Talk:Race and intelligence/Archive 80

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Some problems with article

Latest comment: 14 years ago41 comments6 people in discussion

I have been reading through the article again and I have encountered several problems with neutrality where sources are misrepresented or only a specious, one-sided description of a topic is provided. Generally these misrepresentations seems to assign more weight to the hereditarian argument than it deserves and less to the different environmentalist positions than they require. I am afraid that as I delve further into the literature I will find more of this and that I am only catching the worst bloopers at this time.

Race_and_intelligence#Test_scores - here it says "Self-reports have been shown to be reliable indicators of genetic race to the extent that they match up with genetic clusters derived from mathematical clustering techniques, but these techniques do not determine whether these clusters themselves have any relation to intelligence." This directly contradicts Sternberg, Grigorenko & Kidd (2005) and Smedley & Smedley (2005) and Cooper (2005) which all agree that there is zero evidence for any observable genetic differences between racial groups which according to them are completely social constructs with no biological content. Cooper argues at length against Rowe's study which is sited in the next pargraph accusing him of stating opinion rather than argument when Rowe states that "The conceptual fuzziness of racial definitions does not negate their utility". I don't know how to improve thise other than remove it or completely rewrite it with a more balanced choice of sources.
Race_and_intelligence#Debate_assumptions_and_methodology stated (I've corrected this) that Sternberg, Grigorenko and Kidd argues that "Differences in test scores that are used to argue for differences in intelligence between races represent the inappropriate use of tests in different groups". This is a gross mischaracterization of a study concluding not once but several times that "Race is a social construction with no scientific definition" and that "intelligence is, at this time, ill defined" and that "Race is a social construction, not a biological construct, and studies currently indicating alleged genetic bases of racial differences in intelligence fail to make thier point even for these socially defined groups".
Race_and_intelligence#Caste-like_minorities. This section was clearly written to discredit the possibility of influence from social effects like those documented for caste-like minorities. It mentions a single study which it describes disparagingly as making "claims" instead of arguments and it suggests that the only substantiation of the claim is a table for which numerous caveats must be made. It doesn't mention any of the arguments of the book, but all of the caveats about the data. If we made as many caveats for every article by Jensen, Rushton or Lynn the article size would explode. It also fails to include the material from the APA report (which clearly considers the caste-like minorities factor to be of possible significance) and references to the most important studies, those of Ogbu about this topic.
The processing efficiency section is much larger than all of the other subsections, but the first three paragraphs describe what reaction time is and how it relates to intelligence. When it finally mentions the actual issue it says thatthere is too little research. Again the APA report has useul information on this that could be supplied instead of the longwinded explanation of what processing efficiency is. ·Maunus·ƛ· 13:51, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

I think you'll find these people [Sternberg, Grigorenko and Kidd, A. Smedley, B. Smedley, Cooper] have little authority in genetics (incidentally, why do Sternberg and co. insist on putting their faces into every paper?). mikemikev (talk) 14:31, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

(remove inserted)I think they have more so than Rushton, Lynn or Jensen. Anyway I didn't include the sources, they were already there, but their views were mischaracterised. Your comment about photos is utterly irrelevant, but as a matter of fact all the authors of articles in that issue of PA include a photos in their article. ·Maunus·ƛ· 14:50, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

So can you reference an authority in genetics who states race is not biological? mikemikev (talk) 15:02, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

What exactly are you arguing? That it is not a sufficiently significant view to be included? Are you arguing that "those people" shouldn't be represented in this article? (Occam put them there - I merely made the inclusion reflect their actual viewpoint). ·Maunus·ƛ· 15:05, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Maunus, I have a problem with you just suddenly changing all of this without any discussion. I think I need to revert these changes for now. This isn’t because the changes you’re making are necessarily wrong, but because the wording of most of the sections that you’re changing is the product of several months of discussion during mediation, and the consensus of around ten different users. (Incidentally, this included users who take both perspectives about the cause of the IQ gap.) If you want to change these sections, they need to be discussed one at a time, preferably including some of the other editors who determined the pre-existing wording. --Captain Occam (talk) 16:32, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Captain, you seem to fail to realize that the current consensus emerging does not seem to agree with the inclusion of the section you rewrote, at least not in the form in which you rewrote it. Reverting changes that other editors made trying to improve the section rather than discussing the issues you perceive with their wording and trying to reach a new consensus does not strike me as aiming towards a constructive resolution.--Ramdrake (talk) 16:39, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

I don’t think you understand what I’m saying here. Almost none of these sections were written by me; they were either written by other users as a result of the mediation’s outcome, or were part of the article even before mediation. This isn’t about who’s right or wrong, this is just about not changing a section that has consensus without sufficient discussion.

I’m fine with discussing the changes he wants to make, but any of these changes need to be made after we’ve discussed them and reached a new consensus that replaces the previous one. That’s just how WP:BRD works.

No BRD works with Bold first (that was me) then Revert (that was you) and then Discuss (that's now). But the D requires that there are arguments for reverting and that unproblematic edits (for example bringing claims in line with what the sources say) shouldn't be reverted. Present your arguments for reverting - what do you think is wrong with my Bold edits? How do we improve them, or did you just revert because you got the order wrong in BRD and thought it was RDB?·Maunus·ƛ· 16:55, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

I certainly want to discuss your changes, but first it seems like it’s necessary to establish that until we reach a new consensus that replaces the existing one, the pre-existing version of the article should stay up. Since the wording of most of these sections was the product of several months of discussion, and you only proposed these changes a few hours ago, I don’t think you can reasonably expect there to be a consensus for them yet. But Ramdrake has just undid my revert and restored your changes to the article. Do you agree that we shouldn’t be making these changes until after we’ve discussed them?

It’s difficult to discuss any changes to the article if you’re going to try and change a whole bunch of sections at once like this. Can we please discuss them one at a time? Tell me which section change you think is most important, and then we can start with discussing that one. There’s no deadline, and making these changes one at a time will give the other editors who determined the wording for these sections more of an opportunity to participate in the discussion about whether their wording should be changed. --Captain Occam (talk) 17:08, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

I don't agree that any and all edits should be supported by consensus before being inserted because that would set the basic editing principle such as WP:BOLD and WP:BRD out of function. I don't mind being reverted when you have an issue with an edit I make, but I don't think that reverting any edit made without prior discussion is productive. I also think that the rumour of the current version being supported by consensus is greatly exaggerated - there are two current cleanup tags on the article. Thirdly I wasn't a party to the mediation or of the consensus that it established (if indeed there ever were such a consensus). How long is that supposed consensus going to mean that we have to revert the edits of any editor coming across this page? ·Maunus·ƛ· 17:40, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

There isn’t some special case here because of the current structure being an outcome of mediation. This is just basic editing procedure that applies anytime someone tries to make large changes to an article. The person can be bold, and then if they get reverted, the changes they proposed don’t get made until there’s a consensus for them. The bold changes aren’t supposed to stay in the article until there’s a consensus to remove them, which is what Ramdrake seems to be trying to do. All I’m asking for here is for you and Ramdrake to comply with WP:BRD. --Captain Occam (talk) 17:49, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Just a reminder, please stick to content issues rather than claiming false consensus. A.Prock (talk) 17:29, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

(reset indent) Maunus made his changes one by one, so these indeed can be discussed one by one. Also, since many -even most- of them are corrections of misrepresentations of the sources, I don't see why we should go back to an error-prone version. Rather, please explain the issues you have with Maunus' edits (I'm expecting it's something beyond WP:IDONTLIKEIT and the fact that he made these edits boldly (I find the edit summaries are more than appropriate as justifications). I hope this answers your objections. And yes, I've been following the discussions again, silently, for a bit now since I'm back out of the hospital.--Ramdrake (talk) 17:23, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Ramdrake, I think you understand the way this is supposed to work here, whether you’re willing to admit to it or not. Do you remember when DJ made a bunch of edits to the article in January, and you reverted them because they weren’t yet supported by consensus? In that case, you weren’t even willing to discuss whether they were right or wrong: the only thing that mattered to you was that they hadn’t been discussed in depth yet. It’s exactly the same principle here. A few edit summaries and a few paragraphs or explanation are not sufficient to overturn several months of discussion between ten different users.

Again, please don’t get the impression that I don’t want to discuss these edits; I do want to. But before we do, we need to clearly establish the fact that they should be made after there’s a consensus for them, not before this. This is pretty basic policy, which you’re pointed out yourself in the past, and if you aren’t willing to follow it here, it looks like you’re allowing your approval of Maunus’s edits to cloud your understanding of proper editing procedure. --Captain Occam (talk) 17:32, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

There is no such procedure I am afraid. Unless the article is subject to ArbCom imposed restrictions of which I am not aware.·Maunus·ƛ· 17:40, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Captain, under most circumstances I would agree with you on this; however, I must also acknowledge that most of Maunus' edits were correcting obvious errors of representation. These cannot be allowed to stand, and I don't see that these would need to be discussed prior to inclusion. Please let it be.--Ramdrake (talk) 17:37, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Let me remind you that there’s no deadline. If some of the things that Maunus is changing are serious errors of misrepresentation, then he’ll have no trouble justifying them and getting me (and anyone else here) to agree to these edits, so discussing them and then changing them will only take a few days. If most of these errors have been in the article for several months, what difference does another few days make? What’s the hurry? --Captain Occam (talk) 17:43, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

I have used edit summaries explaining my edits. I have written four length paragraphgs explaining most of them here. What more do you need before you can say what is your problem with them? We may not have a deadline but we also don't need to draw everything out into a contest of perseverance.·Maunus·ƛ· 18:07, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Could clarify what it is you disagree with, using specific edits? A.Prock (talk) 17:59, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Right now, what I’m expressing disagreement with is just the general concept of expecting bold changes to stay in the article before there’s been any discussion or consensus about them, rather than waiting until consensus exists in order to make these changes. I’d like to begin discussing Maunus’s edits themselves, but before we do that it’s necessary to resolve this point about editing procedure. Can we please just temporarily return the article to the state it was in before Maunus made all of these changes, so we can begin discussing his edits one at a time, the way is normally done when discussing large changes to an article? If some of Maunus’s proposed edits are just to fix aspects of the article that misrepresent the source material, I probably won’t disagree with changing these things, but we still need to discuss them first rather than rushing ahead without any discussion. --Captain Occam (talk) 18:07, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Let's focus on content issues, and not get bogged down by process. Now is a perfect time for D. What content issues do you have with any of the specific edits? A.Prock (talk) 18:25, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Maunus: if you can tell me which of your four points you think we should focus on first, then I’ll be ready to start discussing it as soon as we’ve finished resolving this point about editing procedure, and then we can change the section in question as soon as we’ve decided on the best way to change it. This doesn’t have to take very long. All that matters to me is that we make these changes after we’ve discussed them, not before we have. Can you (and Aprock) agree to this? If you can, we don’t need to discuss procedural issues any more beyond this point. --Captain Occam (talk) 18:28, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Please don't let process paralysis prevent you from discussing any content issues that you may have. A.Prock (talk) 18:38, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Okay, Captain Occam, you are saying that you disagree with people who make edits you do not like. Okay, we got it. Nevertheless, Maunus explained the problems that he saw in the article, and made edits that he believed fixed them, and explained why in edit summaries. This is precisely how we do things at Wikipedia.

Above you say that there was no consensus for change. So? You seem to be acting under the illusion that this is the mediation page. It is not. And mediation has ended. This is an article. And Wikipedia is the article anyone can edit at any time. Get it? You seem to be saying that Wikipedia is the article that Maunus cannot edit at any time. I wonder what policy says this?

I have reviewed the differences between your version and Maunus's and as Ramdrake says, they are relatively minor edits that clarify attribution or point of view, for the most part. Now, what does this mean, your insistance that there be consensus before any change is made? ramdrake and Aprock seem to suppor the changes. I sure do. That sounds like a consensus. Now, if you had a substantive objection to any of the edits, I would take the time to read and consider your explanation carefully, I do not mind extending you that courtesy. But you have come as close as anyone can to saying that you reverted his edits because you felt like it.

And this is unacceptable behavior at Wikipedia.

You can revert an edit if it is clearly wrong. If you do so, you should be prepared to explain why on the talk page. If you cannot provide a substantive explanation for why your version is better, than do not revert. This is the only way that good articles get written by a wikicommunity of thousands. You cannot express disagreement with the "general concept" that other people are going to edit the article. This is just the opposite of Wikipedia.

If you ever have something of substance to contribute to the discussion, feel free to chime in, otherwise, let it be. Talk pages are explicitly for discussing improvements to the article not to your ego. Slrubenstein | Talk 18:31, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

All right, I’ll accept that for the moment these edits can stay in the article. For the record, I actually don’t disapprove of all of them; I just have an inherent aversion to making large changes like this without much discussion.

There are a few of Maunus’s edits that I actually do disagree with, though. I’ll provide a more detailed explanation of why I feel this way about them sometime shortly. --Captain Occam (talk) 18:39, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

You could also undo specific edits one at a time (or even better introduce an improvement that isn't the same as the previous version) and just write your reason in the editsummary - then we'd be moving forward at a really good pace.·Maunus·ƛ· 19:06, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Thank you, Captain Occam - I realy believe that this is the only real way to move forward. Of course, when there is an edit you genuinely disagree with, we should examine and discuss it. It is much better for all of us, certainly for you, if we devote our time to this kind of discussion than general objections to someone editing the article. Slrubenstein | Talk 18:51, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

All right, I’ve gone through Maunus’s edits and changed the things that I disagree with. There’s only one change that I’ve completely undone, which appeared to be synthesizing several different parts of the APA report in order to reach a conclusion that the APA never actually states. The rest of the things that I’ve changed are only minor adjustments of wording, and attributing the APA’s view to them. (I know theirs is the most dominant viewpoint on this topic, but I still think it ought to be attributed.)

Maunus, do you consider the adjustments I’ve made to your changes to be a reasonable compromise? --Captain Occam (talk) 21:15, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

The APA report quite clearly makes the caveat that native american low scores in verbal intelligence should be seen in the light of their being tested in a school setting in their non-native language, and the fact that there is a higher incident of hearing loss among native american children. They make the same caveat (not the hearing one, but the language one)for Hispanics saying that "Linguistic factors may play a particularly important role for Hispanic Americans, who may know relatively little English.(by one estimate 25% of Puerto Ricans and Mexican Americans, and at least 40% of Cubans speak English "not well". Even those who describe themselves as bilingual may be at a disadvantage if Spanish was their first and best-learned language.)" So this is not synth, but is taken directly out of the report. The Apa report also mentions that Arctic native Americans have a "Particularly High visuo-spatial skills". In the same vein I think the article should also mention the significance that cultural focus on different kinds of intelligence may have on the race gap, for example the fact that in tests that doesn't test G but for example creative intelligence, blacks perform considerably better. ·Maunus·ƛ· 06:26, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

I’m aware that the APA report says this separately about both Native American and Hispanics. What it doesn’t say is that this is true in general of people whose native language isn’t English. That’s what I’m saying is synth, because it’s drawing a general inference about non-native English speakers that isn’t actually stated in the report. I suspect that this inference is also inaccurate, because the report also states that Asian Americans have an average IQ above that of whites. --Captain Occam (talk) 08:16, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

It clearly implies that people who are tested in a language in which they are not proficient will ”generally” show poorer results in verbal tests. Otherwise mentioning the fact the two instances doesn't even make sense. When the report doesn't make that caveat about Asian Americans it is presumably because the levels of "speaking English not well" aren't as high among that group as it is among Hispanics and Native Americans. Anyway I don't see how you can advocate having a lead that simply states that "native americans and Hispanics score lower than whites" when the report takes great pains at presenting the caveats with the data that stem from tests of people in their second language. It is an obvious misrepresentation of the report.·Maunus·ƛ· 09:03, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Even if you think this is implied, indirect implications aren’t enough when we’re citing sources at Wikipedia. We can’t read between the lines and include what we think the source is implying; we have to just say what the source says and no more.

As for the lead section, the way the article is structured is to keep most of the discussion about the cause of IQ differences out of the lead. In order to comply with NPOV, if we present one view about the cause of these differences we would have to present other views also, and the lead would quickly become far too long. This section has been discussed more heavily than any other part of the article, and what we eventually decided was that the lead should just describe what the IQ score results are (which are in of themselves relatively non-controversial), and leave the discussion about causal factors to the body of the article.

I know you don’t think that the fact that this was agreed in the past is on its own a reason to keep it this way, but in this case I think it really makes sense. We’ve tried the other way also, in which specific possible causal factors were introduced in the lead, and it resulted in the lead becoming quite a mess. --Captain Occam (talk) 09:31, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

I disagree compltey with the above characterization and I think we should await more opinions. I don't think it is an unreasonabe reading of the APA report to see it as saying that it is generally to be expected that people being tested in a non-native language will perform worse on verbal inteligence tests, and that this may explains at least part of the lower scores of Hispanics and Ntive Americans. I also disagree very much with the idea that it is possibe to simply "describe what the tests say" - the probem is that this takes figures out of context that can only be understood and interpreted in context and the interpretation or validity of which there is no consensus about. It is also a misrepresentation of the APA report which does precisey never make any sweeping generalisations without making several paragraphs of due caveats first, or present numbers out of context. Unfortunatey my computer is acting up and I may not be abe to continue discussion at this point. Ill get back when I can. But lets await third, fourth and fifth opinions before deciding what to do with the american and hispanic test scores. ·Maunus·ƛ· 12:14, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Captain Occam, I have to point out, the goal is not compromise, it is improvement. The first question to ask Maunus is whether he thinks your changes constitute an improvement. If we identify places where you and he have conflicting ideas over how to improve the article, then an acceptable compromise would be one where both of you agree that the edit is some improvement, even if it is not as much of an improvement as either of you (in your conflicting ways) hoped for. But ever edit should be considered an improvement. Compromise is at most a means to that end. (If this is what you mean by "reasonable," then okay, it was not immediately evident to me) Slrubenstein | Talk 22:18, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

That’s basically what I meant. I do think that my changes constitute an improvement—avoiding synth, better attribution, and more precise statements of what the sources say. Ideally Maunus won’t disagree with this at all, but if he does, I’m hoping that he’ll at least agree that the changes I’ve made are at least a partial reflection of what both he and I think would be best for the article. --Captain Occam (talk) 22:46, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Well, Captain Occam, I have to say, I think that what you call a compromise in fact made the article worse, not better. I am writing specifically with regard to your debate with maunus over the presentation of low average scores for Hispanics and Native Americans. First of all, under any circumstance Maunus is right that when using the APA report as a source for the statement that they have lower avefrage test scores than whites, we have to include the reason the APA provides for the low performance. Since a great deal of the controversy is over genetic versus environmental reasons for test differences, if the same source that says their scores are low also gives a reason, it is directly relevant to the very justification of the article itself to include the reason. Not to include it is disingenuous and deceptive. Including it certainly violates NO policy whatsoever, in fact in complies with our NPOV and V policies which say that when presenting information from a verifiable source we also have to provide salient context.

Second of all, Maunus is quite right that the APA is making a point about test score averages when the test is in a language that the test subjcts are not fluent in. This is NOT a violation of SYNTH. The key line is this: "The result is a performancetest/verbal-test discrepancy similar to that exhibited by Hispanic Americans and other groups whose first language is generally not English." The predicate of this sentence consits of clause ( "... a performance/verbal-test discrepancy") that has two nominal phrases: to that exhibited by Hispanic Americans" and "to that exhibited ... by other groups whose first language is generally not English." The sentence is clearly making a generalization. "other groups whose first language is generally not English" is not Maunus's synthetic claim, it is the APA's synthetic a posteriori claim and entirely permissible under Wikipedia policy. In fact, Wikipedia policy requires it. We have an obligation to represent the view of the APA accurately. That the sentence ends with the general phrase, making the object of the sentence "groups whose first language is generally not English," it is making clear that Native Americans (which the statement already made clear is not one group but itself refers to many different groups) and Hispanic Americans are specific examples of a more general trend, "groups whose first language is generally not English." if we do not say that this is the point that the APA is making, we are just lying to our readers. Wikipedia loses credibility. I hardly call this an improvement. Slrubenstein | Talk 17:13, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Okay, I see now what part of the APA report Maunus was referring to. I think if this information is included, it ought to be reworded in order to make it clear that the APA is referring specifically to Native Americans and Hispanics, even though they’re also making a general statement about language being a factor.

However, I still think this shouldn’t go in the lead section. This isn’t an NPOV issue or a synth issue—I agree that including this information is consistent with NPOV, and that it isn’t synth if it’s worded properly—it’s just an organizational one. Right now, the lead section doesn’t discuss specific causal factors for any of these groups. If we add information about specific causal factors for Native Americans and Hispanics, we’d really need to add it for blacks and whites also, because causal factors are discussed much more heavily for blacks and whites than they are for Native Americans and Hispanics, and the proportion of topics presented in the lead needs to match its proportions in the source literature. And I suspect that discussing this in the lead for blacks and whites in addition to Native Americans and Hispanics would cause the lead to become much too long.

I think we ought to either put the information about linguistic factors for these groups somewhere in the body of the article, or just not mention Native Americans in the lead at all. For a long time, the lead only discussed IQ scores for blacks, whites and Asians, and these are definitely the groups whose scores are discussed in greatest depth by the source material. What would you think of it as a temporary solution if we were to just remove the discussion about Native Americans from the lead, until we can find somewhere in the body of the article to present what the APA says about them? Since Native Americans are discussed far less in the source literature than blacks, whites and Asians are, I wouldn’t consider it a serious loss for the information about them to be left out of the lead section. --Captain Occam (talk) 03:07, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

I would applaud leaving Native Americans and Hispanics out of the lead. And actually I think instead of stating that "In the US, intelligence quotient (IQ) tests have consistently demonstrated statistical differences: the scores of the African American population are on average lower than that of the White American population; the Asian American population on average scores higher; Amerinds scores on average fall between Caucasian and African American scores." it would be better to state that "In intelligence research in the US there is a pattern of groups identified as African American scoring lower than groups identified as "White", which in turn score lower than groups identified as "Asian American". This wording would avoid the problems of assuming that the groups studied actually represent different "races" and it would avoid the problem of making the caveats of the APA report. It also avoids the problem of saying "consistently" when there are in fact research (Yerkes research of WWI e.g.) that has shown some black groups to perform better than some whites, or some blacks to perform better than some whites when some particular areas of intelligence have been tested (e.g. the creative intelligence of Sternberg). I also would want to change the first sentence because it assumes that the groups being studied are indeed "human races".·Maunus·ƛ· 07:37, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

This is what I would call real compromise - and real improvement. Slrubenstein | Talk 10:00, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

What I’ve done is restored the wording that this part of the lead section had before the information about Native Americans was added. I approve of the emphasis this version placed on the fact that the scores of all groups overlap with one another, which I think ought to be mentioned as prominently as possible, and this version was also definitely supported by a strong consensus.

I’ll explain what I mean by the second point, because I know there are several people who don’t think past consensus is relevant here. During the mediation, there were approximately equal number of editors who thought the article should give more space to the 100%-environmental explanation of the IQ gap (which was the view of Ludwigs2, Slrubenstein, Aprock, and Muntuwandi) and who thought more should be given to the hereditarian hypothesis (which was the view of me, Varoon Arya, Mikemikev, and David.Kane), so any agreement we reached involving both of these groups really would represent a consensus between editors who normally disagree. There probably isn’t as sharp a disagreement between these groups anymore, now that the article is in a state that members of both groups have said they’re satisfied with, but I still think this is an informative way of dividing up the opinions of the editors involved in it. And when you use this division, I seem to be the only editor in the latter group who’s currently participating here, while Slrubenstein, Maunus, Aprock, and Ramdrake all belong to the former group.

The reason this matters is because the definition of consensus is editors who previously disagreed coming to an agreement. For this reason, I don’t think something that has the support of everyone on one side but nobody on the other side can necessarily be considered consensus, even if the other side’s current lack of participation here means that very few users are expressing active disagreement with it. The reason I favor the past version of this part of the lead is because this definitely did have consensus from both sides of this dispute, during mediation when both sides were active here. That type of consensus is going to be much more difficult to obtain again as long as one of the two sides is only being represented by a single user. --Captain Occam (talk) 20:29, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Consensus based editing does not mean someone from both sides must agree, or that all must agree - to give one person veto power over any change, blindly, is madness. Consensus-based editing must be based on reasons, argument, and evidence. I certainly think the more diverse the editors, the better the article, and I think (necessarily) that diverse editing discussing changes is a good thing. But it cannot simply be saying that there are two sides and people from both sides must accept an edit. I could object to your edit until the roosters crow, but if I cannot give valid reasons, I cannot veto your edit.

That said, I would characterize the point of contention differently. I happen to believe that human intelligence is highly heritable, and i also think that environment has a big impact on learning and learning outcomes, so I think that dividing people based on genetic versus environmental uses a blunt instrument to do subtle work. As for the mediation, I think some editors believed that only the views of a certain group of psychometricians counted, so anything they agreed on is "mainstream" and anything they reject is "fringe." If we identify this group as one "side," I definitely belong to a different group. I would characterize my side thus: I think that while psychometricians are experts in IQ testing, in any discussion of race, the views of cultural anthropologists and sociologists are highly salient, and in any discussion of genetics and inheritance, the views of evolutionary biologists and population geneticists (including many biological anthropologists) are highly salient. Therefore, in determining mainstram, majority, minority, and fringe views, we must often include the views of a larger and more diverse group of scientists than psychometricians. My concern is with how we determine the significance of a viw and the reliability of the source, and I think this is how participants in the mediation were divided. Captain Occam, this may not be your perception, but please do not represent me. What I just wrote at least explains my "side" in the mediation.

But the mediation is over, and now this page is open to anyone. Any edit that complies with NPOV, NOR, and V hould be given the benefit of the doubt, and if anyone things a part of the article or a specific edit is not fully compliant with any of these policies we ought to discuss it on the talk page and strive to consider whether there are better alternatives. I do not see any other considerations entering into it. Slrubenstein | Talk 22:55, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Doll study

Latest comment: 14 years ago21 comments4 people in discussion

Just curious what this has to do with Intelligence, and why it's in this article / why it's in the policy relevance section. It seems left field. -Bpesta22 (talk) 03:49, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Two cents (all I'll spend; I'm exhausted just watching). Discussion of this well-known line of study is in the wrong section (policy) but it is relevant to the article in demonstrating (1) previous social influence by others on individual subjects based on their perceived race (environment v. heredity); (2) the potential unreliability of "race" as a precise biological characteristic; and (3) the frontiers between the fields of psychometrics and sociology (perhaps). Steveozone (talk) 04:14, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Bpesta: An anonymous IP just added the information about that study a few hours ago. I'm doubtful about whether it belongs there, but I haven't bothered removing it because I'll hopefully be rewriting that section soon anyway. --Captain Occam (talk) 04:32, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

The section may need fixing; how about the part about the relevance to the article? Steveozone (talk) 04:45, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

I don’t think this new content presents any information that isn’t already discussed by other parts of the article. The idea that discrimination or preconceptions about races could influence IQ scores is already discussed by the “stereotype threat” and “caste-like minorities” sections, and the questions about Jensen’s and Rushton’s motives will be in the revision to this section that I’m intending to make. Even though this information is cited to sources that the article doesn’t use elsewhere, in terms of content I think it’s redundant, and we can’t expect to cite every source that exists for a given viewpoint about this topic. --Captain Occam (talk) 04:56, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Huh. New sources are usually good, I thought. Perhaps per my points above, #2 and #3? I'm not tracking the implicit assumption "about races" being subject to "preconceptions," and I'm wondering what is it about "races" that is conceived before what? Steveozone (talk) 05:29, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm just talking about what's in the new content that was added. For example this paragraph:

"There has been a limited but measurable amount of evidence leaning toward the assumption that media and culture influence subconscious ideals on 'race'. One study reveals that even from a very young age, individuals identify 'white' with positive attributes and stimuli and 'black' with negative attributes. These are ideals are translated into subconscious cognitive presumptions on individuals among white and black populations. Though the causes are unknown, language, media, television and education all are considered to play a factor in subconscious categorizations."

That's basically just repeating the same ideas that are already in the "stereotype threat" section, but with a different source. We don't need the same idea discussed multiple times in a single article. --Captain Occam (talk) 05:47, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Oh, OK; I agreed the last section should be fixed--I was just wondering about the "fix." I'm just talking about how sourced information should be preserved and collected in the appropriate section, and the doll study is relevant (which is what I thought this talk thread was about). Is there a problem with including more sources? Steveozone (talk) 06:18, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

If you want to just add these sources to the appropriate parts of the article (without adding anything else to them), I guess there’s nothing wrong with that. I don’t think we should make these sections any longer in order to describe the additional sources, though. Most of the sections are balanced against one another kind of carefully in order to not violate WP:UNDUE, so if we’re going to add additional sources to them, we need to be careful not to skew that balance. --Captain Occam (talk) 06:52, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

I'll think twice before sourcing anything, then. I know this article and others are messy, and I wouldn't want to skew a balance. Steveozone (talk) 07:35, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

I disagree with the notion that the content currently in the article is well balanced and avoids UNDUE. I think it has serious weighting problems for example the sections on Brain size and Processing efficiency are much longer than the other sections about possible causes of the gap. And generally the article gives much too much credence to the genetic hypothesis adopting many of its assumptiuons tacitly throughout. Also the article isn't really very long so there is no really good argument "to not make sections any longer" especially not when other subsections of simiolar importance already are much longer. In short if you want to use undue weight as an argumnent it is not enough to simply say "it gives the topic more weight than it has in the previous version" because that is exactly the problem we are trying to solve. You could alternatively find arguments in favour of the current weighting, backed by sources of course.·Maunus·ƛ· 07:20, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

I actually agree that the processing efficiency section is too long. That’s why I said “most of the sections” rather than “all of the sections”. However, I think a more pressing concern about this section is the fact that it doesn’t contain any citations. It was written almost exclusively by Bpesta22, so whenever he becomes more active here I’m intending to see if I can get him to add some sources to it. Once he does, it’ll be easier for either of us to reduce the size of this section while still remaining true to what the sources say.

The current weighting was determined almost entirely by David.Kane, and was mostly based on the weighting of these topics in Richard Nisbett’s book Intelligence and How to Get It, particularly in the appendices where Nisbett discusses possible influences on IQ, and the pros and cons of each of them. (Or perhaps it was only one of the two appendices; you’d have to ask David.Kane.) Nisbett believes the cause of the IQ gap to be 100% environmental, but this is still how he weights these potential influences on IQ when he describes them. I haven’t examined Nisbett’s weighting in as much depth as David.Kane has, but from what I’ve been able to see, he seems to have represented it pretty accurately. If you have a problem with the current weighting, you should probably discuss it with David.Kane—he’s still active at Wikipedia, and I’m not sure why he’s stopped participating in this article. --Captain Occam (talk) 07:41, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

I don't need to discuss it with David.Kane. He is aware that I don't agree with his weighting (although admittedly I haven't checked whether it accurately represents Nisbetts). Anyway it is us - who are currently editing the article - who needs to discuss this together. As I have said before keeping Status Quo is not an argument.·Maunus·ƛ· 09:18, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Well, I do think that it accurately represents Nisbett’s weighting. If you disagree, I guess I think you ought to look at how he weights these topics in the appendices of his book, and see if you can make any specific suggestions about how the weighting in the article could reflect this more accurately. (Other than reducing the size of the processing efficiency section, which I already agree should be done at some point after the citations are added to it.) --Captain Occam (talk) 09:42, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Feel free to chop up the processing efficiency section. I added the background because I figured it's hard to just summarize race differences on RT without explaining why it's relevant to IQ. That said, of all the many things that could / could not go in the article, the doll study puzzles me. -Bpesta22 (talk) 15:25, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Bpesta, I’d really like it if you could add some references to this section before any of us trim it down. Since you’re the one who wrote this section, you’ll have a much better idea than anyone else here what sources this material is from, and you’re also probably more familiar than any of us with the source literature about mental chronometry in general. --Captain Occam (talk) 19:12, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Will do tonight or tomorrow. Would it be ok to cut n paste them here? -Bpesta22 (talk) 22:51, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

It would be easiest if you could actually add them to the article itself, but if you’re unsure of how to use <ref> tags in the article, just posting the list of citations here would be OK also. If you’re going to just post the citations here, though, one thing I’d ask is to make it clear which parts of this section are cited to which sources, so that whoever adds the citations to this section can make sure they add the right citations to the right parts of it.

Either way, when you’re coming up with your list of citations, you might want to take a look at WP:RS if you haven’t already. Primary sources (such as individual studies where data is first presented) are sometimes okay at Wikipedia, but secondary sources are best. It’s also best to use sources from a variety of authors, so for example, we shouldn’t be citing the entire section to Jensen’s Clocking the Mind. (Although a few refs to that book would be okay, as long as we don’t present Jensen’s view as the only valid one in areas where other researchers disagree with him.) --Captain Occam (talk) 00:06, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

I've just taken a careful look at the sources for the two new paragraphs, and I don't think any of them support the new material that was added. Two of the citations are to other Wikipedia articles, and the other two are to articles that just discuss how race can influence people's perception of others, without mentioning anything about this as a possible influence on IQ. The first two obviously aren't valid sources, and drawing an inference about IQ from the latter two seems to be a clear example of WP:SYNTH. Unless someone can provide a clear justification for how this material can be be included without it being synth, I think it needs to be removed. --Captain Occam (talk) 17:04, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Most of the cites I have below are to primary/basic research demonstrating the effects. A few are secondary. If some violate Wiki rules; fair enough, don't include them. I would stipulate that so few people are willing to research the topic that most of the cites are to people like Jensen (and me!).

I likely could find more, if pressed. Also, Jensen's g factor (1998) and his more recent mental chronometry would be good secondary sources.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V9F-4R1FS44-1&_user=10&_coverDate=02%2F29%2F2008&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1341706642&_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=df978c2b9b341f4263f55bea0606a938

http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/30years/Rushton-Jensen30years.pdf

http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/amp/50/1/41/

http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/sbp/sbp/1990/00000018/00000002/art00016

http://defiant.ssc.uwo.ca/faculty/rushtonpdfs/2010%20Review%20of%20Nisbett.pdf

The last cite here is a specific rebuttal to Nisbett. It might be useful in the article as most of it is framed on Nisbett (it's possible we already cite it; I didn't look first) -Bpesta22 (talk) 04:19, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the links, Bpesta, but I'm not able to get access several of these papers. (And for the third one, I can't even tell from the URL you linked to what its title is, in order to see whether I can find it anywhere else.) I still think it would be easiest if you could try adding the citations to this section yourself, and possibly also try making the section a little more concise while you're at it, since that also needs to be done at some point.

If you do, one other thing I’d suggest is to try relying on Jensen, Rushton and Lynn as little as possible for the citations in this section. Deservedly or not, anything by those authors is going to be contentious. The first paper you linked to is good because it’s by a pair of authors who aren’t so controversial, and because it’s a secondary source summarizing a lot of research in this area. Your own paper about reaction time would be OK also, but since it would most likely be considered a primary source, we’d probably want some secondary sources also. (If you can’t find anything better than this about race differences, a primary source from you plus a secondary source from Jensen and/or Rushton might be OK.) --Captain Occam (talk) 01:18, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

David Kane's revert

Latest comment: 14 years ago8 comments4 people in discussion

The claim that there is no consensus about what intelligence is is supported by the APA report and it was sourced to a paper by our very own Bryan Pesta. He starts the article by making the relevant caveats for any paper dealing with this topic noting that there is no consensus about the nature of either race or intelligence AND that views opposite his own view exist and are espoused by other scholars. This is more than sufficient proof that this wikipedia article MUST take those views into account, just like Bryan Pesta had to mention them up front if he wanted his article to pass peer review. There is no way around it. There is no consensus about race or about what intelligence is the article should not pretend there is. The APA report also does not say otherwise - it makes pages of caveats explaining several different views in detail and explaining how modern IQ tests do not measure those, it doesn't take any caveats for race because it completely rejects using the term (because it knows that if it did use the term race it would havr to make 7 pages more of caveats). David Kane will obviously have to reinstate my edit, or rewrite it into an improved form that still does not attempt to obscure the lack of consensus about the nature if intelligence. ·Maunus·ƛ· 05:11, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Well, perhaps we are not so far apart on this. In general, I prefer to cite things like the APA report or a good secondary source rather than random academic articles (as much as I like our own Bpesta). But note that we already cover the debate over the meaning and definition of intelligence in the debate assumptions section, much of it written by me. So, clearly, we agree that this belongs in the article. I also agree that to talk about intelligence test scores without first mentioning these issues is problematic. Any objection if I try to fix this by moving the Assumptions section ahead of the test scores section and doing some other minor stuff? David.Kane (talk) 12:17, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

We could try that out and see if it works better.·Maunus·ƛ· 13:08, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

I will make that change now.. David.Kane (talk) 15:50, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Reasonable point-- I mentioned long ago somewhere here that this article would be much easier to write if we highlighted that all the data in this area regard only self-reported race differences on g. Seems like many of our problems go away if we admit the data only indirectly speak to what race is biologically, and center on just the general factor. Note that my article claims no consensus on what intelligence is, not on what g is, or whether it exists. -Bpesta22 (talk) 15:17, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

That is exactly why I chose it as a good example of how we ought to do it here at wikipedia.·Maunus·ƛ· 15:47, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

The article does state that clearly. How would you state it even more clearly? Add it to the lead? David.Kane (talk) 15:50, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

I have a two-pronged solution I'd like to propose. First, following David's good idea, I added "self-identification" to the introduction - I tried to be as concise as possible. If anyone can come up with clearer writing, cool, but I think in the lead we have to be quite concise.

Second prong: I think that there is a section missing from the article. The second section, "debate assumptions," identifies four positions, #4 being that races themselves are social constructs. Clearly, the article currently goes into a fair amount of detail concerning positions 1-3, develope din different parts of the article later on. I do not think it gives adequate attention to #4. Also, the third section discusses "group differences." But this assumes that groups exist. Well, okay, they do, but what kinds of groups are these? What do we mean by groups? There are big assumptions here we do not discuss. Finally, for an article called "Race and IQ," there sure is a lot of space devoted to IQ and rvery little space devoted to race. I have one proposal that addresses all three concerns:

I think that there is a section missing, in between "debate assumptions" and "group differences." I propose creating a new section (it would be section 3, all the others would be bumped down one) called The nature of groups. Whereas later sections, on IQ tests, are dominated by research by psychometricians, this section might draw more on research by anthropologists and sociologists. It can explain why most social scientists believe that race is a social construction; it would explain why social constructions can correlate with phenotypic markers like hair texture and skin color (but may also correlate with phenotypic features that are not necessarily tid to heritable factors, such as education and income level, as is the case in Brazil). Finally, it an explain why it is that so many questionaires ask people to "self-identify," what "self-identification" means and why it is favored over other ways of identifying people's race, and if there are any debates over the meaning or the proper versus improper uses of self-reported data, and so on. I actually do not think such a section need be very long, I would not want it to be longer than the section on history or at most on debate assumptions. Readers should finish it with a clear understanding of what self-identified race defnitely means, may mean and does not mean, and it would vastly improve the article. Slrubenstein | Talk 17:31, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

about pelvic size

Latest comment: 14 years ago7 comments4 people in discussion

I added a section called "pelvic size and musculoskeletal skelett features" to show that the cranial capacity is strongly genetic. Here you have the article, very interesting http://www.ssc.uwo.ca/psychology/faculty/rushtonpdfs/2004%20Human%20Evolution.pdf —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.147.29.155 (talk) 03:48, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

This is WP:UNDUE use of a primary source. Mathsci (talk) 07:45, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Mathsci, please explain how Rushton is primary and Lieberman is not, and why for that matter we cannot use primary sources for a current science article. It's becoming painfully obvious that you are just using this secondary/primary nonsense as an excuse to justify pushing your POV. mikemikev (talk) 08:51, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Unfortunately most sources being used in this article are primary, one of the consequences of the last stage of mediation. It's unclear why editors are shovelling the contents of questionable scientific papers or books (eg those of Rushton or Lynn) onto the pages of this encyclopedia without further qualification. Mathsci (talk) 11:48, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Mike, if you look at the edit that Ramdrake and Mathsci reverted, you’ll see it had an entire section about this. While I don’t object to these papers being mentioned at all, I think it’s hard to argue with Mathsci’s and Ramdrake’s assertion that it’s undue weight to devote an entire section to just two papers. This is really just a subset of the “brain size” topic, and it’s one of Rushton’s arguments for the difference in brain size being genetic; how about we just add a single sentence about these papers to the part of the “brain size” section where it describes Rushton’s opinion? --Captain Occam (talk) 10:09, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

OK, actually I was thinking of something similar. Undue I can agree with as an objection, primary/secondary no. Adding the sentence in brain size should be an acceptable compromise, and no need to replace Lieberman. mikemikev (talk) 11:01, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

All right, I’m glad you approve of the compromise I’m suggesting. If nobody here objects to it, I’ll implement it sometime soon. --Captain Occam (talk) 11:42, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Dubious tag on the brain size hierarchy section

Latest comment: 14 years ago11 comments6 people in discussion

I've put the {{dubious}} tag on the paragraph as it presents the brain size hierarchy as established facts, when in fact several researchers found no hierarchy or a different one. I'd refer anyone interested in reading about it to consult Liberman's excellent paper on this: right here. I'm not quite sure how to go about correcting the paragraph.--Ramdrake (talk) 13:03, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Lieberman is absolutely note a rationalist, he is a marxist. Hundreds of studies have clearly demonstrated that the cranial capacity of blacks was smaller, their pelvis is smaller and the cranial capacity is less than the third week of pregnancy!

It should not include Lieberman is an obscurantist who denies the very foundations of the theory of évolutionK. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.147.29.155 (talk) 14:44, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Folks, please: WP:DNFTT.--Ramdrake (talk) 14:47, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

I checked two of the Lieberman references (Beals and Montagu) finding "no hierarchy". They agree that there is a brain size hierarchy, but explain it by "thermoregulation" and "having no effect on intelligence" respectively. So the brain size data is correct. mikemikev (talk) 16:21, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

If you re-read beals carefully, you'll see that he never claims any kind of racial hierarchy to brain size: he posits an explanation based entirely on thermoregulation. Maybe I should have said "no racially-oriented hierarchy".--Ramdrake (talk) 17:34, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

If I re-read carefully I can re-find what I just told you. Cheers Ramdrake... mikemikev (talk) 17:40, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

I think there are good arguments against the brain size argument for heredity mad by Nisbett. That is a secondary source and is a fine source for providing the environmentalist view. He also mentions that there are contradictory studies showing larger cranial capacity among african american women. Anyway I think it would be useful also to mention that human pouplations within Africa has greater genetic diversity than the entire humanity outside of Africa, also an argument used by Nesbitt, there is bound to be groups of Africans with bigger brains and skulls than at least some groups of whites.·Maunus·ƛ· 17:50, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

“If you re-read beals carefully, you'll see that he never claims any kind of racial hierarchy to brain size: he posits an explanation based entirely on thermoregulation. Maybe I should have said ‘no racially-oriented hierarchy’”

Before all of the edits from the anonymous IP, the text of the article already pointed out that Lieberman disagrees with Rushton about this. If pointing out Lieberman’s and Beals’ disagreement with Rushton was the purpose of the “dubious” tag, and this was already pointed out by the article itself, isn’t the tag not necessary? --Captain Occam (talk) 18:30, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

This is pretty fringe stuff. No one questions that an increase in cranial size is a trend in human evolution, although it is unclear to what extent this is tied to the development of human intelligence. I do not know of any reliable research that suggests it explains inelligence differences among races. Slrubenstein | Talk 21:51, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

To Occam: the current article presents racial brain size hierarchy as an established fact, when in fact several researchers have found no racially-based hierarchy, or a different one. It then presents Lieberman as the sole dissenter to this hierarchy and attributes to him the geoclimatically-based variation hypothesis (which is really Beals'). So, it needs to be rewritten with a bit more balance and better attention to sources, is all I'm saying. To all: I would also appreciate other editors taking a close look at IP 88's edits which still stand, which sound awfully POV to me (for example, saying that the genetic hypothesis is now widely accepted). I won't touch them anymore since the good Captain has done me the favor of reporting me at AN3. :( --Ramdrake (talk) 23:33, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

in his review of lynn's "race differences in intelligence" mackintosh notes that:

"although he argues that the results of adoption studies point to this conclusion, lynn's main focus is on brain size and his evolutionary hypothesis, which is that genetic differences between different races must have produced differences in such a genetically determined characteristic as intelligence, since they have, after all, produced differences in brain size, with groups remaining in or migrating to benign tropical climates undergoing less selection pressure for increases in intelligence and brain size than those exposed to harsh northern climates and ice ages. it would have been news to the first europeans who ventured there that the australian outback was an undemanding environment, and, unfortunately for lynn's argument that increases in brain size were a consequence of migration to the northern hemisphere and the need to survive ice ages, the cranial capacity of early homo sapiens, 100,000 or more years ago, was rather greater than that of modern europeans (aiello & dean, 1990). moreover, even by his own calculations (in table 16.3), differences in brain size explain only a quarter of the observed iq differences between europeans and africans, native americans and south asians. in fact, this is a serious overestimate, because he assumes a correlation between brain size and iq of .40, which is true for mri studies; but the racial data he uses are based on cranial capacity, which correlates only .18 with iq. differences in cranial capacity between different groups, therefore, could explain no more than 12% of the iq differences between them."

smells like more manipulation from lynn.--mustihussain 23:47, 23 May 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mustihussain (talk • contribs)

Ramdrake: even though I think we’re all agreed that the IP’s edits were erroneous, that doesn’t justify you reverting the article five times in twelve hours. If you had engaged in discussion with me and Mikemikev about the compromise we were suggesting between you and the IP, you probably could have dealt with this problem without violating 3RR.

SLR: if you’re not aware of any reliable research which links race differences in IQ to race differences in brain size, I hope you don’t mind me pointing out two studies about this that I think would qualify as reliable sources. One is this study by Arthur Jensen in the journal Intelligence, and the other is this study by Jensen and Johnson in the journal Personality and Individual Differences.

I know these papers are probably considered primary sources, so I’m not suggesting the article should necessarily cite them; and I also don’t think the article needs to devote more space to this topic than it did before all of the edits from the IP. I’m just mentioning this so everyone can have an accurate understanding of what research exists on this topic. Both Intelligence and Personality and Individual Differences are fairly reputable journals, and you’ve acknowledged yourself that Jensen is fairly well-regarded as a researcher, despite how controversial he is. So I don’t think this can be considered completely a “fringe” idea. --Captain Occam (talk) 04:49, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Preliminary Review of Significance and Policy Relevence (revised) Section

Latest comment: 14 years ago40 comments7 people in discussion

General notes:

The entire section is problematic because it is not clear that there are any racial difference in intelligence. Certainly there are difference in intelligence outcomes for various racial and ethnic groups, but so far there has been no direct evidence that racial intelligence is different for any given group. If there is no racial difference in intelligence, there is no significance of racial intelligence.
It's not clear what this section is supposed to be about. Is it about the difference in outcomes, or the inate racial difference (which is not an estabished relationship)? If it's about the former, refferring to the appropriate intelligence articles seems appropriate, if it's about the later, this sounds very much like WP:SYNTH and WP:OR, taking a minority conclusion and using it as the basis for an entire section.
The section relies heavily on primary sources. This in itself is problematic as WP should generally use secondary and tertiary source, see WP:Primary. A broad topic like this should probably rest more firmly on secondary sources.

Within Societies: The first half of this section deals primarily with the effects of intelligence independent of race. Accordingly, there should be reference to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#Positive_correlations_with_IQ. In fact, things could certainly be improved by a better presentation of how IQ alone is significant somewhere in the appropriate intelligence articles. One thing which isn't clear from the second paragraph is that all of the data are correlational data, and do not determine the direction of causailty.

Between Nations: This entire section should be deleted. The article is about Race and Intelligence, not Race and Nations.

High Achieving Minorities: Again, we have a discussion which fails to highlight that we are dealing with a correlational phenomenon. In fact, with respect to Jewish outcomes, another very popular explanation is that of Talmudic reasoning/culture. Given the general consensus that environmental factors play a large role in shaping IQ, it needs to be made clear that there is no direct evidence that the correlation is causal in the direction that IQ is a function of race.

(Jumping in): I read somewhere that the names of numbers may be a factor in higher Korean scores on math tests. Korean has no irregular number names: twelve (12) is ten-two (at least in the Sino-Korean numbering system used when doing arithmetic. --Uncle Ed (talk) 17:22, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Addressing the IQ gap: This also seems to be a section which is essentially independent of race. It's good to see that it links to the appropriate article. The rest of the section doesn't seem to be discussing how to address the IQ gap, but is rather a he said/she said about research into race and intelligence. It's not clear where that content belongs, or how encyclopedic it is.

In sum, the rationalle for this section is weak, the content of this section is confused and tends to rest on correlative results, with an over-emphasis sourcing primary source, and nearly all of the reasonable topics here can be handled by summarizing and linking to the appropriate articles. A.Prock (talk) 15:30, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

As I have stated above I agree that more secondary sources are needed and much more clarity about what is in fact the topic of the section. I also agree with Aprock that it tacitly assumes that race exists as a biological concept and that the iq gap is based in it.·Maunus·ƛ· 15:47, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

We can discuss this shortly, but I'd prefer to first finish discussing the changes that Maunus is proposing to the rest of the article. Or we can discuss this first and then discuss the rest of his changes, but it tends to get confusing when we've got two large and currently active discussions on the talk page about separate parts of the article. --Captain Occam (talk) 16:56, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

I hope we can separate two things:

the observation that various "races" (or members of various ethnic groups, or citizens of various countries) get statistically significant different scores on intelligence tests
theories about why they wind up with different scores

I'm well aware that there are people who are dead set on believing (or denying!) that the differences are real (e.g., that people with different skin color are born with different intelligence potential like the alpha beta gamma system in Brave New World)

I'm not sure whether enough research has been done on racial, ethnic, or national differences in child-rearing practices, early childhood education or cultural expectations.

All I know for sure is that when I, as a private tutor, have been able to convince a child that I believe in him, I have always been able to teach him multiple years of grade school math in less than one calendar year. (No, I'm not going to introduce my original research here. :-)

I'm hoping that we can write fairly and without bias about all the theories on the subject of how intelligence is manifested, with attention to the nature-nurture dispute, and also that we will describe studies which have actually compared these theories with reality. --Uncle Ed (talk) 17:00, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

I’ll probably be writing a new draft of this section sometime soon, so I figured I should respond to these comments first.

Aprock, a lot of your objections go against things that you yourself agreed on during mediation. Going with the most obvious one, in your first sentence, you say “it is not clear that there are any racial difference in intelligence.” One of the things you agreed on, along with the rest of us, is that the article should take the same general perspective that the APA report does. Well, the APA report states that there is a difference of around 1.1 standard deviation between the average IQ of blacks and of whites, that IQ affects several social and economic factors, and that its predictive validity in these area is the same for blacks and for whites. While the APA report doesn’t go into detail about specifically how the IQ gap between blacks and whites would be reflected in these social factors, as long as we’re basing this article on the APA report we can’t assume that there’s no IQ gap at all, or that IQ does not measure anything that’s socially or economically relevant.

As has been pointed out to you before, the APA is saying more than just that IQ correlates with these social outcomes. It is saying that IQ influences them (and that is the word they use), so if this is what the source material says, we shouldn’t be second-guessing it. I should also point out that national IQs are something of a sub-topic of the race and intelligence debate, particularly when it comes to countries in sub-Saharan Africa. The article already presents information about the doubts that have been raised over the reliability of scores from this region, so it already discusses IQ and nations in another context. In the interest of balance it needs to also present the other side of this dispute, which is that national IQs (even in this region) are still good predictors of several social and economic variables.

Maunus, I hope the comment from Uncle Ed is sufficient to address your own point. This section of the article isn’t presenting any perspective about whether the difference in average IQ between races is caused entirely by environmental factors, or whether genetics play a role also. But the APA report points out that differences in IQ have certain social and economic effects, and this is the case regardless of whether these differences exist for genetic or environmental reasons. When we extend the same principle from the IQs of individuals to the average IQs of races, it becomes statistically inevitable that differences in average IQs between races will have social and economic effects also, regardless of whether those differences in average IQ are genetic or environmental.

If there are any specific aspects of this section that you think need to be re-worded, in addition to the ones that you’ve pointed out already, then you’re welcome to do so. But in terms of overall content, I don’t think there’s anything in this section that disagrees significantly with the position taken by the APA. --Captain Occam (talk) 15:43, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Hey, Captain, I wonder if any of the difficulty choosing how to present this material in the article is due to unspoken assumptions or agendas. For example, socialists generally advocate policies that stop skill, ability, or merit from being a factor in what economic resources a person gets. But (in my experience) they don't always make this goal explicit.

The upshot for our article would be choosing how to describe advocacy about intelligence. If one group seems less intelligent (based purely on test scores) or even if that group demonstrates less intelligence / skill, there would naturally be a dispute over how this affects income. Free market advocates would want the legal right to set pay rates based on presumed or demonstrated levels of work effectiveness, for example teachers whose students make significantly more progress should get merit pay. Others (and I guess these would be chiefly socialists, although they might resist the label) would reject any merit pay scheme for teachers.

So then, if large groups of people in general seem to have lower intelligence and if these correlates with less desirable job performance, the question is whether employers ought to have the legal right to set pay rates accordingly. Opponents presumably would call this discrimination, on the grounds that any correlation between benefits and a factor such as race necessarily reflects some sort of bias.

Another response to disparities of course is simply to claim that the tests are biased.

I guess what I'm bringing up is the aspect of interest (in the sense that only judges who are "disinterested" in a case may issue a ruling on it). We may need to describe the interests of those who make various claims.

While I'm at at, I'm not sure that the issue of imputing genetic causes to social phenomena has been described clearly enough. Although I'm not an expert, it seems to me that when a scientist or researcher say a certain percent of some psychological or behavioral thing is "due to genetics" it is generally based on subtracting all the known causes from 100% and assuming that the balance has to be genetic. That is, it's often not based on discovering a specific genetic cause but rather using the process of elimination, i.e., assuming that the unknown causes must be genetic. If this is so, it should be made explicit. --Uncle Ed (talk) 17:19, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Ed, you need to understand the difference between genes and inheritance. Genes are bits of code that play a critical role in the production of polypeptides, essential for the making of enzymes that regulate bodily function (including growth). When a scientist says something is due to genetics, it is usually when it is very easy to identify the gene, usually, but not always, when a mutation causes a particular congenital birth defect, and it is easy to find the mutation. But scientists do not need to identify a genetic cause to measure the degree to which something is inherited. Scientists take identical twins (who are genetically identical) and then look for the variance in some behavior; obviously they need a large number of twins. From this they can infer the degree of heritability. Perhaps this is what you meant, but this is not quite the same thing as "process of elimination" and if the scientists do not know they precise genetic mechanism (which is often the case since most biological processes depend on many enzymes and many genes are therefore involved) they don't make the claim.

While I am at it, do you actually have any verifiable sources about this "agenda" stuff or is this your typical bullshit? Please, I beg you, go out and do research on a topic you want to learn more about, and then edit an article, and when you do please keep our policies in mind. Raising a red herring is not constructive, and if it is not a red herring why don't you do us a favor and provide the sources you are relying on? If you do not have any sources, you are just inviting us to violate NOR. That is not constructive is it? Slrubenstein | Talk 17:41, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Sorry if I've hardly done anything being raising a red herring. It was not my intent to divert attention from the task of constructing this article in accordance with our policies. If that was the effect, then I guess I am in the wrong.

A lot of science is contaminated with bias, especially when findings have a bearing on public policy, as in the social sciences. Sometimes politicians or other interested parties latch on to a single study (e.g., as the "latest" and therefore best) and dismiss all others. Even researchers themselves have been accused of personal faults in attempt to divert attention from what they've actually found (Bell Curve authors, Jensen, etc.)

I was of course aware of the difference between discovering an actual genetic cause (like, surprise! White people tend to have white babies, but if one parent is black the babies come out kind of brownish) - and the process of estimating heritability. I didn't mean to suggest that other contributors here were unaware of it, but was hoping that in each case where attribution of heritability was made that we would be sure to indicate the reasoning process by which that estimation was made. I was also hoping that we would take pains to make that distinction which you thought I myself was unaware of, between heritability calculations and actual assignment of genetic causes. I daresay a lot of difficulty describing the disputes over race and intelligence stem from science writers and other journalists blurring that distinction.

I don't always have sources at hand, but perhaps if you're willing to do a bit of WP:TEAMWORK you might help me re-discover I source I'm relying on but have forgotten. In the field of intelligence research, just as in the field of studying homosexual desire / behavior, claims have been made about some people being "born that way" (smart, gay, "born leader", "inherited all that musical talent from his father"). I do hope we can work together to describe all this in accordance with WP:NPOV and any other relevant policy. --Uncle Ed (talk) 18:25, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Ed, you misunderstand NPOV. NPOV does not mean that we have to provide a balance of editors point of view, it means we provide all significant views from reliable sources. So your own views on intelligence or genetics (like mine) are utterly irrelevant to this article. Whenever you find an actual reliable source for a significant view that is missing from this article, by all mans come back and make an actual contribution. Slrubenstein | Talk 20:45, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

@Occam. Please, for the umpteenth time, stick to content issues and refrain from the claims of false consensus.

I specifically noted that it's not clear what the section is supposed to be about. Is it about outcomes, or innate racial differences in intelligence, or something else. Please clarify this.
WRT intelligence influencing outcomes, there is no question about that. That can be entirely handled by referring the the appropriate wiki article.
WRT nations, nations are racially heterogeneous, and so are not any measure of racial intelligence. The issue of sub-saharan blacks can be addressed directly if need be. Again, there are other articles on wikipedia which you can refer to.
Your explanations still confuse correlation and causation, which I think may be the primary problem here.

As far as I can tell, this section is entirely unnecessary. Your explanations have not clarified in any way why the appropriate wiki articles can't be summarized and linked to. A.Prock (talk) 01:23, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

The correlation vs. causation thing has been explained to you multiple times already. If the source material describes there as being a causal link between intelligence and these social outcomes, then it isn’t our job to second-guess that. However, we can also include some sources which dispute the direction of the causal link, as my proposed revision does.

What this section is about is the real-world effects associated with the IQ gap. This includes social and economic factors which correlate with IQ, and are distributed unequally between races in the same way that IQ is; and it also includes a discussion about how various researchers and policy-makers think these differences should be dealt with. The latter part of the section, the “policy relevance” part, was added specifically because Maunus and Slrubenstein were requsting that it be included. I don’t have a strong opinion about whether it be part of this section or not, so if you object to it, your disagreement is with Maunus and Slrubenstein rather than with me.

There are two other things you should keep in mind about this. One is the level of support this section has received during the five months that it’s been discussed. Users who have expressed approval of including it are me, DJ, Varoon Arya, David.Kane, Mikemikev, and Bpesta22. Maunus and Slrubenstein had specific changes that they wanted made to this section before they could approve of it, but all of their suggestions have been followed now; at this point the only editors participating in this talk page who unequivocally disagree with including this section are you and Ramdrake. That isn’t a reason to ignore any suggested changes that you and Ramdrake think should be made to it, of course, but it means that I don’t think you can justifiably claim that there’s no reason to add this section at all.

And the other thing you should keep in mind is the changes that Uncle Ed would like to have made to this section, which are fairly different from some of the changes you’ve been wanting. I can’t give your opinion about this any more weight than his, and it may end up being the case that it won’t be possible to come up with a version of this section that satisfies both you and him. If that’s what ends up happening, the solution isn’t to leave the section out entirely, since Uncle Ed obviously isn’t arguing for that—doing that would only be giving you exactly what you’re asking for while giving him nothing. The appropriate solution in that case would just be to add this section to the article in state that’s at least tolerable to both you and him, and then let you and him work out your disputes over it without me having to act as an intermediary. --Captain Occam (talk) 02:01, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

If you could please address my points, we might be able to move forward. Talking around them isn't very productive. Your continued pushing of false consensus is immaterial as well. One more time:

Is this section about outcomes or about innate racial difference in IQ?
Why should information about racially heterogeneous groups be included?
I'm not at all worried about reliable secondary sources confusing causation and correlation. I'm worried about you doing so.

A.Prock (talk) 18:15, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

I agree entirely with AProck that there is no place in this article for a discussion of racially heterogeneous groups like nations. "Significance" is altogether vague - "significance" is actually a requirement for inclusion of a view in an article so presumably all of our articles are about significant things.

Now, I could see a section on policy implications if these could be documented without violating NOR. So my question: does anyone have a reliable source stating that a specific local, state, or in the case of the US Federal law or policy was changed or created based on any of this research? I happen not to know of any but if there are clear cases I think it would be wirth discussing their possible includion in this article. Slrubenstein | Talk 19:05, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Aprock, I think I’ve addressed your points about this already, but I’ll address them again:

The section is about outcomes. And the existence of these outcomes has nothing to do with whether the IQ gap between races is innate or acquired, because the correlation between IQ and these social factors is the same whether an IQ difference exists for genetic or environmental reasons.
The reason the “between nations” section is included is because the source literature discussing it specifically makes the connection between national IQs and racial IQs. For that reason, I don’t think including this is synth. However, if several users think this section still isn’t relevant enough to be included, then it doesn’t have to be. If that’s the case, the one thing I would ask is that some of the information about the correlation between national IQs and these social factors to be added to the section discussing IQ differences outside the United States, since that section currently presents nothing but criticism of the idea that these scores are valid, and in the interest of balance we should provide the counter-argument to this idea also.
As long as this section is properly sourced, whether I’m personally making a mistake in this area won’t affect the actual content of the section. Let’s keep focused on the content, not the contributor.

Slrubenstein: there are several sources which discuss effort to diminish the gap between races in academic achievement by improving school conditions. If there are other examples of public policies that have been influenced by race and intelligence, I’m not aware of them, but if you have any suggestions about this you’re welcome to make them.

At this point, it seems like there’s enough disagreement with the “between nations” section that it would probably be best to leave that section out. However, if I do this I think information about the correlation between national IQs and these social factors ought to be included in the “IQ differences outside of the USA” section. Would that be an acceptable compromise? --Captain Occam (talk) 01:06, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

If this is about outcomes, the appropriate way to handle this is to refer to the appropriate articles about IQ. Using sources about race and intelligence which cite Lynn's IQ of nations is fine, but including information about correlation between national IQs and social factors doesn't make sense for an article about race and intelligence. Suggesting this is appropriate for this article is a perfect example of using correlation to advance causality. A.Prock (talk) 04:16, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Aprock, there’s something important here that you seem to be missing. The material that you’re saying it’s inappropriate to include is material that’s discussed heavily by the source material—the source material about race and intelligence. And I’m including Lynn’s writings here. Lynn claims that racial IQs in various countries do not just correlate with these social factor; he claims that racial IQs are causing them, while other authors claim that the causal link points in the opposite direction, or that it’s some of both.

It’s our job as Wikipedia editors to accurately represent the debates that exist in the source literature about race and intelligence, and these topics are part of this debate. They also don’t appear in the source literature about any other topic. While the IQ article discusses social factors which correlate with IQ, it does not discuss how these factors are distributed unequally between races in the same way that IQ is. Therefore this topic needs to be included, and it can’t go in any article other than this one. --Captain Occam (talk) 07:20, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

It's our job ... yes, but without giving UNDUE weight to particular views. Not all of Lynn's views have equal weight. I think that his views on the IQs of diferent nations are for the most part considered fringe, and there is not much debate about them because people consider them so fringe (when there is debate about how absurd the figures are, that is on a whole other level than debates about how to interpret the data. This article should focus on debates about how to interpret the data. We should cover debates over the quality of the data only when a significant number of scholars think that the data has quality. I am not convinced that is the case with this data). Slrubenstein | Talk 10:42, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

A lot of Richard Lynn's work is suspect. Some of the raw data might be correct, but academics have consistently criticized his selective use of data, his misuse of statistics and his flawed methodology. This has always been the case, starting with his work on intelligence and gender (according to Mackintosh he based his finding on one test, known to be biased against women), then dysgenics and finally global aspects of race and intelligence. I don't see how we can pick and choose what's correct and what's not. In fact, I can't see, if we're writing an encyclopedia, why we're even trying. If some expert has not made this precise in the literature, all we can do is repeat what critics have said about Lynn's work and that's about it. If they say it's flawed, wikipedia can't write about it as if it were definitive or possibly correct after suitable qualification. That is WP:OR. Mathsci (talk) 12:23, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

I think it’s important to separate those of Lynn’s views that are fringe from those of his views that are held by a lot of other scholars. That national IQs correlate with other societal factors such as income is not such an uncommon view, as can be seen from some of the other sources that the section I’m proposing uses while discussing this. Generally, other researchers who write about this agree with Lynn that this correlation exists, but disagree with him about national IQs being primarily the result of genetic factors in their populations, as well as directly causing all of these social factors; they tend to think that the relationship between these factors and IQ is more complex.

If you’re concerned about balance here, though, what do you think of the compromise I suggested, of leaving out the “between nations” part of the section I’m proposing and instead putting this information in the “IQ differences outside of the USA” section? At the moment, this section provides nothing but criticism of IQ scores outside the USA, without mentioning the view (which is not such an uncommon view) that national IQs still correlate with these social factors. If you think the content I’m proposing is biased in favor of the idea that Lynn’s views are accurate, the “IQ differences outside of the USA” section is currently biased in the opposite direction, so perhaps the best solution is to put all of this information in a single section. What do you think of that idea? --Captain Occam (talk) 11:53, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

If you'd like to improve the material in the IQ article about outcomes, that's fine. Outcomes as a function of IQ has nothing to do with race though, so including that information here is inappropriate. And by all means, cite the appropriate publications when developing any new content about IQ. A.Prock (talk) 14:45, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Aprock, are you deliberately ignoring what I’m saying here?

“Outcomes as a function of IQ has nothing to do with race though, so including that information here is inappropriate.”

The source literature is specifically discussing outcomes as a function of the racial IQ gap. The previous time we discussed this section, I spent quite a while demonstrating this to you, and telling you specifically which papers talk about it. And that’s why this information is relevant here.

Really, I’m making every effort to listen to your complaints and make this section into something you would find acceptable. But if you keep repeating yourself while completely ignoring what I’ve said in response, that’s not going to be possible for me. There is enough support for this section that it can probably be added to the article even without your approval, so the only effect it’s likely to have if you keep stonewalling like this is to prevent me from being able to make this section as satisfactory as possible to you.

Does anyone else (other than Mathsci) want to try explaining this to Aprock? David.Kane or Slrubenstein, maybe? --Captain Occam (talk) 22:18, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm not ignoring what you're saying. You're not understanding what I'm saying. If the source is attributing the cause of the outcome to IQ, then that information isn't relevant here. There are plenty of other articles which discuss the significance of IQ, and summarizing/linking to them is the best way to handle this. I've read the sources you pointed me to, and none of them make the claim that you are making here. And please, for the umpteenth time, stop pushing false consensus. A.Prock (talk) 23:14, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

If you’ve read all of the sources that I asked you to read, then you’ll be aware that the source literature used by this section is specifically discussing outcomes of the racial IQ gap. I’ve certainly demonstrated this as well as it’s possible to demonstrate it during our prior discussion about it. You asked me what sources discuss outcomes as a function of difference in average IQ between races, and I listed around nine of them; then you asked me what single source described this in greatest depth, and I answered Jensen and Nyborg’s paper. I then asked whether after reading the paper itself (not the abstract) you could find any problems with it as a source for this, and you never responded.

Can you please explain, specifically, how information about outcomes of the racial IQ gap is not relevant to an article about race and intelligence? --Captain Occam (talk) 23:36, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

All the sources I read indicated, some through statistical study, that the outcomes could be seen as independent of race. That is, there was no racism, or more racism against less intelligent races. It was possible that all variation in outcomes was due entirely to intelligence, and not to race. If you have specific papers you'd like to quote which show that the outcomes were not due to intelligence alone, but rather the interplay of race and intelligence, then by all means quote them here. A.Prock (talk) 23:44, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

“All the sources I read indicated, some through statistical study, that the outcomes could be seen as independent of race. That is, there was no racism, or more racism against less intelligent races. It was possible that all variation in outcomes was due entirely to intelligence, and not to race.”

If what you mean is that the papers were saying that race itself wasn’t influencing the outcomes, that’s correct. However, the papers were still discussing the outcomes specifically in the context of race. They were describing how because IQ influences these outcomes, and IQ is also distributed unequally between races, this results in these outcomes being distributed unequally between races also.

You don’t seem to disagree with me about the these papers specifically describing the outcome not only of IQ, but also of the unequal distribution of IQ among races. But for some reason, you think that in an article about the distribution of IQ among races, information about the outcome of that distribution is not relevant. Can you explain in more detail why you think this information is not relevant to an article about race and IQ, if it’s not only about the outcomes of IQ, but the outcomes of the racial IQ gap? --Captain Occam (talk) 00:11, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

It's not my place to explain why it's not relevant. It's up to you to explain why it is. You yourself say the articles say that race wasn't influencing outcomes. It seems you are conflating two things: A) Unequal IQ distribution between races, and B) Unequal outcome distribution due to IQ. It is certainly reasonable to include information about A. Just because a paper also discusses B does not mean that it is directly relevant to the article. That said, that information is well covered in other wiki articles, and summarizing/linking to said articles only make sense. I honestly don't understand why you find that so problematic. A.Prock (talk) 00:20, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

First of all, you need to remember that the papers are not only discussing unequal outcomes due to IQ. They are discussing unequal outcomes due to the racial IQ gap, and that’s how they describe them. I think you’re aware of this, but you keep referring to these papers as only discussing “unequal outcomes due to IQ”. There are other Wikipedia articles which discuss unequal outcomes due to IQ, but there are not other articles which discuss unequal outcomes due to the racial IQ gap, which is what these papers are discussing.

As for why this is relevant, it’s completely standard for an article about a certain phenomenon to cover effects of the phenomenon that are described in the source literature. A few examples of this are that the article about the Aral Sea describes not only how the Aral Sea has shrunk over time, but also how this shrinkage has affected the people living in that area; and (more relevant to the topic of psychology) the article about Major depressive disorder includes information about the sociocultural effects of depression. The exact same principle applies here also. When we’re describing something in a Wikipedia article, we need to do more than just describe the thing itself; we also need to describe how that thing is relevant to people’s lives and to society.

Can you agree with that? If not, you need to explain how outcomes of the racial IQ gap are any less relevant to be discussed here than outcomes of the Aral Sea’s shrinkage are to be discussed in the Aral Sea article, or than outcomes of depression are to be discussed in the Major depressive disorder article. --Captain Occam (talk) 01:05, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

It's well established that different races test differently on IQ tests. All of the sources I've read indicate that much if not of the outcome difference can be attributed to intelligence alone. Even you agree with that. I haven't said that the outcome difference shouldn't be discussed. In fact, I've said it should be discussed, primarily by summarizing/linking to the relevant wikipedia articles. You still haven't explained why you find that so problematic. If you have specific quotes from specific secondary sources that you'd like to discuss, I'd be happy to discuss them. Without sourcing from reliable secondary sources, there's not much point in continuing this discussion. Remember, wikipedia rests on a firm foundation of reliable secondary sources. So far, you've presented no such source. A.Prock (talk) 01:39, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps I’m not properly understanding what it is that you’re suggesting here. The section that I’m proposing already links to Intelligence and public policy, and I can also link it to Intelligence_quotient#Positive_correlations_with_IQ. The Intelligence and Public Policy article discusses outcomes with regard to race also, and I’m fine with adding summarizing that content in this section also.

Is that all you’re suggesting? You gave me the impression that you were expecting me to make more changes to this section than just this, but if this is all you’re requesting, I don’t have a problem with following your suggestion. --Captain Occam (talk) 02:28, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

I've been very clear. The best way to handle this content is to summarize and link to the appropriate wiki articles. A.Prock (talk) 02:55, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Yes, and I’ve explained in what way I intend to modify this section in order to do that. Are we agreed about this? I’d like to make sure you approve of the way I’m intending to modify this section based on your suggestion. --Captain Occam (talk) 03:49, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

I will certainly review the section as I did previously. A.Prock (talk) 14:28, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

=> A consistent problem with this article is that, even when secondary sources are available, editors are trying to edit as if somehow they are capable of interpreting primary soures themselves and of evaluating the scientists that write them. The secondary sources that discuss the primary sources are in a wide range of disciplines: psychology, sociology, political science, statistics, history, anthropology, education, biology, genetics, etc. No single wikipedian has mastery of all those subjects: that is exactly why we use secondary sources and do not allow WP:SYNTH essays in articles. I think Aprock has the right idea about summarising and referring to other WP articles. Mathsci (talk) 07:56, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

The raw data is primary. All of the sources Occam used are secondary. I think this section is ready to be implemented. mikemikev (talk) 09:07, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

I think we all agree on the importance of secondary sources. I do not think this is the contentious issue here. I still believe that the only value of this section is if research specifically on race and intelligence has influenced social policy somewhere, or has had a notable impact on discussions about social policy. No, does anyone have reliable secondary sources on that? So far, I have not seen them. But I'd be thrilled if someone could povide some. Slrubenstein | Talk 10:26, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

At Aprock’s suggestion, when I add this section to the article I’m intending to summarize and link to the Intelligence and public policy article, which has several portions which specifically discuss how race and IQ have affected public policy. If you look at the sources for that article, you can see that there are several of them which discuss how one of the goals of the No Child Left Behind Act has been to eliminate the racial achievement gap, and also how racial disparities in IQ test results have resulted in laws against using IQ tests as part of the process for selecting potential employees. (Although other, more specific types of cognitive tests are allowed, as long as it can be demonstrated that they’re relevant to job performance.) Would you approve of this section including information about these topics? --Captain Occam (talk) 11:11, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

It looks to me like we’re finally mostly agreed about what this section should contain. When I add it to the article, I’ll incorporate all of the suggestions that I’ve received about it, including the recent ones from Victor Chmara, Aprock and Slrubenstein. (And this includes putting the information about correlates with IQ between nations in the “IQ differences outside the USA” section rather than this one.)

We’ve been discussing this proposed section for around a month, and it’s more like two months if you include the amount of time we spent discussing it during mediation. I know I could post another draft of it, and receive some more critiques about it; and we could continue this same process for another two months, or longer, until we’re arguing over things like its word choice and sentence structure. But there needs to eventually come a point when we decide that there’s enough agreement over this section that it can be added. It doesn’t have to be perfect before we can add it—the rest of the article isn’t perfect either—and it can continue to be tweaked after it’s been added, just like every other part of the article.

I think we’re at that point now with this section. If anyone has any objections to my conclusion about this, please let me know. --Captain Occam (talk) 01:05, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

If it looks anything like the version you are developing on your sub page, there are still a lot of problems with it. A.Prock (talk) 02:05, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

No, that version is out-of-date now, since it doesn’t incorporate any of the recent suggestions I’ve received from you and Slrubenstein. What I’m intending to add to the article will be quite a bit different from this. --Captain Occam (talk) 02:26, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Consensus

Latest comment: 14 years ago37 comments5 people in discussion

I think maybe it would be worthwhile to try to agree about what is the current scientific consensus about a few points in order to advance. I would like to make a survey about whether this representation of the scientific consensus is more or less adequate. When I write "consensus" that is supposed to reflect an issue about which there is no real debate and to which a majority of scientists on both sides of the hereditarian fence can agree to. When I write "no consensus" that means that there are vocal proponents of both views - without taking into consideration which side is a majority or which side is more likely to be right.·Maunus·ƛ· 08:10, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Do you want us to add our comments point-by-point to the below? David.Kane (talk) 12:20, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

probably its easier if we add all comments below all the points.·Maunus·ƛ· 13:07, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

You mean each comment directly below the point we are responding to, right? David.Kane (talk) 15:51, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

No I meant at the bottom of all the points where we are currently just bickering. But by all means comment where you find it most practical.·Maunus·ƛ· 15:53, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

I find it easier to go point-by-point. My memory may be off about what was agreed to in mediation, so please consult those records directly. David.Kane (talk) 16:07, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Intelligence

There is no community wide consensus about what intelligence is or how to measure it. A majority of intelligence researchers believe some version of the Spearman hypothesis to be correct and the g-factor to be the best measure of intelligence. Some intelligence researchers do not believe the spearman hypothesis, others do not believe that current IQ tests test all important aspects of cognitive ability. Among intelligence researchers belief in the spearman hypothesis is prevalent, but not necessarily because that is the predominant view within psychology as a whole, but perhaps because believers in the spearman hypothesis are easilier drawn into intelligence research and non-believers are easilier drawn away from the field.

Disagree. See Intelligence: A Very Short Introduction by Ian Dreary for a good introduction. A lot depends on what you mean by "community wide." Which community precisely? See the APA report for a fair summary of opinion among the community of psychologists. David.Kane (talk) 16:07, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Well, this is a problem at the root of the editing disputes here. The way I read the APa report it quite clearly states that there is no consensus, Bpesta's article states there is no consensus, Nisbett states there is no consensus, Sternberg, Grigorenko and Kidd says there is no consensus. The community is of course the community of intelligence researchers (psychometricians mostly but not only).I don't know how you can claim that there is a consensus while as much as one voice disagrees - here we have several. ·Maunus·ƛ· 16:16, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

I think about this the same way I think about "race." Is there consensus about the right way to think about race? No! All sorts of people disagree for all sorts of reasons. Is there consensus about how to think about "intelligence?" No! All sorts of people disagree for all sorts of reasons. So, it is important to have a debate assumptions section which makes that clear. But, once we enter the realm of the scientists who actively research race and intelligence --- that is, once we are reading secondary sources like Loehlin, Mackintosh, Flynn and so on --- it is clear that "race" means "self-identified racial group, which varies by country/culture" and "intelligence" means "IQ test." David.Kane (talk) 14:43, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

IQ as measured by modern tests only tests the cognitive abilities associated with the g-factor, specifically the kind of analytical abilities used in a school setting.

Disagree. David.Kane (talk) 16:07, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Elaborate?·Maunus·ƛ· 16:16, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Read the literature. There is a great deal of dispute about g. David.Kane (talk) 14:44, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

There is consensus that both genetic and environmental factors contribute to determining measurable IQ in an individual.

Agree. David.Kane (talk) 16:07, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

There is a community wide consensus that IQ is heritable in the sense that a child of high IQ parents is more likely to have a high IQ, and a child of low IQ parent is likely to have a low IQ.

Agree. David.Kane (talk) 16:07, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

There is no consensus as to whether this heritability is caused by mostly genetic or mostly environmental causes - as both may have similar effects. There are many arguments advanced in favour of either a predominantly genetic or a predominantly environmental explanation. The APA report states that neither hypothesis is well supported by empirical studies, but that the genetic hypothesis has slightly less support. Not everyone agrees with the APA reports conclusion - some believe the environmental hypothesis has strong support, others that the genetic hypothesis has strong support.

Agree. David.Kane (talk) 16:07, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

No genes contributing to measured IQ have been identified to date.

Agree. David.Kane (talk) 16:07, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Race

There is no community wide consensus about the nature of race as a classifier of human beings. Some believe it to reflect bio-geographic ancestry to some degree, others believe it to be purely a social construct.

Not sure. Again, what "community" are we talking about? I think that the article should handle this in the way that every researcher (including Flynn, Nisbett, et cetera) handle it. "Race" is defined as self-identified racial group. David.Kane (talk) 16:07, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Race and Intelligence

There is a community wide consensus that current IQ tests have shown a pattern in which test subjects self identified as black score lower than subjects selfidentified as white.

Agree. David.Kane (talk) 16:07, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

There is a community wide consensus that this gap is on average of an entire standard deviation.

Agree partially. Some (like Flynn) argue that it is currently less than a standard deviation. I would agree with "approximately one standard deviation." David.Kane (talk) 16:07, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Good point - the gap "was at the beginning of testing approximately 1 SD"·Maunus·ƛ· 16:20, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

There is no community wide consensus about whether the reasons for the gap are environmental or genetic.

Agree. David.Kane (talk) 16:07, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Those who do not believe that race is a scientifically valid concept reject that the gap is based in genetic differences, but that environmental factors account for the entire difference.

Disagree. Those that object to race think that the whole debate makes sense. If race does not exist, then there is no "difference" to account for. David.Kane (talk) 16:07, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Those who do not believe that IQ in an individual is largely genetically determined reject that the gap is based in genetic differences, but that environmental factors account for the entire difference.

Huh? I can't think of anyone involved in this debate who denies that individual IQ is largely (>40%) genetic. David.Kane (talk) 16:07, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

I think I can find a quote from Sternberg that puts that into doubt. Anyway by "largely" I meant mostly. 40% isn't mostly. I meant the views that say more than 50%. ·Maunus·ƛ· 16:18, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

I would be interested in seeing a quote from Sternberg that denied that intelligence as measured by IQ test scores was not at least 50% heritable in adults. David.Kane (talk) 14:46, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Those who believe that IQ is largely genetically determined AND that race has a biological genetic basis believe that the IQ gap is likely to be caused mostly by genetic differences.

Disagree strongly! Flynn and Nisbett are counter-examples. Both believe that IQ is (partially) genetic and that race is meaningful. Both are environmentalists when it comes to explaining the gap. David.Kane (talk) 16:07, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Ok, I take the point. There are even researchers who find both race and G-based intelligence to be valid who disagree with the hereditarian hypothesis.

Maunus, as much as I think what you’re suggesting is a good idea in principle, we already spent more than a month during the mediation case doing the exact same thing that you’re suggesting we do here. The points that we resolved during mediation can be found at the top of the mediation discussion page, and Ludwigs2 has also added most of them to the “FAQ” section at the top of this talk page. I know that the fact that this is the “status quo” is not in itself a argument for keeping what we’ve resolved there, but it’s also important that we be able to keep making progress with this article. It took us more than a month to resolve the answers to these questions during mediation, and only two months have gone by since then. It’s going to be difficult to get anywhere with this article if one out of every three months has to be spent re-discussing points that have already been resolved. --Captain Occam (talk) 23:36, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

It doesn't seem very useful to introduce procedural gambits to halt constructive discussion. Nothing in mediation is binding. The only rules that govern the editing of this article are wikipedia core editing policies. As new secondary sources appear - eg the book of Fish mentioned below - that can change the whole slant of the article, which I agree is heavily biased at the moment. That is a serious problem and one that various editors are trying to solve at the moment. Mathsci (talk) 23:57, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Are you going to address my point about progress? Fish’s book is not relevant to what we’re discussing here—while it may introduce some new specific ideas that are worth covering in the article, a single book is not going to significantly alter the overall consensus of researchers in this area, which has been established by hundreds of researchers over the past 40 years. There is no reason for the resolution we reached about this two months ago—in which you had the opportunity to be involved, but chose not to—to not still be applicable. Having to devote another month to this (which is probably how long it will take, judging by past experience) will only take up time that could be used for more productive editing. --Captain Occam (talk) 00:12, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

This is progress. We have to get the articloe to reflect the scientific consensus or lack thereof. It currently doesn't. How can we progress without agreeing on what the scientific consensus is first? Anyway Progress hasn't been the first thing I have experienced from your side in this discussion - you have seemed quite content with reverting discussing and letting the issue go to an impasse so your version stands. You have defended the status quo at every turn (a status quo that is demonstrably unbalanced in favour of the hereditarian hypothesis). If you wan't progress then start working towards improving the article instead of working towards keeping it as is. Alternatively if you want to use your time for more productive editng wikipedia has a lot of backlogs about a multitude of interesting non race related topics. You go could edit some of them for awhile and then come back after we make some progress here. ·Maunus·ƛ· 05:10, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Fish's book is one of the best secondary sources I've found. I don't understand any of these claims about consensus during mediation or why you keep repeating them. The article is definitely biased and there are clear ways to correct that. Primary sources should not be used for editing this article if it can be avoided - that's one of the main problems here. Wikipedians have no way of evaluating them and can manipulate them as they wish. Fish is a fine book and will be very useful for future editing (see below). We must move on, we must not become set in our ways. Mathsci (talk) 00:31, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Mathsci, this is incredibly simple.

1: Two months ago, we spent a month during mediation determining what the consensus is among researchers in this area.

2: Maunus would like to start a new discussion to determine what the consensus is among researchers in this area.

3: I’m saying that wouldn’t be a good use of our time, because what he’s suggesting is something we’ve already done recently.

That’s it. None of your claims about bias in the article, or Fish’s book, have anything to do with this. Incidentally, if you’re going to get involved in the discussion here again, you should remove the description of yourself as a “non-editor” from your comment below; otherwise I can remove it for you. --Captain Occam (talk) 00:38, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

If this was done recently then I don't understand why there doesn't seem to be consensus for actually having the article reflect the scientific consensus. We need to agree about this. When I have tried to make the article reflect the fact that there is no consensus about this issues, that the hereditarian viewpoint isn't the default viewpoint and that not even the spearman hypothesis is universally accepted I have been met with this same kind of lame metadiscussion. "We shouldn't argue this." "we should argue this first" "thats not the right way to argue". When I have referred to the APA report which has been blatantly misrepresented to lend much more support to the hereditarian viewpoint than it does I have also been met with lame procedural objections, filibustering and calls to defend the staus quo (an article text that is demonstrably misrepresenting its sources).

If this was already agreed upon then it should be easy to agree upon again. If it wasn't then the mediation (which wasn't that succesful anyway) agreed upon the wrong things and we have to agree on something else. Please adress my proposal if you do have problems with any of these expressions of consensus. If you do not then I will take that as a sign of consent and I will proceed to adjust the article for neutrality in accordance with my impression of the scientific consensus as outlined above. ·Maunus·ƛ· 04:22, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Maunus, I have two suggestions for you about this:

1: Read the points that we resolved during mediation. I don’t think you’ll disagree with them, although you might think they don’t cover enough different topics. (They don’t go into as much depth as what you’re proposing here.) It may be that the article doesn’t accurately reflect what was resolved during mediation; if that’s the case, then that problem is worth addressing, but re-resolving what was resolved during mediation is not going to be an effective way to deal with this problem. The way to deal with it is by proposing specific changes to bring the article more into line with consensus, both the consensus among researchers in this field and the consensus reached during mediation, as you’ve done for the changes you’ve proposed already. Most of the changes you’ve proposed in this manner have gone on to eventually be implemented, so I don’t think you can justifiably claim that I or anyone else is unilaterally blocking the article from being changed.

2: Be patient. I’m not the only editor here who might take issue with large-scale changes to the article, so whether or not I agree with any change you propose is not the only thing that should determine whether or not you should make it. At the very least, consensus for this article ought to include Bpesta22 and David.Kane also, and there are other users who are less active here whose feedback it would be good to have also. --Captain Occam (talk) 05:26, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Whatever was decided during mediation - and there was no detailed discussion of content - we still have a biased article. Wikipedians are free to allocate their time editing wikipedia as they wish. I'm reading Fish a little bit. It's a long book and seems to be a great source. Many of the things Maunus has been worrying about are covered there very well. I wasn't aware that anyone on this page was presumed to be an expert on the subject. They'd have to be an anthropologist, geneticist, psychologist, historian, statistician, educationalist, sociologist, political scientist ... such creatures just don't exist, even on wikipedia. Mathsci (talk) 00:55, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

I am concerned that Captain Occam is on the verge of violating WP:OWN. Captain, a word of advice: stop referring to the mediation. Mediation is not about creating a perfect article, it is about resolving a set of disputes among editors. The mediation closed, meaning that the disputes among editors that led to it had been resolved. It is over, it is in the past. Anyone who participated in the mediation - anyone who signd on as a participant in the dipute - might do well to keep the mediation in mind, but that is about as far as it reaches. It is over.

Since this is no longer a mediation, there is no point in naming names - your very attempt to divide contributors here into two sides is itself divisive. Wikipedia is the encyclopedia anyone can edit. And all editors are equal. All. Why single out Bpest and David Kane, and not me, or Mathsci, or Jimbo for that matter? Anyone can edit, anyone can ofject to an edit, anyone can change an edit, anyone can ask that an edit be discussed on the talk page, it just does not matter what the handle of the editor is.

There are only two ways I can read your dividing editors into two camps. One, you are insisting that you, David and Bpeta own the article. This is wrong. Stop it. Second, you are accusing everyone else of forming some cabal or conspiracy. Do you wish to continue with this line of personal attacks?

Each editor is an independent individual. Moreover, judge any edit by its virtues (does it add relevant content? Does it comply with NPOV, V, and NOR?) If so, it doesn't matter who adds it, it is good. If not, it does not matter who adds it, it is bad. Do David Kane or Bpesta have objections to an edit? They are entirely free to voice their objections here. If they are valid, whoever made the editor must deal with it or risk a revert.

There is only one set of policies and guidelines for editing ikipedia articles, Captain occam, and you have no right at all, no right, to try to impose your own new rules for editing this article. If something was wrong in Amunus's edit, by all means tell us. But this campaign of yours to stop Maunus from editing the article because ... he is Maunus .... is itself offensive. Focus on the content of the edit, not the editor. Slrubenstein | Talk 14:53, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

SLR, please assume good faith. The reason why I specifically mentioned David.Kane and Bpesta22 rather than you is because judging by their comments and contributions here, I think they’re more likely than anyone else to have suggestions or objections about the changes that Maunus is hoping to make. Since the definition of consensus is for editors who previously disagreed with one another to reach an agreement, discussing his proposed changes with these users is especially important, even though their opinions don’t carry any more weight than yours does. If several days go by and David.Kane and Bpesta22 have nothing to say about one of Maunus’s suggestions, then I’m also fine with him assuming these editors don’t have a problem with his proposed changes; my comment about this was only in response to his claim that if I didn’t reply he would consider that sufficient to demonstrate that his proposals had consensus.

Nowhere have I said that I don’t want Maunus to edit the article. All I’m asking is for him to do is the same thing you’ve requested of me several times: to propose his edits one or a few at a time, and to be patient and wait for feedback from other editors about them, rather than rushing forward with large changes before there’s been sufficient time for other editors to comment on them. --Captain Occam (talk) 17:34, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Talk:Race and intelligence/Archive 80

Contents

Some problems with article

Doll study

More problems

David Kane's revert

about pelvic size

Dubious tag on the brain size hierarchy section

Preliminary Review of Significance and Policy Relevence (revised) Section

Consensus

Intelligence

Race

Race and Intelligence