, the paragraph above TheHaberProcess (talk) 14:45, 8 August 2022 (UTC)striking WP:BLOCKEVASION. Generalrelative (talk) 15:05, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ Wills, Christopher (February 11, 2009). "Review: The 10,000 Year Explosion by Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending". New Scientist. 201 (2695): 46–47. doi:10.1016/S0262-4079(09)60457-7.
  2. ^ Bray, Steven M.; Jennifer G. Mulle, Anne F. Dodd, Ann E. Pulver, Stephen Wooding, and Stephen T. Warren. "Signatures of founder effects, admixture, and selection in the Jewish population", Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 14 September 2010; 107(37): 16222–16227. doi:10.1073/pnas.1004381107
  3. ^ G. Cochran, J. Hardy, H. Harpending. "Natural History of Intelligence" Archived September 11, 2013, at the Wayback Machine, Journal of Biosocial Science 38 (5), pp. 659–693 (2006), University of Utah
  4. ^ Lynn, R. and Longley, D. (2006). "On the high intelligence and cognitive achievements of Jews in Britain." Intelligence, 34, 541–547.
  5. ^ "The IQ Wars Reconsidered" (PDF). Contemporary Sociology. 10-15 points IQ advantage of Ashkenazi Jews

Lead References

Sad socks :( Generalrelative (talk) 06:37, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

Hi @Grayfell: why did you delete the references? ETDS554 (talk) 04:30, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

ETDS554, Grayfell was right to revert your edit. Per MOS:LEADCITE, it is not necessary to supply references in the lead when they are supplied in the article body. In a case like the present article, where the number of possible citations is very extensive, including only a few may give the reader the false impression that these are the only ones available to support the claims of the lead. Given that the topic of this article is very controversial as well, the weight of that concern is all the more pronounced. I hope that makes sense. Generalrelative (talk) 04:39, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
I see that you also added a reference to the Washington Post, which violates the special sourcing requirements for this page. This page has a special restriction where we are only supposed to use peer-reviewed academic sources. That may have been why Grayfell identified your edit summary as misleading. Generalrelative (talk) 04:43, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
In that case I suggest having two or three references per statement in the lead. Many of the readers are just going to read the lead for a quick glimpse at the subject, it would be good for them to have at least a sample of the best resources in the literature. ETDS554 (talk) 04:59, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
I suppose we will just have to agree to disagree on that one, since the guideline is clear that it can go either way based on local consensus as to whether lead citations are appropriate or not for each article. Perhaps others will show up who agree with you that the status quo should be overturned. Generalrelative (talk) 05:09, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
Was there a talk page section about this at any point? I found it weird because a colleague told me the lead used to have references but no longer did. She also told me she wanted to improve this article but some white supremacist was blocking her. ETDS554 (talk) 05:32, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
Yup, it's been discussed numerous times. See e.g. this one and the following thread. There isn't a strong consensus either way, but there is a longstanding status quo, which is considered WP:IMPLICIT. Re. your colleague: this is a tricky concern to discuss. On the one hand, this article definitely attracts a lot of white supremacists eager to push their fringe views into article space (or just rant about them on the talk page). However, one of our core behavioral policies is "assume good faith". That's not just a recommendation but a requirement. Unless someone outright proves that they are not acting in good faith, we will bend over backwards to assume that they are. Look through the talk page archives and you will see. So I'm not sure what your friend is referring to specifically. Several years ago there were some known white supremacists who exerted undue influence on this article, but they've since been blocked (though a few sad sacks keep on creating WP:SOCKPUPPETs). If your friend's edits were more recent, it could very well be that she made some well intentioned attempts to improve the article and mistook good-faith resistance for white supremacism. In any case the proper thing to do would have been to bring her concerns here or to a noticeboard like WP:FTN. Since the latest RfC in 2021, calmer heads have essentially prevailed. I hope that's helpful. Generalrelative (talk) 06:03, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
Hello. To clarify, the edit added sources, but it also changed the meaning of the article by adding an anachronistic claim that race and intelligence was being discussed since since at least them times of Aristotle. Since this claim is controversial and disputed it is misleading to present this with the edit summary "WP:ILC". It is also a typo, but that would be an easy fix. The added source makes an interesting point, but it's an extreme over-reach to say it claims or even suggests that Aristotle viewed human groups as 'races' in the modern sense of the word. If I'm wrong and Matthew A. Sears is claiming that Aristotle's view of races is the same as the modern one, we need a source where he explicitly claims that, and we would need to contextualize it against the mountain of existing sources which dispute it. Grayfell (talk) 07:02, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

Since Aristotle

Sad socks :( Generalrelative (talk) 06:38, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

These ideas are much older than the "modern concept of race" Aristotle is the first major thinker I am aware of. I can find peer-reviewed sources for that one. ETDS554 (talk) 05:54, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

Please do. But note that the concept of "race" didn't really exist in the ancient world, at least according to most scholars. That's why both here and in the History of the race and intelligence controversy article we begin with the modern period. You'd need some pretty high-level sources to persuade us otherwise. Generalrelative (talk) 06:05, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
Feel free to delete this whole section. Doug Weller talk 20:02, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

Polygenic scores

Sad socks :( Generalrelative (talk) 06:40, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.


Hi @MrOllie:, why did you revert my edit? ETDS554 (talk) 18:02, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

I suspect you already know: Polygenic scores have been the intense focus of sockpuppet accounts, as detailed in the talk page archives. MrOllie (talk) 18:04, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
Is that also the reason my colleague could not add them? I am sorry white supremacist desperately cling to any new scientific findings to justify their biases but that does not mean certain topics need to be salted from the encyclopedia ETDS554 (talk) 18:19, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
Aha, so you're white supremacist long-term abuser User:Fq90 again. How boring. Generalrelative (talk) 18:26, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

RfC on racial hereditarianism at Talk:Eyferth study

Clueful editors are invited to participate at Talk:Eyferth study#Request for comment on hereditarianism subsection. Generalrelative (talk) 07:53, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

Should IQ test figures be included?

See WP:NOTFORUM What some random contributor thinks is 'taboo' is of no relevance to article content. AndyTheGrump (talk) 22:43, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

I would like to include the following:

The Bell Curve, by Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray, lists figures of 105 for Northeast Asians, 100 for North and Central Europeans, 92-96 for South Europeans, 91 for Arctic peoples, 90 for Maoris, 89 for American Hispanics, 86 for Native Americans, 85 for Pacific Islanders, 84 for South Asians, 83 for North Africans, 71 for Sub-Saharan Africans, 62 for Australian Aborigines, 57 for Pygmies, and 55 for Bushmen.

Generalrelative reverted this edit, with the argument being that it is WP:UNDUE and WP:PRIMARY. However, I don't see how the edit gives undue weight to any particular source, since The Bell Curve is one of the most well-known publications in the field. In addition, it is a secondary source which summarizes primary source research in the field. What do people here think? Wiki Crazyman (talk) 23:01, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

Firstly, we shouldn't cite any source that old for data. And secondly, The Bell Curve is a deeply controversial source, and both its methodology and conclusions have been subject to heavy criticism from the scientific community. So no, the figures don't belong in the article. AndyTheGrump (talk) 23:22, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
I support @Wiki Crazyman's suggestion. This page needs some data. As it currently stands the page is lacking in clear numbers and facts. Much of the page reads as an attempt to spin any research that has taken place. @AndyTheGrump do you have suggestions about better measurements that you'd prefer? I recently tried to add this map but got pushback on it being controversial also https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:World-iq-map-lynn-2002.svg Brandon (talk) 20:51, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
If you are incapable of understanding why that map (based on data which has been soundly refuted) does not belong in this article, frankly I doubt you will have much to offer on this topic. AndyTheGrump (talk) 21:57, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
I'm sure the methodology has been criticized but I haven't seen more complete attempts to measure. Do you have better data? The problem with this page is that people go to it looking for a map or a bar chart and it feels like whoever wrote this page is purposefully unwilling to show any data other than lead levels (yet another excuse for why every measurement of IQ has been so flawed that they dare not show it). Brandon (talk) 22:12, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
That some hypothetical reader would like a map is not a reason to include a map that we know is wrong (and was compiled by a white nationalist to boot) MrOllie (talk) 22:16, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
I just read the criticism and it doesn't seem like much. I'm happy to use other data that you like more but zero data isn't a good option. As it stands, this article is short on facts and long on partisan editorializing. Let's fix it. Brandon (talk) 22:26, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
Wikipedia does not cite crap 'data' sourced to fringe racist pseudoscience. AndyTheGrump (talk) 22:29, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
I'm looking for good data, not "crap" or "fringe" research - whatever the real numbers are. Did someone try to re-measure the bell curve numbers that @Wiki Crazyman put forward? Do you have a version of those numbers that look better to you that we can include on the page? Brandon (talk) 22:33, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
If you are looking for good data, I suggest you stop looking for it amongst the proponents of fringe racist pseudoscience, and instead read up on what current scientific consensus has to say on such matters. AndyTheGrump (talk) 22:35, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
I understand that you're looking to frame any correlation between genetics and intelligence as taboo. That's why this article is a problem. Let's stop doing that and admit that certain genes make people taller, faster, and smarter. This particular wikipedia page needs impartial data. I welcome your data as well but it's not reasonable to basically say "this topic is 100% taboo" on the page. Brandon (talk) 22:40, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

Scientific Consensus

At this point WP:DENY is probably the best approach here. Wikipedia talk pages are not a WP:FORUM. Generalrelative (talk) 23:10, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

I see in the FAQ section of this page that folks are trying to claim no evidence for a genetic link between race and intelligence as a "scientific consensus" viewpoint despite the fact that actual scientific consensus is so rare that the phrase could be considered an oxymoron. Let's take a look at the claims related to that FAQ and maybe delete that section? 

No evidence for such a connection has ever been published.

The bell curve research, SAT scores, army entrance scores - most race/IQ data has shown a gap that is challenging to explain exclusively through environmental factors. 

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".

143 academics choosing to virtue-signal on a topic likely to help their career doesn't speak to a broad scientific consensus. Top academics signed a letter condemning the COVID lab leak theory too. 

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.

That's just saying the terms of the discussion are ill-defined. So you're welcome to say there's a "scientific consensus" that race is a poorly-defined concept - that's a fact. 

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.

"most" doesn't amount to a scientific consensus - you'd be fair to say that "most" university professors vote for the political left but that doesn't mean there is a "scientific consensus" that the left is better 

Extensive evidence has been published which indicates that observed differences in IQ test performance between racial groups are environmental in origin.

100% environmental in origin? I don't think so. That's like claiming that Shaq is good at basketball because he trained a lot. The guy is also tall. 

Most researchers view the idea of a genetic connection between race and intelligence as scientifically obsolete.

Sure, they view race and intelligence as fuzzy, unscientific topics that they don't want to get into. That's not the same as saying that there is a scientific consensus.

There is a scientific consensus that the earth orbits around the sun. There is little scientific consensus on the topic of race and intelligence. Also this phrase is not the kind of wording that should appear on a supposedly neutral wiki page. Brandon (talk) 21:37, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia does not base article content on the unsourced opinions of random contributors. What you 'think', and what you consider 'facts' are of no relevance here. AndyTheGrump (talk) 21:52, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
I read the higher-level discussion and now understand that you have higher-level mods who are willing to allow this extreme language. Obviously not something I can overrule. Not sure how a discussion gets closed out but I'm not trying to renegotiate a supreme court ruling on my first day Brandon (talk) 22:17, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
Your "first day"? According to this you've edited sporadically on this account since 2011, and just happen to have resumed editing after 4 years in order to dispute consensus in one the most contentious topics on the encyclopedia. If you're not yet aware that we don't have higher-level mods who are willing to allow this extreme language perhaps you are also not aware of our policy against abusing multiple accounts? Generalrelative (talk) 22:31, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
This is my only account. I read this particular article and it was so heavily partisan that I decided to get back in the game. Brandon (talk) 22:35, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
You have offered precisely zero evidence that this article doesn't follow standard Wikipedia practice in not promoting fringe pseudoscience as some sort of counterpoint to clear scientific consensus. AndyTheGrump (talk) 22:37, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
The bell curve isn't fringe pseudoscience. It was written by reputable academics. The other discussion on this page wants to add some data from it. Let's add back a bit of objectivity to the page by including some of that. Brandon (talk) 22:50, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
There is nothing 'objective' about using Wikipedia to promote fringe racist views. AndyTheGrump (talk) 22:59, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
I'm looking to add data to a page with very little data. As I mentioned, if you have better data, I'd be happy to pursue it. But I am beginning to suspect that you don't like any research you've ever seen on this topic. You wouldn't go to a page about nuclear fission and remove all the data because you consider nuclear power dangerous, right? You contextualize data that you don't like. Brandon (talk) 23:04, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
The data in the Bell Curve that you seem to be so impressed with was based on fringe science funded by the Pioneer Fund, who are also notable for publishing Nazi propaganda in the US. It was and is fringe pseudoscience. Hernstein probably was reputable before it was published, but it definitely tarnished his legacy. Murray never really was reputable except among the far-right. MrOllie (talk) 23:07, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

Scientific consensus in the lead

Recently @AndyTheGrump reverted my edit that corrected an inaccuracy in the lead about scientific consensus

I replaced the scientific consensus is that genetics does not explain differences in IQ test performance between groups, and that observed differences are environmental in origin. with the scientific consensus is that intelligence is a complex trait that is influenced by both genetic and environmental factors. exactly as stated in the cited source of medline plus

he argued that MedlinePlus which is produced by United States National Library of Medicine is not WP:RS, calling it “misuse of source” even though these are the exact words of the source, and claimed it irrelevant even though the title of the article itself is “Race and intelligence” Chafique (talk) 11:52, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

Even setting aside the reliability issue, you cited a source that is about genetic variation between individuals - this article is about variation between groups. That is an extremely important distinction. See the many, many discussions about this on this talk page and its archives. MrOllie (talk) 12:01, 24 May 2023 (UTC)
Yes, the individual vs group distinction is important. And this sentence of the lead has been repeatedly discussed in the archives, including in several RfCs about the scientific consensus. DFlhb (talk) 08:42, 25 May 2023 (UTC)
Please look at the context of your edit. The lede, like the rest of the article, is discussing supposed differences in IQ between groups ('races'). Your source isn't. Furthermore, the lede is supposed to summarise material discussed in depth in the article body. The article body cites multiple in-depth analyses of the actual topic in question. It is entirely inappropriate to try to counter them in the lede by citing a MedLine webpage aimed at a lay audience. There is a multitude of peer-reviewed and subject-expert written content available on the subject, and those are the sources we should be citing. MedLine is fine for it's intended purpose (providing background information on medical topics to the general public) but it isn't a peer-reviewed journal, and it isn't a reliable source for topics it doesn't even discuss. AndyTheGrump (talk) 12:11, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

Chafique Medline plus is just a digital library run by the National Institutes of Health. They index papers from academic journals, including good and bad. You can find papers purporting to prove demonic possession in MedLine. Inclusion in Medline does not make something good by default. The papers are published in journals (the actual source), not Medline, which simply indexes them. Zenomonoz (talk) 12:12, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

Frederick Douglass

Please be careful when discussing Frederick Douglass. He was the half black, half white offspring of a plantation owner. He is also very important to the issue of Blackface. When new slave families arrived on plantations, plantation owners often allowed their children to interact with the slave kids. Whenever this happened, the black kids would laugh at anything the white kids did, funny or not. This condition was picked up by the whites, it was imitated in traveling circuses, on stage, in vaudeville, and in silent film. It was so bad that when Douglass gained fame, he was told to never smile in pictures taken of him, or it would remind people of the condition. So, of the hundreds of pictures taken of Frederick Douglass, none show him with a smile. This, despite being instructed to ally himself with the Suffragette Movement, having two wives (one white), and five children. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lord Milner (talk • contribs) 23:35, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

What edit are you suggesting? --Hob Gadling (talk) 17:28, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

Evidence of Ashkenazi Jewish IQ advantage

The article currently reads "There is no evidence for a Jewish IQ advantage." This statement is not supported by the article cited. I'll outline here the relevant section of the article, "Jewish—Non-Jewish Differences in IQ". The first paragraph says there is "little good evidence" about the IQ of Ashkenazi Jews, then citing three studies which provide some evidence of higher Ashkenazi Jewish IQ; they say these studies are samples of convenience. They seem to be convinced that such a difference exists. Rather than arguing there is no difference, they instead go on to discuss in the second paragraph the source of the difference, focusing on Cochran et al.'s sphingolipid explanation. They do not believe there is strong enough evidence in favor of this theory, but still do not believe to be affirmatively untrue, as they still regard it to be "an intriguing suggestion". In their third paragraph, they note that even the highest estimates of Ashkenazi Jewish IQ wouldn't account for the observed differences in Ashkenazi Jewish accomplishment. This is the entirety of their treatment of Ashkenazi Jewish IQ.

There is no bad-faith interpretation here, this is the straightforward, plain reading of the source material. Even if you think one source is sufficient to establish the existence of academic consensus, this source does not suffice, as it directly contradicts the claim currently made in the article. The authors explicitly say that there exists evidence/data in favor of the proposition. Where am I wrong here?

If you wanted to say "According to such-and-such authors, there is 'little good evidence' for an Ashkenazi Jewish IQ advantage", that would be supported by the source, though it would be somewhat biased towards what you want to be true. But the claim that there is no evidence is straightforwardly false. Peaux (talk) 01:47, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

See my post just above where I address this. Let's limit the conversation to a single thread. Thanks, Generalrelative (talk) 01:52, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

No evidence for Jewish IQ advantage

Why was this content deleted? — Preceding unsigned comment added by CuriousCrafter123 (talk • contribs) 17:55, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

My mistake. Sorry. I've self-reverted. NightHeron (talk) 18:05, 15 September 2023 (UTC)
@NightHeron I'm not going to complain if you think this content is really necessary (though I don't see the point myself), but can you fix the sfn multiple-target error that you've re-introduced please? Thanks, Wham2001 (talk) 10:47, 17 September 2023 (UTC)
What error are you referring to? I'm not familiar with the term "multiple-target error". Thanks. NightHeron (talk) 11:16, 17 September 2023 (UTC)
See Category:Harv and Sfn multiple-target errors – it's where a shortened footnote (reference using {{harv}}, {{sfn}} or one of their relatives) points to more than one long-form citation. The solution in this case is to convert the inline reference to Nisbet et al. (2021a) to a shortened footnote (sfn) citation. If you edit articles using shortened footnotes more than very occasionally, I would recomned installing this script, which highlights various kinds of problems with shortened references in a clear and helpful manner. Best, Wham2001 (talk) 17:11, 17 September 2023 (UTC)
The edit in question was put in not by me, but by CuriousCrafter123 two days ago. I've never used the "shortened footnote form", don't know how to use it or how to correct it when misused, and have already spent almost an hour trying unsuccessfully to understand it. If you want to revert CC123's edit, I won't object. I thought the content was relevant and well-sourced, but it's not crucial for this article. NightHeron (talk) 18:04, 17 September 2023 (UTC)
Yeah, harv and sfn are not obvious the first few times. I've converted the reference. Best wishes, Wham2001 (talk) 19:51, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

There has been some edit warring over this, and the claim has been made in an edit summary that the sentence misrepresents the source. I took the time to reread the relevant section just now, and I see the authors are quite clear that there isn't any real evidence that Jews (or Ashkenazi Jews in particular) in fact have higher IQs on average than other populations. As the authors emphasize, All available studies, however, are based on samples of convenience. They then go on to discuss the question of to what we should attribute the greater overall intellectual ability popularly attributed to Jews. But "popularly attributed" does not imply that there is in fact scientific evidence. The closest thing to evidence that they cite are two estimates comparing Jews in Britain and America to White non-Jews in the same countries, and one of these estimates is by notorious quack Richard Lynn. All that said, I'm not especially committed to retaining the edit, which was added by a brand new account (it's been discussed before, e.g., whether Jewish intelligence is relevant to this article at all, given that there is some question as to whether "Jewish" is a racial category) but I don't think that the rationale that was given for removing it in this instance makes sense. Generalrelative (talk) 01:42, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

You are confusing evidence with conclusive evidence. The authors explicitly state that there does exist weak evidence in favor of the proposition, and discuss it as if it were true. Note, for example, that rather than discussing why the belief may have come about that Ashki Jews have higher IQs, they instead discuss a theory that would explain a higher AJ average IQ. They describe the theory as "an intriguing suggestion", a descriptor very unlikely to be used about a theory of a mechanism explaining something you believe to be untrue.
For a couple other examples: other than this joke study, there have not been any studies done to the highest level of rigor to show that parachutes prevent death. Relative to the standard in the field (randomized controlled trials), the evidence we have that parachutes prevent death is weak. On the other hand, there is lots of strong evidence (RCTs, meta-analyses, the whole lot being peer-reviewed) of certain psychic abilities in humans (ESP). There's also equally strong evidence against. But while most people and scientists would likely say there is no chance ESP is real, the statement that there is no evidence of it is false, and the statement that there is only weak evidence that parachutes save lives is (technically) true.
You're right that "popularly attributed" doesn't imply that there is evidence, nor do I mean to suggest it does. However, you ignore the rest of the sentence: "supported by (weak) data". This is explicitly saying that there exists evidence, but that the evidence should not be taken as conclusive. I genuinely do not understand how this could be read any other way. Peaux (talk) 05:35, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
I could scrawl any false statistics I wanted on on a cocktail napkin. Perhaps I could even find someone willing to described it as "intriguing". That napkin would, technically, be a kind of 'evidence', but to present it as "some evidence" would be either disingenuous or completely and dramatically missing the point. Richard Lynn's fringe pseudoscientific nonsense is just about as legitimate as that hypothetical napkin-scrawling would be. It's perfectly possible for a theory to be intriguing without being supported by a shred of real evidence. Grayfell (talk) 05:53, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
That napkin would not be evidence. Samples of convenience, however, are. If your claim is that they all falsified data, as you hypothetically did on your hypothetical napkin, then you'd be right to say there is no evidence. But you have provided nothing to back up that claim, and the source cited certainly doesn't either.
You can say that you consider the data that exist to be nonsense, but the source cited in the article, supposedly by seven top scholars in the field, does not.
And you misunderstand the "intriguing" comment/argument. They are referring to the proposed mechanism, not the proposed effect, as intriguing; and my argument is that people generally do not consider proposed mechanisms for effects they believe not to exist, to be intriguing.
Again, they explicitly state that there does exist weak evidence of the proposition. Whether you believe that evidence or not, the statement that no evidence exists is false. Peaux (talk) 06:35, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
You are right that I haven't provided evidence that Lynn falsified his data, because this is a Wikipedia talk page and that would be WP:OR. Fortunately, dozens of published scientists have already done that work for us. We have already had many, many, many discussions of Lynn, as well as Cochran, Hardy, and Harpending, on these and related talk pages. This is junk science and per WP:FRINGE, should not be legitimized on Wikipedia. If you want real evidence that Lynn falsified, William H. Tucker (psychologist)'s work comes highly recommended, or if you want a more approachable work, Superior: The Return of Race Science is pretty good despite (and because) of the complaints of the scientific racists it documents. For Harpending etc., off the top of my head, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ashkenazi Jewish intelligence (2nd nomination) is one previous discussion about this. As I mentioned on that discussion, they are not serious scholars and do not deserve the benefit of the doubt. If they are right about any aspect of their 'intriguing' theories, it's almost certainly a coincidence or "stopped-clock" kind of thing, and not because of the merits of their supposed research. Grayfell (talk) 06:49, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
All that is well and good, but if true, then that would cast significant doubt on the legitimacy of the source cited in this article, which treats them as legitimate work. Peaux (talk) 06:56, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
For those without access, here is an extended quotation from the article in question. Generalrelative (talk) 05:59, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

There is little good evidence about just what IQ levels are typical for Ashkenazi Jews. (There is even less evidence available for Sephardic Jews, and in the rest of this section “Jews” should be taken to mean “Ashkenazi Jews of Eu- ropean descent.”) Jewish IQs have been variously esti- mated to be 7–15 points higher than those of White non- Jews in Britain and America (Flynn, 1991; Lynn, 2004, 2006). All available studies, however, are based on samples of convenience. It is not clear to what we should attribute the greater overall intellectual ability popularly attributed to Jews and supported by (weak) data. It is certainly possible to invoke cultural explanations, and there are numerous armchair genetic theories as well. One genetic theory may have more substance to it than the others. This is the “sphingolipid” theory of Cochran, Hardy, and Harpending (2005). Coch- ran et al. noted that Jews are subject to several distinctive genetic conditions that involve an excess of sphingolip- ids—the substance that forms part of the insulating outer sheaths that allow nerve cells to transmit electrical signals and encourage growth of dendrites. These illnesses include Tay-Sachs disease, Niemann-Pick disease, and Gaucher’s disease. Having too many of these sphingolipids is fatal or at least likely to result in serious illness that can prevent reproduction. Why does natural selection not eliminate these diseases? Cochran et al. enlisted the sickle-cell ane- mia analogy. The sickle-cell gene produces illness for individuals who have two copies of it (one from each parent). But those with only one copy of the gene are provided with protection against malaria. Cochran et al. argued that because Jews were segregated into trade and finance since their arrival in Europe in the 8th century AD, intelligence conferred a larger reproductive advantage for them than for others. The main evidence in favor of the sphingolipid theory is that Jews with Gaucher’s disease are more likely to be working in occupations demanding ex- tremely high IQ than are other Jews. No direct test of the association of the genes for these diseases with intelligence has been made, so the theory remains merely an intriguing suggestion. It is important to note that even at the highest esti- mates we have of Jewish IQ, Jewish accomplishment ex- ceeds what would be predicted on the basis of IQ alone. Nisbett (2009) has argued that the numbers of Jewish Ivy Leaguers, professors at elite colleges, Supreme Court clerks, and Nobel Prize winners are greater than one would expect even if average Jewish IQ were 115. He has also noted that remarkable as the superior achievement of Jews is, the achievement difference between Jews and non-Jews is far less extreme than differences between groups in many other comparisons that cannot be explained on purely ge- netic grounds, such as the achievements of the Italians versus the English in the 15th century, of the English versus the Italians after the 18th century, of Arabs versus Europeans in the 8th century, of Europeans versus Arabs after the 14th century, and of New Englanders versus Southerners throughout American history.

I'm going to leave aside the bulk of what you're arguing because it seems to me to be a barrel of red herrings (if you'll forgive the phrase). The fact of the matter is that Cochran et al.'s hypothesis is in no way evidence that Jews have higher IQs than others. I will say, by the way, that I find the use of the term "IQ advantage" to be misleading (the sources sometimes use it, unfortunately, but not in this instance). We're really just talking about average performance on a specific set of tests, and in order to make claims about that we'd need systematic studies, i.e. most certainly not "samples of convenience". And the authors are clear that such systematic studies did not exist at the time of writing. Generalrelative (talk) 06:14, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
You misunderstand my argument. Of course, a hypothesis is not evidence. However, the fact that the authors of the source discussed a hypothesized mechanism for the proposed effect is evidence that they, who (I believe) you described as seven top scholars in the field, find the proposed effect credible enough to care about how it might be explained. The hypothesis isn't evidence, but the fact that they discuss it is evidence they believe to some extent in the effect you claim there is no evidence for. As for whether samples of convenience should be considered evidence, you're right that they are not sufficiently conclusive evidence. But you are substituting your personal judgement for that of the authors of the source. They explicitly describe the effect in question as "supported by (weak) data". You have consistently ignored that the text of the source directly contradicts the claim made in the article. I'll also note, the standards you propose are an isolated demand for rigor. There are lots of effects in psychology for which the only evidence is samples of convenience (college students in psych classes or in general). We do not describe those effects as being supported by "no evidence". Peaux (talk) 06:52, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
I have misunderstood nothing. "Weak data" is scientist-talk for "no evidence". We've had similar discussions many times before on this talk page and the consensus is always the same. The authors of the review are certainly entertaining Cochran et al.'s argument, but they also present a pretty compelling case to reject the whole premise of a genetic Jewish IQ advantage in the final sentence of the section. In any case, see below. Generalrelative (talk) 06:59, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
They present no case at all that the existing evidence should be ignored. As for the final sentence, it's a non sequitur. They say that a higher mean IQ, even if true, would be insufficient to explain the differences in achievement observed. This has no bearing on whether the claim is true or not.
I'm glad to see you're making the right decision, albeit disappointed, of course, in your reason for it. Peaux (talk) 07:30, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
Respectfully, please give the ill-placed moralizing a rest. I've quoted the entire relevant section above so that others can make up their own minds. It's time to give them a chance to weigh in if they'd like. Generalrelative (talk) 14:17, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

After giving this some thought, I'm going to come down on the side of removing this content –– though not, I should emphasize, for any of the reasons raised by Miladragon3/Peaux. The fact remains that the sentence refers to "Jewish IQ advantage" which is a fundamentally misleading phrase. The previous sentences are about IQ test scores, so to fit in thematically we'd need to revise it to say that there's no good evidence for what the average IQ of Jews is. If folks think that's important to say here, that's fine, but I find it awkward. If you have nothing substantive to say about it, why bring it up? And this is leaving aside the concern that I raised above about Jews not necessarily being a racial grouping. On the whole, I just don't think the sentence as-is fits and I don't think a "fixed" version really adds much to the article. Generalrelative (talk) 06:59, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

It seems to me that a context-free statement that "There is no evidence for a Jewish IQ advantage" is entirely inappropriate. It seems to have been added because it expects readers to already be familiar with a rather esoteric debate concerning Ashkenazi Jews (not Jews in general). If this particular debate was of real significance to the 'race and intelligence' topic, and could be demonstrated to be so by citing sources which argued this, there might be a case for discussing it, while providing a proper context, but slapping in a 'no evidence' claim about something not previously discussed it just bad writing, even ignoring the vary many obvious problems involved in implying in Wikipedia's voice that Jews are a 'race' - an implication which absolutely does not belong in any serious discussion of a scientific topic. AndyTheGrump (talk) 14:41, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
Yeah, I dug into this a bit more and I have reason to suspect that the burner account used to add this sentence was R&I LTA Fq90, possibly just trying to stir the pot. If anyone's curious I'll be happy to discuss via email. I'm going to go ahead and remove the disputed content for now. But if other experienced editors would like to take ownership of the content and re-add, I won't stand in the way. Generalrelative (talk) 00:24, 23 September 2023 (UTC)
That makes sense. If restored, it should be rephrased to more accurately reflect the cited source. Grayfell (talk) 00:23, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

Lede problem

The phrase in the lede “Further complicating the issue, modern science has shown race to be a social construct rather than a biological reality” masks controversy and is not appropriate verbiage for an encyclopedic explanation of science. Science has not “shown” race to “be” a social construct. Some scientific perspectives have characterized race as a social construct, and more commonly as being more socially constructed than biologically real. But some scientists maintain that race is strongly biological. We should reveal controversy. Zanahary (talk) 16:01, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

There is already a strong consensus about this over at Race (human categorization), so it won't be relitigated here. But I'll be happy to explain the basics of why we phrase this the way we do.
Per WP:MEDRS, consensus statements by major scientific bodies are among the highest quality sources on scientific topics.
Here's what the American Association of Biological Anthropologists (i.e. biologists who specialize in the species homo sapiens) says:

Race does not provide an accurate representation of human biological variation. It was never accurate in the past, and it remains inaccurate when referencing contemporary human populations. Humans are not divided biologically into distinct continental types or racial genetic clusters. Instead, the Western concept of race must be understood as a classification system that emerged from, and in support of, European colonialism, oppression, and discrimination. It thus does not have its roots in biological reality, but in policies of discrimination. Because of that, over the last five centuries, race has become a social reality that structures societies and how we experience the world. In this regard, race is real, as is racism, and both have real biological consequences.

They go on in slightly more granular detail to explain:

Racial categories do not provide an accurate picture of human biological variation. Variation exists within and among populations across the planet, and groups of individuals can be differentiated by patterns of similarity and difference, but these patterns do not align with socially-defined racial groups (such as whites and blacks) or continentally-defined geographic clusters (such as Africans, Asians, and Europeans). What has been characterized as “race” does not constitute discrete biological groups or evolutionarily independent lineages. Furthermore, while physical traits like skin color and hair texture are often emphasized in racial classification, and assumptions are often made about the pattern of genetic diversity relative to continental geography, neither follows racial lines. The distribution of biological variation in our species demonstrates that our socially-recognized races are not biological categories. While human racial groups are not biological categories, “race” as a social reality — as a way of structuring societies and experiencing the world — is very real. The racial groups we recognize in the West have been socially, politically, and legally constructed over the last five centuries.

So far, in the very extensive debates that have been had on this topic over the years, no one has come close to providing anything like this kind of source arguing that race has a biological meaning. That's why we state it as a fact rather than an opinion that race is socially constructed, per WP:YESPOV. Generalrelative (talk) 17:07, 15 October 2023 (UTC)
But controversy exists, doesn’t it? And it’s a controversy central to the article topic? Zanahary (talk) 20:04, 15 October 2023 (UTC)
Not really, no. If you want to get into the weeds a bit more, here's a much more technical consensus statement on the issue, published earlier this year by the National Academies of Science: Using Population Descriptors in Genetics and Genomics Research: A New Framework for an Evolving Field. In most other cases I'd encourage you to go to the main article on the topic –– i.e. Talk:Race (human categorization) –– and start a discussion there, but in this instance the issue has already been discussed to death, so I'll suggest rather that you drop it. Generalrelative (talk) 20:40, 15 October 2023 (UTC)
You can find a minority view on almost any topic, but Wikipedia does not treat the minority views as equal to the mainstream ones. See WP:YESPOV (as Generalrelative correctly just cited), WP:FALSEBALANCE, etc. MrOllie (talk) 20:48, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

Should this article discuss the hereditarianism movement itself?

I'd support adding a sentence to the last lead paragraph about the clear political goals (segregation/eugenics/"racial awareness") of the hereditarian position (based on this paper, page 6), and adding a corresponding paragraph to the body, maybe in the "Policy relevance and ethics" section. Some of this stuff is mentioned in the History section but only in passing; most of this article focuses on the science, but not on the movement linked to that science, and that movement's false claims (that their research is suppressed, "taboo", or that opponents are engaged in "blank-slate" science denial). The paper I linked addresses this at length and is a good source if we decide to cover this. DFlhb (talk) 08:46, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

I'd like to insist; I think it would benefit this article if we covered the false "meta-claims" associated with race and intelligence, like claims of suppression of 'legitimate' research, depictions of respected mainstream academics as blank-slatist ideologues, etc. I may do bold edits in this direction later. DFlhb (talk) 08:35, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
The answer to this question depends entirely on how many reliable, secondary sources you can find. Sources like these [60][61][62] might be argued to add up to some sort of brief statement, but be aware that any substantive addition to this article is likely to attract a new wave of meatpuppetry, so make sure you step correct. It's also worth noting that there are hereditarians and then there are race-and-intelligence hereditarians who fail to grasp the basic population-genetics-101 fact that individual-level heritability does not imply heritable difference at the level of population groups. Though the latter group like to call themselves simply "hereditarians" –– presumably in an effort to falsely cast those who criticize them as critics of hereditarianism writ large –– it's actually their scientific illiteracy that's the problem. Generalrelative (talk) 15:52, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
I'll also add: the subsidiary article History of the race and intelligence controversy has a somewhat lower bar to entry. Perhaps it would be best to begin there and then evaluate whether some of that content can be incorporated into the main article? Generalrelative (talk) 15:56, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Header Paragraph phrasing

The phrasing of the first paragraph when I read it always felt inaccurate. I didn’t know how to articulate until now.

My objections to the current reading is as follows:

(1)- “Science” as defined by wikipedia is an endeavor with the calculus of the scientific method. If we use calculus as a type of logic.

The meaning of endeavor can be either a noun or a verb, but not an object. It is not itself a system. Hence why Wikipedia says science is “systematic”. In logic and model theory only models, systems, or theories can show or demonstrate something. My definition of endeavor is inspired by Websters dictionary and Cambridge, in addition to a preview of the definition from the Oxford dictionary site. I do not have access to the Oxford English dictionary

(1.1)- For science to “show” something is misleading to the audience. Science as defined is a continuous process. Another phrasing which would work is the scientific method as it is a system. This would be more accurate. Even so, this leads me to the next point

(2)- In Oxford’s English learning dictionary “to show” means to prove something, among other things. This type of definition fits best in the context of the paragraph. Another definition by Webster close to this is “to demonstrate or establish by argument or reasoning”. The other definitions I’ve seen have been “to declare” to “peform”. The later definitions cannot be done by a system nor can “establishment”, rather, by people or an object. A formal system in itself cannot show this, a computer for example is build by a system of logic but it is the computer itself which can only demonstrate propositions, images, or declarations. The later cases do not seem to fit.

(2)- Now, to “prove” or “demonstrate by argument or reasoning”. As indicated by the edit, it is debatable whether or not the scientific method can show or “prove” anything. As commentators on this subject have offered perspectives, Kuhn and Popper in particular, who are the closest to holding positivist positions in the epistemology of science, there is disagreement. The school of conventionalism inherently carries an issue that there is an indeterminacy of proof. A formal system which we hold to understand an objective perception of the world is limited by its measuring apparati. Popper, holds two things: you cannot prove anything in science, only falsify. But to falsify is another term than to “show”. My edit comments were cut off but I added other suggestions. It might be better to replace show with “falsify”. Finally Kuhn holds the only systems we have in the domain of science are paradigms which may be superseded by later paradigms. So another phrasing which would be more precise is “the modern scientific paradigm has falsified race as [biological] construct” or “the modern scientific paradigm has shown race to be a social construct”.

(2)- The final objection which was cut off from my edit comment is that some hold to epistemological anarchism or even post modern like philosophies, which hold every scientific view is merely socially constructed. It is merely the product of a community of people holding certain propositions to be true by their own will to power. And/or, the epistemological anarchism which would hold each “truth” is merely a position by people. This led me to write “the modern scientific community”.

My edit comments also give other justifications in that it is more accurate to use a community as people who show things as they are objects which can act. Which showing is.

(3)- The idea of “science” showing race to be a social construct is indeed modern. Therefore, it may be accurate to say this is the case. But the scientific method hasn’t changed nor has the system of science since the concept of race was conceived. Prior to the mid 20th century the consensus of race wasn’t that it was a social construct. So “science” at that time period would have contradicted the modern understanding of race. Therefore to say “modern science has shown race to be a social construct” is to say science contradicts itself. A way to remove such a contradiction would to specify the field as “Modern biology and genetics has shown…” which indeed can be subject to change as we know physics, for example, is constantly developing and has many open problems and currently is waiting for a new unifying paradigm. ————————-

Therefore the suggestions are as follows:

(A) ”..modern biology and genetics have shown race to be socially constructed”

(B) “…the modern scientific paradigm has shown race to be a social construct [or: to be socially constructed]”

(C) “…the modern scientific paradigm has falsified race as anything else [than/but a] social construct”

(D) My original edit which was reverted

Finally, if there was already discussion of this I would like to see it, I do not know where it would be and it might help to add to the talk discussion. Sedeanimu (talk) 22:14, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

This language is based on a centralized consensus over at Race (human categorization). See the 4th sentence of that article: Modern science regards race as a social construct, an identity which is assigned based on rules made by society. The statement has been discussed many, many times, both there and here, and consensus has converged on the language you see. I'm surprised to hear you say you couldn't find any of these discussions because the most recent example is just above. Generalrelative (talk) 23:32, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

Systemic encyclopaedic editorial bias

The introduction requires removal of editorial bias for "blank slatism", which is a peculiar view of human nature in which all observed human group differences have a complete environmental origin. At a minimum, it needs to be made clear that many claims in the first paragraph of the introduction are disputed:

Discussions of race and intelligence – specifically, claims of differences in intelligence along racial lines – have appeared in both popular science and academic research since the modern concept of race was first introduced. With the inception of IQ testing in the early 20th century, differences in average test performance between racial groups were observed, though these differences have fluctuated and in many cases steadily decreased over time. Complicating the issue, modern science has shown race to be a socially constructed phenomenon rather than a biological reality, [citation needed] and there are various conflicting definitions of intelligence.[citation needed] In particular, the validity of IQ testing as a metric for human intelligence is disputed. [citation needed] Today, the scientific consensus is that genetics does not explain differences in IQ test performance between groups, and that observed differences are environmental in origin.[citation needed]

Here is a neutral version of the introduction first paragraph which takes into account current research;

Discussions of race and intelligence – specifically, claims of differences in intelligence along racial lines – have appeared in both popular science and academic research. With the inception of IQ testing in the early 20th century, differences in average test performance between racial groups have been observed, though these differences have fluctuated and in many cases steadily decreased over time. Likewise, although empirical racial classification attempts to identify biological (super)populations or subspecies, with modern approaches automatically clusterizing species biodiversity, historic categorization has involved arbitrarily discretized social constructs (e.g. in demographic surveys). Furthermore, there have been alternate definitions of intelligence proposed, in which the validity of IQ testing as a metric for human intelligence is disputed. There is currently no scientific consensus on the relative contribution of genetics/environment to IQ test performance between populations. Existing empirical methods exhibit limitations; for example twin studies (differences in phenotypic treatment prevent controlled experimentation), GWAS (divergent evolution of sample populations prevent comparison), etc.

I understand that the systemic encyclopaedic editorial bias for "blank slatism" likely relates to an RfC on racial hereditarianism. [63] [64] Richardbrucebaxter (talk) 04:06, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia has a pro-science bias. "Blank slatism" is a straw-man position advocated by approximately zero sources or editors here. Being a racial hereditarian with regard to intelligence is simply being ignorant of modern population genetics, as is well attested by the sources discussed in that RfC you mentioned. That's why it was WP:SNOW-closed and will not be relitigated anytime soon. Please note as well that the lead is supported by citations in the article body, as has been discussed numerous times before. Generalrelative (talk) 18:30, 26 November 2023 (UTC)
Zero academics or professional scientists in the field would agreed with the proposition that the existence of genetic group differences in intelligence is an invalid hypothesis or that this hypothesis has been invalidated by the evidence. In its current state the article is claiming that all observed human group differences have a complete environmental origin (i.e. that there is no dispute of this claim); this is an extreme and highly biased position. The neutral version of the introduction proposed is not arguing for "racial hereditarianism", it is simply discussing the current state of the research.
Richardbrucebaxter (talk) 14:27, 27 November 2023 (UTC)
Do you have any sources to back up your extreme and outlandish claim about "zero academics or professional scientists in the field", or are you just throwing it out as your personal opinion? NightHeron (talk) 14:50, 27 November 2023 (UTC)
Since you've apparently refused to actually examine the sources discussed in the RfC, I'll quote one for you. Here's a 2020 statement by a group of scholars including prominent subject-matter experts Agustín Fuentes of Princeton and Jonathan M. Marks of the University of North Carolina:

[W]hile 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.

[65] Emphasis added. Generalrelative (talk) 17:26, 27 November 2023 (UTC)
See Field (disambiguation). The article is referring to group differences in intelligence, which is a field of psychology. In this thread we are specifically discussing environmental-genetic contribution to group differences. While there might be some historic relevance of anthropological field research, they are not the most relevant tools used to explore the empirical question. Richardbrucebaxter (talk) 04:30, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
Biological anthropology is the sub-field of biology that studies the species homo sapiens. Both Marks and Fuentes are experts in the evolution of complex human behavioral traits and the associated genetics. Take a look at their BLPs. Besides, there are lots more sources cited in the RfC. Take your pick. In any case, this argument has already been had and decided, so this will be my final reply to you. Generalrelative (talk) 04:44, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
Biological anthropology is familiar with the discovery that currently classified subspecies (race) of our nearest living relative Pan troglodytes exhibit similar genetic variation to Homo sapiens continental superpopulations (Fst=0.1-0.2), and similar last-time divergences/mixing patterns (>5ky) [66]; yet the ability to study race as a biological construct does not grant expertise in population level variation of specific psychological traits nor their genetic correlates/interaction. The authors cited have not published peer-reviewed articles in intelligence, and yet they are de facto being used to dictate encyclopaedic content policy. Richardbrucebaxter (talk) 01:30, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
There are lots of valid ways to study the issue. One is by studying group intelligence specifically, and another is studying whether socially defined groupings have any validity in the first place. But all of this is really beside the point - we have had several RFCs on this issue and developed a strong wiki-wide consensus. Arguing that the sources are wrong isn't going to get you anywhere in the face of that. MrOllie (talk) 01:39, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Content removal

This revision by @NightHeron reverts my addition of a relevant perspective on criticisms of race by Earl B. Hunt. The rationale is that it's undue and "confusing": "since race is socially constructed, it's unclear how biology and genetics could be part of the explanation".

An editor being confused by the content of a scientist's perspective is not grounds for wholesale removal of the content. And Hunt's idea here is that socially constructed race is correlated with biological and cultural realities that can be impactful in test performance, so studies of race and intelligence are in fact studies of other factors and intelligence, with race as proxy. This is neither confusing nor undue. Zanahary (talk) 22:51, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Hunt is a source that's been discussed extensively in the past. Presenting his book in a balanced manner –– that is avoiding WP:CHERRYPICKing –– presents something of a challenge because he goes out of his way to steel-man some of the racial hereditarian arguments before coming around to the conclusion that they lack an evidentiary basis. There is also the matter of him being a psychologist with no professional training in genetics, though in this particular case I think that's a secondary concern. So yeah, NightHeron's removal was on point and completely in line with longstanding consensus. Generalrelative (talk) 00:44, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
If I had seen it, I would've also reverted this. In addition to what Generalrelative says, I don't think this is actually particularly informative by itself. Phrases like "numerous race-related aspects" are broad and vague and low in meaning but high in implications. Even if this were a fair summary of Hunt's position, which I don't really think it was, it would not add any clarity to the topic. Grayfell (talk) 03:50, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

Clusters

I don't understand this sentence When one samples continental groups, the clusters become continental; if one had chosen other sampling patterns, the clusters would be different. Does it come from Kaplan 2011? If yes, could you give the page on which it's written? Alaexis¿question? 09:52, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

I just googled it and saw that the sentence is WP:COPYVIO, so I'll remove it for now until we can do a rewrite. Indeed, the entire passage is WP:CLOSEPARA from the article "Human Genetic Clustering" in the Scholarly Community Encyclopedia:

Anthropologists such as C. Loring Brace,[54] philosophers Jonathan Kaplan and Rasmus Winther,[55][55][56][57] and geneticist Joseph Graves,[58] have argued that while it is certainly possible to find biological and genetic variation that corresponds roughly to the groupings normally defined as "continental races", this is true for almost all geographically distinct populations. The cluster structure of the genetic data is therefore dependent on the initial hypotheses of the researcher and the populations sampled. When one samples continental groups the clusters become continental; if one had chosen other sampling patterns the clustering would be different. Weiss and Fullerton have noted that if one sampled only Icelanders, Mayans and Maoris, three distinct clusters would form and all other populations could be described as being clinally composed of admixtures of Maori, Icelandic and Mayan genetic materials.[59] Kaplan and Winther therefore argue that seen in this way both Lewontin and Edwards are right in their arguments. They conclude that while racial groups are characterized by different allele frequencies, this does not mean that racial classification is a natural taxonomy of the human species, because multiple other genetic patterns can be found in human populations that cross-cut racial distinctions. Moreover, the genomic data under-determines whether one wishes to see subdivisions (i.e., splitters) or a continuum (i.e., lumpers). Under Kaplan and Winther's view, racial groupings are objective social constructions (see Mills 1998 [60]) that have conventional biological reality only insofar as the categories are chosen and constructed for pragmatic scientific reasons.

On the bright side, hopefully this clears up any confusion as to what was meant by the sentence. Generalrelative (talk) 16:07, 3 December 2023 (UTC)
In addition to copyvio, it looks like it's user-generated content. Scholarly Community Encyclopedia describes itself as "a user-generated content collection platform for researchers" and doesn't attribute this content to a researcher for us to assess their credentials. Alaexis¿question? 18:18, 3 December 2023 (UTC)
The source they cite over there, 'Handwiki', is a Wikipedia mirror. So most likely not a copyright violation. MrOllie (talk) 18:24, 3 December 2023 (UTC)
Aha, I didn't catch that! Upon inspection it looks to be lifted from Race_(human_categorization)#Cluster_analysis. Man, MDPI is the worst :0 Generalrelative (talk) 18:38, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

De-italicizing ‘race’ and ‘intelligence’ from conceptual criticism section

These words should not be italicized—WP:WORDSASWORDS is for words. This section is for criticism of concepts, not of words. Thus, the words ‘race’ and ‘intelligence’ should be de-italicized there. Zanahary (talk) 17:01, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

This only way we can identify them as specific concepts for discussion, rather than running text. (Apart from scare quotes, of course, but we don't do that.) Take for example the section title you chose for this discussion: compare
  • De-italicizing race and intelligence from conceptual criticism section
  • De-italicizing race and intelligence from conceptual criticism section
Italics are being used as a form of highlighting of the specific topics under analysis. This is what WP:WORDSASWORDS is designed to achieve in most articles; it is only in linguistics articles that the examination is more rarified. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 17:35, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
I don’t know what your comparison is meant to illustrate, but I don’t think it applies—if the section were referred to with italicized text, that would make sense, because it’s a reference to a piece of text reproduced in the reference. That is not the same as italicizing concepts in question.
Take a look at the article for cancel culture, for instance. The term is not in italics when criticism of the concept itself is written about. But it would be italicized in text about criticism of the term. Zanahary (talk) 18:56, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
That article uses scare quotes for the same purpose: The expression "cancel culture" came in circulation in the late 2010s and early 2020s. As I understand the MOS, it really should read The expression cancel culture came in circulation in the late 2010s and early 2020s but I'm not about to start another debate about it. WP:other stuff exists. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 20:44, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
Yes, that’s for the expression! Not for the concept. The section in this article is about the concepts, not the terms. So they should be neither scare-quotes nor italicized Zanahary (talk) 22:33, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
Look at the lede for example. It refers to “the modern concept of race”, without italics on the last word. This is correct, because words as words get italicized, not words as concepts. That should be maintained, including in the header for the conceptual criticism section. Zanahary (talk) 22:37, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
The section title echoes the title of the article, so some method is needed to denote that 'race' and 'intelligence' are going to be discussed separately rather than as the 'race and intelligence' relation that is the main topic of the article. Rephrasing the section title to be more distinct from the article title should decrease the need for the italics. MrOllie (talk) 22:41, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
It could be separated into two sections: one for race and one for intelligence. Zanahary (talk) 22:50, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
On its face this seems like a good solution, but the section is already broken up this way. Generalrelative (talk) 23:05, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
Then why don't we either: rename the top-level header to 'Conceptual criticism' (or something), or change each sub-section to a top-level header, eliminating the 'Criticisms of race and gender' header that combines them? Zanahary (talk) 23:14, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
I'd be amenable to the first of these options. Our current section header is definitely clunky –– though it does have the virtue of being semantically clear. Curious to hear what others think. Wrt the second option: I liked it at first, until I went back to the article and saw how it would impact the flow of the table of contents. Keeping the two "conceptual criticism" subsections together just makes more sense at the level of overall logical flow. Generalrelative (talk) 00:03, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
Just making a note here that I've WP:BOLDly edited the headers to be more succinct, following on the heels of a similarly BOLD edit by Zanahary. Generalrelative (talk) 21:58, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

Lede wording

Right now, the lede contains:

With the inception of IQ testing in the early 20th century, differences in average test performance between racial groups were observed, though these differences have fluctuated and in many cases steadily decreased over time. Complicating the issue, modern science has shown race to be a socially constructed phenomenon rather than a biological reality, and there are various conflicting definitions of intelligence.

I think it should be:

Since the inception of IQ testing in the early 20th century, differences in average test performance between racial groups have been observed, though these differences have fluctuated and in many cases steadily decreased over time. Complicating the issue, modern science has shown race to be a socially constructed phenomenon rather than a biological reality, and there exist various conflicting definitions of intelligence.

“since” and “have been” clarify that such differences are still observed, and makes more sense with the explanation that they’ve changed over time. “Exist” is just better prose than “are”. Zanahary (talk) 18:52, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

@Generalrelative did you mean to revert this edit, by the way? Your explanation was about restoring stable version of the header issue above. Did you have an objection to these prose edits, too? Zanahary (talk) 21:15, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
Aha, yes. There's just a lot going on at once here and I wanted to give others a chance to weigh in. I don't see these edits as especially problematic but I'm also not convinced that they are an improvement. Not sure how helpful it will be to get into the weeds on whether "exist" is better prose than "are" in this case –– I don't see why it would be but it's a vanishingly minor issue. A slightly bigger concern has to do with the way we present group differences in average test performance. Our current wording "With... were" is probably not perfect, but it has the virtue of not overstating the case.
Of course it's technically true that group differences have often been observed, but this is more trivially true than one might initially imagine, especially when one looks at the factors which impact IQ test performance discussed in the article. Complicating matters, sometimes one racial group performs better than another in a certain context and things are entirely reversed in a separate context (e.g. in the UK Blacks often outperform Whites at IQ proxies like academic achievement, whereas this is not the case in the US despite the closing gap). The whole thing is far too messy for a statement about the way things have been since the inception of IQ testing, which is what seems to be implied by your revised wording "Since... have been". In this case, what has been observed is very, very heavily conditioned by what kinds of samples have been looked at and the kinds of a priori assumptions researchers have used to group subjects.
Again, the current wording is probably not perfect, but it's the result of years of discussion and consensus-building. That's an angle that may not be immediately apparent to a relative newcomer to this topic area: this is one of the most controversial pages on the internet. We've been targeted by relentless POV-pushing of every kind imaginable –– and some you probably wouldn't imagine unless you'd seen them. If the community who watches this page seems especially resistant to change it's because we've been over this stuff many, many times. It's not that things cannot be improved (I think you've seen that I'm open to working with you on improving the clarity of headers) but the bar is high. Generalrelative (talk) 21:53, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
Got it. I’m aware that this is a controversial article.
I think the Since… have been verbiage is superior because it doesn’t imply, as the current wording does, that differences were observed at the advent of testing, and that’s it. But I understand that my proposed wording might inappropriately suggest a reliable consistency of specific measured differences. What about something like:
Since the advent of IQ testing in the early 20th century, there have been observations of differences in average test performance among racial groups. These differences, however, are not static; over time and across studies, they have varied and sometimes narrowed.
I’ve gone ahead and restored “exist”, since it seems like there have been no objections raised to that text. Zanahary (talk) 22:54, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
Can you explain why this would be an improvement? On its face, sometimes narrowed seems like a rather obvious POV shift from in many cases steadily decreased over time. In general, your text uses more words to say the same thing, except for the part about the narrowing gap where it uses fewer words to make a more equivocal statement, which is (I would argue) UNDUE in this case. The narrowing gap is a very widespread phenomenon by any measure. That is, by any measure which people have used to argue for the existence of a gap, such gaps are narrowing and doing so consistently over time. Generalrelative (talk) 23:10, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
It could be Since the advent of IQ testing in the early 20th century, there have been observations of differences in average test performance among racial groups. These differences, however, are not static; many have varied across studies and steadily decreased over time., which is an improvement because it makes clear and expresses coherently that the observation of differences has persisted. Zanahary (talk) 04:09, 15 December 2023 (UTC)
Hmm, I'll refer you back to my first response above (second paragraph). Rather than the two of us going round and round on this, let's wait for others to weigh in now. Generalrelative (talk) 04:28, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

Little evidence on IQ of Jews

Surprise, surprise ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ It was a sockpuppet all along. Generalrelative (talk) 23:39, 21 December 2023 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

Why does this content keep being deleted? CuriousCrafter123 (talk) 23:56, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

Consensus against inclusion was established after you first tried to add similar content back in September. See Talk:Race and intelligence/Archive 103#No evidence for Jewish IQ advantage. Generalrelative (talk) 00:08, 21 December 2023 (UTC)
It says in the discussion that it should be rephrased to more accurately reflect the cited source. And that is what I did. CuriousCrafter123 (talk) 00:14, 21 December 2023 (UTC)
There was the more fundamental objection that Jews aren't typically considered a "race", and no one cared to counter that objection. Generalrelative (talk) 00:34, 21 December 2023 (UTC)
While Jews as a whole are not, Ashkenazi Jews in the US definitely are considered a race. I think this article [67] summarizes the issue quite well:
"Race is a social construct —it is a powerful idea created by humans, not biological fact—and the boundaries of race are thus often flexible."
"In 19th century America, Jews were generally believed to be a distinct race within a broad category of white people."
"In the early 20th century, ... Jews began to be called non-white, and many even started calling Jews black"
"By the 1930s anti-Jewish racism was at an all-time high, but Jewish American racial identity quickly shifted again."
"In the 21st century, while most Americans believe Jews are white, racial issues linger....Racial hate crimes against Jews also remain common." CuriousCrafter123 (talk) 01:26, 21 December 2023 (UTC)
I wouldn't disagree with any of those statements. Just not sure they add up to making the statement on Ashkenazi and Sephardic IQ scores averages DUE for this article. I would point you in particular toward AndyTheGrump's comment in the previous discussion. Generalrelative (talk) 01:43, 21 December 2023 (UTC)
While I think it is quite clear Jews in America have historically been socially classified as a race, I can see why you would say that in modern times this is no longer the case. Perhaps the content should read something like: "While Ashkenazi Jews have historically been classified as a race, this is no longer the case. Nevertheless a widespread myth remains that they have a higher average IQ than other populations. There is little good evidence for this." CuriousCrafter123 (talk) 01:46, 21 December 2023 (UTC)
Yep, maybe. Or maybe we just leave it out. That seemed to be the previous consensus, as I mentioned above. But let's hear what others have to say. I'm not especially committed one way or the other, though my preference here is to leave it out. FYI there used to be a whole article on "Ashkenazi Jewish intelligence" that ended up being WP:TNTed because it was a clusterfuck of bad science. See this AfD. Generalrelative (talk) 01:53, 21 December 2023 (UTC)
May I ask why you would prefer to leave it out? That is exactly my point, there is a widespread myth about Ashkenazi Jewish intelligence. It is important that this article explicitly dispels it. CuriousCrafter123 (talk) 02:01, 21 December 2023 (UTC)
Because Jews are generally classified as a religion or an ethnic group and not as a race, a refutation of the myth does not belong in an article on Race and intelligence. Hence the consensus to leave it out. NightHeron (talk) 02:08, 21 December 2023 (UTC)
The content I suggested already states that Jews are not classified as a race. Refutations of widely held misconceptions about race and intelligence definitely do belong in the article. The article for example refutes the myth that race is a biological reality. It refutes the myth that IQ is a good measure of intelligence. It refutes the myth that heritability within groups implies heritability between groups, among others. CuriousCrafter123 (talk) 02:32, 21 December 2023 (UTC)
My reason for leaning toward exclusion here hinges on my concern that it may represent WP:SYNTH. That is, if we need to cite sources to say that Jews are sometimes considered a "race" in order to justify inclusion in this article, and then cite another study about the level of data we have on their average IQ scores, that could be seen as a violation of our policy against original synthesis. Generalrelative (talk) 02:51, 21 December 2023 (UTC)
I guess I do not see that. What would be the claim that is not in the sources in this case? CuriousCrafter123 (talk) 02:57, 21 December 2023 (UTC)
The issue is in putting two sourced claims together to make a synthetic claim that is not stated explicitly in either source. What you'd need to provide to ameliorate this concern would be a reliable WP:SECONDARY source (ideally more than one) that explicitly connects disputes about Jewish IQ to the discourse on race and intelligence. If you can provide such sources, there is really nothing anyone can do to prevent you from adding the content. You will have shown that it is WP:DUE for inclusion. But without them it's really not clear that it's due.
Note that we don't have the same issue when we're talking about e.g. "black" and "white" people, because everyone agrees that those are races, even if the distinction between them varies from context to context. I hope that makes sense. Generalrelative (talk) 03:05, 21 December 2023 (UTC)
I don't agree that "black" and "white" people are races. Nor do billions of others all over the world. HiLo48 (talk) 03:37, 21 December 2023 (UTC)
To be clear, all races are social constructs. Like, say, national citizenship. Despite the fact that it's made up, it would be objectively wrong to say that Barack Obama is not an American citizen. Like national citizenship, race is a social identity that has too strong an impact on the real world to simply write off as imaginary. See e.g. this for a consensus statement on the matter.
Note that I will not be responding on this further since this must not turn into an off-topic WP:FORUM thread, but I do want my intended meaning to be clear. Generalrelative (talk) 03:59, 21 December 2023 (UTC)
I still do not see what is the synthetic claim that is not stated explicitly in the sources.
If you wanted more sources here is a suggested entry with some more:
"Older literature on IQ classified Jewish people as a racial stock [68]. However, Jews are not currently considered a race [69]. Nevertheless there is a widespread myth that Ashkenazi Jews have a higher average IQ than other populations [70]. There is little good evidence for this. [71] CuriousCrafter123 (talk) 04:38, 21 December 2023 (UTC)
All I can suggest at this point is to compare what you've written with the examples provided in the WP:SYNTH policy. To me this looks pretty clearly like it falls into the "don't do this" category. But I'm done discussing this now. Let's hear from others. Generalrelative (talk) 04:49, 21 December 2023 (UTC)
I would invite you to read "SYNTH is not presumed": If you want to revert something on the grounds that it's SYNTH, you should be able to explain what new thesis is being introduced and why it's not verified by the sources. CuriousCrafter123 (talk) 13:48, 21 December 2023 (UTC)— CuriousCrafter123 (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
The thesis that claims about Ashkenazi Jews and intelligence and refutations of those claims constitute a controversy about race and intelligence. NightHeron (talk) 14:37, 21 December 2023 (UTC)
As I recall you were originally in favor of adding this content, back when I added it in September. Can I ask what made you change your mind? CuriousCrafter123 (talk) 21:57, 21 December 2023 (UTC)
(ec) If this is a discussion over this recent addition and revert, [72] I'd have to suggest that in addition to all the other issues discussed above, a comment about 'little evidence' regarding one specific group (whether once sometimes regarded as a 'race' or not) seems distinctly misplaced in a section discussing actual test results. 'We don't have the data' isn't a result. Once again ,this appears to be an attempt to shoehorn in commentary on an esoteric and inconclusive debate into the article. AndyTheGrump (talk) 04:58, 21 December 2023 (UTC)
There not being data on a topic can be a noteworthy state of affairs. Take a look at the section on genetics for example, it says we have not found the genes for intelligence yet and that the mechanisms that give rise to intelligence are not understood. CuriousCrafter123 (talk) 22:00, 21 December 2023 (UTC)
That is unpersuasive, to put it mildly. This bit of trivia isn't inherently noteworthy, and you have conspicuously avoided any indication of why it would be noteworthy.
The section of cited source which discusses Jewish IQ doesn't mention 'race' at all. That section cites four sources, two of which are previous works by authors of the paper, and two of which are fringe garbage which should not be directly cited. This proposal is nothing. In addition to all the major neutrality issues, this is just too flimsy to bother with. Grayfell (talk) 23:06, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

Overfocus on the US and only a few categories

IQ tests in the US are only a small part of the global historical picture. I added a UK/Japan example; also ample examples a) affecting non-anglo groups not always considered 'white' in the US/UK/France for instance, and b) taking place in non-Western countries [e.g. S. America, MENA, Asia], which bear mention. – SJ + 04:26, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

@NightHeron: this reversion was not constructive; please be specific about concerns. This article is broadly misleading and worse off for presenting the general topic as though it refers to US discussions of US-based IQ tests and literature focused on two racial groups. – SJ + 23:22, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
I tend to agree that SJ's contributions were helpful, even if some additional copy editing may be required. And SJ, just FYI, we've got a longstanding convention on this article to avoid footnotes in the lead. Since every single word has been litigated ad nauseam, a fully referenced lead would be unreadable. And selective citations just tend to raise questions about the places where we leave citation to the article body. Better to maintain consistency and stick the refs in the article body. Generalrelative (talk) 00:20, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
Thanks GR, I see. Currently the first and third paragraphs could get away without cites, but I would cite the second, see below.
SJ: My edit summary just pointed out that your edits didn't belong where you put them. The lead is supposed to summarize the article, and the introductory part of the history section is supposed to introduce that section. It is WP:UNDUE to put some specific example there that's not referenced anywhere else. My constructive suggestion would be for you to propose a well-written and well-sourced new subsection about how pseudoscientific beliefs about race and intelligence have affected the attitudes and behavior of people in the West toward people in East Asia. NightHeron (talk) 00:56, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
The History section is brief, and everything before World War I is in the first paragraph... – SJ +

I mentioned one example of Japan (views in the UK about east Asia); there are also views in the West of Asian exceptionalism, stereotypes in parts of Asia and Europe about the inferiority or superiority of different groups of outsiders; views from countries that developed eugenics programs in the 20c and their outcomes. It's strange to have an article on this topic that chooses to single out Anglo-Saxons and the US and World War I in the lead but doesn't talk about World War II, German and Japanese takes on these issues mid-20c, sterilization and anti-miscegenation policies on grounds of intelligence, &c. There is also an overfocus on Jensen and a handful of others and one or two recent controversies to the exclusion of more globally significant ones. I see the detail article on history of the race and intelligence controversy has this problem in spades, starting with the definite article in the title and mentioning Jensen over 100 times. I don't have further edits at the moment, just noting the issue as a major one. – SJ + 22:17, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

If you have other sources to bring to the table, that would be great! I welcome fresh eyes on this stale, battle-worn topic, especially from an experienced editor such as yourself. Just be prepared to have every aspect of your source selection and presentation of those sources challenged, not just by the regulars but by brigading trolls and LTA socks on the pages that are not protected. In your comments above, you seem to be aware of this background, so I'm not too worried. Cheers, Generalrelative (talk) 00:24, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
I think @NightHeron: and GR are correct in saying please write a proposed paragraph with references before adding this information back in. It seems SJ does have some good stuff, and their contributions are appreciated. Also, placing this material in the body first is probably most appropriate. As was stated above, the lead and the introduction were hard fought. Well, this whole article has been hard fought - for years. I am glad Night Heron and others are willing to stay with it, year after year. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 02:15, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

Better refs and cross-refs?

Lead references
As of earlier today, there were no refs in the lead. I added a few, but there should be substantively more drawn from the article, particularly in the 2d paragraph, which seems arbitrary.
Older historical references
The idea that one's in-group is superior in intelligence and capacity than one's out-group is very old indeed. While particular notions of race and tested intelligence may be from the last 150 years, this article feels like it should be about the full historical arc.
General pseudoscience about superiority and exceptionalism
There's a broad history of bad statistics and motivated reasoning about race / gender / group superiority, which is hardly mentioned or linked here. I'm not sure how many subtopics have their own articles, but we have a whole category on exceptionalism, which could offer helpful context to ground the article and give it flow, as the arguments and the millennia-long history of narratives of superiority are similar. E.g., one can find many writings using language such as 'why one civilization dominated another', polygenesis (ex: in the US) or racial mixing (ex: in Japan) or 'X and intelligence' (ex: sex, religion]) with similarly polarized claims, methods of inference, circular arguments, &c.

– SJ + 00:57, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

I agree with NightHeron that it will be constructive for you to propose substantial additions here, rather than making BOLD edits, given how much this article is already the result of many, many hard-won consensuses (you can see at a glance how much discussion there's been by looking at the number of archive pages). And regarding refs in the lead, see my 2¢ in the section above. Cheers, Generalrelative (talk) 01:10, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
Assuming the WP:LEAD content is done right (I haven't checked), WP:LEADREFs aren't necessary. I think no LEADREFs is even considered a mark of quality WP-writing by many editors. OTOH, controversial stuff tends to have LEADREFs, sometimes extensive cite-bundles. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 05:39, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
For controversial or incomplete topics, explicit cites in the lead can be helpful. The second paragraph makes a number of unexplained editorial decisions, and is not supported by the body the way a lead paragraph in a GA would for instance. Given the controversy and current incomplete state of the article I would cite that. In particular I'd leave out the focus on the US in the 1920s, unless that's sourced for deserving such special attention, or balanced by the rest of the world. Citation stacks get annoying, but you can limit it to one or two high-level sources for the most substantive claims, or compress them at the end of each paragraph (cf. amphetamine). – SJ + 22:17, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
I'd be open to this. Feel free to try out some citation stacks and see what the reaction is. I won't revert again. Generalrelative (talk) 00:26, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
I think it is best to leave citations out of the lead paragraphs at this time. I prefer to see proposed citations here on the talk page first. I think the lead does a good job of summarizing the article and I am not seeing how the second paragraph is arbitrary. Also, mentioning the 1920s is important because this was one of the peak periods of rationalizing racism to maintain the status quo, i e., keeping in place the dominant culture.
And we can look at the pre-civil war scientific racism toward Native Americans here on the talk page based on (JSTOR) articles such as has been posted somewhere above - Scientific Racism and the American Indian in the Mid-Nineteenth Century. In any case, I think this Wikipedia article does a really good job providing an overview of this topic. And that is essentially the function of an article on Wikipedia. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 02:40, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

Many parts of the world

In the lead there is this sentence: "Pseudoscientific claims of inherent differences in intelligence between races have played a central role in the history of scientific racism in many parts of the world." I think there is no need to for the added phrase "...in many parts the world." The phrase seems to make this lead sentence too wordy and detracts from conciseness. Any agreement on this matter? ---Steve Quinn (talk) 00:54, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

I agree. Even if there are sources that will allow us to expand the scope of this article, the phrase seems unnecessary. Generalrelative (talk) 01:14, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

Removal of Quillette quote

BOTH SIDES ARE RIGHT
An individual writing under the name "Shuichi Tezuka", who purports to be a scholar and doesn't love Wikipedia, published an obloquy about this article in Quillette. In this discussion, the Wikipedia community considers whether Tezuka's hatchet job belongs in the {{Press}} template on this article's talk page.
Those in favour argue that {{Press}} just means the article's been mentioned in the press. It doesn't mean the press are talking sense, and indeed the press often don't. Editors taking this view also argue that adding the press template helps people find where Wikipedia is mentioned in outside sources.
Those against argue that to call Quillette, which is an Australian right-wing online magazine, a "press outlet" is quite the stretch. According to this view we shouldn't be drawing attention to this kind of pseudoscientific bulldung from an organization that self-acknowledges as hereditarian. It's also alleged that the person writing as Shuichi Tezuka is a community-banned racist LTA.
Talk pages are unindexed and don't draw attention to sites mentioned on them, so I give that part of the "against" argument somewhat less weight, but still, my assessment is that both sides are right. Quillette's article is relevant and slightly amusing, and there should be a pointer to it from this talk page, but we don't need to dignify Tezuka's little rant about Wikipedia's oppressive woke orthodoxy by putting it alongside pieces by the BBC and CNN. Editors are at liberty to remove it from {{Press}} and pop it in somewhere else near the top of the page, perhaps wrapped in {{small}}, and perhaps adding whatever context is appropriate, at editorial discretion.
I hope this helps, and I hope it fully resolves the dispute. Questions, comments, criticism, and complaints about this close are welcome and should be directed to my talk page.—S Marshall T/C 18:30, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

I reverted the good-faith edit that added a quote from Quillette to the section "This article has been mentioned by multiple media organizations" at the top of the talk-page. Note that Quillette is listed at RSP as generally unreliable. Not surprisingly, part of the quote is untrue -- the part claiming that RS were replaced by newspaper articles. However, it's reasonable to criticize citations of media sources that should be looked at and possibly removed. I removed a citation to a piece in Vox, and other ac editors are of course welcome to remove other inappropriate uses of media sources if you find any. NightHeron (talk) 18:53, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

@NightHeron, I added it and I disagree with your removal. The {{Press}} template is a talk-page thing, it says nothing more than "This coverage exists." WP:RS does not apply (not that you said it did). That an opinion piece writes what it writes is not a reason to exclude. There is no demand that {{Press}} stuff are "right" or "WP-nice." My view is that Quillette is "press/media organization" and fits the talkpage template hand-in-glove. If it helps as a compromise, we can have the template without a quote. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 19:02, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
Yes, I agree to that compromise. The problem with giving the quote is that there is no place there for any commentary or refutation of something that is factually incorrect. But your suggested compromise avoids that problem. Thanks. NightHeron (talk) 20:04, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
Well, you can always start a discussion like "Quillette says there are WP:BLOGS used as sources in this WP-article, are they correct and if so, should we do anything about it?" Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 21:10, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
The Quillette piece appears to have been authored by a person who was banned from Wikipedia for his obsessive, relentless promotion of white racial superiority. While his views may make him a median contributor to Quillette, they were a poor fit for Wikipedia. It seems a bit dishonest of him not to disclose this history in the Quillette piece (or maybe he did and I missed it—the article was quite long and unfocused).
This person wasted literally thousands of hours of constructive volunteer time pushing racist nonsense. So I guess the argument against including the piece in our header is that it's a continuation of his obsessive litigation by other means, and we shouldn't play along. In fact, its inclusion directly undermines the "DON'T FEED THE TROLLS!" banner at the top of the talk page. And his endorsement of Justapedia is pretty telling. But in the end... whatever. MastCell Talk 18:43, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
Do we editorialize like this with similar sections in general? I don’t think we should. Zanahary (talk) 19:17, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
When I add (or expand) these templates on talkpages, my habit is to add something on-topic from the media in the |quote= parameter, if that's what you meant. Not if none of the previous items had quotes, but that wasn't the case here. Editorializing? Well, I picked the quote from what was available, so if you like.
My general opinion is that this is an interesting template to have on talkpages when content is available, and if it contains stuff I disagree with that is fine (that is the nature of "media") and sometimes it even adds a bit of interest. It has some potential value for editors to know what kind of coverage is out there, and the stuff in them may inspire good edits, warn of something (and explain a recent view-spike) or make someone think "Cool, CNN noticed the article I was working on" or "Wow, that pseudonymous writer really feels neglected about their previous Quillette article."
Fwiw, had I found the BBC, CNN and SP articles first I would have added those here too. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 19:49, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
Correction, I wouldn't have added the BBC, that article doesn't mention this article. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 19:55, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
I'm with MastCell. And I don't think I'd ever want to use something with an anonymous author taking sides of Wikipedia. Too likely it will be a banned editor or LTA. Doug Weller talk 20:06, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
Quillette is a fervent promoter of race pseudoscience and is, by admission of founding editor Claire Lehmann an hereditarian publication. Nancygerette (talk) 18:02, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
Yeah, we know. Gråbergs Gråa Sång's position appears to be that we should be including all media coverage of the topic, regardless of quality. Like MastCell and Doug Weller, I find that argument problematic, since we do need to draw the line somewhere. There is after all no shortage of butt-hurt Nazis complaining about this topic online, some of them in the pages of "magazines" like Quillette. Given the likelihood that the author of this piece is one of a handful of banned long-term abusers, providing them with a permanent perch on our talk page header seems counterproductive. Unless someone can provide a policy-based rationale for inclusion, I'm seeing a rough consensus here to remove. Generalrelative (talk) 00:52, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
There's no "policy-based rationale" for the bizarre claim that the {{press}} template is "providing a permanent perch". Perhaps you are mistakenly referring to a different template, {{Permanent perch for media coverage that not only exists but is true and correct about everything and we agree with it and we think the author is not only correct in their claims but also a good person}}? The documentation of the press template is itself pretty clear (not to mention based on an actual consensus that isn't just three people saying they think a website suxxxxx). jp×g🗯️ 04:39, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
I think it’s helpful to see that an article has received media attention; the template shouldn’t be treated as an endorsement. Zanahary (talk) 04:49, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
I cannot imagine why it would be helpful. I doubt anyone who comes to this talk page and navigates to a collapsed media mention template would be surprised to learn that such nonsense exists somewhere out there on the Internet. This particular Quillette article doesn't seem special as an example. So who, exactly, is helped by linking to it? Linking to the article does editorially indicate that it is worth someone's attention to actually click on the link and read it. Otherwise, what even would the point be? In that sense, a link is form of endorsement, regardless of whether or not we agree with its specific contents. Grayfell (talk) 05:56, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
In what sense, the sense where cats have fins?
Yes, it's worth someone's attention to see what people are saying about us on another website, regardless of whether we agree with it or we think they are a good person. It's especially relevant if a bunch of people start coming here from the other website, in which case we can see what information they've been given before hand. If you really, genuinely think that acknowledging the existence of something is an endorsement (rather than just making this argument out of personal distaste for the website in question), I will wait here while you go open AfDs for "murder", "indigestion", "tax fraud" and "Ku Klux Klan", or remove all mention of the subjects from their talk pages, et cetera, and we can see how that shakes out. jp×g🗯️ 02:03, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
Arguing with this level of disrespect and incivility is 1) disrespectful and uncivil (wow!), and 2) never going to convince anyone. Zanahary (talk) 02:36, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
If attempts to explain something diplomatically are ignored, there is little alternative but to phrase it directly. The {{press}} template does not require that sources are reliable. There's no basis for the claim that it does. This has been litigated again and again and again; outside of truly egregious situations like harassment sites that dox editors, it has been repeatedly determined that there's no benefit to policing talk page header press mention templates. The documentation for the template, which was determined after an attempt to gain broad consensus over a period of months, confirms this. Our policies confirm this. If you know of a way of explaining this that is less offensive, let me know. jp×g🗯️ 04:59, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
To me it's helpful for the same reason that any media alert is helpful. On Wikipedia, we cite all sorts of primary and secondary sources that most editors certainly have no interest in endorsing. That's the nature of the encyclopedia; we get all the information. That spirit extends to the talk page. If an article's reception of media attention is significant (and there is apparent consensus that it is, since this template exists and is in wide use across the project), then this instance of media attention ought to be included. Zanahary (talk) 02:41, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
Zanahary, thanks for demonstrating that reasonable minds can disagree respectfully on this matter. Generalrelative (talk) 16:39, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
When making changes like [73] it would be useful to consider not just whether local consensus can support such a change, but also whether it's the type of change that will likely cause a public embarrassment for Wikipedia. In the past year, Wikipedia's coverage of everything related to human intelligence has become a laughingstock among professional psychologists and also on social media. The removal of the link to the Quillette article is exactly the type of change that probably would produce such mockery. In fact, the Quillette article has a section about unjustified removals from Wikipedia articles related to intelligence. When that is part of its subject matter, how could anyone be unaware of how absurd it looks to un-ironically remove the Quillette article itself?
@JPxG and Zanahary: if you've read the two Quillette articles from last December and from July 2022, you'll possibly have some understanding how how things turned out this way, and my comment here described another similar incident. I'm mentioning the background just in case some of the uninvolved editors showing up in this discussion care enough to address the broader issues that cause incidents like this current one. But I won't hold it against you if you'd rather just acknowledge the problem and then move on to other things, which is what ArbCom usually has done when these situations are brought to them. tickle me 12:15, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
The right wing in the U.S. frequently attacks and ridicules Wikipedia, and I don't see why this should cause us to be upset and change the way Wikipedia does things. If the right wing did not attack Wikipedia, we'd have reason to worry. Over the years the U.S. far right has increasingly been promoting fringe POVs, including white supremacist views of intelligence. Treating such views as fringe and sources that promote them as unreliable was not the result of "local" consensus, but rather was the conclusion of two widely-publicized RFCs within the last four years. NightHeron (talk) 12:33, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
+ 1 to this. Becoming impervious to PROFRINGE media is precisely how Wikipedia has increased its reputation for reliability among both subject-matter experts and the general public, and how it maintains its status as the Last Good Place on the Internet. Generalrelative (talk) 16:39, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
(reply to Grayfell) I'll quote my view from earlier in this thread: "It has some potential value for editors to know what kind of coverage is out there, and the stuff in them may inspire good edits, warn of something (and explain a recent view-spike) or make someone think "Cool, CNN noticed the article I was working on" or "Wow, that pseudonymous writer really feels neglected about their previous Quillette article."" Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 18:06, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

I have literally no idea what you guys are talking about. What do you think is the point of the {{press}} template? It's not an endorsement of the things that get linked in it. The main purpose is to indicate -- to us editors -- when our editorial processes and discussions have been the subject of attention by the media. It is to indicate, to the editors of the encyclopedia who comment on talk pages, if there is some high-traffic website that mentions the talk page, which is likely to be the origin of many people reading it and coming here to leave comments about it. Why are you acting like it's some kind of trophy that we should take away from people to punish them? It makes no sense. jp×g🗯️ 04:34, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

Much of the press we are getting in recent years is treating Larry Sanger as some kind of topic expert, or treating vandalised bio articles as major topics, regardless of how fast they were corrected. It is not a trophy, nor a badge of honor when the press turns its attention to Wikipedia. Dimadick (talk) 14:41, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

Press on this article exists. Existence ought to be sufficient to list an item with the {{press}} template. But no. WP:NONAZIS! This episode is some amazing meta-level commentary on the ideological corruption rampant in these parts of Wikipedia. Jweiss11 (talk) 07:16, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

Of course! What we needed all along was some ideologically pure editors to come along and waggle their fingers about how NONAZIS is corrupting the youth.
But seriously, y'all linking {{press}} seem to have missed the paragraph where it explicitly urges us to Use common sense when assessing inclusion. Sure, the normal rules for reliability do not necessarily apply, but this is far from a blanket call for the indiscriminate inclusion of any and all coverage. You may reasonably disagree with where MastCell, Doug Weller and I draw the line –– that linking an article by someone we've almost certainly banned from Wikipedia for disrupting this topic area goes against common sense –– but please don't pretend that our views are somehow beyond the pale, or that our arguments are of the "this suxxx" variety. The arguments we've presented are only compounded by the low editorial standard of Quillette; I see only one (very inexperienced) user arguing for exclusion solely on that basis. Generalrelative (talk) 23:57, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
To this I'll just add WP:PROFRINGE as another decidedly common-sense reason for exclusion that goes well beyond mere reliability. Generalrelative (talk) 17:06, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
That is a view. Mine is that as Unwarranted promotion of fringe theories goes, it's very weak such (and fwiw, not why I added it). And that guideline, like WP:RS, is about article content. Basically, we are in personal taste territory (and that was an essay I just linked). Removal of "annoying" media/opinion like this from {{press}} appears to me like bowdlerization. Quillette is also media. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 22:15, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
I'm glad that we're able to disagree in a civil manner on these points. You and I really do have different ideas about what Use common sense entails in this instance, and that's fine. Frankly the only thing I find "annoying" is the mischaracterizations and uncivil behavior of some of our colleagues here. But that too is no big deal. Perhaps additional voices will care to weigh in and a consensus for inclusion will become clear. Otherwise, WP:ONUS will prevail and the link will go. Either way the encyclopedia will be served if we remain committed to civility, as you've done. Generalrelative (talk) 22:57, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
WP:ONUS and the policy of which it is part is also about mainspace. What we can get here is WP:CONSENSUS, like in a discussion about which of 2 relatively equal pics should be used as leadimage. If the discussion dies down a bit, shall we ask for closure at WP:RFCL? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 23:20, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
Look, I'm not going to edit war over it, but WP:ONUS is policy and it makes no special reference to mainspace: The responsibility for achieving consensus for inclusion is on those seeking to include disputed content. If you believe strongly in maintaining the link, you'll have to persuade others. I too am persuadable. And yes, I would support requesting closure at WP:RFCL.Generalrelative (talk) 23:24, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
"While information must be verifiable for inclusion in an article, not all verifiable information must be included. Consensus may determine that certain information does not improve an article. Such information should be omitted or presented instead in a different article." My emphasis. Also, part of WP:V. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 23:29, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
I stand corrected on the explicit language of ONUS. See below, however, regarding its common-sense applicability to the present dispute. Over and out. Generalrelative (talk) 23:38, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
One final comment on the substance of your argument, Gråbergs Gråa Sång: {{press}} explicitly calls for us to Be mindful of guidelines when assessing inclusion, and even suggests the Reliable Sources Noticeboard as a venue for discussing this. So even if the standards for inclusion in a press header are lower than for inclusion in article space, considering other guidelines like WP:PROFRINGE makes perfect sense.
I'm going to take a step back from this thread now to make room for others. If anyone would like to discuss on my talk page or by email, feel free. Cheers, Generalrelative (talk) 23:28, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
Here is, in full, what the documentation says:
This template automatically adds articles to Category:Wikipedia pages referenced by the press. Oftentimes, the purpose of this is to contextualize talk page discussions about ongoing coverage of editorial disputes, and press coverage listed here may come from sources otherwise considered unreliable.
Use common sense, and do not use this template to link to outing of Wikipedia editors (e.g. forum threads where people are trying to dox users). Be mindful of guidelines such as WP:LINKLOVE and WP:ELBLP, as well as the biographies of living persons policy (which applies to all pages, including talk pages). When in doubt, discuss the appropriateness of the template and sources on the article's talk page, or consider seeking input at the Biographies of Living Persons Noticeboard or the Reliable Sources Noticeboard.
This specific wording is the product of discussion at Template talk:Press following a series of incidents in which people claimed that the template was somehow required to be curated to exclude bad (i.e. bad for mainspace) sources. jp×g🗯️ 22:18, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
JPxG, I hear you, and I understand why you might be frustrated after a hard-fought consensus at Template talk. Indeed, I was unaware of that background before this discussion. But I do think that my reading of the consensus text at {{press}} is reasonable –– even if reasonable minds can disagree. And I am very keenly aware of some other background pertinent to this contentious topic area which I feel is equally important to consider. We'll have to leave it to others, and ultimately to the closer, to determine how much weight to give to each of our positions. Generalrelative (talk) 18:14, 7 February 2024 (UTC)
Cosigned! Zanahary (talk) 03:23, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
It's absurd to accuse editors of "ideological corruption" in response to not wanting to link to a badly-written troll article on a talk page. It would be an WP:AGF violation if it weren't so silly. Grayfell (talk) 22:42, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
Yeah, "ideological corruption" is... not nice. Or helpful. "badly-written troll article" is not that nice either, but I've read it, and I see how one can arrive on that conclusion. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 10:34, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
Personally I can see very little merit in including the Quillette piece in the 'mentioned' header. It is clearly editorialising and written to further the writer's own personal agenda. It should be noted that Quillette solicits for and accepts submissions from "Interested authors" [74] and that the author appears to have only ever written for the website on the one topic. I see nothing to suggest that their views are even those of Quillette itself - this is essentially no more significant than a blog post from an anonymous individual. AndyTheGrump (talk) 03:40, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
This does have a whiff of blocked users slooooowly forum-shopping an op-ed. Quillette is a recent minor site with prolific fringe-y opinion pieces, which I wouldn't normally class as "media" in the sense of the template. A pseudonymous piece from it feels disproportionate alongside the BBC and CNN. Even the SPLC summary is borderline, but that's at least a named writer from a 400-person organization with a clear editorial practice and global audience. The Quillette piece is not "a random [annoying] article that got social media attention", it is by a pseudo that exclusively publishes on this topic and on alleged biases of Wikipedia, giving extensive positive attention to the work of the editors sanctioned in the AC case originally affecting this topic. With minimal benefit from inclusion, I'd leave it out. – SJ + 03:55, 4 February 2024 (UTC) TLDR: What Andy said (beat me to it!). – SJ + 03:56, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
Fwiw, I added the item under discussion when I found it on google. Nobody told/asked me to, on or off WP. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 10:16, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
That was clear! The "forum shopping" comment referred to the author getting that [pair of] piece[s] published in Quillette. If an actual journalist w/ topical expertise wrote something similar in a piece on the topic in, say, Newsweek (to pick a long-standing media outlet not considered generally reliable anymore), I could see an argument for its relevance. But this seems like the same small community that was edit-warring about this a decade ago continuing to do so in opinion pieces and entire forks of wikipedia; it may be an indicator that flame wars are eternal, but not an indicator that "media organizations" are talking about this. – SJ + 23:18, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
What counts as media-org/press for our purposes in this day and age can be disagreed on by reasonable people. My view is that Quilette fits the description, my December thinking was something like "Quilette? Never heard of it. Ah, it has a non-awful-looking WP-article that doesn't say "blog", then it fits the talk-page." Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 05:53, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
  • Quillette only publishes opinion; in this case it's the opinion of someone with no relevant expertise, which immediately makes WP:DUE weight a hard sell. On top of that it's a WP:BIASED group whose biases reflect fairly out-there views (they wear their rejection of the academic consensus on the issues they weigh in as a badge of pride, but it's an obvious problem when considering due weight on Wikipedia.) In the right situation, biased sources can be used, and opinion pieces can be included, especially when they come from respected subject-matter experts; but we have to measure all these things together when weighing due weight, and in this case it all adds up to something that is obviously WP:UNDUE as opinion without substantial secondary coverage. --Aquillion (talk) 11:11, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
    I was thinking of mentioning WP:NPOV myself, in my view excluding the item goes a little, maybe, perhaps, against the spirit of NPOV in this context. But like almost every PAG etc that's been linked in this thread, NPOV/DUE is about mainspace. IMO personal taste is much more on point than DUE. Consensus will be what it will be. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 12:21, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
    For the article, or for the auto-collapsed expandable eighth box out of ten in the header on the talk page of the article? jp×g🗯️ 22:22, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
  • Per Aquillion and AndyTheGrump, this is not a source that bears mention alongside the likes of BBC and CNN. It is clearly problematic, as articulated above, and the selection of this source for curation is (quite unintentionally) not a neutral action. Curation itself can be POV unless carried out under clear guidelines, and WP:UNDUE is an appropriate guideline here. This one should not have been selected. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 11:38, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

I've asked for closure of this discussion at Wikipedia:Closure requests. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 21:40, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

  • Note to closer: Folks in the "exclude" camp have been cagey about the evidence that the author of the Quillette article is a community-banned LTA. That has been both to avoid WP:OUTING and to avoid giving the LTAs tips for block evasion. Please email me if you have any questions or to request additional background. Generalrelative (talk) 16:37, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

Side discussion on removing non-academic sources from article

If it's closed can we then go back to NightHeron's constructive beginning to this thread before the distraction? The Vox piece was removed and the remaining seems to be confined to "note a" cites to New Statesman, The Guardian, and The Independent. I would just remove the entire note along with the text in the "Test Bias" section. It's a bit of cherry-picking from Reeve and Charles. The most appropriate text in their paper for this article is probably the paragraph at the end of section 4.2 which is weaker and more cautioning. Dump the lot and problem solved. fiveby(zero) 18:27, 7 February 2024 (UTC)
Good idea. Generalrelative (talk) 19:14, 7 February 2024 (UTC)
This article still includes citations to various other non academic sources, which violate the restriction to only cite "peer-reviewed scholarly journals and academically focused books by reputable publishers." For example, in the "Health and nutrition" section sources 86 through 91 all are to articles published in The Guardian. But I don't know if this is the right time to try to make the article comply with that restriction.
Do you not find it contradictory that you have modified this article based on the Quillette article's criticism of its citations to newspaper sources, yet also you do not want that article linked to in the talk page header? It would be one thing if the Quillette article's criticism were baseless and we were disregarding it. But we are already giving the Quillette article exposure indirectly, by removing some of the newspaper sources that it criticizes this article for citing. When we are already doing that, it is not really giving the article more exposure to link to it in the talk page header, as a way to identify the origin of the criticism that these edits were based on. tickle me 01:42, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
Apologies for not finding those. I think the ground here is covered by p. 101 and elsewhere of Nisbett and it looks like those Guardian articles, which reference papers and a conference presentation, were probably added in an effort to improve the sourcing. What is this restriction you're referring to? I'm not sure Intelligence and How to Get It would pass the bar? It's from a prominent author but written for a general audience and not academics. Probably some improvement in the citations could be made here but not sure what needs done. I see the ArbCom ruling "Correct use of sources" in the talk headers, but not anything about this other restriction you mentioned. fiveby(zero) 03:23, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
fiveby: there's a header when you edit the article that stipulates Only high quality sources may be used, specifically peer-reviewed scholarly journals and academically focused books by reputable publishers. That's what's being referred to.
I'm not sure when those Guardian sources were added. I don't think anyone would object if someone wanted to replace them with the actual studies they're reporting on. They are all, as far as I can tell, reporting on peer-reviewed studies that would pass muster. We just have to cite them directly.
As to tickle me's argument: the Quillette article's criticism was indeed baseless because it claimed that editors were "replacing" higher-quality sources with journalistic ones. They were not. Generalrelative (talk) 04:43, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
Update: I went and substituted out all the Guardian refs for relevant peer-reviewed sources: [75]. I also cut the citation of Nisbett's book in that paragraph. It didn't seem necessary in that case. Elsewhere the book is cited where it's being quoted by Mackintosh (IQ and Human Intelligence, Oxford University Press, 2011), a secondary source, so I think that's appropriate. Generalrelative (talk) 06:30, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
[76] [77] [78] Generalrelative, you are not looking carefully enough at the sources you cite. This study is about how early childhood deprivation reduced intelligence in Romanian children, this study is about how green space affected intelligence in Belgium, and this study is about how air quality affected intelligence in China. These sources say nothing about African Americans or about the topic of race and intelligence. Your citing these sources to support the statement "The African American population of the United States is statistically more likely to be exposed to many detrimental environmental factors" misrepresents the sources. The support for this sentence from its other citations also is dubious, but those three sources are misrepresented the most egregiously. It also is an action prohibited by another part of the sourcing restriction: "Anyone found to be misrepresenting a source, either in the article or on the talk page, will be subject to escalating topic bans." tickle me 12:58, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
That's probably my fault for trying to get rid of the news sources, and i was not objecting Nisbett at all, just trying to understand the source restriction. The content is i think on very solid ground and Nisbett's work covers all the bases and should address any kind SYNTH concerns. The goal here should be to improve the citations so that editors agree they support the text and to serve the read (if any actually bother to look). In my opinion Nisbett is excellent citation for readers, and it's unproductive for editors to demand shrubbery or play gotcha games with the source restrictions. What exactly would you like to see for citations for this passage? fiveby(zero) 14:55, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
Thanks fiveby, but I'll hand it to tickle me: this is an effective gotcha. I was obviously trying to help by going back to the Guardian articles and substituting in the studies they were reporting on. But given that there are LTAs like the Quillette author who are obsessed with finding fault with editors in this topic area, and if I were to self-revert I would technically be replacing peer-reviewed sources with journalistic ones, I'll go ahead and remove the offending sentence for now. If anyone has time to work collaboratively and ensure that the refs are supporting what they're supposed to (or wants to argue for the Nisbett book being allowable), please feel free to add back in an appropriately referenced sentence. Generalrelative (talk) 15:04, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
Happily, the section reads just fine without this sentence: [79]. If anything, it was a bit redundant. Generalrelative (talk) 15:09, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
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