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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. Dakota 06:49, 29 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Nilotic type

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Delete Nice support of racial science... I would say that this violate WP:NEO but I found three instances of this term being used in an anthropological sense but they were in a scholarly journals from 1907, 1939 and 1947....go figure. This wasn't a mainstream category then and certainly isn't now. The article uses origional research to back up these outdated and pseudo-scientific claims, see WP:NOR. For you googlers, notice the lack of g-hits. The sources in this article aren't cited in-line so who knows if they're even verifiable or reliable and not just by hacks/racists. Strothra 01:04, 24 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I thought that WIKIPEDIA is a source of knowledge and it unites intelligent people. If you meddled into my "West African type", I could take it as a controversal topic, but refuting such a well-established, well-measured fact like Nilotic physique is too much. Centrum99 08:49, 24 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Without wishing to commit personal attack on Mr.Centrum, having considered the "User Contribution" data available, my vote is for deletion on the grounds of POV, possible OR, and overall perceived bias. --Simon Cursitor
  • Here's the problem, as I see it: statistical studies of body features that do not reference underlying genes are extremely susceptible to bias and preconceived notions, and to incorrect conclusions due to unobserved environmental and dietary factors. If this article classified atheletes by genotype, then I would have no problem at all. However, classifications by tribe, race, or body type are notoriously inaccurate, and subject to too many ways in which the conclusions can be slanted to favor whatever conclusions the author wishes to make, consciously or not. I am well aware that the scientific sports literature deals with such issues without reference to genes, in peer-reviewed journals, but speaking as a professional medical biostatistician I have to say that I question whether any of this "research" can stand up to close scrutiny. If this article were to admit in its first paragraph that concepts such as "Nilotic type" have no scientific basis in genetics, or alternatively, if it were actually to specify the genes that define the Nilotic type, then I would be much more favorably disposed. — Aetheling 12:50, 24 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

According to Wikipedia rules, personal attacks are used especially in cases, when a person uses it "as a means of avoiding discussion of the relevance or truthfulness the person's statement". However, I can document all what I say with exact numbers, from the skull length, face width, limb length, body mass index, muscle+fat width, even calf girth. What about you? Do you also know some other English word except "Delete"? It would improve our communication. Centrum99 09:07, 24 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Keep and cleanup: the editor who wrote these has stated that he is having trouble understanding how to correctly cite an article. As he lists a dozen works in his references section, albeit incorrectly, I am not convinced this falls under NOR. If others would help him figure out how to cite the assertions made in the article correctly, we might be able to get past the NOR issue, and address any NPOV or bias issues. The works are dated from 1989 to 2006. I comprehend that those voting "delete" are concerned about OR, Bias, and inaccurate articles which present disproved science as though it were current, but this may not be the case here. I myself was only able to find a reference in a 1907 work; that does not mean it does not have currency elsewhere and until we figure out what sources Centrum99 is using and whether they support his article, we cannot judge whether it is OR. If there is bias, it can be addressed - and if the article is indeed OR and promoting a disused term, then we can address that. We do indeed have an article on Racial science, and it is disputed and very poorly sourced, but IMHO it is not a candidate for deletion. Could it not be the case here? We have an article on Flat earth, which I believe just made FA. We have articles on many topics which are either proven false, disputed, or crank theories, but we have them. This term, dating to 1907, is most assuredly not a neologism. It may be outdated poor science, and then again it may be something else. Those voting "delete as OR" for an article with 12 books in the references, and "delete as neologism" for a term making an appearance at least by 1907, are surely allowing distaste for Racial science to affect their neutrality. We do not have to like something or agree with it in order for it to be worthy of inclusion. KillerChihuahua?!? 11:11, 24 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete changed from keep, above - see comment, below. KillerChihuahua?!? 14:25, 24 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Note that I did not nominate this article based on WP:NEO. As I clearly state in my nom, the term, although historical, is not used any longer by credible anthropologists nor does this article explain the historical use. Rather, this article expands on the orgional definition by using origional research, see WP:NOR, which leads to a a conclusion supporting the political agenda of the author promoting race science as if it were good or even real science. The term is offensive and generalizing not to mention no longer accepted by any established scientific communities. The fact that it is no longer in use and was never widespread even at the time means that this term also fails the standards of notability. Just because a handful of quacks promoted the idea in whatever form does not make it notable and falls more under the heading of a hoax masquerading as reality in the minds of some fringe groups. You are seeing the term and assuming that it was, at one point notable, but it was not else it would be more readily found in historical scholarly journals when, in fact, only a few instances can be found. --Strothra 12:55, 24 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete fails WP:NOR QuiteUnusual 11:51, 24 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    Comment please explain how an article with 12 books as references fails NOR. I have asked the editor who wrote the article to give better cites, explaining where and how his sources support the content of the article. He is confused, and I am willing to give the time necessary to work with him and determine whether the sources do indeed support the article. KillerChihuahua?!? 11:55, 24 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    Because none of those books deal with the idea of the nilotic type, rather they are used in order to garner data which the author is synthesizing into supporting another topic, the nilotic type. To quote WP:NOR, it is a "synthesis of published material that appears to advance a position." Here, that position is race science, an archaic pseudo-scientific inquiry which has repeatedly been condemned by all modern medical establishments. It's a fringe belief that is hardly mainstream unless one currently lives in Germany between the years 1937-1949. --Strothra 14:13, 24 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    Comment: If the references do not indeed support any of the article content, then yes by all means delete. I have received no response from my post to the auther, nor has jossi, who pointed him/her to WP:CITE. KillerChihuahua?!? 14:25, 24 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
You received no reply from me, because I must also sleep sometimes. The term "Nilotic/Nilotid type/race/physique" was regularly used by anthropologists until ca. 60-70's. Note that the large article of Roberts, Bainbridge "Nilotic Physique" that is still frequently cited as one of the most detailed studies on East African physique, was published in 1963. I can post maps from books of Lundman or Biasutti, which are authorities from 50's-60's, who use the term "Nilotid" or "Razza Nilotica" respectively. After this generation of anthropologists finished their lifelong work, the new generation born after WW II subdued to the demands of the new age and comparative anthropology was, in fact, buried. The anthropological division that was established during the first half of the 20th century was substituted by more "politically correct" geographical terms, so, for example, you no longer study a "Nilotic type", but "East African pastoralists" or simply "East Africans". Gradually even this division was discredited as "no more meaningful" and since a certain time, scientists in Western Europe/North America must pretend that racial differences don't exist all. This absurd situation probably reached its top in 2003 with the public TV fraud called "Race: The Power Of An Illusion". I am not the only one, who complains about it. Recently I was in correspondence with a French anthropologist, who apologized that he has no newer data on the physique of Europeans, only those from his study wrote in 80's, because a broad anthropological comparison of today's Europeans is simply unthinkable. So you shouldn't be surprised that many people - if they want to discuss physical variability in Europe - must quote Carleton Coon's Races of Europe, written in 1939. There virtually exist no newer studies or synthesis since ca. mid 70's, when Hiernaux book People of Africa was published. However, since some data are needed for medical reasons, there exist recent studies in which you can find some basic anthropometric measurements like e.g. height, sitting height, arm length, body diameters etc.
To Aetheling: I think your arguments are not appropriate. Body proportions are generally geneticly determined traits, adaptations to enviroment that don't change so plasticly like stature. Since leg length is bound with nutrition, you can observe a small increase of relative leg length (in comparison to stature) in industrialized nations during the last century. However, the increase is very small in comparison with height and obviously hitted a genetic limit during the last decades. For example, Japanese were notoriously known as small, extremely short-legged people. Their trunk index (trunk height/body height ratio) was around 54% 50 years ago. Now it is around 53,6% and appears to be stabilized. This is still far from the average of about 52% found in Europeans, 50-51% in West Africans and Ethiopids, and 48% found in the Nilotes and the majority of Australian Aboriginals. Note please, how the trunk index is bound with climate: numbers between 53-54% can be found in East Asians and Eskimos, 52% in Europeans, 50-51% in steppe-forest Africans, 48% in populations adapted to hot, dry desert. This is a climatic adaptation resulting from the need to handle with excessive or insufficient body temperature. Limbs have big volume relative to their height, hence they are the first part of the body that reacts to climatic change. In hot climate, long thin limbs better dissipate heat than short, volumnous limbs that, on the other hand, better preserve body temperature in cold climate. Since distal limb segments like forearms and calves are the thinnest, they are also most influenced: for example, Neanderthals had extremely small forearm/upper arm and calf/thigh ratio that can't be found in any modern human population, because modern Arctic humans still are not perfectly adapted to Arctic climate like Neanderthals. Nilotes and Australian Aboriginals represent the other extreme, with extremely long limbs and extremely long forearms and calves. And as for genetics, I would add that Nilotes are one of the most archaic human groups that can be well separated as a single race. They posess a special subclade of Y-haplogroup A (A3b2), a sub-branch of the subclades found in Khoisan. They must have separated from the Khoisan people a long time ago and since they have lived in their enviroment for thousands of years, their adaptation to hot climate is the most extreme of all human groups. Irrespectively if you like it or not, and irrespectively if the term "Nilotic" is "officially allowed" or not, this physical type still exists. The only way, how to erase the Nilotic type from the world is to go to Sudan with a sufficiently large army and exterminate all Nilotes. 82.100.61.114 15:56, 24 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thanks for the detailed response. Based on this, here is how I think you can clean up this article. (1) In the lead paragraph, document (with references) the genetic existence of the Nilotic as a "well-separated race", and describe what is known from genetics of its ancestry and geographic dispersal. Give a lot more detail (with references) on how they fit into the broader panorama of known genetic groups of Africa. (2) Shift the primary emphasis of the article away from physique, and towards the genetic identity of this group. Avoid any characterization that is not based in the bedrock of genetics, because every other aspect of phenotype may be heavily influenced by health, nutrition, environment, and culture. Why even mention height, when, as you say, it may largely depend on living style? (3) I recommend that you be very careful with your physical descriptions. You used the words "slim" and "slender", for example, yet this slimness may be purely nutritional. Is there any evidence at all that this slimness derives from genotype? (4) In your second paragraph, I suggest that you give some of the history of the word "Nilotic" itself. You might mention explicitly that the "Nilotic" concept dates back to the days when anthropological classifications were based on little more than physical stereotypes, as part of a program for establishing a heirarchy of races, from "primitive" to "advanced". Mention that the term has not been used since the 1960s, and tell us why it fell out of favor. Is there another term that is now preferred? (5) Push all the aspects of physique into a separate section, just before the sport section. — Aetheling 17:23, 24 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"Nilotic type/physique" is no original research, but a well-known and established term, at least for those, who have ever read something about anthropology. But as I said on the discussion to West african type, I will start from the beginning, with a new article about physical anthropology of Africa. Centrum99 21:39, 25 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]


Delete I decided to check the references. Beall et al. do not use the terms "nilotic" or "nilote". Campbell, Leslie, Campbell (2006) do not use either term and their research is a comparison between nomadic and settled populations within one ethnicity, not a comparison of one ethnicity to another, and thus seems totally unrelated to this entry's nominal topic. Entiene and Hiernaux I could not check. The first Larsen, et al., the one from 2000, as far as I can tell does not exist: No article featuring Larsen as its author appeared in any 2000 volume, a search for "h.b. larsen" or "larsen, h.b." as an author yields no results, and searches for "kenyan" in the title of an article yielded me no results regardless of whether or not I specified 2000 as the article year. The second Larsen, at al. (from 2004) does not speak of "nilote" or "nilotic type", although it does state "In this light the purpose of the present study was to describe body dimensions, running economy, aerobic power, and related variables and relate them to habitual daily physical activity level of Nandi town and village boys in western Kenya. The hypothesis was that the characteristics of east African elite distance runners can be observed in adolescent Nandi boys regardless of where they live." The study identifies genetics as a possible factor in Nandi running. The Little and Rębacz sources I couldn't get, as the University of Minnesota doesn't have online access to the Yearbook of Physical Anthropology or Collegium Antropologicum. Ditto J. H. de Ridder, E. Smith, C. Wilders, C. Underhay, as the University of Minnesota doesn't provide me with access to the Proceedings of the Seventh Annual Conference of the International Society for the Advancement of Kinanthropometry. Roberts (1963)... talks about a Nilotic group, although we have Ramdrake saying that a clinal approach has supplanted one of Roberts's fundamental assumptions. Both Saltin et al., I couldn't get ahold of: University of Minnesota doesn't give online access to the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports. So, what I could get ahold of gives me 1 source that as best I can tell doesn't exist, 1 source that someone disputes as reliable, and 3 sources that in my opinion only link to the topic at hand by violating a provision of WP:NOR, "It introduces an analysis or synthesis of established facts, ideas, opinions, or arguments in a way that builds a particular case favored by the editor, without attributing that analysis or synthesis to a reputable source." We have Aetheling's suggestions for a rewrite, we have the existing entry, and we have an author ascribing delete reccomendations and the apparent irrelevance of multiple sources to political motivations - that last something that always makes me think the lady doth protest too much. In all, while after I see it I might welcome an article along the lines of what Aetheling suggests, at the present time I think the entry requires deletion. The Literate Engineer 22:32, 28 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
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