Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Race and intelligence (3rd nomination)

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 KEEP. postdlf (talk) 02:54, 17 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Race and intelligence[edit]

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This article demonstrates the reason why wikipedia WP:NPOV applies to article titles not just content.

To accept the premise of the stand alone article of this title is WP:UNDUE it completely loses the scientific context of the number of world class institutions who do not consider this to be an area meritting study

The context of this contraversial issue has been completely lost from the creator's comment "copied large section from Racism"

The article is purely about IQ and not intelligence and there is a difference. Which means it is already misnamed. The information needs to be put in scientific context ie what effects an IQ test [1] to name one of many. Someone's genetic code is complex as are how things are passed on. If this subject is viewed as notable then it should appear under its closest scientific field Heritability of IQ or in a social context such as Scientific racism

Because NPOV arguments are so rarely needed on deletion I will give a short example just because there are news articles about World war II bomber found on the Moon [2] doesn't mean that the context should be ignored and an article written as if the story was believed to be true. It has nothing to do with notability.

Both Race and Intelligence and Race and IQ should be deleted WP:PSCI; WP:FRINGE; WP:NPOV; WP:UNDUE; not redirected and the content placed on Heritability of IQ as a subsection towards the end, a great deal of clean-up is still needed after the move as the article currently stands it is in breech of WP:Propaganda. Tetron76 (talk) 16:55, 11 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. To nominate an article for deletion on the basis that its title violates NPOV is quite simply absurd. Clearly the nominator is offended by the subject matter, but the notion that IQ has a racial component has a long history and has been the subject of many scientific investigations. It matters not one whit whether it's "true" or not so far as the existence of this article is concerned. Malleus Fatuorum 17:30, 11 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Keep As politically charged as it is, the fact remains that the subject matter is certainly notable and the article itself is meticulously cited. The title is appropriate, even if it bothers someone. The controversy of Race vs. Intelligence goes back centuries, and whether there is or isn't a correlation (I'm more of a "environment vs. intelligence" guy myself), it doesn't take away the fact that subject matter is worthy (and verifiable) as an article. To say that the subject matter is fringe is just silly. As to NPOV, that is a matter of editing, as is the other reasons given for delete (ie: not valid reasons to bring an AFD to begin with). The article clearly says in the beginning that it has been a matter of debate for decades, which is true. Deleting the article won't change that. Dennis Brown (talk) 17:36, 11 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The view that this article is viewed as meticulously cited is very scary. The first citation comes on line 17 and the cited article does not make the point that it is supposed to be backing. While I appreciate wikipedia articles are edited by non-academics, anytime a statement is made there should be a citation that contains the information to support this statement.Tetron76 (talk) 17:46, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - An unreadably massive, turgidly written exercise, but both highly notable and highly policed for POV, including the mother of all ArbCom cases. Carrite (talk) 18:07, 11 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Keep The article is has been a magnet for POV pushing, socking and meatpuppetry and WP:SPA's but it is a notable topic. Controversial, but notable. Professor marginalia (talk) 18:16, 11 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Speedy keep If an article has the wrong title, or if the contents are POV you fix it by moving the article and by editing it to NPOV, not by deleting the article. The subject is often discussed and clearly notable. Sjö (talk) 18:23, 11 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Certainly, not speedy keep criteria. What if the fix of the contents is to stubbify the article and then rename it to a very different title? How is this not the same as deletion?Tetron76 (talk) 18:01, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Nomination does not make sense to me. What is "the premise" of the phrase "Race and intelligence"? MartinPoulter (talk) 18:32, 11 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I meant that the topic implies an intersect of ideas along the lines of WP:SYNTHSIS, historically the topic was not discussed under these terms. It was along the lines of Blacks are unable to read, they have inferior intelligence because there language doesn't have a term for "chemistry". while I agree the material was widely covered it was never grouped together under the blanket of Race and intelligence. This implies an area of dicussion based upon a scientific discernment. The modern topic of discussing this is genetics and intelligence. By using scientifically imprecise descriptive terms it allows propaganda to be treated as mainstream such as the example of responding about black chess grandmasters [3]

Keep The problems with this article can be solved by regular NPOV editing. I don't think AFD is the right venue for this conversation since a simple Google Books search turns up a number of books about this issue. Qrsdogg (talk) 18:43, 11 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Keep There are major problems with the article, as evidenced for example by WP:ARBR&I, but the controversy concerned is covered in many top rate sources (e.g. books of Stephen Jay Gould, Jefferson Fish, Nicholas Mackintosh, Robert Sternberg, Christopher Jencks, james Flynn, Arthur Jensen, Richard Nisbett, etc). It is an article that understandably not many editors will wish to edit and which therefore, in normal circumstances, hardly changes from one problematic state to another. Exceptionally it was completely rewritten from scratch a year ago, but not under optimal circumstances. However, since there is copious first class literature on the controversy and it has over the years provoked historically noteworthy clashes between prominent academics, there is no reason to delete it. Its controversial nature and the editors it occasionally attracts will always prevent it from being either a good article or a stable article. But that is how things are. Mathsci (talk) 18:57, 11 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - This is a subject brought by many researchers throughout centuries, this is what a encyclopedia is all about, it is all about the information, the article should extract any single piece of POV away and keep the article rationale. Eduemoni ^↑talk↓ 19:25, 11 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Keep and tag The general topic of this article is certainly notable. The problem in this case is that editors who are most interested in actively editing the article tend to have specific racialist agendas that they want to promote. Likewise, articles which have gone through arbitration often have significant structural and content problems which rise well above the usual issues that occur in other articles. Ideally there would be a tag somewhere that notes these problems exists at a more chronic level, and are likely to persist. aprock (talk) 20:17, 11 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Keep None of the given rationales apply and will be explicitly rebutted if necessary. Morton Shumway—talk 21:53, 11 April 2011 (UTC).[reply]

I would be grateful if you explain why? i.e WP:FRINGE Tetron76 (talk) 18:15, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Keep I have no opinion on the article content but the nominator has failed to state a suitable rationale under which anyone should consider deleting the article. I am not sure what to recommend other than another review of WP:NPOV; I simply do not understand the nominator. Blue Rasberry (talk) 07:10, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 14:17, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Social science-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 14:17, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

keep I want to strongly encourage or even implore everyone who votes on this article to actively participate in writing the article. The article and related topics have a long history of pov problems and of focusing narrowly on the specific studies of a group of psychologists that attempt to prove that some races are naturally inferior to others, while ignoring issues of racism and the long tradition of using claims of lower intelligence for social and political purposes. I cannot vote delete as the topic is notable and I know that if enough neutral editors gather to work on the article it will be possible to write a good and neutral article about the topic. This has not been possible in the past couple of years while I have been engaged with the topic, mostly due to the imbalanced ratio of SPAs to less invested editors.·Maunus·ƛ· 14:31, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Keep This is a highly notable topic widely discussed in reliable sources. There is no reason whatsoever for this proposal for deletion.--Victor Chmara (talk) 15:00, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - It's snowing... Carrite (talk) 16:57, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I noticed that as well, but since this has been put up on AFD so many times, piling on might actually be helpful. Dennis Brown (talk) 17:07, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

If you are complaining about frequent renominations it didn't help that the talk page had wrongly removed any reference to past AfDs. Due to wikipedia problems it took over an hour just to add the tag.Tetron76 (talk) 17:39, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comment since I have clearly failed to express myself well I will try to expand the detail. From wikipedia guidelines:

An idea that is not broadly supported by scholarship in its field must not be given undue weight in an article about a mainstream idea,[3] and reliable sources must be cited that affirm the relationship of the marginal idea to the mainstream idea in a serious and substantial manner.

None of the 173 sources are presenting information the article with relation to the mainstream ideas within Genetics or Cognitive science.

To present even the best possible written article on this topic requires information that is off topic to show that race is too crude a measure when doing a genetic study before the lead. The title prevents the inclusion of the information as it is a superset of the article.

This is Wikipedia:Fringe_theories#Pseudoscience point 3, if it was genuine science: race to start off with would have to be replaced by ethnicity as "black", "white" and "asian" all cover more than one ethnic group as demonstrated by David Cameron's comments about Oxford University's 2009 admissions [4] and IQ would be adjusted for race in the way that they are for age.

While it is true that the content issues could be improved by deleting every unsourced or wrongly Cited lines and adding factors that affect an IQ test from Brest feeding, to limitations of questions, it is not ever possible to present this information in a manner that is appropriate for a lay-person to understand without information preceding the lead because it is unencyclopedic.

In my opinion the argument is about the content being what wikipedia is not and discussions of notability are therefore Ignoratio elenchi.Tetron76 (talk) 17:36, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I think we already got your point. Every single issue you have mentioned are topics for the article's talk page, and some seem a bit hysterical, such as WP:Propaganda. I will leave it at that and let the closing admin make their determination as they see fit, as it appears the probability of this discussion invoking Godwin's Law is rapidly approaching 1. Dennis Brown (talk) 18:52, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I withdraw my nomination since when I started making the nomination, the preexisting AfD wasn't showing on the talk page, I am effectively nominating on the same reasons as were made in 2005. I accept that an extra 5+ years of POV doesn't change the interpretation of wikipedia guidelines and clearly I am not eloquent enough for this debate to be of value.Tetron76 (talk) 10:16, 13 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

KEEP but work on it and perhaps re-title it. I think the general areas of intelligence and its definition, (supposed) measurement by conventional IQ tests, the results of such tests as they correlate with economic status individually and by country, performance changes over time for individuals and groups, correlations with school success and job success, the proposed linkage of such test results to the ill-defined category of race, and the political and social policy conclusions some draw from the test results needs to be carefully discussed. The reasons that many people hold false stereotypes and draw illogical conclusions about these issues also ought to be examined, though that bleeds over into psychology, sociology and politics. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.185.175.10 (talk) 19:43, 13 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Delete Six years later, the article is still an exhaustive survey of all the facts other than the ones that really count. It has no substantial mention of the cultural bias in IQ testing into which economic and therefore education differences play, the flimsiness of IQ as a measure of the scope of human intelligence, rebuttals of the concept of race, or how lack of opportunity creates a disincentive to scholarly thinking in general. The only time the word "culture" is used in the entire article is as a rebuttal of a passing mention of cultural bias later on in the article. Articles on controversial subjects such as these should be given the chance to become balanced, and scrapped if they remain as biased as this. Anarchangel (talk) 23:24, 13 April 2011 (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.