Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Snyderman and Rothman (study) (2nd nomination)

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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 no consensus. There are differing pluralities within this discussion that, when taken with "uninvolved" editors, point to a lack of consensus to delete this article, but also a lack of consensus to keep the article in its current form. The nominator adopted an editor's proposal to move the article to the book's title and re-write, but that position cannot be said to have achieved consensus. Further complicating matters is the Arbcom involvement, which has resulted in topic bans for some of the editors commenting here. With respect to the bans, I did consider them in evaluating the discussion, here, but it did not affect my conclusion. Further discussion on the talk page should focus on how to reorganize this content in an appropriate manner. Xymmax So let it be written So let it be done 21:46, 26 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Snyderman and Rothman (study)[edit]

AfDs for this article:
Snyderman and Rothman (study) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log • AfD statistics)
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The article is about a little known advocacy paper that became a book advocating a point of view, the writing of which was supported by grants from politically oriented foundations. The article exists as a POV fork and does not meet the Wikipedia criteria for articles about books, but rather is an attempt to put undue weight on a non-neutral point of view into Wikipedia article text. WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 00:50, 19 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • Keep. This AFD seems pretty disingenuous. This study is not described as an “advocacy paper that became a book advocating a point of view, the writing of which was supported by grants from politically oriented foundations” in the secondary sources which discuss it, a good sampling of which are currently cited by the article. These citations were mostly added to the article by Mathsci, who is about as far from a pro-hereditarian editor as it’s possible for anyone to be, so there’s next to no chance that the selection of sources is biased in favor of this viewpoint. Only one of the study’s 48 questions addressed the topic of the cause of the racial IQ gap, and the accompanying book devotes a similarly small amount of space to anything that could be considered “advocacy.”
WeijiBaikeBianji nominated this article for deletion exactly eight minutes after reverting my most recent edit to it; an edit which he’s also refusing to discuss on the talk page, despite my comments there that it isn’t reasonable for him to revert edits to an article if he’s unwilling to address the justification that’s being provided for them. In other words, this AFD is basically acting as a substitute for discussion about edits to the article that WeijiBaikeBianji disagrees with, but that for some reason he isn’t willing to discuss in talk. It’s especially problematic that this should occur while race and intelligence and all related articles (which includes this one) are currently under arbitration.
Regarding the claim that this article is a POV fork: it’s about a study and book that reached (among many conclusions) a conclusion that’s controversial. Wikipedia probably has hundreds of articles about books that present unpopular ideas, including books that present controversial race-related conclusions such as The Bell Curve, books that contain flat-out racism such as Mein Kampf, as well as everything in between. This doesn’t make these articles POV forks of anything unless they presents the books’ conclusions as necessarily correct, which this article doesn’t. And I think Varoon Arya and I already addressed the issue of notability in this article’s previous AFD. --Captain Occam (talk) 12:21, 19 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Captain Occam, you accuse WeijiBaikeBianji of bad faith above. Do note however that they could have waited till after arbcom had topic banned you and davidkane from r&i articles - broadly construed - (as is likely to happen). You should appreciate the fact that they did not. --RegentsPark (talk) 14:33, 20 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I suppose I’m glad that if he was going to nominate the article for deletion, he would do it now rather than waiting for a time when David.Kane and I are unable to participate here. But what would be best of all is if he were willing to discuss his reverts instead of trying to resolve the issue with an AFD, don’t you agree? --Captain Occam (talk) 15:24, 20 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I do see WeijiBaikeBianji discussing deletion here. His (assuming WeijiBaikeBianji is male) focusing on notability and deletion seems fair since deletion is what he's arguing for. Also, further down, I note some discussion of sources. On the face of it (I can't comment on the specifics of the reversions you mention) it appears that WeijiBaikeBianji is acting in complete good faith. --RegentsPark (talk) 15:45, 20 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
RegentsPark, thank you for assuming good faith and checking the time sequence to reach your correct conclusion on why this nomination for deletion was timed as it was. I could see that there were POV disputes on the talk page of the article, and I could see that the ban hammer was about to strike the editor who made the last preceding revert as I made this AfD nomination (as I had given notice I might do earlier on the article talk page). I could also see that another editor who entered into talk page discussion on POV of that article and who has spoken up here for keeping the article was similarly about to be banned. I was in no hurry, but when I saw the revert of sourced content by a party to the current Arbitration Committee case happen as the case was about to be decided, I thought it was a courtesy to all concerned to post this AfD nomination right away, to give everyone an opportunity to be heard. (P.S. Yes, I am male, so you may refer to me in the third person as "he.") -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 01:55, 23 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Note: This debate has been included in the list of Social science-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 17:31, 19 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete The study doesn't appear to be notable. I see 22 entries on google, 4 of which are clearly wikipedia mirrors, and only one on google scholar. Looking at the previous AFD, I note that the notability was questioned but no substantive evidence of notability was provided. (That particular AfD was closed as 'no consensus'.) Since the study is non-notable, and appears likely to be a POV fork, I suggest it be deleted. --RegentsPark (talk) 00:12, 20 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
RegentsPark: Could you explain where the study is a POV fork from? David.Kane (talk) 15:43, 20 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Looking at the edit history, it appears to be a fork off of Media portrayal of race and intelligence created by User:Futurebird: 03:39, 8 February 2007 [1]. Media portrayal of race and intelligence currently just points to Race and intelligence and was created as a fork off of that article by User:Nectarflowed: 09:03, 1 January 2006 [2] aprock (talk) 16:44, 20 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I can’t say either way whether this article really started out as a POV fork of Media portrayal of race and intelligence, since I wasn’t involved in these articles yet back when that article existed. But seeing as it no longer exists, I don’t see why that’s an argument for deleting the current article. It’s customary to delete one side of a POV fork rather than both sides, and in this case the other side of the fork has already been deleted. --Captain Occam (talk) 00:10, 21 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
David asked what it was a fork of. I did some research and answered. That is all. aprock (talk) 00:51, 21 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
RegentsPark: Could you provide a link for the claim that there is "only one on google scholar?" This link, cited below, shows 117 references. Given that, would you like to revise your vote? David.Kane (talk) 20:27, 20 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
David.Kane, the google scholar results that I looked at are at [3]. As you can see, there is only one link included in the results. Regards. --RegentsPark (talk) 03:40, 22 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep There are several problematic claims in the description above. First, how is this article an "advocacy paper?" The paper was originally published in the (highly regarded) American Psychologist. I can't recall ever seeing an "advocacy paper" published in this journal. Second, is there a problem with a "book advocating a point of view?" Any book worth reading (or worth writing a Wikipedia article about) advocated a point of view. Third, the "article exists as a POV fork." From what article is this a POV fork? I have followed much of the discussions on the Talk page and can't recall that claim ever having been made. Please tell us what article (that existed before this article) is the other side of the fork. Fourth, what POV is this article advocating? (And why not simply fix the article itself?) Fifth, the study/book is obviously notable: the necessary "multiple, non-trivial[2] published works whose sources are independent of the book itself" are listed in the references to the article itself! David.Kane (talk) 12:43, 20 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
David, you asked an informational question about editorial policies of American Psychologist, a publication for members of the American Psychological Association. Last Thursday I was visiting an academic library out of town, and I happened to photocopy the "Editorial Statement of the American Psychologist: II"[1] that appears in volume 42, just one issue before the Snyderman and Rothman article[2] that I photocopied the previous weekend. I have since found that same editorial statement in an online database, and have found preceding (1986)[3] and following (1988)[4] annual statements of editorial policy by the same editor. The editor, Leonard D. Goodstein, made clear that he intended to publish articles that are interesting and understandable ("not so arcane")[5] for a broad range of readers who are members of the American Psychological Association. In his first statement (1986), he said, "Articles reporting primary empirical research findings are not appropriate for the American Psycholgist."[6] Goodstein pointed out that such articles should be submitted to Psychological Bulletin, the same journal that published James R. Flynn's pathbreaking paper[7] while Goodstein was editing American Psychologist. A reader of American Psychologist asked Goodstein if he really meant to exclude articles "reporting primary empirical research findings"[8] and Goodstein replied[9] that the policy of American Psychologist only rarely accepting articles with primary research data had been in effect for many years. Goodstein said a possible exception to that policy would be for "information concerning the state of psychology in general."[9] So perhaps Snyderman and Rothman (1987)[2] was not an empirical study at all, or perhaps it was only published in American Psychologist because, as the authors wrote, the article advocated that "the expert voice be heard in the public arena,"[10] in other words that psychologists should do more advocating on behalf of their occupation. David, that's why I referred to the article as an advocacy paper, because reliable sources showed me that it was. You additionally asked why I haven't already edited the Wikipedia article Snyderman_and_Rothman_(study) (here nominated for deletion) to fix its POV problems. That is because of the announced intention of another editor[4] to revert sourced content if he just doesn't like it. I see the Wikipedia article, today, doesn't even mention Snyderman and Rothman's acknowledgement[11] that they received help in developing their survey from Richard Herrnstein, which suggests that now the Wikipedia article doesn't even reflect editors having read Snyderman and Rothman's original paper. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 00:22, 24 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Move and rewrite (changed position of nominator as of 25 August 2010) I nominated this article for deletion to uphold Wikipedia policy. Independent rationale 1: Wikipedia has policies on articles about books. The Snyderman and Rothman opinion survey, and the article and book that resulted from the survey, have not won a major award, nor become a subject of instruction at multiple schools, nor were they produced by authors who are so historically significant themselves that any work of theirs is notable. Nor does the article content (the survey, the article, or the book) appear as a subjectnote to Wikipedia guideline "of multiple, non-trivial published works appearing in sources that are independent of the book itself." A claim that the article subject meets Wikipedia guidelines must therefore be based on a claim that the survey (and then the article and then the book) "has been considered by reliable sources to have made a significant contribution to a . . . political . . . movement," which is the only applicable criterion here. I have asked on the article talk page for affirmative evidence of that before nominating this article for deletion. It's dubious that this is such a significant survey, article, or study. I know many published sources about the broader subjects surrounding the subject of the survey, and in most published sources the survey gets no more than a passing mention, or no mention at all.
    Independent rationale 2: Wikipedia policy disfavors content forks and especially disfavors point-of-view forks. If it can be shown by reliable sources that the article subject made significant contribution to a political movement, that raises the delicate issue of neutral point of view in developing the article content. Assuming good faith, I note that editor Futurebird appears to have created the article on 7 February 2007 to expose political bias in a source relied on for editing the Race and intelligence article, which is now the subject of a current Arbitration Committee case. On that case's proposed decision page, Wikipedians can observe proposed findings of fact about the first and the second editors to object to deletion here. I note that the previous discussion of deletion of this article, which did not reach consensus, included several parties to the current ArbCom case, and that most of the editing of the article has been done by those parties, with continual failure to achieve consensus on point of view for the article. All this is strong evidence that the article is a POV fork and can only remain a POV fork, and thus should be deleted by Wikipedia policy.
    Note that the two rationales for deleting the article, that it never met policy for an article about a book in the first place, and that it constitutes a POV fork, are independent, but they are synergistic. With notability for stand-alone treatment in a Wikipedia article being legitimately in doubt, and warranted at best only by relation to political controversy, then the article's demonstrated history of triggering POV disputes among editors shows it should not be in an encyclopedia for worldwide readership with neutral point of view.     (original time-stamp:) -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 17:02, 20 August 2010 (UTC) (new time-stamp:) -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 04:27, 26 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: These seems to be some confusion as to what a POV fork is. Let me quote the guideline:

In contrast, POV forks generally arise when contributors disagree about the content of an article or other page. Instead of resolving that disagreement by consensus, another version of the article (or another article on the same subject) is created to be developed according to a particular point of view. This second article is known as a "POV fork" of the first, and is inconsistent with Wikipedia policies. The generally accepted policy is that all facts and major points of view on a certain subject should be treated in one article. As Wikipedia does not view article forking as an acceptable solution to disagreements between contributors, such forks may be merged, or nominated for deletion.

Since what qualifies as a "POV fork" is itself based on a POV judgement, do not refer to forks as "POV" except in extreme cases of persistent disruptive editing. Instead, apply Wikipedia's policy that requires a neutral point of view: regardless of the reasons for making the fork, it still must be titled and written in a neutral point of view. It could be that the fork was a good idea, but was approached without balance, or that its creators mistakenly claimed ownership over it.

There is no way that this article is a POV fork because it was not created (and does not now function) as "another version of the article (or another article on the same subject)." There is no other "version" of the article. The subject is not discussed, in detail, in any other location on Wikipedia. There may be many reasons to delete this article, but calling it a POV fork is mistaken. David.Kane (talk) 17:13, 20 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • Keep The article satisfies the WP:NB criteria, because it has been the "subject of multiple, non-trivial published works whose sources are independent of the book itself, with at least some of these works serving a general audience", as anyone can ascertain from Google Scholar[5][6]. It is not a POV fork of anything, it's an independent subject. There's been a good deal of work done on the article, and a variety of viewpoints from secondary sources are present in it.--Victor Chmara (talk) 18:51, 20 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Victor, you might want to change your second link to this. I think 117 citations to the Snyderman and Rothman book (and 125 for the original paper) still satisfies WP:NB, but some of the 8,450 sources from your own link aren’t actually citing it. --Captain Occam (talk) 19:21, 20 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Good catch. Corrected.--Victor Chmara (talk) 19:29, 20 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Victor, thanks for your comments. A Google Scholar search I ran reveals the names of both the article and the book, and has links under each for citations of each. My count of citations largely agrees with yours, so there is no dispute about that. So here my follow-up questions are 1) if notability can be established by some number of Google links to citations of a published work, how many citations are enough? 2) does anything else about the quality of the citations matter for establishing notability? The actual Wikipedia criteria for notability of books specify that the book must be discussed (perhaps criticized), not just cited in passing. Are you satisfied that the Snyderman and Rothman book has that many independent, possibly critical, treatments in the literature that you have surveyed? 3) Can a showing of notability nonetheless be overcome by other criteria for deletion? I gather that your statement is that the current version of the article (which I think reflects my revert of Captain Occam's most recent revert) reflects reliance on multiple sources and a reasonably neutral point of view. There seemed to be talk page disagreement on what point of view would be "neutral," and my concern was that much that I have read about the article or the book (both of which I possess in my office) has yet to be reflected in the article. I am willing to continue discussing this issue, and appreciate your reply. (Really detailed discussion of notability criteria or neutral point of view criteria would of course belong on the notice boards for those issues, not on this AfD page.) -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 02:06, 23 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • weak delete This article was created by me when I removed non-notable material that was clogging up the Race and Intelligence article. I felt 'at most' a simple mention of this highly political study in the main article was all that was needed, but at the time, being quite new, I didn't want to delete 'anything', so I put it in its own article so that it could sink or swim on its own merits. The study is not notable, and this article is now just clutter. futurebird (talk) 11:45, 22 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you, Futurebird, for your comments. (I'm not sure if Captain Occam's comments below are a reply to you, immediately above, or a reply to someone else.) As I think you have heard now, the Arbitration Committee is proposing a decision that enjoys broad consensus on the committee to deal with the mess of POV-pushing and unreliable sourcing that you observed on Race and intelligence years ago. I can respect anyone's reasons for examining the publications by Snyderman and Rothman, which have often been used to make points the publications cannot validly make. I have to say that I still think there is warrant for deleting the article entirely, while perhaps permitting either of the publications to be sources in the few Wikipedia articles to which they are relevant on the few issues for which those publications are reliable sources. Plenty of better books don't have Wikipedia articles at all. Perhaps I will have to create new articles about those, and I hope you will visit those articles with your practiced editing skills as you have time to do so. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 02:14, 23 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
How many non-trivial citations to this book and study do you think are necessary in order to satisfy the first criterion of WP:NB? Per the links that Victor Chmara posted above, Google scholar shows 117 citations for the book and 127 for the original study. (It was 125 the day before yesterday, so apparently there have been two more of them in the past two days.) If you think that’s not enough to qualify as "multiple, non-trivial published works", you ought to explain what you think the threshold is. --Captain Occam (talk) 12:34, 22 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. Firstly the title "Snyderman and Rothman (study)" includes the authors names and not the title of the article or the book. The article published in the journal "American Psychologist" is titled "Survey of Expert Opinion on Intelligence and Aptitude Testing" and the book is titled "The IQ Controversy, the Media and Public Policy". Based on WP:NAME, I would think that if the article were to be kept, it should be given either of the two names and not the present name. If the title of the book were to be chosen then the article should discuss the entire book, and not just the survey portion. If the title for the survey article is chosen, then the question then becomes does this single article deserve a standalone article. Such publications are not usually given standalone articles but can be cited in other articles. This is not a problem for books as they often have standalone pages. Many will argue that this study has been cited a number of other articles. In general Wikipedians who patrol the AFD tend to be more open to studies if they have been cited. At the same time, much of the material from the survey that isn't about race is not mentioned in the article. This does give the article the appearance of a POV fork.

Basically I think the AFD should address whether this article should be a standalone or whether the material should be merged into some other article. I don't believe a full scale wipeout of this study from Wikipedia is at present feasible but I also feel that the standalone article gives too much weight, without context, to a single survey carried out 25 years ago. Wapondaponda (talk) 17:53, 22 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, Wapondaponda, thanks for your comments. That's a good overview of the background to the article. I do not claim that the article and the book should not be mentioned at all on Wikipedia. They do have limited usefulness for a limited number of statements that would add useful content to a limited number of Wikipedia articles. But I'm not sure that the current article 1) is really about a notable subject for an encyclopedia with a worldwide twenty-first century readership, nor am I sure that 2) the article meets the cardinal Wikipedia principle of neutral point of view. You correctly point out that under its current name, the article also doesn't fit well with Wikipedia policy on naming articles. That's a lot of problems. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 02:18, 23 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Notes[edit]

  1. ^ Goodstein 1987a, pp. 1–2
  2. ^ a b Snyderman 1987, pp. 137–144
  3. ^ Goodstein 1986, pp. 1–2
  4. ^ Goodstein 1988, p. 1
  5. ^ Goodstein 1987a, p. 1
  6. ^ Goodstein 1986, p. 2
  7. ^ Flynn 1987
  8. ^ Reznikoff 1987, pp. 188–189
  9. ^ a b Goodstein 1987b
  10. ^ Snyderman 1987, p. 144
  11. ^ Snyderman 1987, p. 138

Bibliography[edit]

  • Flynn, James R. (1987). "Massive IQ Gains in 14 Nations: What IQ Tests Really Measure". Psychological Bulletin. 101 (2): 171–191. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.101.2.171.
  • Goodstein, Leonard D. (January 1986). "Editorial statement of the American Psychologist". American Psychologist. 41 (1). American Psychological Association: 1–2. doi:10.1037/h0092058. ISSN 0003-066X.
  • Goodstein, Leonard D. (January 1987a). "Editorial Statement of the American Psychologist: II". American Psychologist. 42 (1). American Psychological Association: 1–2. doi:10.1037/h0092014. ISSN 0003-066X. Retrieved 22 August 2010.
  • Goodstein, Leonard D. (February 1987b). "Comment on AP Editorial Statement: Reply to Reznikoff" (PDF). American Psychologist. 42 (2). American Psychological Association: 189. doi:10.1037/h0092027. ISSN 0003-066X. Retrieved 23 August 2010.
  • Goodstein, Leonard D. (January 1988). "Editorial Statement of the American Psychologist: III". American Psychologist. 43 (1). American Psychological Association: 1. doi:10.1037/h0091930. ISSN 0003-066X.
  • Reznikoff, Marvin (February 1987). "Comment on AP Editorial Statement". American Psychologist. 42 (2). American Psychological Association: 188–189. doi:10.1037/h0092028. ISSN 0003-066X.
  • Snyderman, Mark; Rothman, Stanley (February 1987). "Survey of Expert Opinion on Intelligence and Aptitude Testing" (PDF). American Psychologist. 42 (2): 137–144. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.42.2.137. ISSN 0003-066X. Retrieved 22 August 2010.
  • Move to the book title which will have the advantage of being able to use reviews of the book for references, and re-write the article, which seems written to highlight the particular conclusion, not describe it--I note the non-standard use of large type, which is very strongly discouraged for use in articles in Wikipedia; extensive use of highlighted or displayed quotes is a characteristic of POV and promotional articles. This is one of the cases where stating the article over might have some advantages. DGG ( talk ) 03:24, 26 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
As the nominating editor for this AfD, I change my position to support this suggestion. The article will have to be rewritten almost from scratch, but a move at least preserves a few of the useful secondary sources that are already cited in the article. Thanks for the suggestion. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 04:27, 26 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - Notable study with considerable non-trivial positive and negative reactions. --Dezidor (talk) 19:27, 26 August 2010 (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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