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Initiation of Mediation

Welcome to the mediation for Race and Intelligence. I have reviewed the case and the preliminary discussion to the point where I feel comfortable with this case proceeding; further, all 3 "main" parties have indicated acceptance along with ALL of the others who are currently online. After many years of disputes, it is finally time this is put to rest. Using the issues presented and the policies of Misplaced Pages as my guide, I hope to guide all of you to a resolution that is fair and reasonable. I feel like the process the Mediation Committee uses for these matters is a good standard to follow. Below is a series of Ground Rules that I would like all parties to sign on to in the same edit that they add their opening statement. Feel free to contact me on my talk page if you have any questions.

Proposed Groundrules:

1. Stick to content, not the contributor - This should be uncontroversial, since it is policy. Personal attacks will be removed by the mediator, substituting the following template: (Personal attack removed)
2. Listen to fellow editors, assuming good faith.
3. Seek consensus rather than continually repeating the same point.
4. Always work to find common ground rather than ways to support your, and only your point.
5. Do not make edits to the page that would contravene these discussions. Essentially, any issue in dispute, once resolved, may then be changed on the article page. Trying to argue on the page during this discussion would contravene these proceedings.

Acceptance of Groundrules

Please signify your agreement to the above groundrules by typing * '''Agree''' ~~~~ below.

• Agree Ramdrake (talk) 20:44, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
• Agree David.Kane (talk) 20:50, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
• Agree Captain Occam (talk) 20:52, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
• Agree Fences&Windows 20:57, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
• Agree Aryaman (talk) 20:59, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
• Agree DJ (talk) 21:19, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
• Agree T34CH (talk) 21:24, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
• Agree Mathsci (talk) 22:42, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
• Agree Wapondaponda (talk) 00:51, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
• Agree Slrubenstein | Talk 18:51, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
• AgreeTechnoFaye Kane 05:16, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
• Agree Ludwigs2 06:26, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Opening Statements

Rules and Content of Statements

1. Your statement will only be accepted if you soon thereafter add your acceptance of the groundrules posted above.

2. Your statement should address 1) the construction of the dispute in your opinion, 2) the nature of the dispute as it has progressed, 3) the outcome you originally seek coming into this mediation , 4) Misplaced Pages Policies that come into play in your opinion, 5) proposed ways to resolve the issue or points of mutual agreement that could begin an objective process to a resolution

3. Follow groundrules in not attacking other participants and acting in Good Faith

4. Seperate your statement by a ===

Cheers! Reubzz (talk) 20:41, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Slrubenstein's Statement

The fact that there has been an ongoing dispute for over three years, with a changing cast of characters, proves one thing: this is not a "personal behavior" problem involving a breakdown of communication or trolling. I point this out because I know this is how most disputes at WP are viewed by the community, and most of our conflict resolution mechanisms are meant to resolve these kinds of disputes. I obviously have no clue about how to resolve this dispute, I tried at least twice (in 2006 and in 2008) to mediate conflicts between especially active editors and achieved nothing. All I know is, the root of this problem is not really a conflict between specific individual editors, that is just the form it takes. At stake here is not resolving a specific dispute among names parties; at stake is creating a relatively stable article that is organized in a way to sustain fruitful edits and not - as has always happened in the past - fall back into dissention. This is in my view the desired outcome: a stable article future editors can contribute to without getting mired in the same debates that have overwhelmed it almost since its inception

I think there are two key issues here. The first is the charge of racist science. No one is questioning that one component accounting for human intelligence is genetic - genes account of an amount of variance among members of the same group (which could conceivably be humanity as a whole). There is some debate over what the percentage is, but this debate is not controvercial because race is not an issue. The problem is when someone says that half of the diference in IQ between Blacks and Whites is genetic is tantamount to saying, Blacks are inherently inferior. There is a documented history of beliefs like this being used in social policy and in politics to discriminate against Blacks, for example, denying them the right to vote at certain times in certain places. The reason that many scientists now view this as "racist science" is because it is now clear that the methods used to establish the claim that Blacks are inherently inferior were deeply flawed if not fraudulent. This is a simple matter of history and the article on race and intelligence needs to include it - so far I do not think I have said anything controversial.

The controvery begins when we discuss whether Jensen Rushton, and Murray and Hernstein be included in the section on racist science. I repeat that this charge rests on two thigs, first on the fact that the claim that Blacks are inherently inferior to Whites is racist, and second, that the claim is based on bad science. There is no doubt that many scholars have accused them of racist science, but other scientists have defended them. The charge of "bad science" rests heavily on the fact that Rushton and others have at times misused the concept (which comes from a different academic discipline) of "heritability." I think this is a controversy the article needs to cover in a dispassionate way: some accuse them of racist science, some have defended them. I think editors have found it difficult to come to a consensus way to cover this debate in the article.

The second is the question of majority, minority, or fringe view and here I think people editing the page need real guidance as to Misplaced Pages's criteria for "fringe." The problem is that these words (majority versus fringe) are essentially relative. We are obviously not talking about "popular views" - most Americans or Canadians may believe Blacks are inherently inferior, or may believe Blacks and Whites are inherently equal, and these facts might be relevant to a section on "popular beliefs." When we talk about fringe science versus majority or mainstream science, obviously we mean among a group of scientists. And one place where we need help is in determining which group. We could say, "among the group of scientists research race, heredity and IQ." The problem is, this really is the group that is accused of being fringe. We do not want to end up with a tautology "All researchers who agree with Rushton agree with Rushton" - that does not help us sort out this mainstream versus ringe problem. Of course all researchers who believe Blacks are inherently inferior to Whites, at least to some degree, are going to agreee with one another. This is what is at issue with the Wall Street Journal advertisement. This was a statement of 50+ scientists posted as a paid editorial in The Wall Street Journal attesting that Blacks are - to some degree - intellectually inferior to Whites. One major dispute is: do the signatories of this ad prove that this view is "majority" or "mainstream?" Or, is this the very question: are the signatories to this ad fringe or mainstream? Some editors seem to think that the signatories to the ad represent all or most experts on the question, therefore the ad necessarily represents the mainstream view. Other editors believe this group is fringe (which is one reason why they had to express their views through a paid ad, or by citing one another, or by publishing in journals supported by the Pioneer fund or edited by one another).

Those who consider the ad to be a fringe view, and the signatories to be espousers of a fringe view, have to demonstrate that (1) there are other scientists who have expertise on the topic and (2) they hold other views. Many of the signatories ar psychologists, and some people have forwarded the APA statement. This is an official statement of the American Psychological Association, but those who consider the WSJ ad to be mainstream claim that this statemnt represents the views only of those who wrote it (which is fewer than 50) which makes the statement fringe. We are having a similar debate over the AAA (American Anthropological Association; anthropology is the principal discipline that studies "race") and AAPA (American Association of Physical Anthropologists; this is a field of anthropology that specializes on human genetic variation) statements - do the officials of these organizations represent their disciplines, or only themselves?

Finally, Rushton and Jensen are psychologists. Psychology is not the academic discipline that specializes in the study of heredity. Two academic disciplines are relevant: Physical Anthropologists who study population genetics are principal experts on human hereditary. Evolutionary Biologists are also experts on heredity. Have any of these scientists established the degree to which intellectual diferences between Blacks and Whites is genetic? Some editors argue that these views are essential to deciding if Rushton and the WSJ ad is fringe or mainstream.

To be clear: Rather than taking an a priori position that there are "two sides" to this issue (e.g. hereditarian vs. non-hereditarian), we should begin by looking at multiple approaches to the question - biology, cultural anthropology, physical anthropology, psychology, sociology, etc. and find out how they view the question, how many significant views are there and how they understand the differences among these views. It is my sense that some scientists see this as a debate with two sides. I am not sure all scientists view it this way.

I think these are the core issues that need mediation.

From one perspective, these disputes should be resolvable based on strict adherance to WP:NPOV and WP:NOR. However, when it comes to identifying wha is a fringe view, you need to know what fields of science are involved in the claim that "Blacks are to some degree inherently inferior to Whites, intellectually." Rushton and Jensen are psychologists, but anthropologists and sociologists who study race, and biologists and anthropologists who study human genetics, also claim expertise. I think having a clear sense of which academic discipline has how much expertise over what is also essential. This question is at the heart of the dispute, and in my experience no mediation can be successful unless it can find criteria all parties agree are objective and neutral for answering this question.

David.Kane's Statement

The dispute centers on how much space in the article should be devoted to the "genetic hypothesis," i.e., the belief that a non-zero portion of the observed racial difference in IQ is due to genetic differences. Some of the editors view this as "fringe" hypothesis, suggesting via WP:FRINGE that very little if any space should be devoted to it in this article. The other editors view it as a "minority" hypothesis, arguing that the numerous articles in the peer-reviewed literature which support it make it more than "fringe" and that, therefore, via WP:UNDUE a discussion of the "genetic hypothesis" belongs in the article.

The outcomes I seek are a) A ruling about whether or not the "genetic hypothesis" meets the definition of WP:FRINGE and b) A suggestion about the percentage (5%, 30%, 50%, whatever) of the article that should be devoted to the "genetic hypothesis." I recommend that the mediator conclude that the "genetic hypothesis" does not meet the standards of WP:FRINGE and that, therefore, a significant percentage (25%) of the article should be devoted to explaining it via references to the peer-reviewed literature. I do not think that the editors of this article would fight over content. We agree (I hope!) about what Jensen, Rushton, Lynn, Gottfredson, Hernstein, Murray et al believe. We just disagree about how much weight these views should be given in the article. I thank all the editors for participating in this moderation. I apologize if I have mischaracterized the dispute. David.Kane (talk) 21:20, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Varoon Arya's Opening Statement

§1. Description of the dispute: Fundamentally, this dispute revolves around whether or not the so-called "hereditarian" view, which claims that the differences between the IQ scores of Whites and Blacks is due, in some part, to genetics, deserves adequate representation in the article Race and intelligence. Another way this has been put is: Is the hereditarian position "fringe" science, or is it a minority view? This is important, for it determines how much coverage the hereditarian position should receive in the article.

§2. Progession of the dispute: Several editors raised the point that the hereditarian position was inadequately represented in the article. Other editors countered by claiming that the hereditarian position was adequately represented. In the view of some, most of the coverage of the hereditarian position in the article is in the form of criticism, and there is very little which attempts to explain the hereditarian position itself. Others respond to this claim by arguing that the hereditarian position is "fringe", and thus only deserves to be criticized. They further argue that to explain the hereditarian position would be a violation of WP:UNDUE.

§3. Outcome sought: I believe that the hereditarian position falls safely within the definition of a "minority" view. As such, I would like to see the hereditarian position receive adequate representation. By "adequate", I mean a presentation which allows the reader to understand why the proponents of the hereditarian position support that position. This goes above and beyond any question of the proportion of said representation. I am interested in neither the public popularity of these views nor in haggling over the percentage of coverage they receive. My primary interest resides in seeing that both sides of the academic dispute are presented in a coherent and understandable fashion. What comes after that is, in my opinion, the result of a popularity contest, and I do not plan to participate past the point of seeing that both sides are fairly and coherently represented.

§4. Misplaced Pages Policies: WP:NPOV, WP:UNDUE, WP:NOR/WP:SYNTH, WP:ASG (which I personally extend to experts as well as to editors), WP:MNA, WP:RS.

§5. Proposal: I think that we could begin the process of resolution if all the involved editors could agree on several key points:

• There is a real academic dispute concerning the contributing factors to the observed difference in IQ scores between Whites and Blacks.
• This academic dispute is maintained by qualified scholars who advance conflicting research results and/or theories.
• The research findings and/or theories advanced by the involved scholars appear in respected academic journals and other reliable sources.
• The proportion of scholars who currently favor one position over the other cannot be objectively determined.
• The public statements issued either by groups of scholars or by bodies such as the APA are important for orientation, but do not make any final proclamations regarding the outcome of the academic dispute.
• Both sides in the academic dispute advance claims serious enough in import to require an adequate presentation of the reasoning behind their claims, as well as qualified criticism which has been leveled against those claims.
• The social implications of this issue, though very important, should not be allowed to preclude the discussion of any part of the academic dispute.
• The work of experts on both sides of the dispute should be taken in good faith and discussed on its own merits. --Aryaman (talk) 22:27, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Opening statement by Mathsci

I by and large agree with Slrubenstein's statement, particularly that the focus of the article should become stable and that the article talk page should not become a forum for open-ended debate. The article at present does not cover all of the recent major academic contributions to this debate and should make every attempt to do so in an even-handed way. The hereditarian point of view should be carefully outlined, but without giving a false impression of its degree of acceptance. As Slr has written the "open letter" in the WSJ by a self-selected and like-minded group of academics should not receive WP:UNDUE weight, if other distinguished academics have expressed disagreement (as is the case). At present there has not been a systematic attempt to ensure that the broad spectrum of mainstream academic opinion has been properly represented. One problem is that the very narrow topic of a possible correlation between race, whatever that means, and intelligence, whatever that means, has not been widely studied in academia. This makes it hard to write an article on it for an encyclopedia, since many aspects will remain inconclusive because they either have not been sufficiently studied or have not been deemed worthy to be studied. Scrupulous attention should be paid to not ignoring or dismissing important sources, particularly those by eminent academics. Perhaps the most important point is that all key sources should first be carefully identified. These should be carefully summarised in the article, without prejudice. If only a handful of academics favour a particular viewpoint, i.e. it is a minoritarian viewpoint, that should be made clear. There does not seem to be any evidence that "Race and Intelligence" is a major topic of research, discussion or debate in the majority of academic departments specializing in psychometrics or related disciplines. We should be extremely cautious not to approach the writing of this article with that viewpoint. Mathsci (talk) 23:26, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Ramdrake's opening statement

The debate over "race and intelligence" stems from the incontrovertible observation that self-defined "Blacks" score lower on average than self-defined "Whites" on many standard performance and/or aptitude tests. Many interpretations have been made of this puzzling observation.

• Some people have questioned whether "IQ tests" really measure intelligence, and if so how fairly does it do so across cultures. Existing consensus is that these measurements are good predictors of life outcomes (across cultures?), and that they are not subject to any simple form of bias, although certain complex forms of bias (such as stereotype threat) have been suggested.
• Some people have dismissed the question by arguing that race as it is commonly conceived is a social construct and that comparing IQ test results (a psychometric/biological measurement) across social categories is like comparing apples and oranges.
• Some people have acknowledged that the IQ gap does measure something (an achievement gap), but there are two main explanations as to the source of the IQ gap:
  • Some believe it is the result of environmental causes, such as those behind the Flynn effect which has seen a worldwide rise in IQ test scores of about 15 point over the last half-century or so. Factors such as nutrition, schooling and hygiene have been suggested, but no one factor has been definitely demonstrated to be the driving cause between the gap.
  • Others believe that in addition to possible environmental causes, genetic factors cause a difference in scoring ability between Blacks and Whites (and most ethnic groups for that matter). The evidence behind this claim is entirely indirect at this point, as (among other things) no genes have been found that regulate intelligence in humans. Also, different proponents of this position advance different proportions for the genetic/environmental effect ratio.

I believe that it is possible, using available literature, to demonstrate that this last position (often dubbed the "hereditarian position") is in fact the purview of a minority of very vocal scientists, and that mainstream opinion can safely be attributed to the "environmental position".

However, help is needed in arriving at a consensus on determining exactly how strong this vocal minority holding the hereditarian position is, and what would be due weight in presenting their position within the article. My concern is the distinct possibilty that in trying to properly explain the minority hereditarian position, undue weight may be given to it space-wise within the article. But, as I said, I'm aiming for fair and due representation of this position, after we've arrived at a consensus on exactly how to qualify this minority position (fringe, small minority, significant minority, full-blown alternative explanation?)--Ramdrake (talk) 23:27, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Some review papers that could help in this discussion:

• APA statement report on Race and Intelligence:
• AAA statement on Race and Intelligence:
• AAA statement on Race:
• AAPA statement on Race:
• Review of Rushton's hereditarian hypothesis by Leonard Lieberman, eminent anthropologist:
• Race and Intelligence research from the viewpoint of neurology (a review):
• Another criticism of Rushton's hypotheses from a fellow psychologist (Zack Cernovsky):
• Review from the field of philosophy of science criticizing the science funded by the Pioneer Fund:

Hope it helps.--Ramdrake (talk) 23:07, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Muntuwandi's opening statement

I agree with statments of Slrubenstein and Ramdrake. Talk:Race and intelligence has 74 archives, which means the material related to the current dispute has been debated several times in the past. The main controversy is how much weight should be given to the hereditarian viewpoint. The hereditarian position is indeed supported by a group of like minded scientists who for the most part are connected to the Pioneer Fund. There are not many, if any, mainstream publications that support the hereditarian position that are not in some way associated with pioneer fund publications. The hereditarian position therefore qualifies as a minority position. According to WP:UNDUE

"Neutrality requires that the article should fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by a reliable source, and should do so in proportion to the prominence of each. Now an important qualification: In general, articles should not give minority views as much or as detailed a description as more widely held views"

Wapondaponda (talk) 00:48, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

DJ's statement

1) the construction of the dispute in your opinion

There are three points of serious (scholarly) dispute on this topic which raise policy issues for editors:

1. "whether or not races exist"
2. "whether it is either important or proper to study racial... differences in intelligence"
3. "the conclusions that have been drawn about environmental and genetic causes as determinants of these differences"

The third issue has caused the most difficulty recently. The issue is whether the "hereditarian" or "genetic" hypothesis is a fringe view.

2) the nature of the dispute as it has progressed

1. "whether or not races exist" --> So far, this has been handled by WP:MNA and pointing to other articles.
2. "whether it is either important or proper to study racial... differences in intelligence" --> So far, this is included in this article by describing the disagreement and moving on to other topics. In describing those topic, we applied WP:MNA in assuming it is important and ethical. Else, it would be impossible to describe other views.
3. "the conclusions that have been drawn about environmental and genetic causes as determinants of these differences" --> David.Kane and Varoon Arya have covered this (above).

3) the outcome you originally seek coming into this mediation

In my opinion, it's incorrect to treat the "hereditarian" or "genetic" hypothesis as a fringe view. We have no way of knowing how many people actually ascribe to that view affirmatively (the survey from the 1980s not withstanding), but a great many scholars who hold a variety of views on the question nonetheless treat it seriously as a matter for empirical debate. We should do the same. For example, I see no reason that the views in shouldn't be prominently summarized.

Secondarily, I do not see any way to account for how many hold which views. Most apex sources arrive at the conclusion that: "past research on both racial and gender differences in intelligence has been marked by methodological errors and overgeneralizations by researchers on all sides of the issue" and that no one knows what causes the differences. They explicitly do not conclude that environmental causes are known to be the explanation and that genetic causes are known not to contribute.

4) Misplaced Pages Policies that come into play in your opinion

WP:FRINGE and WP:UNDUE are the central point of content dispute.

WP:MNA, WP:RS, WP:NOR are important:

The debate was characterized by strong assertions as well as by strong feelings. Unfortunately, those assertions often revealed serious misunderstandings of what has (and has not) been demonstrated by scientific research in this field. Although a great deal is now known, the issues remain complex and in many cases still unresolved.

WP:NPOV, WP:SYNTH and WP:ASG:

Another unfortunate aspect of the debate was that many participants made little effort to distinguish scientific issues from political ones. Research findings were often assessed not so much on their merits or their scientific standing as on their supposed political implications. In such a climate, individuals who wish to make their own judgments find it hard to know what to believe.

5) proposed ways to resolve the issue or points of mutual agreement that could begin an objective process to a resolution

In addition to the proposals by Varoon Arya, I would add:

• Recognize that simply counting the number of people who affirmatively hold the "hereditarian" hypothesis to be definitely true does not capture the importance of the various arguments that are offered in favor that hypothesis and against its alternatives.
• Treat the arguments made by pro-hereditarian scholars with the same care that James Flynn does when summarizing them (Flynn does not hold the hereditarian hypothesis to be true, but values the contributions of its supporters to the topic.)
• Recognize that disagreements exist about the interpretation of the data outside of the hereditarian/environmentalist dichotomy. For example, evidence against an environmental cause isn't inappropriate merely because it may be seen as in effect pro-hereditarian. (In other words, there is a real diversity of views.)
• We are not obliged to make the hereditarian view look unreasonable or unethical. That should not be a metric of acceptability. Many distinguished scholars (most IQ experts?) believe that the hereditarian view is ethical and empirically possible (albeit unproven).

references:

http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-6916.2007.00037.x Mainstream Science on Intelligence Jensen (1998) Rushton and Jensen (2005) APA's 1996 report

--DJ (talk) 00:33, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Captain Occam's opening statement

For a Misplaced Pages article on any topic about which there is a scientific controversy, one of the most important characteristics the article needs to have is that a person can come to it with little or no knowledge of the topic, and come away from it having a general understanding of the controversy that exists about it, along with the viewpoints and arguments expressed by both sides. There are several policies that relate to this principle, but WP:NPOV is probably the most important. In accordance with NPOV policy, all significant points of view which have been published by reliable sources should be included in the article, in rough proportion to their prominence in the source material.

I don’t think it’s difficult to demonstrate that a legitimate scientific controversy exists about race and intelligence. Two collective statements about this which have been discussed here so far are Mainstream Science on Intelligence and Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns. The first of these was originally published in The Wall Street Journal with the signatures of 52 experts in the relevant fields, and later republished in the peer-reviewed journal Intelligence. Since it has passed peer review for this professional journal, which is the same criterion used to judge accuracy for everything else published in it, the fact that this article began as a newspaper editorial should not be important, although I agree that it cannot be assumed to represent more than the viewpoints of the 52 experts who signed it. Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns is a report written by an 11-member task force appointed by the American Psychological Association. Both of these reports state that the cause of the 15-point gap between the average IQ of Black and White people in the United States remains an open question, and the “Mainstream Science” statement presents the hereditarian hypothesis (that genetics contribute to it) and the environmental hypothesis (that it’s caused exclusively by environmental factors) on approximately equal terms. The APA statement is slightly more critical of the hereditarian hypothesis than of the view that it is caused only by environmental factors, but also emphasizes that neither viewpoint can be known with certainty to be correct or incorrect.

Another source of information about the views of scientists on this topic is the Snydernan and Rothman study, a study from 1988 which examined the views of intelligence researchers about the cause of the IQ difference, and found that a majority of them held the opinion that both genetics and environment contributed to it. (Although the proportion would have no doubt been lower if the study had also included anthropologists and geneticists.) A few editors have claimed that the results of this study are inaccurate due to problems such as sampling bias, but because these criticisms have not appeared in any reliable sources, they need to be considered original research; I think most of the people involved in this article agree on this point. And lastly, the most recent examination of the conflicting views on this issue is the June 2005 issue of the peer-reviewed APA journal Psychology, Public Policy and Law, which was devoted to this controversy. For this issue of their journal, the APA chose to publish a collection of six different papers representing the various viewpoints on this topic. The issue’s featured paper, Thirty years of research on race differences in cognitive ability, is a detailed argument for the hereditarian position by Jensen and Rushton. In addition to the featured paper, the APA chose to publish two other papers that take a pro-hereditarian stance in this issue, as well as two which favor the environmental position, and one which takes an intermediate viewpoint, arguing for an interaction between biological and environmental factors. The last of these, by Suzuki & Aronson, ascribes less importance to heredity than is done by Rushton and Jensen, but more than is done most of their critics. The respective weight that the APA gave to each of the viewpoints expressed in this issue demonstrates the way that they decided these viewpoints should be balanced against one another in a neutral publication.

As far as I know, these are the only sources which have attempted to neutrally present the nature of the dispute itself. Although numerous sources exist which describe the hereditarian viewpoint as “fringe”, or which describe the environmental view as being guilty of the moralistic fallacy, all of these are sources which themselves are explicitly arguing for one viewpoint or the other. Since this issue is presented as a legitimate scientific controversy by all of the sources which are not attempting to prove or disprove one viewpoint about it, I believe that NPOV policy requires Misplaced Pages’s article to present this topic in a similar manner.

In my opinion, some of the earlier versions of the article did a fairly good job with this. Several times I’ve mentioned the version from December of 2006 as accurately presenting both sides of the controversy, as well as including several pieces of relevant information which are missing from the current article, such as the social and practical significance of the IQ difference, which is important regardless of whether or not genetic factors contribute to this difference. (Not to say that this version of the article is perfect, of course.) However, over the past three years, more and more information about the hereditarian perspective has gradually been removed from the article, until at this point it presents virtually no information about the hereditarian perspective except to criticize it, and most of the arguments used in favor of this viewpoint are not mentioned anywhere. For an article on a topic about which a significant scientific controversy exists, I am of the opinion that presenting the arguments used by one side but not the other is a violation of NPOV policy.

There are many reasons this has happened, but all of them seem to relate to one basic trend in this article’s history, which is that most of the time editors who favored the environmental viewpoint have been more numerous and more active than those who favor the hereditarian viewpoint. In theory this should not make a difference, because NPOV policy is that each viewpoint’s respective weight in the article should be determined by that viewpoint’s prevalence in the source material, not by its prevalence among the editors involved in the article. In practice, however, consensus to remove information about the hereditarian hypothesis from the article has generally been quite easy to obtain, while obtaining consensus to add back any such information has been nearly impossible. This trend has had in a long-term effect on the article’s overall balance.

What I would like to result from this mediation is an overall, long-term guideline on the degree of representation that each viewpoint on this topic should receive in the article. I agree with Varoon Arya that the most important point which can be determined here is whether the hereditarian hypothesis deserves enough space to be presented coherently and understandably; I am of the opinion that in the current article it is not given enough space even for this, and that the fact that it isn't is a violation of NPOV policy. However, in the interest in avoiding similar disputes in the future, I would also like this mediation to suggest an approximate percentage of coverage that this view should receive, as suggested by David.Kane.

Perhaps one way to begin this discussion would be if each of us were to suggest the proportions / percentages of representation that should be given to each of these views, assuming other editors here agree that the arguments used in favor of the hereditarian view should be included in any form. I think the sources I’ve mentioned about the nature of this controversy make it fairly clear that the hereditarian hypothesis is a significant-minority view, and as such deserves inclusion in the article, but other editors may disagree. --Captain Occam (talk) 01:17, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

T34CH's opening statement

There are several issues at play which have made reaching consensus difficult in this article. The foremost in my opinion is the title of the article. There is no such thing as "race-and-intelligence", but rather a debate over the connection between these two constructs. The current title sets an a-priori assumption that such a connection exists and is significant, introducing a bias not supported by the literature. I feel the article could be edited more productively if it had a less ambiguous (and IMO less POV) title. This point is echoed by Dbachmann (talk · contribs) in this thread. If this cannot be solved by changing the title, the lead should be adjusted to reflect some agreed upon focus. In the past, the lead has gone through many drastic changes; stabilizing the lead would help to focus editors and build consensus.

An important secondary issue is disagreement over interpretation of NPOV, and in particular wp:UNDUE. There is agreement that the "hereditarian" hypothesis (50/50 genes-to-environment according to Rushton and Jensen) is a minority hypothesis, but disagreement over how best to exhibit this status. Straightforward percentages of content seem restrictive and difficult to quantify. WP:VALID is also very important policy to consider in this issue.

A related issue which would greatly aid in consensus building is the need to agree on which literature reviews should be considered the most authoritative and neutral. By establishing the basic sources which should inform our understanding of academic consensus, many peripheral arguments will be solved. I believe the APA statement is an important starting point. It reads:

Reviewing the intelligence debate at its meeting of November 1994, the Board of Scientific Affairs (BSA) of the American Psychological Association (APA) concluded that there was urgent need for an authoritative report on these issues--one that all sides could use as a basis for discussion. Acting by unanimous vote, BSA established a Task Force charged with preparing such a report. Ulric Neisser, Professor of Psychology at Emory University and a member of BSA, was appointed Chair. The APA Board on the Advancement of Psychology in the Public Interest, which was consulted extensively during this process, nominated one member of the Task Force," the Committee on Psychological Tests and Assessment nominated another," a third was nominated by the Council of Representatives. Other members were chosen by an extended consultative process, with the aim of representing a broad range of expertise and opinion.

I believe that controversial figures such as Rushton and Jensen should be approached as suggested in Misplaced Pages:RS#Extremist_and_fringe_sources. Only RS secondary sources which discuss their research should be used.

Finally, there have been many instances of editors describing or referring to the actions of other editors on the talk page rather than the content. For the most part, these claims come across as accusations rather than constructive criticism, and serve only to poison the editing atmosphere. Per wp:NPA and wp:TALK, there should be restrictions on what kind of discussions are allowed to stay on the talk page. (those policies allow for refactoring comments not related to content) Any genuine issues should be brought to wp:ANI or a similar noticeboard. T34CH (talk) 03:38, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Issues to be Discussed & Agenda

Agenda

• Determination of Issues to be Discussed
• Mediator statement of potential objective procedures to find resolution
• Timeline set of each discussion, going independant of each other possibly
• Mediator proposed several "solutions" (i.e. resolution may be a better word)
• Discussion of proposals, counterproposals by mediation participants
• 2nd phase of Mediator proposals
• Discussion
• Reaching final Framework of Consensus
• Implementation of Framework & putting it into motion on the article page itself
  • Closure of Mediation

Reubzz (talk) 22:03, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Statement of the Mediator

Please note participants, that I am not a Judge or Arbitor in this matter. WP policy is split between user issues and content issues. There is no "ruling body" on content issues, as the Mediation Committee still makes no rulings and the ArbCom only gets invovled in serious matters of disputes between users and/or administrators.

Simply put, this is a process for me to help guide you to a solution, not hear evidence and make a ruling. I wish I could just issue a non-binding ruling/guideline but process precludes me from doing so. Reubzz (talk) 04:14, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Attention All Parties: It will take some time for me to compile the statements and ALL the information I have gathered into a series of issues to be discussed and an objective process for determing the question's resolution. Please note this if it appears I am not taking immediate action. Reubzz (talk) 04:25, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

A note to everyone - I will be out for a large portion of the next 24 hours. My apologies. Reubzz (talk) 03:21, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Statement on mediator - request for experienced mediator

User:Reubzz has edited WP for 10 days with less than 500 edits. He did not bother to reveal his astonishing lack of experience. I have reported him for disruption at WP:ANI. I will not participate in mediation under such an inexperienced editor of WP. Please could we initiate moves to find someone better suited to the task? Mathsci (talk) 23:30, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

I have already raised the issue at the talkpage of WP:MEDCAB, looking for either an explanation (returning user who has changed names?) or a remedy (another mediator, more experienced). I'd say let's stay put for now, as this mediator has initiated mediation correctly according to rules, so there's no point in trashing the work (opening statements, etc.) done so far.--Ramdrake (talk) 23:33, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I am not happy having a novice fooling around like this. They can explain themselves on WP:ANI. I do not like having my time wasted when there are complex issues at stake. I have no confidence at all in this completely inexperienced editor and consider their behaviour quite inappropriate and disingenuous. Sorry. We can continue the process with another mediator if possible (I will reinstate my statement then). You can make that suggestion on ANI if you like. Mathsci (talk) 23:39, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Hi. I help coordinate this project, and I'm on MedCom. Mind if I help? Xavexgoem (talk) 00:25, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Help is always welcome! I think we have a real chance to work this out, so I would like to see Ramdrake and Mathsci's concerns addressed. David.Kane (talk) 00:55, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

I have also agreed to help advise Reubzz, and step in directly if necessary. I am not outright adding myself to the co-mediator list, but I will be watching and monitoring the discussion. If anyone has any questions about the process or anything else, feel free to contact me on my Talk page. The Wordsmith 01:05, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Many thanks to The Wordsmith and Xavexgoem for their kind offer to assist Reubzz in guiding this mediation process; and many thanks also to Reubzz for his willingness to help and learn. I will now reinstate myself in the mediation process, Mathsci (talk) 01:27, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

I am glad Mathsci is on board. I appreciate his concerns. I do think it is possible for a relative newcomer to Misplaced Pages to be an effective mediator (in part because I have seen very experienced Wikipedians fail completely at facilitating mediation) - it takes skills that are not associated with being a Wikipedian (patience, skill at identifying the underlying issues and main stumbling bloicks, skill at communication). It is true, that no one can mediate this conflict without a thorough understanding of our core policies, WP:NPOV, WP:V and WP:NOR. Perhaps Reubuzz has studied these; perhaps Wordsmith is tutoring him on them; perhaps he has been reading Misplaced Pages for years, following discussions, and already knows them.

But my principle concern goes to a point Reubuzz made, a point that many Wikipedians have made over the years: we do not have good principles and mechanisms for resolving content disputes. But this really is a content dispute, and I do not think anyone can mediate it without having an ability to distinguish between different kinds of debates among scientists. For example, there is a big difference between Linus Pauling and James Watson debating the structure of DNA, and Linus Pauling and Jonas Salk debating how to treat the common cold. In the first case, both participants in the debate are experts in the same field, but this is not so in the second case. For example, there is a difference between journals like Science, or the Journal of the American Medical Association, or American Journal of Physical Anthropology, i.e. the journals of major scientific associations and thus flagship journals in their fields, versus privately funded journals. It is important to distinguish between different kinds of foundations, which may have different boards and different peer-review processes that reflect different kinds of funding priorities. Without understanding (or having a willingness to learn about) these matters, I don't see how any mediator will be able to help us stay focused on the robust or profound issues and questions, and the significant points of view. Note: I do not think anything I wrote in this paragraph is biased towards any "side" in this conflict. All sides in this conflict are arguing for the inclusion of what they believe to be significant views from reliable sources. In this conflict, which touches on matters in which different academic disciplines in both the life sciences and the social sciences have expertise, what counts as a reliable source or a significant view can vary depending on the question or the kinds of data one must analyze to answer the question. An effective mediator in my view is going to have to understand eough about science, and the specific sciences involved, to sort out these issues. The point is not to favor anthropology, biology, psychology or sociology. The point is to understand the place of each within academe. Slrubenstein | Talk 07:18, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

I would happily agree with Slrubenstein if I had not already seen the distinction to which he refers be used in such a partisan manner. Oftentimes, editors attack an otherwise reliable source on the grounds that it is biased or unfit for inclusion. Sometimes this is done with recourse to other sources backing up such claims, sometimes it is done without such recourse, but on purely logical or moral grounds. As a matter of principle, I think editors should be encouraged to evaluate sources critically. However, there are no established principles regarding the kind of criticism which is to be applied. This is one of the weaknesses of the group of policies treating sources (WP:NPOV, WP:SYNTH, WP:OR and WP:RS). What are editors to do when a fully "reliable" source makes patently incorrect and/or illogical claims? Conversely, what are editors to do when sources which have a less than exemplary pedigree make perfectly correct and logical claims? I've seen cases of both while editing this article. In our own work (e.g. articles/dissertations/books written outside Misplaced Pages), we certainly criticize our sources, and we evaluate their claims on their merits, regardless of their origin. To do otherwise would be intellectually dishonest. I recognize that Misplaced Pages is not an academic journal, and that a line must be drawn between reporting on the work of others and original research. I do not think Misplaced Pages policy needs to be rewritten, but I do think that the mediators should consider that this topic is one which requires particular care when examining sources critically. --Aryaman (talk) 08:08, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

"Editors should evaluate sources critically". Unfortunately that is against the core policies of wikipedia and why, over the last few months, a futile debate (WP:OR) has been taking place on the talk page that has been reported on multiple noticeboards. We should only report on what sources say; that includes sources giving evaluations of other sources. That has always been how wikipedia has worked. We might notice that authors are academically distinguished, e.g. are fellows of the Royal Society or members of the National Academy of Sciences. Wikipedians should not make the mistake of trying to use talk pages as pseudo-academic forums. Mathsci (talk) 11:35, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Right, Arya - we never say a source is inaccurate. If there is a significant view from another reliable source that says the first view is inaccurate, we can include it. There is no debarte over NPOV's core principle, that we have to include all significant views from reliable sources. My point is that in academic debates, the significance of a view or reliability of a source for a particular view is often relative to the discipline in which the research was trained or does research. For example, just because someone has a PhD. in physics or even won the Nobel Prize does not mean that their views about Virginia Wolf are significant; similarly, a journal on Medieval French Literature may be peer-reviewed, but that does not make it a reliable source about chemistry. Do you really disagree with these points? The two examples I provided are crude. When it comes to anthropology, biology, psychology and sociology journals publishing articles on race, intelligence, or race and intelligence, determining reliability and significance is more complicated - I hope you agree with this too. And since it is more complicated, I believe a mediator needs to know something about these disciplines and what each discipline considers a reliable source for what kind of research. Slrubenstein | Talk 13:02, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Quick question: to what extent are the expressly non-hereditarian sources in opposition to hereditarian theories? Xavexgoem (talk) 13:25, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Excellent question! There are many "non-hereditarian sources" and I would hesitate to generalize. But I think that the best place to start would be with Sternberg and Nisbett (surely two of the most prominent non-hereditarians) in their articles in 2005 issue of Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, Vol. 11, No. 2.. I think it is fair to say that non-hereditarians firmly believe that the explanation for racial differences in IQ is 100% environmental but that they are willing to seriously consider the substance of "hereditarian theories." David.Kane (talk) 13:37, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Also, the sources I listed at the end of my opening statement are all non-hereditarian (the statements could be considered neutral). This should give you an idea.--Ramdrake (talk) 14:47, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

(ec)

Those papers (David's link) are about policy based on IQ measurements, not on the interpretation of between-group IQ differences. Actual lit reviews would be a better place to look. But in those papers, Sternberg says that IQ is not useful to inform policy, and Nesbitt's main point is that race is a poor construct to use when comparing blacks and whites (though he does conclude that the evidence for an actual intelligence difference is "nil"). The important distinction that I see between the "sides" is that Jensen/Rushton et al see evidence for a "true" difference (to put it in psychometric terms), while Sternberg/Nesbitt et al see too small of a signal-to-noise ratio to make that discrimination (ie, issues with race definitions, IQ interpretations, confounding variables in the environment, cultural bias in the tests, etc etc). The "non-hereditarian" view would probably be best summed up as, "if there is a between-group genetic difference, we can't measure it, and it doesn't make enough of an impact to matter given current conditions." T34CH (talk) 14:50, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

To elaborate on David Kane's comment: In my experience, it largely depends upon the source. If one takes the more sober proponents of the environmentalist or non-hereditarian position, such as James R. Flynn, then there is a purely scientific opposition. That is to say, Flynn takes the arguments of hereditarians such as Arthur Jensen seriously, and evaluates them on their scientific merits. There are other environmentalist, however, who reject hereditarian arguments on what are, by and large, moral grounds. They often accuse hereditarians of "racialism" or outright "racism", and put great emphasis on the controversies surrounding the individuals supporting the hereditarian position, questioning their academic credentials, their sources of funding, their affiliations, and anything which could give the impression that hereditarians are not to be taken seriously except as proponents of "radical racist science", and typically do very little to contradict the actual arguments hereditarian use to support their claims. While hereditarians take the criticism and contrary findings of sober non-hereditarians such as Flynn seriously, they typically respond to such moral accusations as lacking any scientific value. It's a highly charged situation, and there's quite a bit of rhetoric and moral posturing involved.

As far as the positions themselves go: The "hereditarian" position posits a mixture of genetic and environmental causes. As a result, proponents are typically more open to findings which advance claims regarding particular environmental factors which could influence the development of intelligence. They directly oppose, however, any attempts to explain all of the difference between groups as due to environmental causes alone. This, they argue, is simply not possible given the widely accepted results of within-group studies (e.g. that genetics plays a considerable role in the manifestation of intelligence within groups of the same racial or ethnic background). They further argue that the non-hereditarian position is fueled more by socio-political interests than by critical scientific acumen.

The "environmentalist" position posits that only environmental causes can explain the IQ differences between groups. Most - and, typically, the most vocal - proponents categorically reject any research which shows that genetics could play any role in this difference. There are some who are compelled to admit that genetics may play some role, but that it is so small, that it's best for all involved if we just ignore it.

Granted, both positions are hard to prove given the nature of the subject and the limitations of the research methods. If we were able to ignore the moral component, I think the non-hereditarian position would reveal itself as the more scientifically radical of the two, given the nature of the position itself. In the only study conducted to determine consensus on this, 45% of polled experts reported holding views compatible with the hereditarian position, while 15% held views compatible with non-hereditarianism. The study was conducted in the late 1980s, so it's unclear how much those numbers have shifted. Several editors here reject the validity of the study entirely, and even mentioning it can cause conflict. I'm willing to grant that its results are somewhat dated, but I do not think that there has been any radical breakthrough in research in the last 20 years which would make such a large portion of the academic community change its mind. On the contrary, proponents of the hereditarian view feel that their position has been strengthened by findings which have been produced since then. With that being said, there is no shortage of claims from non-hereditarians that only a few isolated "radical mavericks" hold hereditarian views. As there has been no formal study since the 1987 Snyderman and Rothman study to determine this, I think it's obvious that such claims should be taken with a grain of salt.

These are, in my opinion, the core points anyone coming to this discussion needs to know in order to determine whether the hereditarian position deserves adequate representation in the article under discussion. --Aryaman (talk) 15:48, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

I would ask the mediator to compare my comments and Arya's closely. I think we have very different approaches not just to the article but to how to mediate the article. I am not at all questioning Arya's good faith, merely calling attention to a difference in approach. Arya is comparing the views of two views, hereditarian and non-hereditarian. The intent behind my comments in this section and above is to suggest another approach. My approach is to start with different kinds of researchers with different kinds of expertise as a basis for sorting out significance and reliability. My reason is, I fear that if we start with the two antagonistic views, we will just go in circles: supporters of the herditarian view will claim that they are the real specialists and that their view is the most significant and proponents of the non-hereditarian view will claim that they are the real experts and their view is the most significant. I think the way out of this circle is to take these views (hereditarian/non-hereditarian) as conclusions different researchers have reached. Instead of starting with the conclusions, let's see where people started out. That means looking at the different disciplines that look at these kinds of questions, and whose training gives competence in what kinds of research. I think Arya's approach is common sense, but I think it has been tried multiple times as a way to resolve the conflict and has never worked, that is why I am trying to articulate an alternate approach. I do not mean to get into a new argument with Arya, I just want to point out that our approaches to dealing with this conflict among editors involve starkly different approaches to how we decide what sources to look at and how to assess the weight of different views. All I can ask is that the mediator consider both approaches before deciding how to proceed. Slrubenstein | Talk 17:35, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

I fully accept Slrubenstein's point that we are talking about two different approaches here. And I'm happy to see he's assuming good faith. I think that, if we are here to discuss the entire article, and beyond that, how "race and intelligence" fits into the wider scheme of human knowledge, then Slrubenstein's approach is certainly superior to my own. It would also be good to put the discussion in its historical context, and I think that's something Slrubenstein and I can agree on. However, my impression is that the article needs nothing beyond a simple introduction to the topic as it fits within the larger framework of the sciences (per WP:MNA). The debate, which is the core topic the article is about, takes place between psychometricians and behavioral geneticists. I'm not convinced that gathering views from anthropologists, biologists, sociologists, etc. is going to improve our understanding of this core issue. It might relativise it - and perhaps unfairly so - but I don't see it helping to explain the arguments involved.

Further, as I understand it, this particular conflict revolves around whether or not the hereditarian position (either as one of two main positions or as simply one outcome reached by a group of scientists among many, many scientists) deserves to be adequately represented in the article. Thus, the mediation process intends to help us solve this particular problem. I don't expect this mediation to solve all the problems with this article. But I do hope that this process will help us establish whether or nor it is justified to explain the hereditarian position clearly and coherently. --Aryaman (talk) 17:56, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

I would like to add a different perception. Varoon Arya wrote: There are other environmentalist, however, who reject hereditarian arguments on what are, by and large, moral grounds. They often accuse hereditarians of "racialism" or outright "racism", and put great emphasis on the controversies surrounding the individuals supporting the hereditarian position, questioning their academic credentials, their sources of funding, their affiliations, and anything which could give the impression that hereditarians are not to be taken seriously except as proponents of "radical racist science", and typically do very little to contradict the actual arguments hereditarian use to support their claims. However, in my experience, the bulk of the criticism aimed at the science behind the hereditarian argument is that it is bad science, in the mathematical and statistical sense (samples of questionable representativity, overinterpretation of correlation coefficients, ignoring data which goes counter to the argument being made, etc.) To me, this is not a rejection based on moral grounds at all, but it is very much based on scientific grounds. I don't think that there is disagreement that the hereditarian position needs to be adequately represented, but I believe one of the main points of dissent is "how much representation is adequate".--Ramdrake (talk) 18:43, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Ramdrake that the central goal for mediation is to determine "how much representation is adequate" for the hereditarian position in this article. (Perhaps we all agree on this?) And that is why my main suggestion is that the mediators work/suggest/cajole us into figuring this out. It could be controlled as a specific percentage of the article or as a specific raw number of words. (Just telling us "reasonable" or "appropriate" representation will not solve anything. (Once we have that, I feel confident that we could all agree on what those words should be. David.Kane (talk) 19:31, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

“I don't think that there is disagreement that the hereditarian position needs to be adequately represented, but I believe one of the main points of dissent is ‘how much representation is adequate’.”

I think that given the current state of the article as well as its recent history, this isn’t a meaningful distinction. Although when we’re discussing general policy, the people who approve of the article in its current state tend to agree that the hereditarian position ought to be “adequately represented”, as soon as we start discussing actual content the same people tend to oppose the addition of any material intended to represent this viewpoint. In its current state, the article does not provide any information about why proponents of this theory hold the opinion that they do. So by opposing the addition of any material which would describe the hereditarian position, several users are in effect trying to keep this viewpoint out of the article, even if they don’t recognize/admit the fact that they’re doing so.

The most recent example of this was when I attempted to add a brief summary of the hereditarian position to the “heritability” section of the article, shortly before this mediation case started. My edit did not make this section of the article any longer, so if this section did not violate WP:UNDUE before my edit, it should not have done so afterwards either. And in any case, even after my edit the hereditarian view was given no more than 15% as much space as was given to environmental explanations, which is about the minumum required to describe the hereditarian view coherently. If other users here were in agreement that the hereditarian position needs to be described “adequately”, this edit should not have been controversial. However, Muntuwandi opposed it for the following reason: “I disagree with the changes made by Occam. I believe that the strongly hereditarian view is a minority perspective that at present is largely restricted to the pioneer fund crew. Unless or until the situation changes, the hereditarian hypothesis should be treated as a minority viewpoint, and should not be given WP:UNDUE weight here.”

Nobody is claiming that the hereditarian hypothesis should be given undue weight, but by using this as a reason to reject even the minimum amount of coverage required to explain it coherently, Muntuwandi is essentially claiming that any adequate description of this viewpoint is a violation of WP:UNDUE. Whenever we’re discussing any specific content, this attitude seems quite common. Therefore, I think it’s important that this mediation case not only resolve whether or not the hereditarian hypothesis should be represented in the article (which is something most of the editors here claim to agree with in principle), but also provide a more specific guideline about how much space it could be given, so that any and all edits which attempt to provide an explanation of this viewpoint can’t continue to be rejected on the grounds that they give it “too much” coverage. --Captain Occam (talk) 19:37, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

I would like to try and briefly summarize two of the central points raised in our discussion so far. Forgive me if you feel I fail to characterize your comments or your position correctly, as that's not my intent. I'm simply trying to identify the common ground so that we can build upon it. I'm not trying to do the job of the mediators, either. I'm just trying to make sure I'm on the same page as everyone else here.

The "Minority" vs. "Fringe" Question: Slrubenstein (and possibly Mathsci also) has brought up the point that it may be the case that all researchers who study the correlation between race and intelligence, and indeed, the whole sub-field, might be considered "fringe" if pitted against broader categories of scientific pursuit, such as anthropology, biology or sociology. S/He's very likely right. The study of this correlation is by no means a major area of research when seen from the perspective of the sciences as a whole, and we might well be able to describe it as on the "fringe". To my knowledge, no one is trying to portray this as some huge field of research, or to exaggerate its relative significance. There are literally a handful of scholars on either side, no more. So, I don't think anyone here would object to this point raised by Slrubenstein. Can we, then, agree that this would identify scholars on both sides of the ideological divide, such as Flynn on the one side and Jensen on the other, as studying on the "fringe" of mainstream science?

Ramdrake seems to agree that the hereditarian position is held by a "minority of very vocal scientists". If s/he used the term "minority" instead of "fringe" selectively, then I think this is a sign of progress which we can build upon. Of course, it seems s/he's still open to referring to it as a "fringe" position, but it might be progress all the same.

Muntuwandi also refers to the hereditarian position as a "minority" position. Again, if this was intentional, then we're definitely making progress in the right direction. I would like to (in good humor, of course) remind Muntuwandi of the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon when discussing connections to the Pioneer Fund. Given their list of associates, it would not be very hard to connect a substantial portion of academe to the Pioneer Fund in some way or another.

T34CH goes so far as to say there is agreement that hereditarianism is a "minority" position, and for him/her, it's simply a question of how much coverage it should receive.

Distribute Justice, Captain Occam and David Kane have all voiced the opinion that the hereditarian position should safely qualify as a "minority" view and not "fringe". Personally, when I hear "fringe", I tend to think of pseudo-scientific claims such as "the earth is flat", "the earth is hollow", "the moon landings were a hoax", or more generally, of developments such as Transhumanism. I don't think of the work of otherwise duly qualified scholars such as Flynn, Jensen, Gottfredson, Plomin, Sternberg, or Wicherts, all of whom represent important institutions of higher learning. Am I alone in this? I hope not.

Thus, on the question of "mainstream vs. fringe", I see good reasons to think that we're slowly forming a consensus that hereditarianism is a "minority" position. Please indicate if this is not the case.

The Question of Proportions: Ramdrake mentions that one of his principle concerns is that, by "trying to properly explain the minority hereditarian position, undue weight may be given to it within the article". This is, indeed, a valid concern. We don't want the article to give the impression that the hereditarian position is held in any higher esteem than it actually may be (though, I think we all agree that there is some difficulty in establishing exactly how much esteem it actually enjoys). We all seem to be willing to agree that more experts probably hold the environmental position than hold the hereditarian position, and that the article should reflect this. Can we, then, agree that, regardless of the amount of space given to the hereditarian position in comparison to the environmental position, that the hereditarian position, as a minority position, needs to be presented coherently, or in Ramdrake's words, "properly"? Further, can we agree to focus on a coherent presentation of the hereditarian position first, determining how much is necessary, and then work towards building the environmental position accordingly? If we take that approach, then I think we should be able to solve two problems at once.

I would appreciate hearing from those who have commented thus far regarding whether the above characterization is fair, and whether you could agree to the points raised. Thanks, --Aryaman (talk) 22:37, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

I am not sure why the hereditarian and environmental positions have to be (i.e. in fact are) opposed. By way of example, I have astigmatism. This is an inherited condition. I wea correctiv lenses, which is an environmental remedy that corrects my vision problem. It is possible that someone may have low intelligence for genetic reasons, but the proper kind of education can improve the person's performance on a range of cognitive tasks, thus correcting for the deficit; if people continue to score low, it could be because of inadequate education. Is this position hereditarian, because I admit to an inherited cause? Or is it environmental, because my explanation for continued between-group differences is environmental? My point is simply that these two positions do not naturally have to oppose one another. This is one reason why I think that starting with opposing positions, the other view I just suggested disappears, and we just go in circles. The approach I suggested, above, might lead us to a way through this impasse by revealing a debate involving more than two views, a debae in which both environment and heredity are variables but not the main ones debated by mainstream scientists. I could be wrong, I am only saying that we will neve know this unless we start by bracketing our assumption that there are two opposing positions. Asking what are the dominant different (significant) debates in different academic disciplines (and featured in what members of a discipline consider the reliable journals of their profession) is, I think, the way to start. Slrubenstein | Talk 22:51, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

That's an very good point, Slrubenstein. In my opinion, they need not be presented as diametrically opposed - though, this may be because the "hereditarian" perspective allows for both genetic and environmental causes, and is open to debate and further research regarding the relative proportions of each. I think everyone agrees that more research is needed, and even Jensen has clearly stated that none of these are absolute values, because populations change, and the values will always change relative to those populations. (He also strongly opposes those who claim that race mixture decreases intelligence, and has offered some evidence that it might actually increase the potential for its manifestation, but, that is an aspect of his research which we have not explored here.) The recent edits by DJ went a long way towards breaking down the (largely false, IMO) dichotomy. Maybe more of this is what you mean?

As to your question: The research which touches on this indicates that programs which promote the development of intelligence have the most success with young children. Children are, so to speak, more "malleable" via environmental factors. This malleability decreases sharply with age, so it is very important to receive support and encouragement while young. The older we get, the more our genetic endowment comes to the fore, and the less malleable we are via the environment. We still retain our ability to learn, but we have a diminished chance of increasing our actual general mental ability, regardless how much we study. Now, depending upon how much of our actual mental ability is determined by our genes, that early encouragement can make a significant difference in our mental ability as adults. I think everyone agrees on this point. The disagreement sets in when it is claimed that, even with the best possible environmental stimuli, a person with a low genetic endowment will never breach a certain point in terms of intelligence. But really, this is roughly like saying that, regardless how much good food, fresh air and exercise a person has as a youth, if they are genetically determined to be short, while they may be able to increase their height a bit, it won't be by much (height is ca. 85-90% heritable in Caucasian adult males, and about 75-80% heritable in Caucasian females; for Asians and Africans the numbers are sometimes reported as significantly lower, sometimes as slightly lower; some posit that variation in heritability may be itself due to environmental factors, with heritability increasing as environmental stress decreases). At the same time, and this is key, this does not mean that person would, for example, never be able to play basketball professionally, a sport in which height is considered highly advantageous. Just ask Muggsy Bogues. In other words, "intelligence", though a good indicator of overall success in Western society, is never absolute, and must never be taken as an indicator of value, which is actually inherent in each and every human by virtue of his or her humanity.

As to the point about bracketing: I really don't know if there are "other" explanations for the difference. In everything I've read, the discussion centers around environmental factors, hereditary factors, and how these two may or may not be involved in the development of intelligence. Perhaps this is because most of it stems from either psychometrics or behavioral genetics. It's a bit open-ended, but if you have something in mind or have an idea of where to look, please make mention of it. --Aryaman (talk) 23:34, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

The hereditarian position: how much is enough?

New bunches of statements.

There seems to be disagreement over what constitutes an adequate description for the hereditarian viewpoint. What do you think constitutes an adequate description?

Be as brief of verbose as you need to be.

Statement by Ramdrake

There are a number of papers discussing the hereditarian position. However, it is important to note that the great majority of those papers come from a few researchers in the field of psychometrics, a few of them particularly prolific (I'm among others thinking of Rushton with 50+ papers on the subject). However, this subject should in all logic also interest the fields of anthropology, population genetics and neuroscience among others. Searching through those fields finds few if any proponents of the hereditarian position, and a certain number of researchers that have written papers on the subject either on a cautionary tone, or who have outright denounced the research for a number of reasons. It therefore seems to have been uniformly, heavily criticized outside of the field of psychology, and even within that field, its legitimate status has come under attack by many (Mackintosh, Nisbett, etc.) Without insisting that the hereditarian position is fringe, this at least should demonstrate that it is the position of a small minority. Therefore,if it is to be described, it should be described rather succintly. Previously, discussions were held to introduce one such argument used by some hereditarian researchers, namely that intelligence is a function of brain size, and that Blacks have smaller brains. TO my knowledge, the only researchers advancing this argument are Rushton and in a lesser position Jensen. Another section which was pushed for reintroduction was a section from the Dec 2006 version of the article which waxed verbose on the social outcomes of IQ, linking the lower IQ scores of Blacks to all sorts of social misfortunes. I am of the contention that the hereditarian position can be adequately summarized in the article without devoting entire sections to suggestions which are tantamount to OR and which come very close to what one could call scientific racism.--Ramdrake (talk) 21:44, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Addendum #1

Reply to Captain Occam:With all due respect, I believe an important caveat needs to be introduced here: virtually all of the evidence for (or against) this theory is within the field of psychometrics isn't an accurate description. Virtually all of the evidence for this theory has been claimed by psychometricians is more correct. Most of the claimed evidence comes the fields of genetics, anthropology, neurology, etc. and has been interpreted by psychometricians to support the hereditarian position (one needs only to think of Rushton's notorious meta-analyses). It is also in part because psychometricians have claimed to reinterpret this data to support their hypothesis that they have come under criticism, as non-experts dabbling in another field (see the faous example of Watson's claim about African intelligence), even though they are experts in their own field. I have other issues with this statement, but I'll wait for Reubzz to confirm where is the best place to make those comments.--Ramdrake (talk) 00:25, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Addendum #2

I still maintain that most of the evidence presented to support the hereditarian hypothesis comes from fields other that psyhchometrics: the brain size issue comes from neuroanatomy, heritability and between group heritability come from population genetics, and so on. The only supporting arguments which would be the purview of psychometricians are IQ test results themselves and considerations of g loading. Also, there are some affirmations that just aren't true: one topic in genetics which is relevant to this article is whether socially-defined racial groups correlate with genetic clusters based on biogeographical ancestry. (The consensus seems to be that they do..) We have supplied several reviews which show that the mainstream position in genetics is actually that socially-constructed races are not supported by genetic cluster analysis. I have also supplied several reviews to the effect that the hereditarian hypothesis finds few if any adherents outside the field of psychometrics. Therefore, I would say that devoting 25% of the article to the hereditarian hyptohesis (when of the remaining 75% we have to talk about the history of the debate, the consensus position on "race" and on "intelligence", those who hold these studies meaningless because they refute the biological reality of races or that intelligence can be reduced to a single number, and then the environemental hypothesis basically boils down to given equal validity to the hereditarian hypothesis.--01:42, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Occam, I have no doubt that this is how you see the situation. However, other people may see the situation in a way very different to the way you see it. Personnally, assigning fields to these chapters, I find that 60 of the 96 pages deal with subjects other than psychometrics per se (dividing up chapters between sciences when chapters are multidisciplinary). The proportion would go even higher if we were to do the same analysis for Rushton, possible the main proponent of the hereditarian position nowadays.--Ramdrake (talk) 03:05, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Addendum #3

I take strong exception to Varoon Arya's statement that psychometricians are the "real experts" in this subject and that other fields are "tangentially involved": by the very definition of its terms "race and intelligence" is a multidisciplinary endeavour, partaking of genetics (for heredity concerns, WGH and BGH and concerns of the biological meaning of "race"), neurobiology (for the anatomical substratum of intelligence), psychology (for IQ measurements), anthropology (for concerns of race as a social construct and in some measure as a biological construct through physical anthropology), sociology (for policy implications) and even philosophy of science (for the ethics of the research). All these fields are involved with no one field having obviously "more expertise" than another. Therefore, I believe we should evaluate the position of all these fields on the matter as being on par with each other, as opposed to psychometrics (arguably the one most favorable to the hereditarian position) being given a dominant position over the others. This might be one of the points we need to mediate specifically. However, re-reading Varoon Arya's comment, I'm thinking fo something else we should probably discuss and agree on: is the article about the "environmental vs hereditarian debate", in which case VA is actually right that it ouccurs betweeen psychometricians and behavioral geneticists mainly, or is it about "race and intelligence as a field of study", in which case my comment just above stands: we need to involve all other fields on a par with psychometricians and behavioral geneticists.--Ramdrake (talk) 17:11, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

I believe Slrubenstein's point is that a geneticist doesn't have to have studied the heritability of intelligence for his/her view of heritability to be germane to the topic, or an anthropologist to have studied "race and intelligence" directly for their views on race to be pertinent. Any criticism which they level at the topic, as long as it is grounded in their area of expertise could be grounds for inclusion, space and notability permitting.--Ramdrake (talk) 19:30, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Addendum #4

On the subject of WP:MNA, I'd be very careful, as some criticism comes from scientists who directly challenge the biololgical meaning of "races", and others who challenge IQ as a proper representation of intelligence. We cannot start the article by making the assumptions that race is biologically meaningful, or that IQ properly measures intelligence, as the first of these is against mainstream opinion and the second is contested by a significant proportion of experts. These considerations, which pre-empt the debate, also need to be included in the article.--Ramdrake (talk) 19:40, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Statement by David.Kane

The article should devote at least 25% of its content, measured by word-count, to an explanation of, and the evidence for, the hereditarian position, as discussed in papers in the peer-reviewed scientific literature. David.Kane (talk) 22:25, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Why? Slrubenstein | Talk 22:39, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

It would be helpful for you to give a brief explanation for this specific number, so we can see your understanding behind it and how you are interpreting the dispute and WP policy. Reubzz (talk) 22:51, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

I am not wedded to 25% specifically. If mediation concluded that 15% or 50% was appropriate, then that would be fine with me. I just think that it is critical to have some specific number chosen. Without that guidance, then the next time someone adds a paragraph on, say, brain size (with references to the peer-reviewed literature), then some other editor will, reasonably enough, delete it and cite WP:UNDUE as his reason. This is the central problem that we need to solve. Without this sort of guidance, the cycle will just repeat. I choose 25% because it seemed a reasonable compromise. There are two major positions: environmental and hereditarian. I believe that strongly that the hereditarian position is not WP:FRINGE. I think that there are strong arguments for both environmental and hereditarian. I would hesitate to characterize either of them as majority or minority. Instead, I would say that the majority position is: We don't know. Putting all that together, 25% seems like a reasonable number. David.Kane (talk) 01:12, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Statement by T34CH

I hate to think of this in hard numbers, as this is very limiting. It should be enough to explain what the hypothesis is and why, without getting into a back and forth debate about the evidence. 25% is a strange number to use if we're also going to include a description of the each of the environmental hypotheses, as this would give it equal or greater presence in the article. (this is especially true if we are to have an overview section, history, etc etc) The APA lit review finds some evidence for environmental influence and no evidence for genetic influence. Thus, more space and attention should be given to the explanations for racial differences in IQ (as opposed to intelligence) where some evidence exists.

Of course, a different focus and structure to the article would change my answer. I'm open to the ideas Slrubenstein is suggesting. T34CH (talk) 23:37, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

I think Occam is getting us further afield than is productive. Are we to begin discussing all the source material and content already, or only the question at hand?

• Snyderman & Rothman is neither scientific nor comprehensive, so using it as a basis for the structure or content of the article is a mistake.
• I have no idea what Occam is trying to show by stating that the brain size article from 1980 is cited 89 times. There are papers from 2009 that are cited 600 times.
• Getting into the correlation between IQ and achievement is less interesting than the correlation between IQ and intelligence.
• The Jensen chapter is totally outside the topic of discussion, as of course Jensen is going to claim that he is right. It also (at least the first half that I looked over) goes much further in depth on anthropology and sociology than psychometrics. Apparently Jensen thinks these are extremely notable issues to explore. T34CH (talk) 05:11, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Re: . Varoon knows very well that Miele a controversial figure (he's the one that edited that out of Miele's wp article), and that we're more interested in peer-reviewed scientific sources than controversial figures interviewing controversial figures for use as "representative sources". T34CH (talk) 07:20, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

I endorse Mathsci's suggestion. We should build a list of acceptable representative sources and use those to decide the content of the article, not the other way around. T34CH (talk) 17:11, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Re: "Other disciplines". VA claims that we should ignore everything but psychometricians and "behavioral geneticists". According to the indexes used by the journal Behavioral Genetics, there appears to be quite a lot of cross over with Anthropology, Biology, and Social Sciences. It's quite impossible to believe that such cross over goes only one way (that Behavioral Genetics informs those disciplines, but not the other way around). The Human Genome Project's page on the topic uses intelligence as an example and frames the issue much as the non-psychometrician "environmentalists" have: as a problem with no good definitions, questionable validity and reliability, and a high degree of difficulty in extrapolating in-group findings to explain between-group differences. Let's keep in mind that the genome project is only talking about one trait here. Throw race in the mix and you multiply the uncertainty. This is why I think that when researchers such as Jensen say they have conclusive evidence, they should be treated as holding a clearly minority opinion. T34CH (talk) 20:05, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Re: Jensen's conclusions, in Jensen & Rushton 2005, the claim is made that there is a definite conclusion: "Our conclusion, that the Black–White IQ difference is partly heritable, accords with previous analytic reviews of this literature." They refer to this as a conclusion several times in the article. Sounds like they have found conclusive evidence to me. That's why I had said that, because I read the article in the past. Please stop your snide little remarks about me. T34CH (talk) 07:58, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Statement by Captain Occam

I agree with Ramdrake that the majority of support for the hereditarian hypothesis comes from researchers in the field of psychometrics, and that it receives less support from researchers in most other areas. However, something that I think needs to be considered is that virtually all of the evidence for (or against) this theory is within the field of psychometrics, so psychometricians are inevitably going to be more qualified to make judgments about the strength or weaknesses of this evidence than researchers in other fields would be. Hypothetically, one might expect geneticists to be able to make a judgment about whether genes which influence IQ are distributed unequally between ethnic groups, but at this point most geneticists are agreed that none of the specific genes which influence IQ have yet been conclusively identified, and only a few of them (such as DTNBP1 and CHRM2) have been identified as candidates. Therefore, while genetics can certainly be expected to make a significant contribution to this debate once it becomes possible to compare the distribution of IQ-influencing genes between ethnic groups, genetics has not yet progressed to the point where it can provide much evidence about the cause of the IQ difference.

That isn’t to say genetics has nothing to contribute to this topic; at the very least, one topic in genetics which is relevant to this article is whether socially-defined racial groups correlate with genetic clusters based on biogeographical ancestry. (The consensus seems to be that they do, although Varoon Arya can provide more papers on this point than I can.) However, if the article provides the views of geneticists about the cause of the IQ difference with equal weight to the views of psychometricians about this, we risk running into the problem Slrubenstein described of ignoring the issue of which academics are most qualified to interpret the evidence in question.

The way I think the hereditarian hypothesis’s representation in the article should be determined is by first determining the percentage of psychometricians who favor this viewpoint. The Snyderman & Rothman study found that a majority of intelligence researchers favor this viewpoint. Not all psychometricians are intelligence researchers, but intelligence researchers make up a sizable portion of them, so assuming the rate of acceptance of this theory is somewhat lower in other areas of psychometrics, we can place the acceptance of this theory at around 50% in psychometrics as a whole. Then there’s the question of how the views of psychometricians should be weighted against the views of researchers in other areas. Although researchers in other areas are obviously more numerous than psychometricians, as I stated earlier they also are not quite as qualified to evaluate evidence which is almost exclusively within the field of psychometrics. Therefore, I think viewpoints inside and outside psychometics should be given approximately equal representation in the article. Since this means the views of psychometricians being given around 50% of the space devoted to explanations of the IQ difference, and the hereditarian hypothesis being given around 50% of the space devoted to the views of psychometricians, this means the space given to the hereditarian hypothesis should be around 50% of 50%, or 25%. In other words, I largely agree with David.Kane’s suggestion, although not necessarily for the same reason.

Regarding specific points: the most contentious line of data I’ve suggested be included is the one about variation in brain size, and part of the reason for others’ opposition to this has been because it’s discussed mainly by Jensen and Rushton. However, the most commonly-cited paper I’ve been able to find about this is not by Jensen or Rushton; it’s Analysis of brain weight. I. Adult brain weight in relation to sex, race, and age by Ho, Roessmann, Straumfjord, and Monroe. This was published in Archives of Pathology and Laborotory Medicine, and according to Google Scholar is cited by 89 other papers; Jensen and Rushton are not by any means the only other researchers discussing this study. Therefore, it seems negligent for our article to not mention it.

The last specific piece of content that’s been discussed so far is the functional and social significance of the IQ difference. I don’t think this section should be as contentious as it apparently is, for three reasons. First: the functional and social effects of the IQ difference would be the same regardless of whether this IQ difference is caused by genetic or environmental factors, so discussing this does not favor one hypothesis over another. Second: the social and functional outcomes with which IQ correlates are not particularly controversial; for example, the APA statement regards them as well-established. And third: the social and functional outcome of the IQ difference is perhaps the least taboo aspect of this topic. It has a well-known name—the racial achievement gap—and is discussed by well-known education specialists such as Abigail Thernstrom. (Thernstrom recognizes the social and functional effects of the IQ difference, but believes the IQ difference to be environmentally caused, and potentially reducible through remedial education.) To dismiss the views of the vice-chair of the United States Commission on Civil Rights as “scientific racism” seems absurd. --Captain Occam (talk) 23:59, 16 November 2009 (UTC

Ramdrake, I believe it best to issue a responce in the form of your own statement I would respond via an "addendum" to your statement above so we can concentrate the viewpoints of all editors. If each statement initiates a new debate, it will be difficult to follow. Please remember to find a resolutional proposal in your statement. Should the Hereditarian viewpoint be given 25% as some parties have suggested, a smaller amount, a greater amount, etc.? Reubzz (talk) 01:18, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

What you’re saying about evidence from other fields is true as far as Rushton’s r/K life history theory is concerned, but if you read Jensen’s writings on this topic (I consider Jensen to be the central authority on the hereditarian viewpoint, just as Flynn is for the environmental viewpoint), you’ll find that at least 75% of the evidence he discusses is purely psychometric. While the views of researchers in other areas would be important in a discussion about Rushton’s r/K theory, his theory is a relatively small part of the hereditarian viewpoint in general, and this theory in general is definitely based almost entirely on psychometric evidence.

Something else that I neglected to mention in my original statement is that I also don’t think we have a reliable way of determining the percentage of researchers outside psychometrics who support or oppose the hereditarian view, because the only study about the percentage of researchers who hold each viewpoint (Snyderman & Rothman) was limited to intelligence researchers. This is another reason why I don’t think the assumption that the hereditarian hypothesis is generally opposed outside this field is a good reason to not explain it coherently in the article. --Captain Occam (talk) 00:38, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

I would ask all parties to refrain from making these massive statements. This subject is anything but simple, but I do believe that there must be a way of shortening the ideas you wish to express. It becomes difficult and stressful when I come back to my computer and find a massive discussion awaiting a long read. This is nothing against anyone, but for the sake of everyone, please try your best to shorten your statements. Cheers! Reubzz (talk) 01:13, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

When you said “Be as brief of verbose as you need to be”, I interpreted that to mean it wasn’t a problem for me to post something as lengthy as I thought was necessary to explain the reasoning behind my viewpoint. How long do you think would be the maximum reasonable length for these statements? --Captain Occam (talk) 01:39, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

I completely understand that this is a complex topic and thus no 3 sentences can explain a position. I am not setting a guideline or arbitrary line like "500 words". It is just a personal request to keep in mind in the future to try the best you can to limit your statements and discussions. If you need 10,000 words to explain or just 50, I'm cool. But you'll know from now on where I stand on that scale. :) Reubzz (talk) 02:00, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

My reply to Ramdrake’s newest point: first of all, I wasn’t suggesting that the hereditarian hypothesis be given 25% of the total space in the article; I’m not sure whether or not that’s what David.Kane was suggesting, but I was under the impression that this isn’t what he wanted either. What I was suggesting is that it be given 25% of the space that’s devoted specifically to explanations of the cause of the IQ gap, with the remaining 75% being given to the various environmental explanations that have been proposed for it. (SES, stereotype threat, educational differences, and so on.) This is percentage is lower than the percentage it was given in the 2006 version, so I’m conceding that this is one way our article shouldn’t be modeled after that version.

“We have supplied several reviews which show that the mainstream position in genetics is actually that socially-constructed races are not supported by genetic cluster analysis.”

You’ve provided several studies that you claimed said this, and most of them only stated that genetics fails to support the idea of races with platonic categories with discrete boundaries. We discussed this only a few days ago. You quoted one such study, and the portion of it that you quoted stated that this correlation exists. The same study also pointed out that race is useful in a biomedical setting, because races have varying rates of reactions to certain drugs. Reactions to drugs are determined by genetics, not by social categories, so the correlation between socially-defined races and genetic clusters is clearly strong enough for races to differ in biological traits.

Regarding the evidence that’s used in favor of the hereditarian hypothesis: I think you must not be familiar with the evidence that’s cited in favor of this if you’re under the impression that most of it is outside the field of psychometrics. Since Arthur Jensen is generally considered the most prominent proponent of the hereditarian perspective, and his book The g Factor is his most detailed explanation of his viewpoint about this, I’m going to describe the organization of the chapter in this book where Jensen discusses theories about the cause of the IQ difference:

1. An analysis of the correlation between races and genetic groups: 12 pages (from genetics.)
2. Correlations between IQ differences and genetic distance: 6 pages (genetics + psychometrics)
3. Race, intelligence and brain size: 5 pages (neurology)
4. G and g loading: 2 pages (psychometrics)
5. IQ heritability within and between groups: 13 pages (psychometrics + genetics)
6. IQ regression towards the mean: 3 pages (psychometrics)
7. Pseudo-race groups and IQ: 1 page (psychometrics)
8. Explanation of how to test hypotheses about the cause of the IQ difference: 2 pages (psychometrics)
9. Structural equation modeling for mental traits: 8 pages (psychometrics)
10. Transracial adoption and IQ: 6 pages (psychometrics)
11. Racial admixture and IQ: 9 pages (psychometrics)
12. IQ and myopia: 2 pages (psychometrics)
13. Environmental effects on IQ: 9 pages (psychometrics)
14. The interaction of race, sex, and ability: 2 pages (psychometrics)
15. Non-genetic biological factors affecting IQ: 9 pages (psychometrics)
16. Theories about the cause of the IQ difference: 7 pages (psychometrics)

Jensen’s analysis of this is 96 pages long. 60 of those pages (63%) are taken up exclusively by psychometric evidence, and another 19 (20%) are taken up by evidence that combines psychometric data with evidence from other fields. If we split this 20% halfway between psychometrics and the other fields from which it uses data, we get a total of 73% of Jensen’s cited evidence for this theory coming from psychometrics. Because Jensen is the most prominent proponent of the hereditarian hypothesis, I think it’s reasonable to assume that his treatment of this evidence is representative of the overall proportions of fields from which this theory uses data.

Reubzz, you can move this comment if I’ve posted it in the wrong place (Right place, just make responces in area of your statement so mediators can see each person's opinions - Reubzz (talk)). --Captain Occam (talk) 02:44, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

We should try to take a look at this from an objective as possible approach. This discussion about what in the book covers what topic is subjective without any real definite brightline. It would be preferred if the ideas in the book, the evidence to support it and the like, are used in discussion rather than the percentages of information in the book. Reubzz (talk) 03:16, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

It’s a pretty long book. Even just considering this one chapter, I think 96 pages’ worth of ideas and the evidence for them is more than I can summarize in a talk page comment, particularly after you’ve expressed concern about the length of some of our earlier comments. --Captain Occam (talk) 03:43, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Incidentally, if you want to read this chapter and decide for yourself how much of the evidence is from the field of psychometrics, I've found it online here. It’s missing most of the references / end notes and all of the diagrams, but other than that (as far as I can tell, from briefly glancing over it) it appears to be the entire chapter.

Whoever uploaded this chapter there probably violated Jensen's copyright on it by doing so, but I suppose it still might be useful for the purposes of this discussion. --Captain Occam (talk) 04:27, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Another good general audience presentation is the 2002 Miele book "Intelligence, Race, And Genetics: Conversations With Arthur R. Jensen". It covers all the major points and does so in a succinct manner. It also provides a brief but comprehensive response by hereditarianism to the most popular environmentalist claims (something missing from the current article). Perhaps this book is also one which could be considered as representative. --Aryaman (talk) 05:50, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Statement by DJ

re: Xavexgoem's question. I would characterize Sternberg and Nisbett as anti-hereditarian as they take an affirmative stance that hereditarians are wrong. Flynn is essentially anti-hereditarian also. Others are more strictly non-hereditarian as they are also non-environmenalist. Note however that, for example, Nisbett (2009) and Sternberg et al (2005) disagree on many fundamental points. Each is nearly as different from one another as they are from Jensen (1998). They only happen to agree on the answer to the question: what's the contribution of genetic factors to group differences?

re: Multiple disciplines. This is mostly about psychometrics and psychology. Behavioral genetics, for example, is mostly practiced by psychologists (e.g. Thomas J. Bouchard, Jr.) for the reason that phenotype measurement requires specialization. There are prominent individuals from fields other than psychology, but no other field really owns this topic as does psychology and in particular "individual differences" psychology (for which "psychometrics" is often used as a synonym).

re: how much is enough? Enough to cover the data and arguments relevant to the hereditarian view just as we cover the variety of non-herediarian views. This can be accomplished by taking a data/argument-centric view rather than a conclusion-centric view. It likewise should be mentioned as one of many views where summaries are presented, such as the lede. This approach requires that we establish which particular data/arguments to include rather than whether to include hereditarian opinions or not. These topics are likely the most pro-hereditarian and thus the most controversial with regard to inclusion:

• the implications of within group heritability for between group heritability
• Spearman's hypothesis and reaction time data
• adoption and early intervention programs
• structural equation modeling of between group differences
• regression equations among siblings
• brain size and other biological correlates
• evolutionary models (see the January issue of PAID)

That order is loosely in order of increasing controversy. The downside of using a topic-centric approach is that no scholar's view is entirely clear at any one point unless more space is spent on that too. --DJ (talk) 08:07, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

"but no other field really owns this topic as does psychology" If you mean that the overwhelming majority of publications on the topic are by psychologists, I agree with you. But I am not at all sure that this is the proper criteria for deciding hat disciplines are relevant. For example, I would expect geneticists (whether in biology or physical anthropology) to know a lot more about heritability of anything including intelligence, than psychologists. Moreover, the fact that very litle research is done under the rubric of a particular discipline does not mean that members of that discipline are not well-suited to comment and it does not mean that members of that discipline have not commented. We need to acknowledge that quantity does not necessarily indicate quality. Einstein published four important articles in his life, and those four changed physics as we know it. It is possible that members of a discipline have not published a lot on this topic because of what their expetise tells them. It is possible that they publish just a little because everyone in the discipline agrees that what they have publsihed ends discussion of the matter. This is why I say that we have to establish first what diferent disciplines claim expertise is, and what they recognize as significant, and what journals or other venues for publication they consider reliable. For example (this is a similar but different topic because I don't want to bias this particular discussion - I really am trying to keep my views on race and intelligence to myself and just make suggestions about how to resolve the dispute) there has been a lot of stuff published by biologists on sociobiology. Since this approach claims to explain cultural phenomena, you'd expect anthropologists to publish a lot on sociobiology too. I know of thre anthropologists who at specific times were influenced by sociobiology (Lionel Tiger, Robin Fox, and Napolean Chagnon) but they have not published a lot that is sociobiological. Why? I think that it is because Marshall Sahlins wrote one very short book lambasting sociobiology as it applies to humans. Along with a volume edited by Ashley Montague, this one book was seen by most anthropologists as ending the debate on sociobiology. Now whenever someone (e.g. a student0 asks about sociobiology, they are simply told: read Sahlins' book. I am not saying one side is right or wrong. I am saying that biology and anthropology are equally invested in sociobiology, and that most anthropologists feel that one book said all that needs to be said on the matter. This is a case where many (we do not have to say all) people consider wuality to be distinct from quantity. My only point is that quantity of publications is not always an indicator in (1) how much one discipline feels work by another discipline is relevant to their own work, (2) how much one discipline feels it has expertise over the subject matter addressed by anothe discipline, (3) what one discipline thinks about research done by another discipline. Quantity alone is not sufficient to interpret what is going on. You actully have to read book reviews and other work to understand why there is a striking difference in how much as been published, what the difference means. Slrubenstein | Talk 09:26, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

In this case, I think we do justice to these more tangentially related topics, such as the meaning of race or the sociobiology debate, by including short summaries with pointers to related articles and making necessary assumptions (WP:MNA). That also allows us to avoid the difficult (WP:NOR) task of synthesizing (WP:SYN) a diffuse conclusion.

Else we need quotes like this to work with:

The problem is that presenting an argument based on poor-quality data, especially on such an emotional issue as racial differences, biases general acceptance of stronger findings supporting the argument. Gottfredson (1998, 2005) has correctly pointed out that findings of racial influences on intelligence are deeply disturbing to many social scientists who are then motivated to attack reports of differences. The use of measures that clearly violate construct validity, or that are obtained in a methodologically inappropriate way, provides the attackers with ammunition. The problem is not that there will be an effect on the beliefs of specialists in the field. The problem is that other psychologists, including textbook writers, may propagate the belief that all studies on a topic are flawed because certain highly publicized ones were. (Source: Hunt and Carlson 2007, p 202, emphasis added)

--DJ (talk) 17:42, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Addendum #1: I continue to prefer the data/argument-centric approach to NPOV accounting. However, if the head-count approach is going to be considered, then I think we need to consider that the anti-hereditarian POV is not endorsed by the apex sources in this field (those with the highest reliability, most implied neutrality, most diverse inbound citations, etc.), and that there are a large number of anti-hereditarians who do not reject the plausibility of the hereditarian view, but rather interpret the data as leaning against it. For example:

• "If group differences in test performance do not result from the simple forms of bias reviewed above, what is responsible for them? The fact is that we do not know. Various explanations have been proposed, but none is generally accepted." -- Neisser et al 1996 -- multi-author study requested by a professional organization -- no support for either view
• "There is no definitive answer to why IQ bell curves differ across racial-ethnic groups." -- Gottfredson 1994/1997 -- 52 total signatories, requested by a national newspaper and reprinted in the journal Intelligence
• "Some laypeople I know – and some scientists as well--believe that it is a priori impossible for a genetic difference in intelligence to exist between the races. But such a conviction is entirely unfounded. There are a hundred ways that a genetic difference in intelligence could have arisen--either in favor of whites or in favor of blacks. The question is an empirical one, not answerable by a priori convictions about the essential equality of groups" Nisbett 2009 -- anti-hereditarian on the a priori plausibility of the hereditarian view
• " challenges social scientists who believe in an environmental explanation of the IQ gap between the races to bring their hypotheses forward. Given his competence and the present state of the social sciences, the result is something of a massacre..." Flynn 1980 -- a prominent anti-hereditarian on the historical imbalance of data and arguments in favor of hereditarianism (and, of course, it's a priori plausibility).

Likewise, in the 1980s survey, the second most common response, ahead of the environmentalist view, is "do not believe there are sufficient data to support any reasonable opinion". From this and more recent publications I think we can conclude that shades of "do not know" is actually the most common opinion of informed experts speaking neutrally rather than advancing a new hypothesis. It should be clear that holding this opinion requires not being convinced of either hereditarianism or environmentalism. It should also be clear that limiting discussion of pro-hereditarian data/arguments implicitly limits discussion of this view as well, which is clearly not acceptable per WP:NPOV. --DJ (talk) 17:26, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Addendum #2: Alternative suggestion for a next step: work on the lede. Have each interested editor or group of editors present a proposal for the lede. For example, see Talk:Race_and_intelligence#New_Intro.3F and Talk:Race_and_intelligence#The_opening_sentence. --DJ (talk) 03:52, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Statement by Mathsci

The fact that somebody writes a lengthy tract to support their point of view does not mean that a wikipedia article should give WP:UNDUE coverage to that view. Citation counts or articles in the media cannot be used as justification. Gottfredson's list of supporters for the hereditarian viewpoint was in fact countered by a list of a similar number of academic anthropologists. Once the subject has been identified as a controversial minority view, even amongst academic psychologists, it is inappropriate for a WP article to represent it as anything else. It also seems completely unreasonable to label eminent academics that have criticized the hereditarian viewpoint as being in an "opposition camp". They are just "expert commentators". Nicholas Mackintosh and Richard Nisbett work in the area of psychometrics and are therefore in a position to comment, although this might be tangential to their principal areas of research and the comments might have been requested by journal editors (e.g. for book reviews). Since many of the explanations suggested by psychologists for the hereditarian point of view involve areas outside their expertise such as anthropology, sociology, evolutionary biology, genetics and statistics, extreme care must be taken. This is one of the key points made by commentators. There is no dispute that there are genetic and environmental factors influencing scores in IQ tests. However, that is not the same as the connection being discussed between race, whatever that is, and intelligence, whatever that is. The lists of factors compiled above by wikipedia editors suggest that they are acting like amateur psychologists/anthropologists/geneticists/statisticians. It's not up to WP editors to do that kind of WP:SYNTHesis or involve themselves on talk pages in that kind of debate: that is why we use sources, without adding further comment. In writing an article about a controversial, inconclusive and poorly studied topic (at least internationally), the most we can say is that it is controversial, inconclusive and not much studied in academia. Quite a lot can be written in the article about the historical debate in the USA, but not so much about any underlying science.

Just as a reminder of the controversy and charges of flawed scientific methodology, here is the conclusion of a book review from 2006 of Richard Lynn's book "Race Differences in Intelligence" by M. Henneberg in the Journal of Biosocial Science:

This book is a frightening example of how an intelligent European author with good skills of academic presentation can argue any case by selectively ignoring vast areas of research on the roles of individual biological variation, cultural traditions and biases in psychological testing, and by creating conceptual entities from unreliable observational phenomena. This is dangerous because, in the past, similar arguments have confirmed racist political and layperson attitudes, and at their extremes resulted in the holocaust and apartheid.

For these reasons, I think that only a short summary of one or two paragraphs is required for this minority view. It should be accompanied by a brief mention of and reference to criticisms, for example from the appendix in the 2009 book of Nisbett. Mathsci (talk) 11:00, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

“It also seems completely unreasonable to label eminent academics that have criticized the hereditarian viewpoint as being in an "opposition camp". They are just "expert commentators". Nicholas Mackintosh and Richard Nisbett work in the area of psychometrics and are therefore in a position to comment, although this might be tangential to their principal areas of research and the comments might have been requested by journal editors (e.g. for book reviews).”

Why do psychologists such as Nisbett and Mackintosh deserve to be considered “expert commentators”, but eminent proponent of the hereditarian viewpoint don’t qualify as that? You haven’t pointed out any difference between people such as Mackintosh and Nisbett who oppose the hereditarian position and people such as Eysenck, Jensen and Cattell who support it, apart from the fact that the former are more numerous and that you agree with them. Mackintosh and Nisbett certainly don’t have any qualifications that the three supporters I mentioned don’t. Eysenck, Jensen and Cattell are psychometricians also, and all three of them are on Haggbloom 2002’s list of the 20th century’s 100 most eminent psychologists. Haggbloom’s review lists Eysenck as the 13th most eminent psychologist of the 20th century, Cattell as the 16th most eminent, and Jensen as the 47th most eminent. Nisbett and Mackintosh didn’t even make the list.

It sounds to me like you’re using the no true Scotsman fallacy. The only thing that makes Mackintosh and Nisbett “expert commentators” any more than Jensen, Eysenck and Cattell are is the fact that they agree with the viewpoint that you approve of. If you define what makes an "expert" as being based on whether a person agrees with you, then of course you can assert that none of the people who disagree with you are experts, but that doesn’t prove anything. --Captain Occam (talk) 12:53, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

They are distinguished academics. Firstly they have both won prestigious prizes; secondly they have both been elected to the highest scientific honour in each of their respective countries, namely the Royal Society and the National Academy of Sciences. Probably this is fairly rare for academic psychologists (see the list below). It's unclear why the stature of the two highest scientific societies in the UK and the USA is being disputed. Neither of the academics I mentioned has experienced controversy in their career as far as I am aware, for example extremely adverse book reviews. Quite the contrary. Neither of them has had to seek funding from non-governmental sources. It would be hard to imagine more expert commentators. Here is an example of another psychologist recently elected FRS Fergus Craik . I haven't checked if he's on the Haggbloom list of psychologists. Membership of the National Academy of Sciences was one their three main qualitative criteria. The report was written in 2002, the same year Richard Nisbett was elected to the NAS. Here's the WP list of psychologists in the NAS. Thus they appear to be using the same sort of qualitative criterion as me, though not properly internationalized, since they did not consider the Royal Society, Academie Francaise, etc. (BTW Robert Sternberg was a past president of the American Psychological Society, another one of three qualitive criteria of the Haagbloom list.) Mathsci (talk) 15:18, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Appointment to the National Academy of Sciences is perhaps the most important honor that can be given to a scientists in the United States. Mathsci is making an important point: we need objective criteria to judging significance and reliability. Captain Occam is concerned about the

Note I'm only making a statement about the two particular commentators that I've mentioned (there are plenty of others). Editors should avoid framing the article as some kind of academic dispute between two opposing camps. There is no evidence for that. The portion of the article under discussion concerns a hereditarian theory put forward by a group of psychologists and the criticisms it has received. Editors' views do not come into this; the problem is just to locate reliable sources. Mathsci (talk) 16:04, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Statement by Varoon Arya

In my opinion, making a guideline in the form of a percentage or a number of paragraphs is neither justified nor feasible. The issue is whether the results of so-called "hereditarian" research should be adequately (i.e. in a manner which is coherent and sufficent to facilitate proper understanding) represented in the article. This would not be an issue if were it not for the fact that some editors insist upon scandalizing the work of researchers such as Jensen, Gottfredson, Rushton and Lynn. We would take a point-by-point approach (similar to what DJ has suggested), and simply report on findings which are either supportive or contradictory of a particular thesis (such as the improtance of SES, the role of test bias, the correlation of within-group heritability to between-group heritability, etc.). This would allow the article to focus on the issues involved and the arguments advanced instead of polarizing the issue any more than is absolutely necessary.

Those who disagree with me will likely say that I take this position because I want the hereditarian position over- or disproportionately represented. This is not true. I think that arguments stand or fall on their own merits, regardless of who makes them, and that the issue of proportional representation is being misused in this discussion to advance a particular point of view over another. Proportional representation (WP:UNDUE) was introduced as a key point of policy to make sure that people did not inflate the representation of pseudo- or non-scientific theories like the flat-earth theory in articles about the Earth. The hereditarian position is based upon neither pseudoscience nor "fringe" research. It's simply a set of interrelated hypotheses which, when taken together, lead to a potentially controversial conclusion. To argue that, by presenting findings which support the hereditarian position, or that, by presenting findings which contradict the environmentalist position, we run the risk of violating WP:UNDUE is both intellectually dishonest and, while arguably conforming to the letter of Misplaced Pages policy, in stark contrast to its spirit.

The point raised by Slrubenstein and Mathsci, i.e., that we should bring in the views of anthropologists, biologists, sociologists, non-behavioral geneticists, etc. is hardly an innocent appeal to ascertain the importance of this field of research. It's an attempt to marginalize the findings of hereditarians by showing that the prevailing opinion of scientists in those tangentially related fields, as they generally reject the concept of race as denoting anything other than a social construct, agrees with those opponents of hereditarianism who actually specialize in the relevant disciplines. This would give the impression that environmentalism is the only scientifically credible view, though by dishonest means. There is no good reason not to stick to the research which has been conducted by experts in the field of psychometrics and behavioral genetics. That they sometimes make appeals to the findings of other, related disciplines is no cause for alarm, as behavioral genetics is, by and large, interdisciplinary. Any critique made by anthropologists, sociologists or biologists of psychometricians being ill-qualified to make pronouncements upon the findings of their respective fields will be applicable to all such psychometricians, regardless of their particular findings. Thus, it would do nothing to advance this particular article.

To summarize, I think DJ and Occam have made the most viable suggestions, i.e. to approach the topic on a point-by-point basis, and to present the relevant findings regardless of origin. The body of the article should discuss these central issues fairly, and "pro-hereditarian" and/or "anti-environmental" findings should not be marginalized to a single section of the article. A separate section, perhaps titled "Conclusions", could be created to discuss the conclusions particular researchers draw from the body of research which has been discussed in the main section of the article. In that section, it should be made clear that the synthesis made by Jensen, Rushton, Lynn, etc., i.e. their conclusions, are highly controversial and do not find mainstream support. It should also be made clear that the majority of experts, both within the field of psychometrics and in other tangentially related fields, hold that either only the environment can account for between-group IQ differences, or that, if there is a genetic contribution, it is so small as to be insignificant. --Aryaman (talk) 16:17, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Normal practice when writing wikipedia articles is first to locate a list of principal sources. Since no wikipedia editor is presumed to be an expert in this particular subject, that applies especially here. We can then discuss which parts of them to report on in the article, possibly with a division into subtopics. Because this is a controversial subject, we should also follow the sources fairly closely. For the hereditarian point of view, I would assume that the 2005 paper of Rushton and Jensen is the most up to date review. In a similar way, once we've reported on a contentious theory, we should then follow this presentation with a report on any criticisms, again from a representative list of sources. So my suggestion is not to make lists of topics, which will probably be counterproductive and a method of generating futile debate on talk pages; we should instead make a list of the principal most up to date sources and then proceed from there. I'm not particularly attached to a number of paragraphs or a percentage. I am in favour of separating out contributions and ideas from particular individuals, like Flynn, rather than the present discursive and slightly rambling presentation. (My own role, as always, will just be in helping to locate and possibly make available sources where the need arises.) Mathsci (talk) 16:56, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm not against collecting a list of representative sources. In my opinion, the Jensen & Rushton paper is a good one, though it could certainly be supplemented (for example, by Jensen's "g Factor"). If we can agree on that, great. When it comes to making use of the texts on that list, I'm not sure we see eye to eye. I see significant advantages in breaking the discussion in the article down to the level of individual issues upon which many scholars have published findings. One advantage is that it would help new contributors understand where they are to add new material. Another is the possibility of expanding one or more such sections as more research findings become available, and when/where it is justified, splitting overly large sections into new articles with meaningful, non-POV-fork titles. For example, a great deal has been written on the issue of racial/class/cultural/content bias in IQ testing, and this might eventually prove worthy of its own article. It's notable, a number of experts have written about it, and important conclusions have been drawn. If we frame this article around the findings of particular pieces of literature, such expansion becomes nearly impossible, and it becomes very difficult to filter criticism directed at particular arguments from criticism directed at conclusions, at scholars, at sources of funding, etc. --Aryaman (talk) 18:14, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Good. I think in this particular case we should start with Jensen and Rushton's 2005 paper. My suggestion, which might sound odd, is that Ramdrake or T34CH writes the summary (including details from any extra sources cited there). Then Varoon Arya or Captain Occam writes a summary of the criticisms. We can then proceed to consensus from there. My basic point is that any wikipedia editor should be capable of writing an accurate summary, even if in RL they might possibly disagree with it. That's how wikipedia works. Mathsci (talk) 23:06, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm willing to assume that you do not intend to condescend, patronize or appear overly pedantic with that suggestion, so I'll go along with it if doing so will assuage your fears of manipulation or POV-pushing. But let's get the list of literature ready first, ok? --Aryaman (talk) 23:24, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

We can proceed, but can you please refactor or reformulate the statement above to remove any kind of personal remarks and show your good faith? Many thanks, Mathsci (talk) 00:08, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

That is me assuming good faith, Mathsci. Perhaps you think your suggestion could not come across in a highly condescending fashion, e.g. as implying that neither I nor Captain Occam are capable of summarizing the Jensen & Rushton report in a neutral manner, and that we need to be taught a lesson in "how Misplaced Pages works", with you as our guide. You've also assumed you know what our personal views are regarding this matter, though I feel quite confident that you don't know mine. That in itself could be seen as a kind of personal attack. But, enough. Like I said, I'm willing to assume that this is not the case, but I did want to remind you that your comment was not nearly as unoffensive as you probably intended it. If that represents a fracture of the groundrules, I suppose it's my place to apologize for taking offense. So: I apologize. As it bothers you, I'll strike my previous comment out. Fair enough? --Aryaman (talk) 00:27, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

PS: While we're discussing this, I would prefer to defer my part in the above suggestion to DJ, as I have no qualms in admitting that he's better at summaries than I am. He has done an excellent job so far, and he also has better online access. (I do almost all my literature research the old way - a personal preference.) --Aryaman (talk) 00:42, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

←Thanks for refactoring. I think the right way of viewing this is what would happen when adding a section on critical reception in an article on a book. The correct thing to do is normally to find all available reviews in academic journals (and possibly elsewhere) and then prepare a summary with citations. Both positive and negative criticisms should appear when they exist. I think I prepared the book reviews in the section Dysgenics: Genetic Deterioration in Modern Populations in the BLP of Richard Lynn. Any editor theoretically should be capable of making a summary given the sources. Other editors can later comment on how accurately the summary matches the sources and suggest modifications if necessary. Mathsci (talk) 09:01, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Please only respond to each other's comments through explainations of your opinion and ways to group them together to reach mutual understandings. I am sure both Mathsci and Varoon Arya are only assuming good faith. Please stick to the content, not the contributor, or I will replace it with the indication of a personal attack as specified in the groundrules. Reubzz (talk) 00:39, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Re: T34CH's latest comments: I'm certainly not claiming that we should "ignore" everything but the results of psychometricians. But it should have a subordinate and/or prefatory role in the article. See WP:MNA.

As an example, the American Association of Physical Anthropologists, in their statement "Biological Aspects of Race", write:

Physical, cultural and social environments influence the behavioral differences among individuals in society. Although heredity influences the behavioral variability of individuals within a given population, it does not affect the ability of any such population to function in a given social setting. The genetic capacity for intellectual development is one of the biological traits of our species essential for its survival. This genetic capacity is known to differ among individuals. The peoples of the world today appear to possess equal biological potential for assimilating any human culture. Racist political doctrines find no foundation in scientific knowledge concerning modern or past human populations.

If this is the kind of statement we're discussing, I have no problem with including this information, provided it will satisfy the concerns of other editors, and provided it is allowed to stand exactly as it is written in the actual statement. (I add that last caveat because I recently discovered a badly mangled and clearly OR version of this statement in the Race article.)

Also, I would be surprised if any proponent of the hereditarian model, most of all Jensen, has ever claimed to provide "conclusive evidence". He's a scholar with controversial views, not a crackpot. Where are these claims regarding Jensen coming from, anyway? Perhaps actually reading Jensen's work would help dispel some of the misconceptions currently in circulation and get us back on track. --Aryaman (talk) 22:05, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

On widening the scope regarding the kinds of experts consulted

I'll make one last attempt at explaining my view on this issue, and then leave it up to the mediation process and the other editors to decide how we shall proceed.

Let us take the example of heredity. If we want to obtain a non-controversial definition of heredity, as well as explanations regarding how it is determined for human traits, it is probably best to turn to standard works on genetics. Provided doing so does not represent a violation of WP:MNA, I'm fine with including such information if it helps the reader understand the topic.

If, however, we want to discuss actual measurements of the heritability of a specific trait - in this case, intelligence - in a particular population, how can we do so without turning to the results of those who have conducted such studies? Disregarding whichever specific background a scientist may have, any research conducted on the heritability of intelligence in a population is relevant to the discussion of the heritability of intelligence in this article. If I haven't made that sufficiently clear before, I apologize. If including information from geneticists - or anyone from any discipline - who have not conducted research on the heritability of intelligence in populations can somehow improve this article's discussion of the heritability of intelligence, I'd like to know how. --Aryaman (talk) 18:11, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

First, you are showing bad faith by referring to this as "widening the scope of the article" when several people have regulaqrly insisted on looking to phyciscal anthropologists and biologists who do research on race and heredity as experts on race and heredity for about as long as the article has existed.

Second, you ask how adding maerial from geneticists would help. here is how: several pulished experts have said that pscyhologists - including those you refer to as the onces who have done research on the heritability of intelligence - have misused the concept of heritability. This makes there view highly relevant to the article, and it is in the area in which they have expertise: what is the concept of heritability, what does it measure, how can it be used, and how has it been misused? We are obliged by NPOV to add this material and really, Arya, don't you see how anything that further educates people about basic science is a way to improve an encyclopedia article on a topic that provides scientific research? How does it not improve the article is what I am dying to know! Slrubenstein | Talk 18:42, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

I have to ignore your comments on whether or not I'm showing "bad faith", as I can't well respond without being accused of breaking the groundrules of this mediation.

As I said: "Disregarding whichever specific background a scientist may have, any research conducted on the heritability of intelligence in a population is relevant to the discussion of the heritability of intelligence in this article." If the geneticists you refer to have conducted such research, then, as should be obvious, I'm in favor of including their findings. I've also said several times that any pertinent and qualified criticism of psychometricians' work needs to be included. Either we're talking past each other, or one of us refuses to agree with the other as a matter of principle. That's not intended as a personal attack. But I'm at a loss as to why I'm being consistently misunderstood by select users. --Aryaman (talk) 19:22, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

I was trying to answer this question: "If including information from geneticists - or anyone from any discipline - who have not conducted research on the heritability of intelligence in populations can somehow improve this article's discussion of the heritability of intelligence, I'd like to know how." Now you point out that you had previously written, "I've also said several times that any pertinent and qualified criticism of psychometricians' work needs to be included" as if this should be be taken to include geneticists who are experts on heritability but who have not conducted research specifically on inheritance. I am sorry that I misunderstood you. If you are now saying that criticisms of psychometricians from experts (on genetics or on race, for example) from other disciplines will improve the article, I apologize and strike out what I just wrote. Given that you accept criticisms from scholars from other disciplines even from people who have not done research on heritability of intelligence, I have to say Arya, I do not understand the question you asked. Mediator: this right here may be a great example of the kinds of breakdowns in communication that have prevented the article from moving forward. Perhaps right here is a place we could use your help mediating. Can you help Arya explain to me why he asked that question, given that he just said he views of experts, even if they have not conducted research on the heritability of intelligence, is acceptable to him? Mediator: can you help Arya understand how I thought I was answering his question? Thanks, Slrubenstein | Talk 21:24, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

I believe both parties in this immediate discussion are doing the best they can to be acting in good faith. I was actually just about to come to this conversation and make a reminder to focus not on the individual, but on the argument. I have been a bit confused about this specific point - whether to include studies and data from sources that did not directly cover the issue of "race and intelligence". I am having trouble myself understanding where Varoon Arya stands on this. Varoon (may I use that for short?) do you favor information from any discipline included in the article as pertaining to the controversy, even if that study did not directly base the question on race and intelligence? If yes, then what information would fall under that, and if no, then please clarify your stance. Slrubenstein, is it correct that I take from your statement that you would oppose information being included if it didn't directly answer the issue of race+intelligence? Lastly, both parties, remember again to focus on the issue at hand - do not force a breakdown in communication. Just cool down (maybe take a stroll outside your office/room, etc.) and rethink your statement you are about to publish to make sure you aren't making a shadow-swipe at someone. Any specific concerns, you can always hit me up a message on my talk page. Cheers! --Reubzz (talk) 21:40, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

First, let me say that I agree 100% with Ramdrake's characterization, below, of the difference between Varoon's approach and his. I agree with Ramdrake's approach; I understand Varoon's approach but think it will have the effect of institutionalizing one interpretation of the conflict, and will not really resolve the conflict (i.e. part of the conflict is over how to understand the conflict, I mean among editors). Reubzz, to answer your question I am a strong believer in WP:SYNTH. The best way I could answer your question is with two hypothetical examples: (1) one source makes certain claims about the heritability of intelligence; another source makes claims about the concept heritability, without mentioning how it has been used in debates over intelligence; I use sourse two to criticize source one. I would oppose this kind of edit as violating SYNTH. (2) one source makes certain claims about the heritability of intelligence. Another source has NEVER done any research on race an intelligence, or indeed any research on intelligence, but is an expert on human evolution or population genetics and makes claims about the concept heritability, and then mentions that the concept has been misused in debates over intelligence; I use sourse two to criticize source one. I would favor this kind of edit, I think it complies fully with our policies. Slrubenstein | Talk 22:08, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Reubzz and everyone, I believe my previous comment here becomes most germane: I have this suspicion that Varoon was seeing this article as documenting the "environmental vs hereditarian debate", whereas myself (and possibly a few others) were seeing it as "race and intelligence as a field of study". If so, I would strongly recommend we discuss this element of the scope of the article first, as I must admit varoon is right in the first case, and I would dare say we're right in the second case. We all just need to agree on the scope of the article first.--Ramdrake (talk) 21:47, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Varoon, is Ramdrake's charachterization of your view correct? Reubzz (talk) 21:51, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I think it is. As we've been discussing on our respective talkpages (I wanted to make sure I understood Ramdrake correctly before proceeding), it seems we're largely talking past each other because we have fundamentally different views about the scope of this article.

It has been my assumption from the beginning that this article should discuss the results of psychometrics in relation to the issue of racial differences, i.e. the potential correlation between "race" and "intelligence". That's why WP:MNA figures pretty large in this article for me. When I read "race and intelligence", I naturally assume the data source will be primarily from psychologists and behavioral geneticists. I don't expect to find the views of anthropology, biology, sociology, or any other discipline, really, because I expect the Race article to cover the mainstream scientific view on any anthropological, biological, or sociological relevance of the concept. That's not a demand on this article - that's simply how I view the subject. If anyone cares to go back over my comments, I think they make sense when seen from this perspective. And, if I look back over the comments of Slrubenstein and Ramdrake with the idea in mind that they are assuming something fundamentally different about the scope, then I can see that their suggestions make sense as well.

Thus, provided Slrubenstein agrees, and provided I've characterized Ramdrake's observation correctly, then I fully support first determining exactly what the scope of this article should be, as well as the related issues of whether the title needs to be tweaked, and whether there needs to be an article which focuses exclusively on the primarily psychometric debate between hereditarians and non-hereditarians (similar to Creation–evolution controversy).

Also, if this really is the primary source of our conflict, then I would like to offer a full apology to both Slrubenstein and Ramdrake for any past grievances which might have arisen due to this misunderstanding. --Aryaman (talk) 22:12, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

I appreciate that a lot - I often felt you were trying to be reasonable even when I found myself very frustrated about the possibility of reasoning things out with you. I am sure you felt the same way and I would be glad indeed if we now have clarity about this matter and can move beyond. And yes, given what you say the scope of the article is the key. I would just add that for social scientists "context" is always an issue; would anyone question that research on race and intelligence (even narrowly defined) is motivated by policy questions? That is not far from politics. How much of this context is relevant? All of this is at issue in the "scope" question. Slrubenstein | Talk 22:25, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

I'll answer Ramdrake's question. The article has always between about the debate, mainly in the USA, concerning the possible correlation between race, whatever that is, and intelligence, whatever that is. The term "race gap" is one that has been applied in the USA to differences in average scores in IQ tests between self-identified population groups. The matter has a long history and has played a role in government policies in the USA. Various explanations have been put forward for these differences in scores and whether the averages have been changing in time (the "Flynn effect"). More recently a small group of psychologists has put forward a hereditarian theory, sometimes in books aimed at a general audience. This theory has used ideas from psychometrics, genetics, anthropology, evolutionary biology and statistics. It has been criticized in journal articles and in commissioned book reviews by experts in these areas. Some attempts have been made, particularly by Lynn, to extend the statements about "race gap" to the whole world population, in particular to sub-Saharan Africa; in this case, experts in psychometrics and other disciplines have pointed out, in commissioned book reviews and elsewhere, that Lynn's approach involved flawed scientific methodology, manipulation of statistics and the paucity or lack of controlled measurements. Other WP articles discuss the role of heritability and environment in determining intelligence; part of this discussion has reappeared in this article, because these have been mentioned as factors that might explain the "race gap" in the USA. The hereditarian theory has not been widely accepted in the academic community and, aimed as it has been at a general readership and policy makers, has sparked controversy in the media. Mathsci (talk) 05:21, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

I believe this is one of the most valuable posts to this page; MathSci has done a masterful job of summing up the entire situation. Slrubenstein | Talk 12:29, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

To clarify one point (I don't think I'm contradicting Mathsci when I point this out): "Hereditarian" views are by no means a "recent" development. They can be traced back to some of the first psychometricians to conduct large-scale testing in the US. Robert Yerkes, for example, developed the "Alpha" and "Beta" Intelligence Tests for use in the U.S. Army at the start of World War I. While those tests have been heavily criticized - and rightly so - for testing acculturation and not actual intelligence, they were more or less representative of the "orthodox" position at the time (Yerkes was president of the APA), and were used to inform the discussion regarding policies on immigration, eugenics and other issues. When biological positivism fell into disfavor (a trend which can be seen in multiple related disciplines, especially in the aftermath of World War II), social positivism took its place, though not completely. The 1951 UN Statement on Race is one expression of this change. Arthur Jensen's 1969 article in the Harvard Review was probably the first piece of research in recent times which, after taking the criticisms of social positivists into consideration, attempted to reformulate the "hereditarian" position. One reason why he's caught so much flak is that his position could be seen as a simple continuation of the almost pseudo-scientific approach taken in the early 20th century (think of Gould's Mismeasure of Man, for example). Thus, Jensen spends almost as much time defending himself from misleading characterizations of his work as he does conducting new research. Of course, both biological positivism and social positivism are forms of positivism, and positivism itself has come under attack by the "critical" movement which was largely inspired by Marxist thought and gained in prominence towards the end of the 20th century. It is this line of thinking which attempts to deconstruct the notions of "race" and "intelligence", and asks whether they are meaningful and/or valuable concepts.

The reason I mention this is that I believe this controversy cannot be properly characterized without an understanding of the currents of thought and the changes in ideology which have occurred in the past 100 years. Social scientists like to believe they are not hampered by the dominant ideologies of their times, but history consistently proves otherwise. The article could benefit from a careful revision of the "History" section, which should help put not only the past debate but also the modern debate into perspective. --Aryaman (talk) 16:38, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

"Social scientists like to believe they are not hampered by the dominant ideologies of their times, but history consistently proves otherwise." I agree but why restrict it, why not just say "scientists?" Slrubenstein | Talk 22:55, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Request

Please simply post your statement with a brief explaination of your opinion. I am trying to work out an agenda for issues to be discussed that would lead us to resolution. Please make your own statement - responces to others is not needed. If you hold a major disagreement with what someone said, simply inform me on my talk page rather than making this page impossible to read.

As some parties have suggested, page protection is an option, however I wish not to use that as I am confident you can follow this simple request.

I will sadly be off for a large part of the day, so please don't give me an essay to read when I come back. I need time to DIGEST your comments, please allow me to do that Reubzz (talk) 12:58, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Nah, that's not necessary. You end up getting into litmus territory - where everyone feels they're being dipped in a vat of heredity to see if they come out green... uhh... what I mean is, in mediation, it's best not to explicitly figure out why someone believes what they do in an open forum if the subject matter is contentious.

Gotta come to some understanding, first. Right now we're stuck between folks who want an adequate summary of some length, and folks who want one or two paragraphs. Quick! What do you do? Xavexgoem (talk) 13:30, 17 November 2009 (UTC) Half the job of a mediator is to figure out things like what's between 2 paragraphs and 25%

(although I would set an agenda. I'm just saying not to worry overmuch about why some folks think this or other folks think that in an atmosphere of (potential) distrust). Xavexgoem (talk) 17:37, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm going to concur with Xavexgoem. What you as a mediator need to do is clarify exactly what specific issues need to be mediated, and then pick one to start with. I would suggest picking the easiest one, to build momentum. This way, everyone knows exactly where we're going. The Wordsmith 17:52, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, all that is happening here is people are slowly reproducing the conflict that is already on the talk page of the article. Trust me, we can keep going and it won't be very long before this talk page is 100 kb. Is this the mediation process - simply to create a second talk page for people to debate the same issues? For my part, I will no longer post anything to this mainpage or talk page. The mediator asked for my view of the conflict and I provided it. What is the point of our debating anything here? That is what the article talk page is for. I am done until the mediator comes up with the next stage. Slrubenstein | Talk 18:22, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

I can't speak for anyone else, but I think there is a marked difference in these discussions when compared with our past discussions on the article's talkpage. Yes, we still disagree on quite a few things, but I think we've made real progress on the "minority vs. fringe" issue, and I think concrete and workable solutions have been proposed which could overcome the question of proportions. Asking the question "How much is enough?" was a good move in my opinion, and if the mediators can bear with us and continue to guide the discussion through posing important questions and indicating areas where consensus seems to be emerging and requesting confirmation, I think we can make solid progress. I apologize to the mediators for the volume of my own comments. I try to keep it to the bare essentials, but as this group has a very poor track record in WP:AGF, making sure one doesn't leave any room for imaginative assumptions has become something of a survival strategy. :) --Aryaman (talk) 18:32, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

A lot of the re-hashing is essential to us. I think most of that is over. What it gives us is a more concise overview of what's going on. Article talk page discussions have a fairly low signal-to-noise ratio. Xavexgoem (talk) 18:37, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

My concrete suggestion (see above) is to switch the perceived roles of editors. Ramdrake or T34CH should prepare a careful summary of the hereditarian point of view based on the 2005 review of Rushton and Jensen and the references therein. Then Captain Occam or Varoon Arya should write a summary of representative criticisms from all disciplines. The summaries can then be massaged into a form agreeable to all. Mathsci (talk) 23:12, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Mathsci's proposal - thoughts?

Mathsci's proposal is intriguing. What are other parties' feelings on it? Reubzz (talk) 00:03, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, it seems like an interesting exercise, but doesn't it miss the central issue? Recall that Mathsci argued that "I think that only a short summary of one or two paragraphs is required for this minority view." I believe that this is the heart of the dispute. Either you believe that the hereditarian view merits no more than 1 or 2 paragraphs or you believe that it should be a substantial portion of the article. What point is there in having Ramdrake or T34CH write a "careful summary" (which would surely be several paragraphs long) if you don't think such a summary belongs, even in theory, in the article? (I apologize if I have misunderstood Mathsci's viewpoint on this.) David.Kane (talk) 00:50, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Mathsci, what specifically would your proposal entail? What would be the content of the sumarries? Reubzz (talk) 00:56, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

It would involve locating two sets of principal sources. Then a presentation of the hereditarian view would be prepared; after that a section would be written on the criticisms. Then all parties could discuss whether the material has been presented accurately and appropriately.

@David.Kane: you missed my comment above on not making a priori requirements on percentages or number of paragraphs.

@Reubzz: wikipedia articles are always summaries/paraphrasings of what can be found in sources.

@Captain Occam: writing dispassionately is how wikipedia works, whether the editor personally agrees with the content or not.

The new material could be prepared in userspace or here, as people see fit. Mathsci (talk) 08:46, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Varoon Arya

I see no problem with it, provided that we go through with compiling a list of representative literature and form some kind of consensus on whether we should (a) group the article's presentation around pieces of literature (as per Mathsci's suggestion, provided I understood it correctly), or (b) group the article's presentation around core issues which are discussed in multiple reliable sources taken from our representative list. After that, I have no problem taking whichever "side" is necessary as long as all sides are fairly presented. I've written neutrally on several conflicting points of view before, and I don't see how this article is any different. In short: I'm game. --Aryaman (talk) 00:53, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

PS: For the record: Before becoming involved in the articles Race and crime in the United States and Race and intelligence, I had no personal interest in anything to do with "race", and had not edited any articles dealing with the issue. My real areas of interest are comparative linguistics, comparative mythology and pre-modern philosophies. Through my involvement in this article, I've somehow been put in a category of personally "promoting" one view, though my original intent was simply to introduce some sorely needed neutrality to the discussion. One view was heavily represented, while another was being unfairly marginalized. I would like to request that other editors please not confuse my defending one point of view with actually holding the point of view myself. "Race" is something which interests me very little in real life, and has nothing to do with my real areas of interest. --Aryaman (talk) 15:15, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Ramdrake

No problem with it.--Ramdrake (talk) 04:08, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Captain Occam

I’ll accept this proposal if it’s what other people want, but I’m concerned that a person who strongly disagrees with a particular position might have trouble summarizing it without subconsciously emphasizing what they consider to be its weak points. As someone who’s been involved in the creationism/evolution controversy for around ten years, I’ve become very accustomed to this problem when either side in that debate tries to summarize the other side’s position. It’s quite rare to find an explanation of creationism written by a supporter of evolution which doesn’t involve some type of strawman, and it’s even rarer to find an accurate explanation of evolution written by a creationist.

It seems like having the explanation of each position be written by someone who disagrees with it might end up leading to unnecessary difficulties for this reason. My preference would be for the people who agree with each position to be in charge of writing it, although as I said, it’s not such a strong preference that I wouldn’t be willing to capitulate to others’ opinions on this. I also approve of the suggestion that the article should discuss this topic issue-by-issue. It was pointed out earlier that Flynn and Nisbett disagree with each other about as much as either of them does with Jensen, and this suggestion seems like it would be a better way of representing the many differing viewpoints about each issue, rather than lumping everything into “pro-hereditarian” and “anti-hereditarian” viewpoints. --Captain Occam (talk) 04:54, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Slrubenstein

That someone who disagrees with a position may not represent it fairly is the reason Misplaced Pages encourages people to work on articles in which they have no interest. Obviously here people are not only working on an article in which they feel they have an interest; they are working only on those parts they agree with. I understand Captain Occam's fear but in this case the challenge of mediation is to get people to see things from someone else's point of view. "Good faith" in a mediation includes a willingness to try this.

It is an appealing suggesting, and echoes a common formula in dispute resolution. If two people fight over who is getting the bigger slice of pie, you have one person slice the pie and the other get first pick. In other words, instead of each person's primary interest being, to represent the view they favor most strongly, their interest is now in having each view represented most fairly. Worth a try. Slrubenstein | Talk 12:09, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

David.Kane

No objection, but I personally won't have time to write anything. -- David.Kane (talk) 12:42, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

futurebird

I have not been active but I put a lot of work in to this article about two years ago. (Look at the edit history.) I think MathSci's idea is both fair and reasonable. Undue weight was an issue two years ago and it is now. A guideline would be wise and might bring this article in to a stable form. (At last.) futurebird (talk)

Statement Deadline + Mediator Agenda

Parties, I would like to thank everyone for your cooperation in this process so far. I believe we are making progress especially in the most preliminary of steps - the ability to communicate with each other. Now that we can focus on content issues fully and that we understand each other's points, I would like to set a timetable/timeline for this weekend which will include a proposed deadline.

Let me first make clear that the following schedule is not a set rule, but rather a stressed timeline for everyone to follow. It will greatly help me read all material and make a list of issues to discuss if I have time to let the discussion sink in and to let it be evaulated. (someone I know once used the interesting term "marinated" for this process :O )

Mediator Timeline Deadline of all comments on pending discussions - Midnight EST/05:00 WP time on Nov.20 Thursday night

Mediator publishes agenda which includes 1) list of things to be discussed and the order they will be discussed, 2) thoughts on objective ways to resolve mediation, central/essential questions - by 11:59pm Saturday night EST/5:00 WP time on Nov.22 Saturday night

I will ask that all comments be published by that deadline. I believe this is a more than reasonable amount of time for all final statements to be issued. Cheers! -- Reubzz (talk) 03:30, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

EXTRA NOTE - At the point I begin this new phase, I will likely archieve the discussions on this page into a seperate one for historical use. --Reubzz (talk) 20:41, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

EXTRA EXTRA NOTE - I will be seeking page protection when the new deadline comes. Reubzz (talk) 02:17, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Request to help in determing issues to discuss

To help me make a listing of the issues to be discussed, please leave a BRIEF (please!) comment on my talk page on the one issue you think should be evaulated first. This will give me a very good perception of where all parties think this is so far. Reubzz (talk) 21:55, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Page protection

I will seek page protection per the deadline above in the next few hours. Reubzz (talk) 21:03, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Protected. This is a different approach. Let's see how it works :-) Xavexgoem (talk) 23:55, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Alright, I've unprotected. Lemme see where I can pick up. Xavexgoem (talk) 00:52, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Seem's Mathschi's proposal has consensus. Occam has a few worries, but that can be fixed through the editorial process. Sound alright? Xavexgoem (talk) 00:55, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

I think the first thing which needs to be determined is the scope. I think most if not all the participating editors would agree that the scope is a central issue here, and that it needs to be resolved before any constructive work with lasting value can be accomplished - including Mathsci's proposal. --Aryaman (talk) 01:55, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

In my eyes, MathSci's proposal is a small step towards determining consensus of the scope. By reaching agreements over how to articulate the view points and what the best sources for determining consensus are, maybe we can build common ground for discussing the scope. Also, it's the only proposal on the table for the next step. T34CH (talk) 02:39, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

I agree. Scope is important, but a general rule for mediation is to get some agreement first. Otherwise we'll get into a talk, talk, talk loop. Xavexgoem (talk) 02:42, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't rightly see how we can proceed with Mathsci's proposal without knowing the scope, which will play a significant role in determining which literature is to be used and how (e.g. in what depth) it is to be summarized. I'll defer to those who think this is possible, however. --Aryaman (talk) 03:23, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

The whole point of the proposal is that it forces people to pick the scope and depth, creating a starting point and context for future discussion. That's kind of what was already said about it. T34CH (talk) 04:12, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Step 1 is presenting the hereditarian view neutrally. If the primary concern of us as editors and the project as a whole is to have a neutral point of view, we should work on that immediately. Remember that lots of people are viewing this page; we're only a few editors. Xavexgoem (talk) 06:33, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

As I said, I’m all right with this idea if it’s what other people want.

Something else I think we ought to discuss here, which is closely-related to Mathsci’s proposal, is DJ’s proposal here: for us to structure the article based on the various lines of data, rather than grouping everything into the “hereditarian” and “environmental” camps. I think this is a very good idea, and might also help improve the neutrality issue. It would mean there are no longer entire sections of the article devoted to one hypothesis or the other, so there might not be such an issue over determining how much space each should be given.

Either way, I imagine that if we’ll be going with Mathsci’s suggestion, it’s going to be my job to explain the environmental perspective. VA, a little while ago you recommended a new book by James Flynn as a source to use about this perspective, but I’m not sure which of his new books you were referring to. His newest books appear to be What Is Intelligence?: Beyond the Flynn Effect and Where Have All the Liberals Gone?: Race, Class, and Ideals in America, both of which relate to this topic. I don’t currently have access to either of these books, but I’m willing to buy whichever of them you were recommending in order to use as a source for the environmentalist perspective, if you can tell me which of them you had in mind. --Captain Occam (talk) 12:03, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

It's not quite accurate to say that there are two camps - hereditarian and environmentalist - as Captain Occam suggests. As we have already established, there is a clearcut hereditarian theory, most extensively articulated in the recent 2005 survey of Rushton and Jensen, which explicitly suggests a relation between "race" and "intelligence". Then there are the published criticisms of this theory, most recently one of the appendices in Nisbett's 2009 book. Somebody on the R&I talk page has mentioned that they've read it (User:ImperfectlyInformed). I think it's best to narrow the scope in this way as Xavexgoem has suggested. After the presentation and criticism sections have been written, we can proceed from there. Mathsci (talk) 15:39, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Oh, I agree that the range of viewpoints on this topic can’t easily be divided into two categories like this. As was pointed out earlier, Flynn and Sternberg disagree with each other about as much as either of them does with Jensen. My point is just that dividing everything into “hereditarian” and “anti-hereditarian” viewpoints is how the article currently describes this topic. The fact that there are so many different environmental perspectives is another reason why I think DJ’s proposal would be an improvement over this structure. --Captain Occam (talk) 19:24, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Nisbett (2009) and Ruston and Jensen (2005) only disagree on the cause of the Black-White IQ gap, not it's meaning meaning or suitability for study. See also Nisbett (2005) doi:10.1037/1076-8971.11.2.302 for details on the data Nisbett thinks confirms an environmental cause. --DJ (talk) 19:26, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Let's not get ahead of ourselves :-)

What needs to be written per Mathschi's proposal? Right now, we need a neutral description of the hereditarian viewpoint. This is the locus of the dispute, after all. Is there any way to make this fit into the article now? Xavexgoem (talk) 19:38, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

If I may offer just one thing to keep and mind and then we can continue with this line of discussion -- there seem to be 3 ways of organizing the hypotheses section: (a) environmentalist vs hereditarian section, (b) topic-centric, (c) scholar-centric. Each has benefits and weaknesses, and it seems that we must choose one. I think we currently now have a mostly (b) topic-centric approach, and what's being discussed is a more of (a). --DJ (talk) 19:45, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Hmm... well, I'll wait for Mathsci to clarify on how to write. In the meantime, all suggestions are welcome. Xavexgoem (talk) 19:48, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

The proposal is procedural in nature, and does not clarify the central problem as noted in nearly all the opening statements, i.e.: How much coverage can the so-called "hereditarian" position receive without violating WP:UNDUE? Going ahead with this proposal jumps the gun on two counts: (1) We have not decided whether this article is to focus on the results of psychometrics and behavioral genetics or whether is it to include more coverage of views from other sciences beyond a simple summary as would be expected from WP:MNA; (2) We have not decided whether a theoretical, topical or a literature/scholar-based organization is to be preferred. We have to decide these two issues beforehand, as #1 tells us how much depth is justified when summarizing, and #2 tells us whether we even need a summary of the "hereditarian" position. Or am I the only one who sees that the hereditarian position could be summarized in a few sentences, a few paragraphs, or several large sections, all depending upon the scope of the article? --Aryaman (talk) 20:28, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Varoon, do you object to having a summary written, and then discussing the issues that the summary as written raises? It seems to lead right into addressing your concerns. T34CH (talk) 21:06, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't see how a "proper" summary can be written unless we know what propriety dictates in this case. If we go with a wide scope as per Slrubenstein/Ramdrake's suggestion, then we only need a paragraph or so, as there are only a handful of psychometricians studying this issue. If we go with a narrow scope, however, we will need a much more detailed summary, both of individual arguments and data sets as well as competing interpretations of that data. We also don't know if that summary should cover the Jensen & Rushton paper as a single piece of literature, or whether it should cover the individual arguments, allowing for criticism and counter-arguments to be fit in later. This isn't something for Mathsci or any single editor to decide, either. Proposing to write a summary before deciding what kind of summary is needed is only going to lead to more unnecessary argumentation, and I'd rather not see this devolve into another round of needless bickering. --Aryaman (talk) 22:02, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

If we have editors willing to write those two summaries (and we do), why not just let them write them? This article has been little more than "needless bickering" for at least 2 years. Could MathSci's suggestion, having been endorsed by Xavexgoem, possible lead to anything worse than what we now have? I doubt it. David.Kane (talk) 23:34, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

I really don’t think a summary of each perspective is the way to go with this. When I was discussing my proposed edits to the article with Ramdrake, you might remember that even though he approved in theory of explaining the hereditarian position, he opposed each individual line of data that I wanted to add related to it as being WP:UNDUE. Almost every example of something like this that’s been added to the article in the past has eventually been removed for a similar reason. I think if we want to get the article into a stable state while still describing the data that’s most relevant to the hereditarian perspective, we ought to use DJ’s data-centric approach, since this would enable us to describe this data without having to present it specifically in the context of evidence for the hereditarian view.

Adding his earlier suggestions to what’s already in the article, we would have something like this:

• Socioeconomic factors
• Stereotype threat
• The Flynn effect
• Black and biracial children raised by white parents
• African ancestry and IQ
• Molecular genetic studies
• Health
• Quality of education
• Racial discrimination in education
• Caste-like minorities
• the implications of within group heritability for between group heritability
• Spearman's hypothesis and reaction time data
• adoption and early intervention programs
• structural equation modeling of between group differences
• regression equations among siblings
• brain size and other biological correlates
• evolutionary models (see the January issue of PAID)

In addition to helping address the concerns of people such as Ramdrake, describing all of the perspectives about each of these lines of data would also enable us to describe how proponents of the environmental view differ in their opinions, which is also valuable. --Captain Occam (talk) 00:51, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Yeeehh... all of that, in one take? I have to show some results soon ;-) Xavexgoem (talk) 00:57, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

(outdent: Re: David Kane's comment) I have no problems with Mathsci's proposal per se, as I indicated earlier. It seems that some are worried that certain editors would not be capable of neutrally summarizing sources which might contradict their personal beliefs or opinions. In light of such worries, this proposal is one way to help overcome those obstacles. And as soon as the scope and organization are agreed upon, I think we could go ahead with it. If people have such summaries prepared already, then of course they could be put up for discussion. But the very first question - from me, at least - will be in regards to how, i.e. by what standard, we are to determine whether the summaries are adequate in terms of coverage. It just seems logical to get that question out of the way before moving forward with any writing. --Aryaman (talk) 02:18, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Xavexgoem, are you going to make a decision about in what order these issues should be resolved? In any mediation case, figuring out the best process for resolving issues like these is the job of the mediator, so this will need to be done by either you or one of the other two mediators. --Captain Occam (talk) 22:58, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm not quite sure what's happened with Ramdrake. Too much turkey - I'm not sure what happens in Canada. I had confit de canard ... Mathsci (talk) 00:20, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

What I need – more than anything – is a summary of the hereditarian view per Mathschi's proposal. Whether this includes some things and not other things can be worked out later. I just need something tangible to work with. Xavexgoem (talk) 01:07, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

I realize I might well be testing Xavexgoem's nerves with this, but: Would there be strong opposition to taking a simple, non-binding straw poll on the scope? (Of course, keeping WP:VOTE in mind at all times.) I think we can lay out both options which have been discussed earlier in a brief and fair manner, and I'm interested to see where everyone stands as far as that particular issue is concerned. If at least one other editor is willing to give it a shot, we could put up a short and neutral blurb on each of the proposals regarding scope, and then give everyone the opportunity to either support one or the other (with reasons, preferably) or to propose some as yet unheard of additional possibility. The moderators could referee the decision based upon the quality of the supporting arguments and a fair application of WP policy, if it comes down to it. I don't want to use the straw poll as a substitute for consensus, but rather as a means of working towards establishing consensus. Anyone game? --Aryaman (talk) 01:16, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

I’d be OK with voting about the scope if it’s what other editors want. However, determining the answer this particular question isn’t quite as important to me as resolving some of the other issues that have been discussed here (such as structure and weight), because the article’s scope is one of the few things about it that I don’t think needs to be changed. Right now it’s focused primarily on psychometrics, with only a small amount of space given to viewpoints from other fields, which is approximately the same as what you’ve suggested. (And with which I agree.) As long as nobody changes this about the article, the article’s scope is one topic that I don’t think needs to be mediated. --Captain Occam (talk) 02:01, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

A straw-poll sounds good. But I insist that we start with something that will produce a result, if only an inkling. Xavexgoem (talk) 02:17, 1 December 2009 (UTC) I'll review all the points later and come up with something tomorrow for a straw-poll. In the meantime: I encourage anyone to write a summary per Mathsci's proposal, as that at least has some consensus. It doesn't have to be perfect.

I suppose there are several ways to present the options. I'll wait for the mediator to suggest the options, but I would summarize the two positions by formulating their core questions, only one of which this article should attempt to answer:

• How important are racial differences in the discussion regarding intelligence?

Answering this question would result in a narrow scope, and the article would be focused primarily upon the results of psychometry. The views of other sciences would be mentioned, but they would not dominate the discussion (WP:MNA).

• How important are differences in intelligence in the discussion regarding race?

Answering this question would result in a wide scope, and the article would be focused upon the views of a multitude of disciplines. The results of psychometry would be mentioned, but they would not dominate the discussion (WP:UNDUE).

A good deal of the past conflict, I believe, stems from the fact that there is uncertainty regarding which of these two questions the article should be treating. If we could clarify this point, I think we would save a lot of trouble in any future work on the article. --Aryaman (talk) 03:34, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

I’ve probably expressed this opinion before, but I think the first option would be preferable. Going with the second option would result in a large amount of space being devoted to the question of whether human races have a basis in biology, which is already discussed by Race (classification of human beings) and Race and genetics. On the other hand, Misplaced Pages does not have any other articles about the debate over race and intelligence in psychometrics. I think it would make the article much more valuable for it to focus on the psychometric debate, rather than also covering topics that are covered by other articles here.

Let’s wait a few days to see if anyone disagrees with this idea about the article’s scope. If nobody does, then we can move on to the next step of the mediation, since Xavexgoem seems to want to begin discussing content here as soon as possible. --Captain Occam (talk) 00:52, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Well, Xavexgoem said a straw poll would be posted soon on this. I just wanted to give my views on what I see to be a good way to characterize the two positions/options. I also think that it makes better sense to focus this article on the first of the two as presented above. But let's see what Xavexgoem comes up with. --Aryaman (talk) 00:59, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

He said on December 1st that he was going to post the straw poll the following day (that is, on the 2nd), and it’s now the fourth. This is the same kind of problem we were having with Reubzz. How long do you think we should wait for him to do this? --Captain Occam (talk) 09:04, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

One section down Xavexgoem said s/he'd be back on the 6th. Let's wait until then. --Aryaman (talk) 13:23, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

The 7th... I should've said Monday. I'm around but of very little use until then. Xavexgoem (talk) 18:51, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Reubzz

Just dropping a note here that I sent an email to Reubzz, asking about his absence. He has IRL issues that are currently preventing him from participating, but he intends to rejoin soon. Until then, Xavexgoem and I are here to help. The Wordsmith 01:10, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks to Xavexgoem and The Wordsmith for keeping an eye on this mediation. I think that we have a real chance to solve a multi-year logjam on this article. Your help is much appreciated! David.Kane (talk) 02:40, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

I raised this question with Xavexgoem and The Wordsmith on their user talk pages yesterday, with no response except here. Reubzz (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) has not edited WP now for over a week. He edited prior to that from Nov 5 until Nov 22. I have no idea why excuses are being made for his unhelpful behaviour. Even if RL issues had intervened, he was surely perfectly capable of explaining this here, having made some kind of commitment to this process. I am unwilling to continue with mediation if it might involve Reubzz at any future date: he is a newbie who has indelibly blotted his copybook. Provided the established mediators now ditch Reubzz and completely take over the mediation process, I am happy to continue. Mathsci (talk) 00:15, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Being that your involvement is contingent on this effort going forward, I will drop Reubzz from this mediation. Xavexgoem (talk) 01:17, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Twas a bad idea in the first place. Wapondaponda (talk) 02:35, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Some of our best mediators started as newbies on the project. Just fyi. Xavexgoem (talk) 04:49, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Every editor was once a newbie, even the established ones, and yes it is possible for a newbie to be a good mediator, and I believe Reubzz was given the benefit of doubt. But overall the reliability of a newbie anywhere is always lower than those of who have an established a track record. It seems that Mathsci saw this coming, it is disappointing that this was so predictable and avoidable, and yet it still happened. Wapondaponda (talk) 05:48, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

RL always comes first, and nothing can be done about that. Let's WP:AGF that this is something out of Reubzz's control. --Aryaman (talk) 12:42, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

I agree that RL comes first, and will AGF. But this isn't so much about Reubzz, but rather our decision to accept someone without a track-record. If someone with an established track record of completing projects disappeared in the middle of a mediation process, it would be a lot easier to assume good faith, because it would be out of character. There is nothing in Reubzz's history, so all we can do is AGF. Wapondaponda (talk) 21:53, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Speaking of RL, I'll probably be gone until Sunday. My family has historically had a more floating concept of what makes Thanksgiving Day. Xavexgoem (talk) 01:38, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Moving on

Alright, I hope your holidays have been enjoyable. We've now had sufficient time off, and I think we can look at this with fresh eyes. As I recall, we were looking at ways to organize this article. Is somebody willing to write a proposal that we can discuss, to gain consensus for a general structure? The Wordsmith 09:58, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

I would suggest that the following points be discussed in this order:

• Scope: It is unclear whether the focus of this article is to be upon race as it applies to the subject of intelligence or intelligence as it applies to the subject of race. How this question is answered has a significant effect upon things such as how the article should be organized and which literature should be covered, and answering it first seems like the best course of action. Doing so may require nothing more than a straw-poll. On the other hand, and especially in light of the past track-record, it may require some discussion. Either way, I think it needs to be clarified first before moving on to anything else.
• Organization: It is also unclear whether the article is to be organized around positions (e.g. "hereditarian" vs. "non-hereditarian" views) or around arguments/data sets and the interpretation of that data by various scholars.
• Literature: Once the scope and the organization have been agreed upon, we can begin deciding which literature should be reviewed, and, as suggested by Mathsci, who should be "allowed" to write which summaries.

Once these three things are determined, I think we will be past the point of requiring further mediation, and can return to editing the article in a normal fashion. --Aryaman (talk) 13:08, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

That seems like a very reasonable proposal. Is there any objection to doing things in this order? The Wordsmith 15:08, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

No objection from me. I think this proposal sounds like a good idea. --Captain Occam (talk) 23:02, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm rather torn here. I agree that determining the scope of this particular article is paramount to actually solving all our problems here (indeed, I think the article needs a totally new title to avoid the very situation Varoon is describing in saying "as it is inevitable that someone will eventually show up and complain - in perfectly good faith - that the article is unbalanced because they've assumed the title implies a different scope"). However I'm worried that it's not an issue we can address directly without first coming to an agreement on how to accurately describe the debate (NPOV issues) and what literature we feel is representative of the academic consensus. This is why we had agreed to come up with descriptions of various view points above, giving a starting point for solving the long standing NPOV issue. I'd want to know more about what options for the scope Varoon has in mind before I commit to debating that issue first. I definitely think agreeing on representative literature should come before the organization issue. T34CH (talk) 23:30, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Describing various POVs might be the a good way to start the discussion, but I think we'd need to decide scope before we can decide on suitable references. I'm inclined to think this way because any reliable, notable source can go in *some* article, but not necessarily this one. My underlying concern is long-term sustainability of a readable article. Whatever structures are put in place should work with rather than fight against the natural inclinations of the multitude of editors that work on this article over time. For example, changing the name of the article might be needed to support the proper scope. Purely by way of example, consider how "Racial differences in intelligence" (the title of Loehlin, Lindzey, and Spuhler's 1975 book) might help achieve the desired scope. --DJ (talk) 00:59, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

To clarify, I meant deciding which literature is representative of academic consensus, not compiling a restrictive list of literature for the article. Depending on the scope, even refs to old eugenics sources might be used, but they certainly don't demonstrate consensus. T34CH (talk) 02:05, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

With all due respect to Arya, I was actually hoping for something more from the mediators (Xavexgoem and The Wordsmith now?) at this point. Many people have issued thoughtful statements and there was some contentious but thoughtful discussion already on this page. I provided Rebuzz with links to specific moments in the history of the article talk (archived pages) that illustrate the pattern of conflict and failed mediation over the course of several years, that shows that this conflict has deeper roots than the individuals participating in this mediation, and I would have thought that the current mediators would have benefited from reading that sample of archived talk, too. I was hoping the mediators might first make some considered and non-partisan observations, perhaps based on their sammpling of archived talk, or of the differences among the statements above, observations about whaat they see as the principle sticking points that need to be worked through, before moving on to more specific proposals. I know Arya provided an interesting outline in good faith and don't quesion that, I was just expecting a perspective on the dispute from the mediators, first. Slrubenstein | Talk 16:58, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

That's just the thing, though. Mediators are here to help the parties discuss an issue, not to make judgments or findings of fact. Every mediator is different, but my philosophy is that the parties know what needs to be mediated and should have input on what the agenda is. The discussions above have been confused by issues related to the mediator(s), not the mediation. My reboot here is to try and get back on the path to solving these issues, without further distractions. The Wordsmith 17:08, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

I read through the bulk of the archived pages Slrubenstein linked to, and I agree: though (some of) the faces have changed, the basic points of contention remain. Regardless, I think they can be resolved. From my reading of the archives, it has never been determined just what the scope of the article is supposed to be, and that fact has exacerbated the problem enormously. Once we come to a conclusion on this, we need to place a template at the top of the talkpage which clearly states the scope of the article, and we need to closely monitor any future discussion so that it remains strictly on-topic (i.e. related to the relevant scope), as it is inevitable that someone will eventually show up and complain - in perfectly good faith - that the article is unbalanced because they've assumed the title implies a different scope. If we can prevent that, I think we can stabilize the article. --Aryaman (talk) 18:16, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

I agree completely that the core issue is scope. Here is my own proposal, I know it will be controversion:

• keep our current article on the Heritability of IQ
• keep our current article on Environment and intelligence
• create a new article on Race and education that specifically covers public and policy debates
• beef up articles on Rushton and others to provide full accounts of their research. I consider Rushton's research to be fringe and difficult to include in any other article, but it would be fully appropriate to develop an account of his views in the article on him.
• delete the article on Race and intelligence. The concept of race means so many things, and is a surrogate for concepts that are very different. All the issues that this article addresses that is covered by mainstream science easily fits in either of the first to articles I listed, and the public controversy and any piolicy debates are better served by their own article. Fringe views of scientists who are notable because they are controversial can be fully developed in articles on those peoples (or, articles on books written by those people00.

Slrubenstein | Talk 14:50, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Most of this seems like a workable proposal. The first four can certainly be done. The fifth, deleting Race and Intelligence, might be more difficult. I would suggest merging usable content into the other articles, and turning it into a disambiguation page to direct readers to the other articles you mention. The article, as it stands now, is a magnet for fringe scientists and POV pushing. I think breaking it into smaller, more amnageable and focused pieces might work. The Wordsmith 15:00, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks - your suggestion definitely improves the proposal. Slrubenstein | Talk 15:14, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I agree with the suggestion of a disambiguation page, though the issue is what exactly would go into such a page. Wapondaponda (talk) 15:30, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm fairly certain Slrubenstein understands that this suggestion goes against everything that all the participating editors said in their opening statements - including his/her own. Deleting an article with supposedly controversial and/or contentious content is not a legitimate way to resolve a conflict. Neither is suggesting a content fork to replace it. In fact, the suggestion itself circumvents the entire mediation process. How are the other editors supposed to accept this in good faith? --Aryaman (talk) 15:41, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Of course it goes against the opening statements. The purpose of them is to gauge where editors initially are. The purpose of mediation is to get them to agree on a compromise, and see points of view that may not be 100% in line with their own. Regarding the forking, its not really a content fork. It is taking one article that is huge, sprawling and unwieldy (and on a poorly defined topic), and breaking it into pieces that actually have a cohesive topic. Since its being proposed during mediation, I fail to see how the idea is circumventing the mediation process. We would continue to hammer out the content of those articles. The Wordsmith 15:48, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I really don't see a situation where all parties agree on what percentage of the article should be devoted to the environmental or hereditarian positions. It is too subjective and arbitrary. However a discussion of the hereditarian position in an article about The Bell Curve or The g factor is unlikely to be controversial if it accurately represents what is in these publications. Some kind of disambiguation page might be workable. Wapondaponda (talk) 15:57, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Exactly. This is too large and contrived for a significant number of editors to agree on the content. Splitting it into an article on heredity and an article on environment might be the best solution available, as it would eliminate the need to argue over proportion and scope. The Wordsmith 16:01, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Well, to some extent, Europe is "too large and contrived" but there is an excellent Misplaced Pages article about it. A simple Google search for "race and intelligence" shows that this is an important topic that a lot of people write about and are interested in. So, I would vote strongly against deleting the entire article. That said, I agree that splitting out the two main positions (environment and heredity) might solve a lot of problems, just as Wordsmith claims. So, in that plan, there would still be a Race and Intelligence article but it would be brief, with sections to (at least) three separate pages (history, heredity, and environment) and then summary paragraphs for each at the main page. Is that what you have in mind? David.Kane (talk) 03:43, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

It circumvents the mediation process because of its inherent assumption regarding the treatment of so-called "fringe views", which is the very thing we came here to resolve. Rather than moving towards any kind of compromise or agreement both parties could agree upon, this suggestion represents the most extreme possible result of one POV. Though I would be surprised if Mathsci and Ramdrake did not agree with Slrubenstein's suggestion, I would be equally surprised if DJ, Occam and David Kane did not object to it. End result: no "mediation" whatsoever, simply a reformulation of the original problem. I don't think this is going to get us anywhere. --Aryaman (talk) 16:17, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I do not see how my participating in mediation can be a circumvention of mediation. I am not suggesting a POV fork, which is a bad idea, I am suggesting a content fork, which we do all the time and for good reason. The page is a mess because it has not clear focus - on this we all agree, in fact I was taking my lead from Arya. There is little controversy among scientists, but there is a big controversy among the general public, which is why I suggest an article on the public controversy. But let us not confuse the public controversy with the controversy on the talk page of the article. Race does not have a stable meaning; it is used to refer to genetics, which is covered in the heritability of IQ. It is also used to refer to self-identified ethnic groups, which are studied by anthropologists and sociologists, and discussion of this research - which is not in conflict with or arguing against any mainstream work by geneticists - belongs in the article on environment and intelligence (I'd be happy changing it to SES and IQ or something like that by the way). A lot of the controversy on the talk pages comes from people who are concerned with one area of research talking past people who are concerned with the other area of research. This is just a muddle, and a content fork is one way to ensure that the best scientific research is presented in a coherent way, for whichever topic.

About fringe views, I am not sure what the "inherent assumption" is. I am writing very much in the spirit of compromise because I am suggesting a good way that fringe views can nevertheless be covered in Misplaced Pages. Fringe views in science can and often are popular views in the public (one example is creationism, and Arya, I am not equating Rushton to creationism, I am equating the content fork I am proposing here to the content fork we have between evolution and creationism, one by the way which has satisfied both advocates of evolution and advocates of creationism for many years). When a view that is fringe among scientists is notable among the general public, it certainly deserves coverage in Misplaced Pages and I have suggested several weays: article on the exponent of the view, article on notable books, and an article on the public controversy. How is this not in the spirit of compromise? Slrubenstein | Talk 16:28, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I guess there's no point in trying to explain it, Slrubenstein. If you don't see it already, you won't see it with any amount of discussion. Best to simply move on, as to do otherwise makes things unnecessarily personal. Thus:

If even the mediator is going to give tacit approval of this suggestion, then I think the only thing which can be done which would satisfy those of us who are interested in seeing the results of psychometrics and behavioural genetics on the role of race in intelligence research sufficiently covered is to propose the creation of a new article which deals specifically and solely with this issue. If those who support Slrubenstein's suggestion could grant that, and agree to a fair naming of the newly proposed article, then I think we could support the deletion of the current article. Of course, this is my own suggestion, and I will certainly wait until DJ, Occam, David Kane and others have voiced their opinions and/or made suggestions of their own. --Aryaman (talk) 16:48, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Since i'm not involved in this sort of research, I don't know what "the results of psychometrics and behavioural genetics on the role of race in intelligence research" entails. However, if you feel that there is (verifiable) content in the current article that would not be covered under the split, then the obvious solution is to create a new article for that topic, as you suggest. The intended outcome of this proposal is to better organize the content we have, not to prevent it from being represented on Misplaced Pages. So yes, I think your counterproposal is also reasonable. The Wordsmith 17:02, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

There is certainly enough verifiable information from reliable sources to justify such an article, and I'm confident it could be put together in rather short order. Even if we expand the articles on individual researchers, none of those will be able to cover the general issue, the debate within the psychometric community, or give anything resembling an overview of the studies conducted, the data discussed, the arguments involved, etc. The point of a separate article would be to do just this in a balanced and coherent fashion. --Aryaman (talk) 17:14, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I think that is certainly compatible with the proposed split, it just means we add one (or a few) more articles linked from the disambig page. The Wordsmith 17:17, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I have nothing against psychometric research on intelligence. I would think that the most current psychometric research would be relevant to any article on intelligence, whether it be genetics and intelligence or SES or environment and intelligence. I am not sure that it would need a special article, I would suggest that the article Intelligence include, if it does not already, a discussion of "G" including the controversy ofver G, i.e. both sides, and of course a discussion of how g or whatever general intelligence or IQ claims to stand for is measured. That is, any discussion of how intelligence is measured, including debates concerning method, seem to fit in the intelligence article. The results of IQ tests would seem to fit into the already exiting articles on heritability of IQ and on environment and intelligence.

As for behavioral genetics, I would think that this would be a section of the article on genetics. Is this research not done by people with PhDs in biology? Why shouldn't it go in the genetics article? Or in the article on "heritability of IQ" if we are talking about the results of twin studies. I do not see why any material on psychometrics and any branch of genetics cannot fit into the heritability of IQ; we can always rename it "Genetics and IQ" Slrubenstein | Talk 17:29, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

My concern about mixing up race and genetics remains. Race is a term referring to social groups, not breeding populations. The only biological meaning it can have in reference to humans is to mean sub-species. Biologists studiying other species use race in just this way. But the consensus among biologists is that the only subspecies of humans (H. sapiens sapiens) is what we otherwise call the human race; H. sapiens sapiens is not itself further divided into sub (or sub sub) species, so biologists do not apply the word race to humans this way. Nothing I am saying suggests any conflict with any branch of genetics, or with the study of the heritability of IQ. Slrubenstein | Talk 17:34, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

If Arya thinks I am being dismissive of his points, or rejects what I write here, then I would say that we have reached one of the critical points requiring mediation. Slrubenstein | Talk 17:37, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

No, I think we agree more than you may think, Slrubenstein. You make several valid points. For example, the debate regarding what IQ measures, how it is measured, and what it means, if anything, certainly belongs at Intelligence. Equally, the debate regarding the heritability of IQ belongs at Heritability of IQ, and the most current psychometric research is probably relevant at Psychometrics or some other more specific article. But - and this may surprise you - I've never argued for anything else. I am in favour of narrowing the scope of this article considerably, and none of this material belongs in the article as I conceive it other than a short mention for the sake of context. Hence my harping on WP:MNA. I could easily imagine the article doing well under a new title such as "Race in intelligence research" or perhaps simply "Intelligence and race", as this makes it clear that we're discussing race as a variable in intelligence research, not the other way around.

Regarding your concerns about "mixing up race and genetics": You don't have to worry about us confusing the two any more than they are "confused" in the source literature itself. I've seen too many editors take it upon themselves to "debunk" otherwise valid research because the fundamental assumptions upon which the research in question is based is, in their opinion, flawed. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. That's not for us to decide. Behavioural genetics is a highly interdisciplinary field with just as many psychologists as geneticists, so asking that we ignore the results of qualified psychologists in preference of those of biologists is not likely to get us very far. The fact is, although most sciences have abandoned "race" as a meaningful concept, not all have followed suit. Psychometrics is one such field where - in the opinion of some of its experts - "race" can and does provide us with a scientifically meaningful distinction.

It's too soon to say without input from the other editors, but the more I think about it, the more I like this as a workable compromise. It fully addresses my concerns regarding scope, and it eliminates a bunch of the "questionable" content which other editors have expressed concerns over. NPOV becomes a non-issue, because we can make it clear that we're only discussing a very limited field of research in the introduction, and no longer need to weight every single sentence in an attempted appeal to some "global" scope. If others support it, I say we give it a shot. --Aryaman (talk) 21:31, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

One issue that needs to be addressed is the stability of the article. I believe the disambiguation proposal has a better chance of being stable than the current status-quo. Anything else, and the same cycle of events is likely to be repeated again and again. As has been mentioned above, this is not the first time this controversy has been addressed. Wapondaponda (talk) 18:21, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

(unindent) You will have to wait a few days for me to contribute since (a) a conference is running this week, for which I am one the organizers and where I am residing on-site (b) my student is conducting his Ph.D. defence tomorrow and (c) I have an official report to write tonight before midnight. User:the Wordsmith should not suggest that users are "on holiday". I am extremely busy in RL at the moment and very short of time. Thanks, Mathsci (talk) 19:54, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

VA, could you please be a little more specific about what compromise you’re suggesting here? Is it just the same idea you mentioned previously, about narrowing the scope of this article, or are you also incorporating some of the ideas that Slrubenstein suggested?

You’re correct to assume that I don’t approve of Slrubenstein’s suggestion as he originally phrased it, for the same reasons that you’ve already described. If your suggested compromise is to keep the current article (with a narrowed scope) while also creating his proposed new article about Race and education, I’m not necessarily averse to that idea, but a great deal or care would need to be taken in order to prevent it from becoming a POV fork. Differences in quality of education are one of the proposed explanations for the difference in average IQ between races, and an article about Race and education could easily become an argument for education being the primary causal factor, while the Race and intelligence would be arguing for other factors. --Captain Occam (talk) 22:35, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

We could either see it as eliminating the current article and creating a new one with a more clearly defined, narrow scope, or we could see it as renaming the current article and rewriting it with that narrow scope in mind. The end result remains the same. I see this as a workable compromise because the issues which Slrubenstein and Ramdrake raised about the relative importance of the psychometric debate (i.e. WP:FRINGE) can be resolved while also resolving my concerns regarding scope. With a narrow scope, we don't have to rehash the heritability debate, the IQ debate, or the race debate in this article any more than is absolutely necessary as per WP:MNA. We also don't give the impression that the subject carries any more weight in academia than it actually does as per WP:UNDUE without ignoring that a very real and legitimate academic debate exists within the psychometric community. --Aryaman (talk) 23:13, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Slrubenstein's proposal

• support Moving relevant info to other articles solves earlier debates on wp:MNA, simplifies questions of wp:WEIGHT, solves the problems with scope and deciding what to rename the article, and allows us to more accurately define future discussions. Slrubinstein's proposal, with Wordsmith's addendum to leave R&I as a redirect, and Varoon's point of making sure all information is accounted for, seems to me the most progressive and elegant solution thus far. T34CH (talk) 22:14, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
• (tentative) support: Provided that the information which falls within the "narrow" scope (i.e. race as a variable in intelligence research) is covered in its own article, I support the elimination of the current article. I personally doubt whether a disambiguation page will be necessary, as it seems to me that the relevant links would best be located at either the intelligence section of the Race article (for the "wide" scope information) or in the "narrow" scope article under its new title, whatever that ends up being. My support remains tentative until these points are sufficiently clarified, but on the whole, I think it's a viable solution. --Aryaman (talk) 22:43, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

comment: There needs to be an agreement that the psychometric research on racial differences in intelligence is complex and diverse enough that it warrants being covered in an article devoted to the subject. And this needs to be agreed upon regardless of what happens to this article. If Slrubenstein, Ramdrake, T34CH and Muntuwandi can agree on that point, then I think we can move forward in good faith. --Aryaman (talk) 14:48, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

comment I have been advocating all along that there be an article devoted exclusively (or almost) to race and psychomentric results, it is the article on Environment and intelligence, it already exists, just needs more expansion. Slrubenstein | Talk 12:28, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

You're suggesting "race and intelligence" be covered at Environment and intelligence? We have a category "Category:Race and intelligence controversy" with 82 articles, and yet we are to have no article on "race and intelligence"? I'm baffled. --Aryaman (talk) 12:55, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Arya, I really do not understand your point. I have been trying to follow your lead. You have pointed out, repeatedly, forcefully, and in my view correctly, that the problem with the article is that it has no clear focus. I believe this is because people are asking it to cover too many different things that some amateurs believe are related but which in the scholarly literature are not. Race is a sociological term, and the psychometric differences between races is addressed by sociologists and other scholars (psychologists, anthropologists) looking at social history, social relations, social environment. Heritability is a term from genetics and many geneticists, including behavioral geneticists dooing twin studies, look at IQ and inheritance. These are clearly different articles. There is a public, and public policy debate concerning race and IQ that has much to do with education and as I proposed we should have an article on the public/public policy debates. Each of these articles has a very clear focus and thus solves the problem you pinpointed, quite constructively, of lack of a coherent focus. Slrubenstein | Talk 13:56, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes, the scope is a problem. The article should be about "race and intelligence", specifically as those two terms are used in conjunction in psychometric research. Criticism - say, from sociologists or anthropologists - of how "race" and "intelligence" are used/understood in psychometric research is perhaps interesting but of only tangential relevance to the topic at hand. Failure (or adamant unwillingness) on the part of several key editors to grasp this point has plagued the article since long before I ever became involved in it, and has resulted in a steady decline in the article's quality.

Your latest suggestion would be worth considering if we were dealing with a SYNTH violation, and editors were simply dragging together information on two unrelated topics and synthesizing new conclusions. But that's not the case here. Jensen, Lynn, Rushton, Gottfredson and others bring the two things together in their research, and no amount of social positivism is going to make them go away.

The results of psychometric research on racial differences in intelligence stands in need of an article. As you well know, "social history", "social relations" and "social environment" do not satisfactorily explain these differences, and suggesting that they do is simply advocacy of one POV. The more you elaborate your suggestion, the more it seems you really are suggesting a POV-fork - with the slight difference that you really don't want the other POV represented at all. --Aryaman (talk) 16:27, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Arya, here you show your bias. You write The article should be about "race and intelligence" and as such I have no argument. The problem is, as I have said several times, these terms and the issues raised by putting them together touch on distinct bodies of research, calling for content forks, not POV forks. I have stated several times that I agree that work by psychometricians, specifically on IQ tests, belongs in any article on "intelligence." But I simplay cannot accept your narrow one-sided bias: specifically as those two terms are used in psychometric research. Why, I ask you? Why restrict it solely to research by psychometricians? Is it because psychometricians are the experts on IQ? Well, fine, I can accept that reasoning. But sociologists and anthropologists are the experts on race. If one term of the title leads you to think one body of scholarship belongs in, how can you deny that the other term of the title should lead us to incorporate other scholarship? Sorry Arya, you simply cannot dismiss the work of two major social sciences that specialize on race as being irrelevant to an article on race.

In fact, I believe that attempting to accommodate the research of sociologists, anthropologists, geneticists, and psychologists as well as a public policy debate that occurs outside of the academy has led to this article being a mess for many years. It leads to multiple and unclear focii. I have proposed a disambiguation strategy to sort out the different focii for different articles, including one on heritability and IQ to accomodate work by psychometricians and geneticists of all sorts, and one on SES and IQ (or we could just say "race and IQ") that would discuss work by psychometricians in relation to work by sociologists and anthropologists on race. I still fail to see your problem, but if you persist I'd say we have reached a core issue requiring mediation. Slrubenstein | Talk 16:41, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

You're getting very close to seeing my point, which is this: You say (and have said numerous times before) that "this is an article on race", when in fact, it's an article on "race and intelligence". It's not a case of synthesis, where we're dragging the views of experts on "race" and experts on "intelligence" together in one article, and seeing how well they get along. It's an article on those two things as they are discussed in conjunction with one another in reliable sources. To make that more precise: it should be focused on discussing race as a variable in intelligence research, because that it exactly how it's treated in the literature.

I'm glad we agree that attempting to accommodate research which is off-topic has caused numerous problem for this article. But the obvious solution is to simply remove the unnecessary admixture by clearly defining a narrow scope, not to delete the article. I can hardly take your suggestion regarding Heritability of IQ seriously, as you well know that it would never be able to cover "race and intelligence" as it needs to be covered. Unless, of course, you're open to a title change on that article. Then we have something we could consider further. --Aryaman (talk) 17:13, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

• No opinion (yet): While I agree with Varoon Arya that this idea (as he described it in his reply to me above) could potentially be a viable solution, I’m not able to support it until more of our concerns about it have been addressed. Other than what he mentioned about making sure we keep an article about the debate in psychometrics, I’d want some assurance that the multiple articles on this topic won’t result in a POV fork, which seems like a danger if we have a separate article called “Race and education”. When and if all of these concerns are addressed, I’ll support this idea, but not until then. --Captain Occam (talk) 23:30, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
• Confused: I do not understand precisely what Slrubenstein's proposal is. Could someone clarify? Here is what I would suggest (and perhaps this has already been stated): 1) Maintain a Race and Intelligence article, make it very short, but more than a simple disambiguation page. 2) Create a new article called Race and Intelligence History which would cover the history of the research and debate. 3) Create a new article called Hereditarian Views on Race and Intelligence. This would summarize the current research from RS that argue the hereditarian position. (Good introduction is THIRTY YEARS OF RESEARCH ON RACE DIFFERENCES IN COGNITIVE ABILITY.) This article could be as long or as short as the editors associated with it wanted to make it without concerns about UNDUE. 4) Create a new article called Environmental Views on Race and Intelligence. (Needless to say, I am completely flexible on the naming scheme.) Again, this could be as long or as short as the associated editors wanted it to be. In each case, there would be a summary/intro paragraph from each of these sub-articles that would appear on the main Race and Intelligence page. There is probably more to be done in terms of an article that compares and contrasts these views. Perhaps there should be articles on other views. But, if we could all agree on this basic outline, then I think great progress could be made. If this proposal has no connection to Slrubenstein's proposal, then I apologize for my confusion. David.Kane (talk) 04:03, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Your proposals 3 and 4 create a POV fork, which is precisely what I wish to avoid. My approach is to use a content fork, not a POV fork, if the difference is not clear to you perhaps this is why you are confused. We have an article on genetics research on intelligence, it is Heritability of IQ. Differences among races is covered in the Environmental article, which includes research by sociologists. That is a content fork. Fringe views I am proposing should be handled through articles on books or the authors of those books. Any public controversy (as opposed to among scientists) should be in a new article on the public controversy. This is often driven by policy concerns and politics rather than science, and is highly notable. Slrubenstein | Talk 12:32, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

I do not think that my proposals 3 and 4 are a problematic POV fork. Or, even if they are, this still seems the best (only?) way forward. Could you clarify what you mean by "Fringe views?" For example, is THIRTY YEARS OF RESEARCH ON RACE DIFFERENCES IN COGNITIVE ABILITY by Rushton and Jensen an example of a fringe view? I think that a great deal of our dispute boils down to the fact that you (and others) consider this "fringe" and while I (and others) do not. David.Kane (talk) 15:10, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

I did not say they are a "problematic POV fork," I simply said they are a POV fork, which is explicitly the case. And Misplaced Pages doesn't allow POV forks. Slrubenstein | Talk 15:43, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

The article you link above is in a public policy journal. As I stated, several times, a debate that is not notable in scholarly circles is notable in public policy circles which is why I propose an article on the public and policy controversy over race and intelligence to accomodate just such work, on public opinion or in this case on public policy. But this is a content fork, it is a different arena than research by geneticists on heritability or by sociologists on race. Slrubenstein | Talk 15:46, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Slrubenstein, please be specific. Would you agree that this article (Rushton and Jenson (2005)) is a) from a reliabable source WP:RS and b) not fringe WP:FRINGE? I think that you agree with this claim, but I want to clarify this before moving forward. (Also, does anyone involved in this mediation disagree?) David.Kane (talk) 17:46, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Dude, tell me what word in my 15:46 post is "unspecific" or "unclear?" Why are you just playing games with me? your attitude does not suggest good faith. Mediator can you step in here please - what is wrong with what i just wrote? Why ust I keep repeating myself? If I have to repeat myself five times every time I make a post I will drop out of mediation, is that what you are trying to do, drive me away? So much for good faith. Slrubenstein | Talk 23:18, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Please, assume good faith. Your opening statement makes it clear that you think establishing what is fringe and what is not is a critical part of the mediation process. I agree! Do you think that Jensen and Rushton (2005) is fringe? (We all agree that fringe views do not belong in Misplaced Pages.) To be specific, assume that, after mediation, the decision is to keep a single article entitled Race and Intelligence. In that case, would you object to the inclusion of a NPOV description of Jensen and Rushton (2005) being in the article? David.Kane (talk) 03:28, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Oh, I am so sorry, I was not specific enough. I will try to be specific. The article you link above is in a public policy journal. As I stated, several times, a debate that is not notable in scholarly circles is notable in public policy circles which is why I propose an article on the public and policy controversy over race and intelligence to accomodate just such work, on public opinion or in this case on public policy. Slrubenstein | Talk 10:04, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

• • In essence, the proposal would turn the current article into a central hub for the other ones, while pushing the detailed content onto separate (and more manageable/focused) articles. If you believe that more than a simple disambig page is needed, it might be a good idea to take a look at WP:SUMMARY and try to make valid summaries for the articles. The Wordsmith 04:34, 9 December 2009 (UTC)
• support Thanks for the explanation. I would support this proposal, conditional on my understanding that the separate articles include things like Hereditarian Views on Race and Intelligence, or whatever phrasing people like. I would be strongly opposed if this information was restricted to the articles about specific researchers, as I understand Muntuwandi's proposal to require. I agree with Distributivejustice's arguments below. David.Kane (talk) 13:01, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

• Move. Do not delete. Whatever it's titled, there should be an article with the same topic and scope as, by way of example, Loehlin et al. (1975) "Racial differences in intelligence" but up-to-date. The scope of such an article should probably extend as far as what's discussed in doi:10.1038/457788a and doi:10.1038/457786a, as another example. Moving the current article to a new more specific title (e.g. "Race in intelligence research", "Intelligence and race") would be fine. Putting a disambiguation page at Race and intelligence pointing to a variety of other articles at the union of "race" and "intelligence" would be fine. Achievement gap already exists, for example. --DJ (talk) 05:58, 9 December 2009 (UTC)
  • Comment Moving content into biographies isn't tenable. Consider just this list of additional authors with related work: Flynn, Lynn, Wicherts, Dolan, Murray, Loehlin, Hunt, Rowe, Roth, Ogbu, Gottfredson, Nisbett, Ceci, Rose, Lewontin, Sternberg, Neisser, etc. There would also be no ability to talk about the work of others in the same context. It would be like moving the article on utilitarianism into the biographies of Mill and Bentham. --DJ (talk) 07:12, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

• comment. . SLR's proposal with a disambiguation page is the only "new proposal". Everything else has been tried before in one way or another. This article was once divided into several sub-articles that had narrow scopes, but these sub-articles were later re-merged into the current article. The idea of creating another article with a different scope would be POV forking. The current disputes would simply migrate to this "new article". I therefore agree with T34CH that SLR's proposal results in no loss of information. Theories by Rushton, Jensen and Flynn would be covered in articles about Rushton, Jensen and Flynn or their books. This completely eliminates the need for discussing scope and weight. Wapondaponda (talk) 06:34, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Query on POV Fork Issue

I am not an experienced editor and so I would like some feedback from others (both the mediators or the other editors involved in this mediation) about the POV fork issue that Slrubenstein raises above. See WP:POVFORK for background. Assume for a second that we decided on a plan for 4 articles: The top level "Race and Intelligence" article and then 3 sub-articles which the top level would point to and summarize ("History of Debate Over Race and Intelligence," "Environmental Views on Race and Intelligence", "Heriditarian Views on Race and Intelligence"). Needless to say, all these articles would use only reliable sources, adhere to WP:NPOV and so on.

Question: Does anything in WP:POVFORK prevent us for using this plan? Not that I can see, but other opinions welcome. Specifically, this seems to me to be clearly a case of Article spinouts – "Summary style" articles. See also Point of view (POV) and content forks. I would especially appreciate hearing from Wordsmith on this point.

Needless to say, just because we can use this scheme does not mean that we should or that we will. There is more discussion to have. Other schemes, like Slrubenstein's above, might very well be better. But if there is something in WP:POVFORK that forbids this 4 part division, I need to understand it so I can make more informed votes going forward. Apologies in advance if this is a stupid question. David.Kane (talk) 13:30, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Actually one version of this was tried in the past and undone. It could be done in a way that confuses readers, or it could be done in a way that helps them... it really depends. I think that the article R&I is a POV fork from Heritability of IQ. Whatever the outcome, there needs to be some central article which describes the overall picture in NPOV terms. As Araya has pointed out, the intended scope of R&I is not discernible from the title, so it is not a good candidate for the central/hub article. I think a section of H&IQ would be a much better place for this, allowing the existance of any sub-articles to be much less contentious. The main issue with forks is that we need to avoid creating forums where neutrality is ignored. It is often the case that spinoff articles are used as wp:COATRACKs rather than anything else. For now we should focus on the bare bones of the proposal (turn R&I into a DAB page, move relevant information to existing articles), and then deal with other issues later... remember, this isn't type setting; it's very easy to change things around. PS: From now, I'm out of town for the weekend. T34CH (talk) 15:58, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

The Heritability of IQ article and Environment and IQ are not POV forks, because they address different research questions and draw on different bodies of scientific research. Within each article, multiple points of view are provided.

It is hard for me to understand what David Kane is doing. I assumed good faith when this process began but recent evidence suggests to me that he is acting in bad faith. This thread seems to me to be mocking the whole process. How anyone can serious propose two different articles for two different views and claim not to see how this is a POV fork is beyond me. Dedicating an article to expounding a point of view is the very definition of a point of view fork. David Kane says he is not an experienced editor, but now I have to wonder what experience he has with research on heritability or race. I do not see how wither of the articles he proposes would do any justice to the vast scientific research on these different topics. Slrubenstein | Talk 16:51, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Slrubenstein: Did you read the links that I provided? Here is Point of view (POV) and content forks

Misplaced Pages is an encyclopedia and as such should cover the entire range of notable discussions on a topic. Some topics are so large however that one article cannot reasonably cover all facets of the topic. For example, Evolution, Evolution as theory and fact, Creationism, and Creationism-evolution controversy are all in separate articles. This is called a content fork and it helps prevent wasted effort and unnecessary debates: by covering related topics in different articles, we do not have to argue over covering everything in one article.

It is critical to understand the difference between point of view forks and content forks; the former are forbidden, while the latter are often necessary and encouraged.

I think that our current problem is exactly the same. Racial groups differ in measured IQ. One explanation is genetic. One explanation is environmental. The proponents of these different views have --- like the proponents of creationism and evolution --- have had trouble working on a single article together cooperatively in the past. The article is also (now) too long. The obvious solution is a content fork which separates them. (And again, the separate articles must be NPOV, rely on RS and so on. Can you understand why I might, in good faith, view my proposal as a content fork and not a POV fork? David.Kane (talk) 17:55, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

I'd just like to make a general comment, interpret it as you will: forks can really screw an editor up if done for the wrong reasons. When I was working on the 2009 Honduran constitutional crisis we decided to content fork the article into four separate entities: the umbrella article (that I've linked), an article on the events of the coup, an article on the regime that replaced it, and one I've totally forgotten about. My point is that we traded a dispute (over the scope of the article) for ease in editing (since now we have four articles, it's hard to tell what goes where, and there's a sense that all we really need to do is cut and paste from the umbrella article over to the more specific entities). In the end, we entirely stalled the article's development. Granted, it's a current event, so it might not translate well to this. It might be something to consider. On the other hand, most of the arguments are already laid out here, so this might be a good thing. Xavexgoem (talk) 06:36, 12 December 2009 (UTC) That fork I described was also fairly political, since there were some folks who were more-or-less advocating that it wasn't a coup, or that it was, blahblahblah...

a tl;dr: my concern is that a subtle dispute is going on that we are not entirely aware of, and that you may end up spreading it across a bunch of articles and making it worse. If this is not a concern (that is, there isn't any merely tacit dispute) then the fork is a good idea. But if it is, consider the consequences. Xavexgoem (talk) 06:47, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't think that this is a concern. The main dispute here is, I think, much more open than it is "tacit." (Contrary opinions welcome!) The issue is: How, if at all, to include/summarize the peer-reviewed literature which argues that there is a significant genetic component to differences in measured IQ between different racial groups in Misplaced Pages? There are several plausible answers to that question and editors of good faith will disagree. The purpose of this mediation is to come up with something that we can reach consensus on and allow us to go back to working on substantive additions to Misplaced Pages. David.Kane (talk) 17:23, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

After thinking a little about David.Kane’s suggestion, I think it might be a good idea. It would help resolve the issues of weight, article scope, and also the fact that it might not be possible for the article to cover its topic adequately without being too long. However, I’d like to wait and see what other editors (particularly DJ and Varoon Arya) have to say about this idea. --Captain Occam (talk) 15:20, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Occam that it would be useful to hear from other editors (especially Ramdrake and T34CH) both about whether or not this idea represents an (unacceptable) POV fork and, assuming it doesn't, the merits of the idea itself. David.Kane (talk) 17:15, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

One difficulty I see is what may be an unnecessary dichotomy between "hereditarian" and "non-hereditarian" research. I don't mean to say there isn't such a dichotomy, but that, as far as writing an encyclopaedia goes, it may pose some difficulties for us as editors. As we all know, researchers on both sides of the debate often comment on the same studies, providing either different interpretations or different supporting arguments and/or criticisms. With "Hereditarian views on race and intelligence" and "Environmental views on race and intelligence", a good deal of overlap will be unavoidable. How much is acceptable/justifiable? Also, would we be putting certain researchers in a "category" without their consent? Hans Eysenck, for example, was a psychologist of no small stature who deserves more than to be stuck in a "hereditarian" camp. With that being said, however, I can appreciate how splitting the two could be a way around this dispute. I might be more open to the idea if we could see some outline suggestions for the daughter articles. Does anyone have anything particular in mind? --Aryaman (talk) 16:26, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Arya, I agree with almost all of this. Some points: First, I think of these two articles as being about specific arguments/view and not about specific researchers. I could certainly imagine that work by, say, James Flynn would be referenced in both articles with no need to claim that Flynn himself is clearly in one campr or the other. Second, I would be happy to work on some "outline suggestions" if we can, first, come to consensus that these articles would not represent a POV fork. (It makes no sense to work on them if they would be a POV fork.) Of course, agreeing on this point does not bind us to using this approach, but the whole reason that I started this section was to clarify this point. Third, one way to handle the "both sides of the debate often comment on the same studies" is to have a fourth article (or to do this in the main Race and Intelligence article) which broght such cases together. Needless to say, that might lead to trouble but given that each "side" has been fairly and thoroughly discussed in their separate articles, I think it would be OK. Fourth, as I tried to explain in my opening statement, this is not my preferred solution, but it seems to me the one most likely to achieve consensus. David.Kane (talk) 17:11, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Fair enough. To whom do we need to go to get this answered? Is there a fork-guru around here somewhere? :-) --Aryaman (talk) 17:21, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

I believe that, if done right, it would be a legitimate content fork as opposed to a POV fork. Separating it into the types of research, such as one one nature (heredetarian) and one on nurture (education), it would be acceptable. A POV fork would be splitting it into articles that are something like Support for heredetarian views on intelligence and Opposition to heredetarian views on intelligence. So, now that the consensus seems to be that it is possible to do it legitimately, can somebody who knows the topic better than I propose exactly which articles to break it into? The Wordsmith 17:48, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Dacid, some time ago I said that I accept content forks, but that POV forks are forbidden at Misplaced Pages. There is no question about this, our policy states,

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

Now here you are quoting policy that content forks are okay. Well, thank you David. I am glad to learn that David has swung around and now is on my side. David now agrees with me that content forks are okay. Great! We now agree that content forks can help us resolve this discpute.

But David is also proposing POV forks and POV forks violate our policy. I will not accept any compromise that involves a POV fork. It violates policy and damages the project. David, now that you have agreed with me that content forks are okay, I am guessing you are retracting your proposal for POV forks. Slrubenstein | Talk 00:46, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Slrubenstein: Perhaps I am missing something, but, as best I can tell, Wordsmith and every editor involved in this dispute who has offered an opinion (other than you), agrees with me that my proposal is a content fork and not a POV fork. It may be a bad idea for other reasons, but it is still a content fork. Again, I am not an experienced editor, but I believe your dispute is worth Wordsmith rather than with me. David.Kane (talk) 04:12, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Well, this may be another one of those specific moments where mediation is needed. My view is that any article that an article that is about multiple views on one question, problem, or topic, might represent a content fork. But anytime an article is about a particular view, it is a POV fork. You are proposing one article on hereditarian views and one article on environmental views. That is two articles, and it is the two that makes it a "fork" (like the forked tongue of a snake). The difference between the two articles is that one is about one kind of view and the other is about another kind of view. View = Point of View = POV fork. Slrubenstein | Talk 20:27, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Agree that two points of view over explanations of the observed differences in IQ would be a POV fork. Content forks would be spinning out unrelated information from a very large article (such as giving Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet separate articles from William Shakespeare). Making one article about the view that Romeo and J. is strictly a love story and another about the view that R. and J. is only a tragedy is a POV fork. T34CH (talk) 20:18, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Slrubenstein and T34CH: Just so I can understand your position better, would you also argue that the fact that Misplaced Pages has two separate articles --- Evolution and Creationism --- which are "two points of view over explanations of" the story of human origins is also a POV fork? (Of course, just because it is does not mean that we should do a POV fork here.) If not, then what is the distinction between that case and ours? (I don't want to necessarily argue about this, I just want to understand your position better.) I would also be curious to know what other editors think this is a POV fork. David.Kane (talk) 20:28, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

That's like asking whether Science and Religion are POV splits. If you'll read the articles, you'll see that they are framed completely differently. They are not presented as equally plausible alternatives to the same question. T34CH (talk) 20:33, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Proposal for 5-way split

I propose splitting the article into five parts. (I am completely flexible on the names for these parts. The main idea here is that we need to separate out hereditarian views from environmental views to at least some extent.)

1) Race and Intelligence. This is the main article, just as it is now. It would still have a lede and feature forks/summaries to the sub-articles listed below. It would, as now, relevant WP:MNA discussion about the meaning of race and intelligence. It might also include background data on measured IQ differences between races.

2) History of Views on Race and Intelligence would include all the historical information that is now in the main article. It would not include discussion of the contemporary scientific literature.

3) Environmental Views on Race and Intelligence. This would summarize in a WP:NPOV manner the published, peer-reviewed literature about environmental (non-genetic) explanations of measured IQ differences.

4) Hereditarian Views on Race and Intelligence. This would summarize in a WP:NPOV manner the published, peer-reviewed literature about hereditarian (genetic) explanations of measured IQ differences.

5) Current Controversy on Race and Intelligence. This is the section that I am most agnostic about. Do we need it? I don't know. Idea is that sections 3) and 4) would feature straight explanations of the different points of view without any direct interaction. In an ideal world, it might not be necessary to do things this way, but our endless previous debates over scope, WP:FRINGE and WP:UNDUE. By creating a separate sections, we avoid these problems. This allows editors to summarize the academic literature to whatever extent they feel useful. But, at the same time, we want to bring the material in these two sections together somehow. This section will be controversial, no doubt, but it will focus the controversy into one well-defined location. I predict that this will work much better than our current approach.

If we can reach consensus that this is at least a plausible plan (no need to precommit to accepting it), I would be ready to take a shot at taking some bold steps in that direction. We can always revert if it turns out to be a bad idea. Or, if someone else wanted to do so, that would be fine as well. Again, the main point of this plan is to provide a well-defined location at which the two major streams in the academic literature might be summarized separately. Long experience suggests that we are unable to summarize them together. David.Kane (talk) 21:20, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

This seems like a good start. Its possible that the fifth article you propose may be covered better as a section of the History article, since such articles often include section about current developments/research. Does anyone have opinions on this? The Wordsmith 22:01, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

I do think this plan is at least plausible, but I’m not sure we need the fifth article. What would go in that article which wouldn’t also belong in either the first or second article?

Something else that I think one of the articles will need to cover is the practical significance of the IQ difference, along the lines of what was here in an earlier version of the article. We have an article on the Achievement gap in the United States, but nothing about the way that race and intelligence relates to this, even though this is probably the aspect of the IQ difference which receives the most public attention. And we don’t have to worry about this being a WP:SYNTH problem, since there’s a lot of research in this area which is specifically about the relationship between the IQ difference and the racial achievement gap; this is the aspect of race and intelligence that Linda Gottfredson has written about the most.

Assuming we go with your proposal, which of the articles do you think should cover this aspect of the topic? --Captain Occam (talk) 22:08, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

I agree that this material is important and am completely flexible as to where it is placed. I don't see much conflict arising in that material, so my first proposal would be to place it in the main Race and Intelligence article directly. David.Kane (talk) 23:30, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

I suggested adding this material to the article around a month ago, and other editors opposed it because they felt that it provided undue weight to the hereditarian hypothesis. I’m not sure why they thought this, since the practical effects of the IQ difference would be the same regardless of whether it’s caused by genetic or environmental factors, and this section of the article isn’t specific about its cause. None of the people who opposed this material explained why they thought it was favoring one hypothesis over the other. But in any case, it appears that for one reason or other this material is contentious, so it’s probably worth discussing it here. --Captain Occam (talk) 00:10, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

David, I am still concerned that an article that is explicitly about a specific view or set of views violates NPOV. However, I am interested in your article on the controversy. It seems to me that there are three separate conversations going on: a conversation among scientists; a conversation among policy analysts (e.g. scientists who work for think-tanks or for the Federal government, or lobbies, as well as other employees of think-tanks and lobbies including lawyers and former legislative aids, or who work for teacher's unions or the PTA); and a controversy in the general public. I think people involved in one conversation are aware of the other conversations, but it is my sense that these are still separate conversations. I also think that the degree of controversy varies depending on the conversation. What is your sense? I ask because your answer can clarify your proposal #5. Slrubenstein | Talk 00:40, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

I have similar concerns to Slrubenstein. Normatively, I dislike the idea of breaking this topic into multiple articles rather than forcing a single consistent NPOV presentation. However, I'm inclined to endorse this proposal as an experiment worth attempting. My reasoning is that in truth the actual structure of published reliable sources tends to reflect this breakdown of topics. That said, the content of #5 does need to exist in a separate article or in #1 because there is a literature that attempts to engage this question (e.g. Hunt and Carlson 2007, and others). We can attempt this experiment now and then reject it later if we find that it failed. --DJ (talk) 02:39, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

I agree with both Slrubenstein and DJ. My sense of the different conversations among different audiences is similar to Slrubenstein's description. I don't think that there is clearly a best way to handle that difficulty and I agree with section 5) of my proposal is the least well-specified. My initial guess would be to follow Slrubenstein's distinction about different audiences arguing about different topics. Perhaps the article could be organized with exactly the three levels that he describes? I am very open to different approaches on this regard. I also agree with DJ that this represents a second-best answer. I just don't see away, given past experience, to a "single consistent NPOV presentation" in one article. (And the raw length of the article makes this impractical as well.) I agree that this proposal is best thought of as "experiment" which might work or might fail. I am ready to make a bold attempt at this, but only once we have reached consensus to do so, of course. David.Kane (talk) 04:22, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose similar splits have been tried in the past and failed (see many of the redirects to the article ). It exacerbates the current problem rather than solves it. Instead of merging lots of material that fits squarely into heritability of IQ (which incidentally would solve the problem some editors have with too little weight given to geneticists and psychometricians), it spreads the confusion around. It also completely ignores our issue with the scope and non-descriptive title. T34CH (talk) 20:27, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

First, I don't think that similar splits have been tried in the past in conjunction with a thorough and accepted mediation process. I think that this time could be different precisely because so many of the key editors have bought into the process. Second, even if it fails, we can always go back. Third, I disagree about your claim that the central issue involves "lots of material that fits squarely into heritability of IQ." Consider Jenson and Rushton (2005) and the scores of peer-reviewed articles that it references. I think that only a tiny portion (less than 5%?) of that material belongs in heritability of IQ and, more importantly, that article is also getting too long. Fourth, I am flexible on titles. What title would you prefer? Fifth, I am not sure I understand your complaint about "scope." Does some of this material not belong in Misplaced Pages? Does this structure prevent other material that does belong from being included? Please explain. Sixth, perhaps one problem with this discussion is that we do not have an example to work with. Unless anyone objects, I will take a try at making the hereditarian article in my user space. Perhaps that will help to focus the discussion. I certainly won't go forward with any bold editing of the main article until other editors and the moderator have spoken. David.Kane (talk) 20:42, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Results of discussion

It’s been around three days since the last time anyone has commented on David.Kane’s proposal, so I don’t think anyone is going to express an opinion about it who hasn’t already. What do the mediators think about whether this proposal can be considered to have consensus? --Captain Occam (talk) 14:43, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Be bold. This is a wiki, after all, and everything can be reverted. I don't think it hurts to try. Xavexgoem (talk) 15:53, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Would you suggest that we create these articles now, or do we need to wait until the mediation is finished first? --Captain Occam (talk) 16:34, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

The mediation is finished only when things get done. Xavexgoem (talk) 19:02, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

I do not see any consensus on David Kane's proposal, I certainly do not agree with it as I have explained, consistently, since it was proposed. I say we go with my proposal, which seemed to have more support especially after Arya and I cleared up a misunderstanding on the relevance of psychometrics. Slrubenstein | Talk 19:35, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Would it bother anyone else if we go with Slrubenstein's proposal? Or are we just gonna, y'know, talk endlessly? I'm not sure if competing proposals are because editor A doesn't like editor B's idea so obfuscates with a new proposal. I'm just looking for a smidgen of consensus. At least who people who go: yeah, that's a good idea. Otherwise... <shrug> Something needs to be done. It isn't my decision to make. If you want to make it my decision, then everyone needs to agree. Xavexgoem (talk) 21:09, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Could someone please give a very precise description of the current format of Slrubenstein's proposal? Which new pages (if any) would be created? Which pages would be deleted? What material would be moved where? (I realize that Slrubenstein provided an initial proposal but I would like to see some clarification about how "relevance of psychometrics" affected it.) There was a fair amount of confusion about it the first time through. (Or at least I was confused.) To use a concrete example, under Slrubenstein's proposal, assume that I wanted to add several paragraphs to Misplaced Pages about hereditarian views on race and intelligence, views published in the peer reviewed literature and held by people like Jensen, Rushton, Herrnstein, Gottfredson, Murray, Cattell, Eysenck and Lynn. I plan on writing, with the help of other editors, a page or two about this material. Where would it go under Slrubenstein's proposal? (Heritability of IQ is already so long that it needs to be broken up already.) David.Kane (talk) 21:49, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

I appreciate all the effort people are putting into these new proposals, but I haven't been able to convince myself they are needed. I don't think a fork is necessary, and I don't think it's warranted when viewed apart from the chronic problems this article has faced. Slrubenstein seems to think we reached some kind of agreement in our earlier discussion. We didn't. S/he just stopped responding when it came to the critical point. I requested more mediator involvement in this issue, but no action followed. Earlier, I had requested for one of the mediators to post a straw poll on the scope issue, and was told this would be done, but again, no action followed. Instead we've allowed the discussion to derail from the original issue of the mediation, and are now entertaining proposals which sidestep the dispute instead of resolving it. With that being said, I'm not going to stand in the way of consensus if it can be gained for anything which gets us back to editing in a halfway normal fashion. --Aryaman (talk) 21:54, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

I've been bold

I moved all the info from the article to existing articles (linked to from the resulting DAB page). Some work definitely remains (removing redundancies, assessing the need for content forks (NOT pov forks), better structure of the articles, etc.), but it's a start. Have a look and try to make it work, since I think we're actually moving in a productive direction right now. As far as I can tell, I didn't lose an text in the moves (aside from a bit of changes to transition text), but feel free to double check me on that. T34CH (talk) 01:08, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

I applaud your boldness. As you can see, the Race (classification of human beings) article now has a "This article may be too long to read and navigate comfortably." I will be similarly bold in try to fix this. David.Kane (talk) 01:49, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Doesn't Academic Debates on Race and Intelligence just perpetuate the problem of the title race and intelligence? I'm really not into that distinction... maybe if you can figure out a way to get all those debates from the race article together instead of singling out that one. T34CH (talk) 02:03, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Hmmm. Well, the information needs to go somewhere and both Heritability of IQ and Race_(classification_of_human_beings) were too long even before more material was added. But, let me try a different sort of boldness. David.Kane (talk) 02:12, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Can we try something? How about we play around with the information within existing articles first. Then we can see how to best deal with bloated articles instead of just removing the information that's just been inserted solely because it was just inserted--not because it's the best information to remove. Case in point, you've removed one contemporary debate from the race article... suggesting that the only real debate worthy of it's own article is weather blacks are dumber than whites. T34CH (talk) 02:21, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Of course! I will leave Heritability of IQ, Race_(classification_of_human_beings) and Intelligence and public policy alone for a day (I assume that is enough time). Feel free to do anything you like with them. (Obviously, I can't speak for other editors involved in those articles.) If you can come up with something that keeps those articles to a reasonable side and includes all the relevant scholarly literature, I will have no complaints. There is certainly tons of stuff worth cutting in those articles. By only request is that you leave the new Between-Group Differences in IQ until we have a chance to evaluate your edits on the other articles. Does that make sense? David.Kane (talk) 02:29, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

No, that makes no sense. The between-groups article is being cited by editors as "awful" edits by me! You can't separate my changes from the new article, so working on my edits means working on (or reverting) the new article. Let's try this out (figure out what info goes where, what's redundant, and what needs a new home) before we try to create new articles. If you want to do that separately, there's nothing stopping you, but please don't pretend to do one thing when your aim is to achieve another. T34CH (talk) 20:00, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Oh, and can you please start being more straight forward with your reasoning? If you have an idea, just say so instead of pretending you're doing something else . I don't think taking the issues related to race and intelligence out of the race article and then attempting to turn it into the Heritability hypothesis of intelligence topic is the way we should be playing here. T34CH (talk) 02:28, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Civility, gentlemen. Xavexgoem (talk) 20:43, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

I am not "pretending" about anything. David.Kane (talk) 02:29, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Ambivalence isn't gonna help anyone, here. This dispute presents two options: talk endlessly, or do something. Anything. I've seen this happen. If you miss this window then morale is gonna plummet more than it already has, and everyone will be back at square 1. Or further back. Just roll with it. Do stuff till it works! Xavexgoem (talk) 14:36, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

I’d say that my morale has plummeted quite a bit as a result of this newest development. We had worked out a list of issues to resolve about the original Race and intelligence article, starting with its scope, and you told us that you were going to post a straw poll about this first question. As Varoon Arya pointed out in his last comment, you never actually did, and instead allowed the discussion to be derailed further and further until everything we had discussed up to that point stopped being relevant.

There are two reasons why the discussion here has lost relevance. The first is that everything we’ve discussed up to this point was about what should be in the Race and intelligence article, which is now nothing but a disambiguation page. And second, eliminating this article and splitting its content into several other articles is something we could have done at any point during the years of debate about the article, and the reason why it was never done is because most editors always felt that it was worth the effort to keep a central article about this topic. Sidestepping the dispute in this manner is not something we would have needed mediation for; the purpose of this mediation (and the past month of discussion here) was to find an actual solution to the disputes about this article.

I think finding a solution to them would have been possible, but it would’ve required some effort from the mediator, such as complying with Varoon Arya’s requests for mediator involvement and following through with your own agreement to post a poll about the scope question. But you didn’t live up to your responsibilities in this case, so here we are. The reason I’m indignant about this isn’t just because of your failure to help resolve the issues with this article; it’s also because the past month of everyone’s time here has apparently been wasted. --Captain Occam (talk) 21:18, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

I think your missing the issue of the holidays. I don't see a drop in moral other than in you. Varoon is out until the next full moon, Slr is constantly busy, DJ hardly ever edits anyway, Ramdrake has been very sick lately and I fear may not be in good shape, Dave is being very cooperative, and I'm dealing with lots of RL stuff right now. Cheer up; it's the holidays. Let's see if we can get this to work out since it's the closest thing to consensus we've had in a very long time. T34CH (talk) 02:12, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

suggestion

I'm throwing myself into the discussion a bit cold, so please forgive me if I cover old ground. I'm not sure that the move to make this a disambig page was the correct one, because it seems to me there is a specific topic here that ought to have a single article of its own. as I see it, it plays out as follows:

• whether actual differences in intelligence between social groups exist
  • historical confusions between "race" and competence, e.g. "White Man's Burden" type arguments
  • difficulty of determining the meaning of intelligence without importing cultural preconceptions
  • actual statistical evidence for such differences (e.g., the statistical model which suggests that women are smarter than men on average, but with a smaller standard deviation)
• whether any such differences (given they exist) are due to genetic/biophysical factors or whether they are transmitted culturally/socially
  • heredity research and arguments
  • socialization research and arguments
• what public policies can/might/should be implemented to account for any such differences
  • historical efforts, generally horrendous: oppression, apartheid, eugenics, exploitation, etc.
  • what various scholars think is the proper way of responding to any such differences that exist

If we can keep it to this outline, would this solve some of the issues that the article has suffered to date? probably a better title would be Intelligence and Social Groups, or something like that... --Ludwigs2 21:21, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Sorry for the long hiatus, but I had to deal with very serious health issues that kept me unable to be here in any way. I would tend to strongly agree tht turning this page into a disambig and moving its materials to other pages may be only disseminating the problem rather than solving it. About 3 years ago, this article was indeed split into about a half dozen articles, only to be remerged some months later. I think we need to review the important points we've discussed so far (scope, etc.) and achieve consensus on those. Only then can we really move forward.--Ramdrake (talk) 16:31, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Someone said:

> This dispute presents two options: talk endlessly, or do something. Anything.

"Do something. Anything."

Why?

Why not leave the perfectly good article alone?

Oh yeah, it offends people who scratch their heads and JUST can't come up with an explanation why blacks do horribly on IQ tests.

The now-dead article was not too long. It did not contain irrelevancies. It was not filled with uncited statements. There was nothing wrong with it. The sections fit together and were, uhh... integrated. When someone wanted to find out about "race and intelligence", all the relevant material was there in one place.

I feel like creationists destroyed the "evolution" article by chopping it into pieces for no reason other than they don't like the (obvious) implication of serious academic research.

This article should not include opinions by field anthropologists not working on the race/intelligence issue. Nor should it include bizarre apologia like "There really isnt any such thing as race. It's just a social construct".

Do you want to put that statement in every other article about race, like ? If it's true, it should CERTAINLY be included there.

Or does race not exist only when we talk about one of them being demonstrably stupid?

That question won;t be answered. It's far easier just to grab the kid who pointed out that the emperor is naked, ban her from Misplaced Pages for a month, and delete her comment as "unproductive".

But that's my point. "Productive" is implicitly defined as "Doing something, anything" to change the article on race and intelligence.

Why this is a bad thing? Here's why:

In one Oregon(?) school district, they're eliminating high-school science labs and firing the science teachers because blacks all flunk it. See, since it CAN'T be that most blacks are too stupid for science lab, it must be some kind of racism. And since we don't tolerate racism, we'll fire all those racist science teachers.

Bowdlerizing Misplaced Pages for political correctness actively promotes this egalitarianism gone mad.

It makes me ashamed of being a left-wing Liberal. TechnoFaye Kane 05:06, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Heritability of IQ

I believe Heritability of IQ has now become a POV fork of race and intelligence. I believe that heritability of IQ is a separate subject from supposed group differences. Wapondaponda (talk) 16:19, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Content fork yes, POV fork no. It certainly needs some work (though I won't touch it because i'm not a scientifically-inclined person), but it is a viable content fork. The Wordsmith 16:49, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure it's a needed content fork, however. I really think this split & disambig was he wrong move, and I suggest we remerge the parts and get about writing the article correctly. --Ludwigs2 17:18, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

I would say it is a POV fork. Heritability relates to the probability that a trait will (or will not) be passed down from parents to offspring. For example, there are articles such as the heritability of autism, causes of schizophrenia, or biology and sexual orientation which all discuss the heritability of complex traits. The issue of any supposed race differences in the occurrence of these traits is not central to the discussion of the trait's heritability. Wapondaponda (talk) 19:28, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Between-group differences in IQ is the latest POV fork of race and intelligence. It may be much better to simply recreate the article "race and intelligence" than to cut and paste the exact material into articles with a different name. This cat and mouse game is a getting quite ridiculous. Wapondaponda (talk) 15:37, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

It's actually a recreation of the Race and Intelligence article. As such, it is both a POV fork and a portmanteau article. Can someone move the content back to Race and Intelligence so we can continue mediation rather than trying to hide the problem under the rug? Thx!--Ramdrake (talk) 15:47, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree that it’s essentially a recreation of the Race and intelligence article under a different name. As I expressed above in my comment on December 19th, I also think splitting the article was a bad idea to begin with. However, a question that I think we need to answer is whether it might be better for this article to exist under its current name than under the name it had before T34CH split it.

I don’t have a strong opinion either way about this. On one hand, the current title of the article isn’t specific about whether it’s referring to an IQ difference between genders, races, or any other group. But on the other hand, it does address the concern that Varoon Arya raised about unclear scope—between-group differences in IQ is clearly a topic within the field of psychometrics, so everyone who reads or edits the article will know that it’s referring to the debate within this field. The title “race and intelligence”, on the other hand, has been interpreted by some editors as needing to cover the opinions of anthropologists and sociologists about what the terms “race” and “intelligence” even mean.

I’m willing to move the content back to Race and intelligence if consensus supports that, but I think first we need to make sure the old title really is better than the new one. --Captain Occam (talk) 01:09, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

The locus of this dispute was how much weight to give to hereditarian theories. Based on the principle of academic freedom, I am not opposed to the theories of Rushton and Jensen being in wikipedia in some shape or form, as long as they are not depicted as the mainstream position, but depicted as what they are, minority or sometimes fringe views. I do not agree with simply splitting the article into several sub-articles as this was unsuccessfully tried before. But I do support a revved-up disambiguation page which has links to other articles with hereditarian theories. For example there could be links to The Bell Curve and related articles where discussion of the hereditarian theories found in the book is not particularly controversial. This proposal has not yet been attempted. The subject matter is what is controversial, not the name of the article. Simply creating different names, such as Between-group differences in IQ, for the same material isn't solving the problem. Continued forking may soon become disruptive to the mediation process. Wapondaponda (talk) 05:51, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

I support moving the article back to a single page. I think the page should be renamed "Intelligence and race" to put less focus on race in the title (I can craft even softer versions, but they start to sound manufactured), and I think we should restructure it along the lines I suggested at the R&I talk page about the time of the split. and I think you should each give me a thousand dollars, but I don't think that's likely to happen. I'd be bold and make the moves myself, but I'm relatively new to this page and I'd be worried I'd miss something. --Ludwigs2 06:54, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

> "I am not opposed to the theories of Rushton and Jensen being in wikipedia as long as they are...depicted as...minority or sometimes fringe views."

Say, that's mighty white of you, Cap'n! LOOK: Rushton's review of research, published in APA's journal, is not "fringe". The hundreds of academic research papers it cites are not "fringe". Fringe is: "Race doesn't biologically exist. It's just a convention, something that everybody pretends is real". Fringe is appealing to a semiotic distinction: "There are no races because that sounds like speciazation, and scientists only refer to us as a single species". And those are the two MOST credible contrary positions.

Discounting the only obvious (and well-researched) explanation of something which doesn't have any other non-ridiculous explanation is just the kind of crypto-censorship that I expect from the sanitizers and Bowdlerizers when they can't just suppress the article outright. The worst they can do is put their POV spin on it.

Whaddya know, there's another one right here:

>"I think the page should be renamed "Intelligence and race" to put less focus on race in the title"

Okay, now see if you can explain in words exactly WHY we should put less focus on race in the title of an article about two things: 1) race, and 2) intelligence. It's been called that for years. Changing the name is what needs explanation.

   --TechnoFaye Kane 01:10, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Should this be referred higher?

I think this case has progressed beyond the point where I (or any other medcab volunteer) can resolve the complex and nuanced issues on this topic. I think all of you would be better off if I closed this case and one of you filed a request for formal mediation by MedCom. I don't think any of us really have the knowledge necessary to figure out how to attack this beast. So, i'm going to keep the case here open for 48 hours, and then i'll close it (barring any serious objection). You've made some progress, but I just don't think I can help you anymore. The Wordsmith 06:34, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Why abandon the mediation before any real mediation has happened? We came here with a relatively clear, solvable problem, but allowed a few individuals to derail the discussion with proposals which had no consensus and then let them go through with massive changes which turned the whole thing into a bigger mess than the one we started with. Let's get the mediation back on track by returning to the original points of discussion (i.e. before Slrubenstein's split proposal). In my eyes, the last constructive thing to emerge from this mediation was Ramdrake's observation - with which I fully concur - that the scope/title is the central bone of contention. I still feel that, once this issue is satisfactorily resolved, we can go back to editing in a normal fashion - which is what everyone here wants, I'm sure. --Aryaman (talk) 13:24, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Varoon Arya about this. I don’t see how you (The Wordsmith) can know that it won’t be possible for you to resolve this issue when you haven’t yet made a serious attempt to do so. We had a specific set of issues that we wanted your help resolving, starting with the article’s scope, and you offered to post a straw poll about that question. Posting a straw poll would have been helpful, and the fact that you offered to do this indicates to me that you could have helped us a lot more than you have, if you’d made a consistent effort at it. But for some reason, you dropped out of the discussion right after this, and ignored other editors’ requests for your further involvement in it, which is how we got to where we are now.

This isn’t a question of whether you know enough about this topic; it’s just a question of whether you’re able to act as a responsible mediator. I’d have to say I’m a little skeptical of that at this point, but the fact that you haven’t lived up to your responsibility in this mediation case isn’t a valid reason to close it, and I would object to your doing so.

Incidentally, I’ve moved the article back to its original location. Hopefully that’ll make it easier for us to resume the discussion we were having before Slrubenstein and T34CH sidetracked us. --Captain Occam (talk) 20:39, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

That was me, actually. Christmas and stuff. Sorry I didn't inform. Xavexgoem (talk) 04:43, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

There are a number of editors who support the proposals made by Slrubenstein and T34CH. Since they are part of the mediation process, their proposals are eligible for consideration. The purpose of mediation is to solve problems usually through new proposals. When CO states that Slr and T34CH "sidetracked us", I don't quite understand who "us" is referring to. I don't feel sidetracked by them, and I don't see any new proposals coming from anywhere else. The article has been restored, which takes us back to square one with no progress at all. Without any fresh propositions, future discussions will be like beating a dead horse because this particular controversy has been debated several times over. One thing we can learn from this mediation process is to distinguish between genuine concerns about content, and the periodic flare-ups this article experiences. Wapondaponda (talk) 05:25, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

I’m not sure how what I’m referring to isn’t clear from Varoon Arya’s comment. What we were going to try and resolve here was the scope question, and there were several proposals related both to that and to other aspects of the article, such as DJ’s suggestion that it take a data-centric approach. While we were waiting for the mediator to post a straw poll about the article’s scope, Slrubenstein posted his suggestion to split the article, which is something that’s been tried (unsuccessfully) in the past. This proposal enjoyed no consensus, but T34CH went ahead with it anyway, which is what’s lately been preventing us from discussing the issues that we were trying to resolve through mediation in the first place.

As has been pointed out by numerous other users, Slribenstein’s proposal hasn’t helped resolve any of these issues; it’s just added to them. At this point, consensus is also strongly against it. In addition to the mediation talk page here, this can be seen from the talk page for the race and intelligence article, for the heritability of IQ article, and for the new between-group differences in IQ article. In addition to me and Varoon Arya, users who have expressed a problem with this course of action are TechnoFaye, Ludwigs2, Victor Chmra, mikemikev, and GregorB. The only users who appear to approve of splitting the article like this are you, Slrubenstein and T34CH. That’s a seven-to-three consensus, which would be enough to undo this change even if it weren’t for the way it’s sidetracked us from the issues we were trying to resolve here.

Whether this means we’re “back to square one” depends entirely on whether we’re able to resume discussing the issues and proposals that we were discussing before we got distracted by Slrubenstein and T34CH’s attempt to split the article. I’m willing to resume discussing them, but whether or not we can do that isn’t just up to me; it also depends on the cooperation of the rest of you and of the mediators. --Captain Occam (talk) 07:22, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

First, I agree that mediation hasn't even been tried here. Who do we have to talk to to get an experienced mediator to lend a hand? Second, although T34CH bold editing was neither my first or second choice for how to handle the dispute, I thought it was a reasonable choice and that there was a chance for it to lead to consensus. At least I and T34CH were both working on it, and we have disagreed (I think) about this debate in the past. Why not allow his attempt a few more weeks to run? And then, before reverting it, test to see what sort of consensus, if any, has been achieved. I think that recent reversion was a mistake. But I don't want to get in an edit war about it. David.Kane (talk) 17:28, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

The reason I didn’t wait longer before reverting it is because mikemikev stated here that he was about to revert the article, and if the article was going to be reverted, I wanted to make sure that this would be done by someone who was familiar with the mediation process and how the article had been split up. More specifically, you and DJ made some improvements to the article while it existed under the title Between-group differences in IQ that were definitely worth keeping, at least as long as consensus doesn’t oppose them. But since mikemikev hadn’t been following the mediation process, it looked like he was preparing to just revert Race and intelligence to the state that it had existed in before the split, which would have caused all of your and DJ’s recent work on the article to be undone.

We were at the point where there was enough consensus against this split that it was inevitably going to be reverted no matter what; if not by me than by someone else. I couldn’t change whether or not this happened, but one thing I could do was make sure it was done in a way that preserved your and DJ’s recent work on the article. --Captain Occam (talk) 02:37, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

For the record I was planning to incorporate any post split changes, but of course you didn't know that so your revert was justified. Sorry to butt in during mediation, but it seems to me that this split was not agreed upon. One of the main objections to 'race' here is that it is a vague concept. Surely 'group' is more vague and making the problem worse. I think that if this article was renamed it would then die a death of a thousand cuts, and end up buried. Since it is a real issue in academia, I think we have a duty to reflect it on wikipedia. mikemikev (talk) 11:14, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Mikemikev: If you would like to participate in the mediation (and you would be welcome), you should join us in a formal fashion. The initial bold edit by T34CH is an on-going project would should be allowed to run its course. My sense is that the new page is excellent because it allows us (mainly DJ) to avoid controversial discussion about What is Race? and What is Intelligence? while still allowing us to dive into the details of the scholarly literature. If you had more to add, that would be great. This page has been a mess for years and, as best I can tell, T34CH's bold edit offers the chance (but not the quarantee) for meaningful improvement. David.Kane (talk) 00:07, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

I disagree. what we have here is one notable topic that should never have been divvied out over several pages, and T34CH's edit wasn't bold it was hasty, as well as undertaken without proper consensus over a holiday break when people weren't around to debate the issue. --Ludwigs2 00:34, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Just because you and Occam disagree does not mean that you should be stepping in the middle of this and blindly reverting the article. It's pretty clear that this subject needs further mediation, and that Occam's disruptive edits only exacerbate the problem. So far he's been suspended twice over his "bold" edits to R&I. Aprock (talk) 01:15, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm not interested in your dispute with Occam, and I am not interested in being criticized by you for doing what I think is correct. I am offering you the chance right now to discuss the issue politely so that we can reach a proper conclusion about which way to go with this. However, If you merely want to vent, please do that on my talk page so that we can reserve this space for productive discussion. --Ludwigs2 01:49, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Believe it or not, everyone is generally doing what they think is correct, which is why WP:AGF is a fairly good policy. In the case of Occam, doing what he thinks is correct has gotten him suspended twice. I personally have no beef with him, or you. I honestly think letting mediation run it's course is the correct way to go. Aprock (talk) 01:58, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

(e/c) Why does no one ever seem to hear me when I say I want to talk about the topic rather than the editors? So far as I know mediation hasn't ended, nor was the decision to split the article a result of the mediation. I've told you why I don't think this article should be split. you tell me why you think it should be. we go from there. Sound like a plan? --Ludwigs2 02:57, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

> "One of the main objections to 'race' here is that it is a vague concept."

I trust that whoever asserted this will also put that little-known fact into Race in the United States whose first line is: The United States is a racially diverse country". He also needs to change Race and inequality in the United States, Affirmative action in the United States, and Racism in the United States, all of which would seem to be incomplete without inclusion of the very relevant fact that "races" don't exist. For that matter, I bet there are hundreds of articles that will need to be updated with this important new information.

...Unless the concept of races only becomes "vague" when one of them is shown to be less intelligent. Of course, that's not what's going on here, is it?

Another thing just occurred to me, which I haven't seen mentioned. Even if we have to... uhh, whitewash the issue of race being correlated with intelligence because racial groups are just social constructs, nothing changes. The numeric data is still there, and needs to be explained. The question "why is one race so stupid?" has merely been replaced with "why is one socially-constructed group so stupid?"

Remember that it's not sample bias or malnutrition or any of the other very carefully controlled variables that explain why this "socially-constructed group" is, on average, borderline retarded. if it were, then that would be the simple answer to the original question and we wouldn't be here talking about it. Yet no one seriously asserts that hundreds of studies, all showing consistent results, are biased by researcher racism (or whatever the excuse is).

In theory, the Bowdlerizers would be completely happy if the original article in contention were changed only by replacing the word "black" with the phrase "one particular socially-constructed group". Right? (That's actually a serious question). TechnoFaye Kane

Techno, you are confusing separate issues. No one denies that race as a social construct exists - people talk about race all the time, race is a factor in many social and political disagreements, etc. Scientifically, however, race is exceedingly difficult to define. Human genetic diversity is small compared to most animal species (the distribution of genes between supposed human races are much smaller than the normal distribution of genes you find in (I think the normal comparison is) robins). This raises serious analytical questions about whether differences between races are genetic or sociological in nature.

That being said, this is not the place to engage in content discussions. once we get the page back on track, please bring your sources over to article space and start editing. --Ludwigs2 03:05, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Hmm... Okay, I agree that the issue of "why one particular socially-constructed group is, on average, borderline retarded" isn't what this mediation is about.

That being said...

You wrote that: "Scientifically, race is exceedingly difficult to define." But ONLY when the issue is intelligence! No one asserts this as a flaw in scholarly articles about other physical differences between the races. No one thought it was a problem when I was an anthropology major and Dr. Adler told us that racial differences extend to skeletal remains. I imagine few pathologists have been sued by the NAACP for citing those differences to establish race.

Physical race ONLY becomes an issue when the issue is intelligence.

> "Human genetic diversity is small compared to most animal species"

With all respect, Ludwig, so what? Those genetic differences ARE sufficient to cause Asian skull volume to be 6% larger than black ones, Citations on request, but they're all serious academic journals.

> "the distribution of genes between supposed human races are much smaller than the normal distribution of genes you find in robins."

"Again, so what? There are noticeable differences between types of robins, too. In fact, there are six types, called "subspecies". At least, there were until they discovered a seventh a few months ago. And morthe differences involve more than just feathers. In fact, the plumage don't enter into it.

All your statement seems to show is that whites and asians are a subspecies of negro.

BTW, this simple but rigorously scientific chart (made by me) conclusively answers all of the issues of concern in this mediation.

TechnoFaye Kane 05:05, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

The decision to turn the article into a disambiguation was taken as part of the mediation process. The editors participating in that process may decide to revert it in the future. If you want to join the mediation process, then do so. You would be welcome. But you need to join it formally. In the meantime, the polite thing to do would be to avoid major edits on this article. Also, in case you care (and as the prior discussion makes clear) my own perspective on the underlying issues is probably close to yours. David.Kane (talk) 03:14, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

what does 'join it formally' mean? I'm here, I'm participating - do I need to pay some kind of membership dues?

so far, not one single response I have gotten on this page has involved the article at hand. hell of a frigging mediation process. if all you are going to do on this page is criticize each other and revert each other, you are not going to get anywhere. so what's it gonna be - are you going to bitch me out some more, or can we get down to business? --Ludwigs2 04:23, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Dude, it's alright. I basically gave the "go ahead" to create a disambig - actually, I said do anything - since we're in a talk-talk-talk loop. Yeah, I dropped the ball on this one. It's not an easy case, and there are at least a dozen issues, none of them disparate but enough to cause problems one way or another.

Tell me what you'd prefer. You can email me, go to my talkpage, or reply here. If anyone needs a good bitch 'n moan, I'm always free for email. You can bitch and moan at me or anyone else. But we gotta keep that stuff off this page and any other. Xavexgoem (talk) 05:04, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

eh, not a problem. I've had this page on my todo list for ages, and when I finally came off wikibreak and started to take a look at it I found myself ducking monkey poo (not a criticism - I've thrown my fair share of that stuff myself). a bit disconcerting, is all. . does 'join it formally' have a specific meaning, or is that just a turn of phrase? --Ludwigs2 05:53, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Essentially it means that you add your name to the list of parties. That's all, then you're in. We're not a process-heavy cabal. The Wordsmith 06:12, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

is this BYOB, or is there an open bar? --Ludwigs2 06:27, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Our sekrit cabal paychecks aren't enough for an open bar. What do you think this is, Arbcom? The Wordsmith 07:04, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

I think 'Race' is however it's defined for the purposes of that study. Therefore all studies about the subject are valid. If people want to know the results of such studies they can go to the 'Race and Intelligence' article, not the 'Undefined Groups and Intelligence' article. I'll stop reverting this in the interests of peace, but I think the current split is ridiculous, and an obvious attempt to bury the issue. I'll keep an eye on further developments. mikemikev (talk) 10:40, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

It goes beyond that, really. whether or not race has a meaningful analytic definition, The term has been used 'as though' it has a meaningful definition for a very, very long time. People assume that there are differences between different groups of people, and that assumption is often used to claim differences in competence or ability (from garden-variety prejudice to complex apartheid-like social structures), and those differences are often cast in terms of cognitive ability. There is a long history of people making claims about the relationship between race and intelligence; the topic needs an article of its own. --Ludwigs2 18:13, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

I think you are correct in this. I agree that there needs to be an article. The real question is what sort of article it should be. That's the basic problem right now, deciding what should go into such an article. Some people are very interested in including the research which shows that sociological race and intelligence correlate, and the related conjecture that there is a genetic link. In general, that line of research has reached a dead end, and there is little ongoing research into genetic race and how it relates to intelligence. The active research on the relationship between genes and intelligence has so far proven inconclusive, but is ongoing. I think the basic problem is that we're at that dead end in terms of research. Until we understand how genes relate to intelligence, there is unlikely to be any significant research into how genetic race relates to intelligence. I would personally fully support an article that described the history and ongoing efforts to investigate the relationship between sociological race and intelligence. Aprock (talk) 18:35, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

I don't think we need to worry about that. Our job here is to report the history and the current understanding of the topic. If the current understanding is inconclusive, then we simply balance the various inconclusive theories and leave it as an open question. we can easily spell out the dimensions of the problem and the basic modalities that people have used to address it without making any claims about what is right and what is wrong. --Ludwigs2 19:43, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Yep, and that's exactly why mediation is needed. If this is to be an article about the history of academic investigations into race and intelligence, then I generally agree. But it's not clear that that's what the article is to be about. The many differing views as to what should be included in the article is one of the reasons why a disambiguation page was set up. I hope that it will be just a stop gap measure, but so far we can't decide what the article should be about. Aprock (talk) 22:05, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

techno, I'm archiving what you wrote above as off-topic for this discussion (which may be forward of me, but I think is appropriate - please leave me a talk page note if you want to discuss it). this page is for discussing what we are going to do with the article, not for discussing article content. if you have reliable sources for what you say, I'd be perfectly interested in seeing them and using them. but let's take that up when we work on the article itself, after we've finished discussing how we are going to approach the material. ok? --Ludwigs2 01:44, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

> leave me a talk page note if you want to discuss it.

The issue of political meddling in Misplaced Pages is too important. I will, however, keep any future posts (including this one) less ranting, much shorter, and to-the-point.

> this page is for discussing what we are going to do with the article

...and THAT'S the point. I maintain that the article doesn't need to be changed at all. And that statement IS relevant to the issue of what happens to the article. The very fact that one group thinks there's something wrong with it should only be taken seriously when the article quotes fake numbers or is otherwise fraudulent. Do you think the people babysitting the evolution article take the shouts of "atheist bias" seriously?

How about a vote on whether the article needs to be changed or not?

According to Slrubenstein's opening statement:

"The problem is when someone says that half of the difference in IQ between Blacks and Whites is genetic is tantamount to saying that Blacks are inherently inferior."

But that's not true. It is not tantamount to ANYTHING but "blacks (on average) appear to be less intelligent, as measured by IQ tests", period. That statement only refers to test scores, not morality, virtue, or "superiority"--whatever that even means.

This a huge error a lot of smart people make. Historically, the assertion that intelligence = superior has produced nothing but death, sadness, and a lot of nerds not getting laid.

"What does this have to do with changing the article", you ask?

I propose that a prominent disclaimer making that critical distinction be added to the top of the article. I think that will calm down some of the conflict.

Further, I think it would be appropriate to add a section saying "Some people disagree about the relevance of...", and let them put their Apologia Negrogia there.

TechnoFaye Kane 07:03, 14 January 2010 (UTC) PS: I doubt that I have changed anyone's mind, and I'm going to try really, really hard not to read this page anymore.

"It is not tantamount to ANYTHING but "blacks (on average) appear to be less intelligent, as measured by IQ tests", period. That statement only refers to test scores," - I am afraid you misinterpret what I wrote. Had I written "The problem is when someone says averagre IQ scores of Blacks are lower than average IQ scores of Whites is tantamount to saying that Blacks are inherently inferior" you would be correct. But that is not what I wrote. What I wrote was, "The problem is when someone says that half of the difference in IQ between Blacks and Whites is genetic is tantamount to saying that Blacks are inherently inferior." What I wrote calls attention to the claim that the cause or explanation for the difference is genetic i.e. inherited i.e. inherent. The statement I am referring to does not refer solely to test scores. It refers to the claim that the explanation for the difference in test scores is genetic. Now, if you want we can have a debate as to whether IQ test scores measure intelligence. You seem to be suggesting that when you say that the only thing we are talking about is "test scores." But many people believe that IQ tests tests, well, "intelligence." What do you think IQ tests measure? I thought that this article was notable because IQ scores are held to measure intelligence. If it does not measure intelligence, what do you think it measures? But regardless of what you think, many people including most psychologists claim it measures intelligence. And if you claim that Whites are more intelligent than Blacks, well, yes, you are claiming that - in the field of intelligence - Whites are superior to Blacks. And if you claim that this is because of genetics, you care claiming that this superiority is inherant. I hope now that I have broken it down into smaller parts for you you can follow the ideas. Slrubenstein | Talk 15:52, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Discussion: Scope

Before this mediation goes any further, I think it is vital for us to establish some kind of consensus regarding the scope of this article. In what follows, I shall make a proposal. Others may agree with it, ask for clarification regarding it, make suggestions for improving it, or make a counter-proposal. Whatever you do, please keep your comments, questions, etc. on-topic and constructive.

The issue of scope is directly related to several key issues of this mediation, and involves (among other things):

• Title: Defining the scope helps us determine what this article should be called.
• Content: Defining the scope helps us determine what the article should discuss.
• Literature: Defining the scope helps us to determine which literature should be considered representative.

I think the article should treat race as a factor in intelligence research. The main body of the article should discuss the results of research which has been conducted on "race and intelligence" (i.e. those two things in conjunction; cf. WP:SYNTH). The literature used for referencing the main body of the article should come from the field of intelligence testing, i.e. psychometrics and behavioural genetics. Criticism of specific aspects of race and intelligence research which is made by experts discussing race and intelligence should be included in the main body. Criticism of race and intelligence research in general, e.g. that made by scholars with either no expertise in race and intelligence studies or expertise in a field tangentially relevant, can be included but should be treated subsequent to the main discussion and should be allowed to neither pre-empt the issue nor outweigh it (cf. WP:SYNTH, WP:UNDUE). A smaller section, subsequent to the main body, should discuss both the impact this research has had on related fields as well as relevant discussion in the popular press.

To summarize my proposal:

• Title: (1) "Race and intelligence", (2) "Intelligence and race", or (3) "Race in intelligence research".
• Content: The results of research on and theories regarding "race and intelligence" as a single issue, with subsequent discussion regarding the impact of this research and reactions to it.
• Literature: The primary sources should be those written by intelligence experts who consider race as a factor in their research. Secondary sources could include that written by scholars with expertise in tangentially related fields (sociology, anthropology, etc.) as well as the opinions of prominent public figures with no expertise but with, for example, political clout.

Please comment below. --Aryaman (talk) 09:02, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

personally, I think that's only a part of what the article needs to cover. The issue of race and intelligence goes back (at least) to the colonial era as part of efforts to understand the vast superiority of European technology over the (essentially) stone age civilizations colonials and explorers encountered (as well as helping to justify economic exploitation). The science arose primarily because western researchers were confronted with a de facto cultural assumption that other races were a bit dumb; an assumption that scientists went about trying to confirm or refute. going straight to the research would miss the fact that the idea itself springs out of white western/european presumptions of superiority. as I said over on the Race and Intelligence talk page, I think the body of the aricle should look more like this (cut and paste):

• whether actual differences in intelligence between social groups exist
  • historical confusions between "race" and competence, e.g. "White Man's Burden" type arguments
  • difficulty of determining the meaning of intelligence without importing cultural preconceptions
  • actual statistical evidence for such differences (e.g., the statistical model which suggests that women are smarter than men on average, but with a smaller standard deviation)
• whether any such differences (given they exist) are due to genetic/biophysical factors or whether they are transmitted culturally/socially
  • heredity research and arguments
  • socialization research and arguments
• what public policies can/might/should be implemented to account for any such differences
  • historical efforts, generally horrendous: oppression, apartheid, eugenics, exploitation, etc.
  • what various scholars think is the proper way of responding to any such differences that exist

That kind of structure should contextualize the issue properly. --Ludwigs2 10:11, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

One could argue that the issue of "race and intelligence" goes back over 4000 years, but the question is whether we can write such a wide-scope article without indulging in synthesis or original research. This has been a constant problem with the article in the past. While it's true that this article is about two issues, i.e. "race" and "intelligence", we are not at liberty to bring together sources on "race" and sources on "intelligence" and evaluate them in a context foreign to their original composition. Discussing issues such as the "White Man's Burden", difficulties in defining/measuring intelligence, difficulties in defining race, intelligence as a factor in the race debate, etc., while certainly related to the issue of "race and intelligence", should not be the central focus of this article. Though this article should summarize those discussions in an appropriate manner, these issues are best covered at their respective articles, and we are prompted to make necessary assumptions when writing articles exactly such as this one. In my opinion, as long as the title is "Race and intelligence" or some variant thereof, our primary sources should be discussing "race and intelligence" in conjunction with one another. If an article about two issues cannot be written using sources which discuss both issues in relation to one another, then it is likely that Misplaced Pages should not have an article on it at all. In this case, we have enough literature from intelligence experts to write a competent and informative article about the single issue of "race as a factor in intelligence research". As for "contextualizing" the issue, we are limited to imitating the contextualization which takes place in that body of literature. To go beyond that in the attempt to provide "proper" context is to initiate a debate which will keep us firmly situated in the present dispute, as there is no objective standard for what is "proper". --Aryaman (talk) 15:14, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

I think Aryaman has the right approach. This way, we can make good mention of the problems with this dispute (White Man's Burden, etc) without getting sidetracked by it. With that said, there will be an assumption by many readers expecting a greater critique of the subject, so it should be stressed somehow that this article is nearly entirely academic, as are the critiques within the field. Is this an accurate summary, so far? Xavexgoem (talk) 15:32, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

As far as I'm concerned, yes. We should have a disclaimer at the top of the article which says something to the tune of:

"This article discusses race as a factor in academic intelligence research. For information on related issues, see: X, Y, Z."

Which articles need to be listed in that header is, of course, open for discussion, but obvious ones include Race (classification of human beings), Intelligence quotient and Achievement gap in the United States. --Aryaman (talk) 15:48, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

The main problem in that summary is that you seem to want it to be a broad overview, but use a narrow set of sources. I'd be happy with either a narrow article from a narrow set of sources, or a broad overview emphasizing our current understanding. Aprock (talk) 16:40, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

well, all I can say is that if you don't contextualize this article in terms of preexisting beliefs about European superiority, this article is going to continue to be plagued by POV problems. The question of whether there are identifiable differences in intelligence between races only arises because such opinions exist in the conventional mindset. Trying to head straight to the research makes it look as though racial differences are meaningful and true, because the research has to presuppose that for analysis. it's rather like spelling out the answer to a question without clarifying the question itself. --Ludwigs2 20:24, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

I totally agree with Ludwig here. Starting by making the "necessary assumptions" (i.e. that races are valid biological categories and that IQ properly summarizes intelligence) goes xounter to the opinion of a large percentage of scientists in many relevant fields). While the article shouldn't dwell overmuch on these points, they need to be raised as they have been used as legitimate objections to the study of "race and intelligence".--Ramdrake (talk) 21:25, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

The "necessary assumption" in this case is that both "race" and "intelligence" are highly controversial issues. We can safely assume that every reader approaching the article already knows this, and repeating it for the sake of political correctness or whatever is just plain silly. If a reader wants to find out about all the ways in which "race" and "intelligence" are controversial, he or she can read those articles.

I've made it clear that I support including criticism as long as it's coming from literature which covers race and intelligence (and there's plenty of that), so there's no need for the straw man argument. I'm not attempting to "hide" the fact that race and intelligence are controversial. (As though that were even possible?) I am trying to create an article which abides by policy and discusses a clearly identified topic in an intelligent manner. This isn't a high school essay, and we should stop wasting our time by trying to write as though we have some moral obligation to ensure that none of our readers draw potentially offensive conclusions from the research results we are reporting. It's a controversial and potentially offensive topic, and it will be forever plagued by calls of "POV!" That doesn't mean it can't be dealt with in a sensible way. --Aryaman (talk) 22:16, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

I really don't think you can assume that a reader understand that race and intelligence are both ill defined terms.Aprock (talk) 22:21, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Agreed, vehemently. I remember back in High School -- not that long ago, about 3-4 years -- I was watching a kid fill out that political compass survey (google it). One of the questions was, to paraphrase, "I believe that my race is inherently superior to others"... and four bullets: strongly agree, agree, disagree, strongly disagree. Kid clicked agree. Now, Wisconsin might seem like the boondocks to some, but this was an upper-middle class white kid in an upper-middle class white city. I'm not entirely sure what my point is here, but it raises an ethical question. Aryaman, you suggested the use of "Race in intelligence research" as a title. Perhaps this would mitigate this somewhat? It does appear to narrow the contextual scope. Xavexgoem (talk) 22:37, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

(e/c) Aryaman, I think you've misunderstood me. I'm not suggesting you are trying to 'hide' anything, and I am not talking about criticism. I'm trying to tell you that this topic is not clearly defined unless you frame it in terms of greater societal contexts. if you don't, you make it look as though a bunch of scientists woke up one morning and thought (completely out of the blue) "Gee, I wonder if darker skin makes people dumber?" That isn't what happened at all: scientists have merely been trying to get empirical data and create theoretical frameworks to support or refute a set of pre-given social preconceptions about race. we need to lead with some discussion of the history that lead up to this kind of research, because without that history the research itself starts to look racist. --Ludwigs2 22:45, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

(outdent) Aprock, I don't want to assume that my reader "understands" that "race and intelligence are both ill defined terms". If I did, I would be assuming my reader to be biased, which is a bad assumption for any editor to make. On the other hand, if I did want to assume such a thing, then I would be demonstrating my own bias (i.e. that I am of the conviction that "race and intelligence" are in fact "ill defined terms"), and would make myself unfit to edit this article without the closest of observation. Instead, I feel content in assuming that the reader knows this to be a controversial topic. I also see no problem in reminding him of this fact as a somewhat crude yet forgivable way of easing into the discussion. But the line must be drawn at rehashing the debates regarding the definition of "race" and "intelligence" in either the general academic community or in the public at large. The article should stick to informing the reader as to how the literature which actually discusses "race and intelligence" defines these things.

Ludwigs, it seems to me that you are interested in "intelligence as a factor in the issue of race", i.e. a history of academic racism with a special emphasis on any claims of "intellectual inferiority" which may have been made along the way. As I hope is obvious, this is almost the exact inverse to my own proposal regarding scope. I have serious doubts regarding whether synthesis and original research can be avoided in such an article, but it is one solution to the question of how "race" and "intelligence" can be discussed in the same article.

Here's the dilemma: The wider you make the scope of this article, the more inadequate it becomes for presenting the results of psychometric research on the issue of race and intelligence. If you bury it or marginalize it by bringing in historians, anthropologists, sociologists, biologists, etc. who will tell us that research on race is "fundamentally flawed", that intelligence is "impossible to quantify", and that the study of race and intelligence is "the product of the White European man's attempt to dominate the world", it will eventually split off into its own article, thus defeating all the effort spent on "contextualizing" the discussion in the first place, and the cycle of split-merge-delete-recreate-disambiguate-merge-split that has gone on for years will simply continue. Thus, the only viable solution in my eyes is to narrow this article down as much as possible.

But, seeing as we have two options, I suppose we should put it up for a vote, no? If the mediator would do so, I would be grateful. --Aryaman (talk) 03:51, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Varoon Arya for the most part. There needs to be a "race as a factor in intelligence research" article as s/he puts it. Let other articles cover broader topics if they're appropriate topics, perhaps including an article under the namespace of "race and intelligence". There are innumerable academic works with corresponding research-only focus (e.g. the APA's report), which serve as the predicate to establish the scope of such an article. Brief summaries with links out to related articles may of course be appropriate for context. --DJ (talk) 08:43, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Varoon: that's not quite how I would put it. Scientifically, the way one has to approach this issue is to say: "Here is a set of races defined by such-and-such measurements, and here is a measure of intelligence. let's see if there's a relationship between them." Then one does research that categorizes subjects according to measurements of race, runs the subjects through measures of intelligence, and runs statistical analyses (ANOVAS or regression analysis in the simplest cases). Unfortunately, measurements of race suck (and yeah, I know that no one ever talks about measuring race; That just speaks right back to the problem). Race is invariably measured by self-report or by inspection (s/he says he is ... of s/he looks like s/he's...); I have never heard of an intelligence experiment that classifies people according to genetic markers (which is the only meaningful way to classify people into 'races'), nor do I know if that kind of classification is even possible. by ignoring the social context in which race is defined, race gets reified as a pre-given (through the assertion that the conventional way of measuring race is accurate). You cannot understand the answers given by research into race and intelligence without understanding the questions that the researchers asked when they did their research, and that goes straight to social and political preconceptions. --Ludwigs2 11:22, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Ludwig, the issues you’re raising here are actually discussed by a lot of the research that’s specifically about race and intelligence, so you don’t have to worry that these questions will be overlooked if we follow VA’s suggestion about a narrow scope.

I know I’ve stated this earlier in the mediation case, but I also agree with VA that the scope of this article should be “race as a factor in intelligence research”. That isn’t to say the historical background of this topic shouldn’t be mentioned at all, but it shouldn’t be the focus of the article, and it only be presented as a way to contextualize the psychometric debate.

The reason I feel this way (which I’ve also stated before) is because if we take the wide-scope approach, we’re going to end up duplicating information that’s in a lot of other articles, such as Race and genetics, Social interpretations of race, Scientific racism, and so on. That in itself isn’t a problem, but Misplaced Pages also currently lacks any article which focuses on the debate in psychometrics over race as a factor in intelligence research. If we have a choice between an article which rehashes information that’s already in other articles, or an article which presents a topic which is not covered anywhere else on Misplaced Pages, I think it’s pretty clear that Misplaced Pages would benefit considerably more from the latter option. --Captain Occam (talk) 11:41, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

ok, I'm fine with keeping it restricted so long as it is contextualized. really, my main worry is that presenting the research without context will present race fait accompli, which would be (IMO) a misrepresentation of the literature. --Ludwigs2 12:42, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Archiving

Page is getting quite large and probably needs archiving. What is the normal practice for archiving mediation talk pages? A few comments, such as those about some racial incidents that have happened, are quite forum-like and do not appear to be relevant to the mediation process. Wapondaponda (talk) 10:34, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

I usually just collapse them, instead of archiving. Otherwise it takes me a bunch of pageviews to get all the context. I'll see what I can do.Xavexgoem (talk) 10:46, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Collapsing will reduce the vertical space, but it won't reduce the size of the article, which is currently over 350kb. Such large pages become a problem for low bandwidth connections. Wapondaponda (talk) 00:54, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Straw-poll, heaven forbid!

It seems our current dilemma is not as bad as it seems. Right now, principally between Aryaman and Ludwig, we have a fairly specific problem of scope: Should "Race and intelligence" be broad, and cover all fields -- which will inevitably weigh towards the idea that race is essentially an unfair metric in intelligence (which others will argue is an unfair metric itself) -- or will it cover material under the assumption that there are researchers who study race (however defined by them) as a factor in intelligence research. It should be noted that Aryaman has already expressed that it's worth having some explicit discussion within the narrow-context article about some of the basic problems others have with the use of race in intelligence, while not skewing the discussion towards race.

interjection: I have to object to the phrase inevitably weigh towards the idea that race is essentially an unfair metric in intelligence which is not true, and not what I was saying. Fairness has nothing to do with it. Either the measures made of race and the measures made of intelligence are valid and reliable or they are not; it's a question of whether the conclusions drawn are reasonable or spurious, not whether they are right or wrong. --Ludwigs2 11:31, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

It's my opinion that both the wide-context article and the narrow-context article are worthy of inclusion. The former covers a huge area: Sociology, achievement gap, and white supremacy (the system, e.g., White Man's burden); the latter covers a narrow area: the academia that includes race within discussions of intelligence. I use my own opinion in this paragraph just to point out that there may be a middle ground.

A brief glossary: Wide-context refers to race in all or nearly all possible contexts (like the political aspects) and how that could relate to "intelligence"; narrow-context refers to race only as it's used academically in the study of intelligence, regardless of the definition or connotation of race - tacit or express - used by those academics (although, naturally, mentions will be made about the controversy). Xavexgoem (talk) 10:08, 15 January 2010 (UTC) If I got any of this wrong, particularly the glossary, please correct me.

Here's the straw-poll. Feel free to add a short comment on why you think what you do (see WP:Consensus statement for tips on brevity), but please don't make a comment so big that you just know someone'll have to reply to it. There's an "other" section. Use it only if the parts above don't even come close to what you have in mind.

Race and intelligence should cover both the wide-context and the narrow-context Note: the consensus is that wide-context will outweigh narrow-context, so only sign here if you understand that

• support. Any other solution is nothing more than creating a pov-fork. " POV forks usually arise when contributors disagree about the content of an article or other page. Instead of resolving that disagreement by consensus, another version of the article (or another article on the same subject) is created to be developed according to a particular point of view. This second article is known as a "POV fork" of the first, and is inconsistent with Misplaced Pages policies."
• Support. Again, the research need to be presented in full context, which includes reception from other venues of science. As I said earlier, limiting the scope to just psychometricians runs the danger of building a walled garden.--Ramdrake (talk) 19:57, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Race and intelligence should cover the wide-context; another article should more exclusively cover the narrow-context What should it be called?

• Support: I suggest creating Race and IQ (currently a redirect to Race and intelligence) as the article which will focus on discussing race as a factor in intelligence research. "IQ" is (a) more specific than "intelligence", though it can be seen as a sub-set of it, and (b) clearly indicates the distinction between "intelligence" in a general (social/political) sense and "intelligence" as it is used in the field of psychometrics (which is usually carefully defined and not nearly as "nebulous" as in the broader discussion). Both articles should have a header which explains the specific scope (e.g. "This article treats the issue of race as a factor in academic intelligence research. For a treatment of the historical, social and political context in which this discussion takes place, see: Race and intelligence, etc."). --Aryaman (talk) 19:20, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
• Support': Race and IQ is a fine suggestion for the narrow article's title. The broad article can be at Race and intelligence. "About" tags at the top of the pages can keep the two linked. The motivation is empirical -- there is a coherent "narrow" focused literature on IQ that can stand on its own as an article. This approach is consistent with the current state of affairs where Achievement gap in the United States is also a separate article. I believe this will accommodate what are otherwise two different but equally valid visions for what a single Race and intelligence might contain. Evidence that these two visions can practically co-exist in one article seems severely lacking and contradicted by years of problem with the article. We can being by copying the current Race and intelligence content to Race and IQ and setting up the stub for the new Race and intelligence with the appropriate links out. --DJ (talk) 09:40, 16 January 2010 (UTC)
• Support: I think creating a Race and IQ page is a perfect way to handle dealing with separating the research issues from the general sociological ones. Aprock (talk) 18:38, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
• Support: Also agree Race and IQ article is a good idea. David.Kane (talk) 04:34, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Race and intelligence should cover the narrow-context; another article should be made for the wide-context Ditto above

• mikemikev (talk) 17:12, 15 January 2010 (UTC) - Believe wider context goes under 'Race' and 'Intelligence'.

Other (please be brief) But if you have an opinion about the above issues, please add them above

• I think we can (and should) cover both the wide and narrow context in the same article, where the focus is on the narrow context of research but the wide context is covered thoroughly enough to put the research into proper context. --Ludwigs2 19:51, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Question: Ludwigs, can you give us some kind of objective standard for what provides "proper context"? We agreed that even the narrow scope article will cover context, as this is covered in the literature. In what way do you see that context as being insufficient? Some concrete examples might help clarify things. --Aryaman (talk) 02:20, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Comment: This is essentially the first option, as I had it figured. Maybe the small text is too misleading; I added it because it's likely to get a smattering of UNDUE comments as balance is created and maintained. With that said, I think Aryaman is asking the right question. (Actually, I'd rephrase the question: what is the minimum acceptable context? We were having a long and dreadful discussion above about percentages (...I think this was the mediation that happened, anyway...) between wide-scope and narrow-scope) Xavexgoem (talk) 04:45, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Ludwig: Covering both was my first choice as well. But, now that I have studied the archives ad listened to other editors, I can understand why covering both in one article has never worked despite years of good faith efforts. If you have just one article that WP:UNDUE complaints dominate everything. Why not give this new idea a try? David.Kane (talk) 04:54, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Here's the way I see it (not sure if this qualifies as an objective standard, but...): before the research can make sense, the reader has to be able to understand that the scientific question arose out of a set of social/political questions. These don't need to be gone into in great detail (because I'm sure there's already plenty on those questions elsewhere on wikipedia), but enough has to be lain out so that readers can see that scientists aren't asking this question out of a peculiar sort of curiosity. Scientists are asking this question because the ideas of race and intelligence overlap on a number of different social and political fronts (observable differences in wealth, status, criminality, educational achievement, etc., etc.). the R&I question is harped on both by those who want to use intelligence as an excuse for minorities' poor performance in society (e.g. Bell Curve type arguments) and by those who want to suggest there are no differences in intelligence (to show that society is racially oppressive in subtle but enduring ways). we might be able to do this to an extent through the research (some research I've read on this subject lays out the political and social aspects explicitly), but we probably should have a short section laying out the history of the field. more than that would probably be unnecessary - we surely do not have to find any answers to these questions, since scientists themselves don't yet have a clear view on the issue. does that makes sense? --Ludwigs2 07:11, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

I really do think that can be covered in the narrow scope article, as the research often does the same. However, you won't often find presentations of context in that body of literature going back much further than the beginning of IQ testing itself (ca. World War I). We can speculate as to why that is, but I think the most obvious reason is that this research is conducted by experts in intelligence looking at race as a potential variable in their work. Their field began with inception of psychometric testing, and it makes sense for them to start there. As a result, one can and does often find presentations of the history of the "Race and IQ" issue examined from that point forward (of course, with mostly inadvertent emphasis on the developments in the US). If we attempt to go beyond that, I'm afraid we're heading into uncertain territory, with synthesis, original research and plain old speculation lurking at every turn.

For example, I don't think it's wise for us to attempt to examine the motivation behind studies which discuss race and IQ. I know people love to do it, and some of the speculation can be "reliably" sourced, but I've yet to read anything of that sort worth reporting on, as most of it boils down to a carefully crafted ad hominen argument. In opposition to most, it seems, I believe there are fully respectable scientists who have - out of nothing more than the pursuit of knowledge in their field of study - come to conclusions which, when taken out of the context of that field, appear alarming or even offensive to others. I'd like to believe that it is possible to write this article without catering to either "side" in the wider debate, and that we can do so by simply reporting on the results of research and the interpretations of those results. Metadiscussion of the type "Why do these people study this in the first place?" is inherently loaded as it operates on the assumption that their interest in the subject is something other than scientific. --Aryaman (talk) 09:45, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

You misunderstand me, and you misunderstand the scientific point I'm making. I'm not suggesting that we deal with the motivation behind these studies (motivation being commonly understood as a fuzzy affective state). I'm suggesting that we cannot present the research without some clear insights into the questions being asked. Science without context is little more than propaganda, since by framing the question correctly one can (superficially at least) get research to say just about anything one wants it to say. It's a common failing among wikipedians to reach for some 'pure' form of science - that effort might pass muster on the physical sciences (it's still a mistake even there, but one with few ramifications), but it's a sure road to misrepresentation in any research that involves human beings. this is not about the motivations of individual scientists, this is about the way the questions that lie behind the research are framed. --Ludwigs2 19:04, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

I think I understand you just fine, it's just that we have two diametrically opposed ways of viewing this. While you've said "Science without context is little more than propaganda", I would say "So-called 'context' is often exactly that which turns science into propaganda". Regardless of whether or not there is such a thing as "pure" science, there is such a thing as unbiased, unprejudiced reporting upon the results of legitimate scientific inquiry, and "couching" those results in any fashion is to be done with extreme caution, if at all. With that being said, how do you propose we discuss "the way the questions which lie behind the research are framed"? It sounds like some kind of investigative reporting to me, not an encyclopaedia entry. I'm willing to hear your suggestions, though. --Aryaman (talk) 19:20, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Heavens... I think wikipedia was invented as my own personal hell, where I am forced to discuss basic principles of scientific methodology ceaselessly and without end.

I suggest that we have a Background or History section that points out some of the surrounding dialog. for instance, I am sure there are journalistic and social scientific sources that talk about the political and sociological ramifications of the intelligence/race issue - they may even be referenced from some of the more analytical research that we already have, so that would just be a matter of following the citations back. I know for a fact that when the book 'The Bell Curve' came out, half of the critiques were analytic and half were socio-political, and that the authors themselves (what the heck were their names? - slipping my mind) came out with both analytic and socio-political defenses of the work. those right there are probably sufficient to give a good description of the cultural climate from which the research stems. --Ludwigs2 21:31, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

I love the second paragraph, but it's effect may be somewhat diminished by the first ;-) Xavexgoem (talk) 22:07, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

lol - point taken. In the future I'll keep my hellish musings to a minimum --Ludwigs2 22:54, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Well, I have no problem with what you've just described. In fact, one of my first suggestions when I became involved with this article was to do exactly that. But I have to say, this sounds radically different from your earlier descriptions. (I mean, "contextualizing in terms of preexisting beliefs about European superiority"?) As I've said, I think that even by sticking to the core psychometric literature, we can cover the history from the first World War forward, which of course includes all of the "Bell Curve" material. --Aryaman (talk) 09:40, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

PS: Ludwigs, it seems we agree on quite a bit, and our main point of disagreement is whether or not the narrow article can accommodate sufficient context. I think it can, but I don't see a way to demonstrate that without getting concrete. Would you object to the creation of "Race and IQ" as a narrow-scope article with the caveat that the History/Context section be adequately developed? --Aryaman (talk) 15:24, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

I don't want to step into the 'separate article/article name' confusion here. let me say that I would definitely agree to a narrow-scope article where the History/Context section was adequately developed. I'd prefer not to create a content fork, and we can go on to debate the merits of different article names, but I think we're on the same page with respect to substance. --Ludwigs2 16:23, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

(outdent) Well, that helps considerably in moving things along. It seems, then, that we have 7 editors in favour of a narrow-scope article with an adequately developed section on History/Context (I don't think there will be any objection regarding the context as we've just discussed it, as apparently I was alone in my concerns regarding possible problems with synthesis/original research). That's remarkable, all things considered.

Now, it remains open whether this article should be named "Race and intelligence" (favored by mikemikev) or "Race and IQ" (favored by DJ, Aprock and myself; Occam has indicated that doesn't necessarily object to either title). Seeing as we're agreed upon a narrow scope, I think "IQ" is to be preferred over "intelligence". But now I'm just repeating myself.

sneaking this in here: let me toss Intelligence and race into the mix, since it seems to me that the intelligence question was applied to pre-existing racial issues, not vice-versa.--Ludwigs2 18:12, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

No problem as far as I'm concerned, as I made the same suggestion in the section Discussion: Scope above a few days ago. --Aryaman (talk) 19:01, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

To the moderator(s): What's the best way forward here? Should we try to establish a stronger concensus on the title? Do we need a new section and/or poll? Or can we move ahead with actual editing? --Aryaman (talk) 17:59, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

I don't support the creation of two articles. I was thinking of one, focused on the narrow context (but obviously with significant discussion of the wider). Whether this is called Race and Intelligence or redirected from there to Race and IQ is not a major issue. mikemikev (talk) 23:16, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Straw-poll meta discussion

I think this poll is a good idea. I have one question though. Isn't 'just the wide-context' the same as 'both wide and narrow'? mikemikev (talk) 11:52, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

ugh. I'm not sure we (or at least I) am ready for this poll yet. I look at these categories, and what springs up in my mind is: The scientific question is whether intelligence is a function of race; the political question is whether race predicts intelligence. I don't know how to translate that into the wide/narrow framework given above. --Ludwigs2 12:31, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

@Mike - I defined what I meant up above. The narrow option excludes the wider one.

@Ludwig - I owe it to a bunch of editors to at least narrow down the scope of this mediation; I promised a straw-poll a long time ago. You actually defined the wide/narrow scheme better than I have: science question is narrow, political question is wide. Make sense? Xavexgoem (talk) 12:39, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

ok. my own knee-jerk preference, then, would be that it should cover the wide-context but focus primarily on the narrow context (and yes, I am genetically obliged to be a pain-in-the-ass ). let me think about it a bit, though, and decide whether I want to choose one of the given options or add in an 'other'. --Ludwigs2 12:50, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Xavexgoem: The point is whether the wide includes the narrow, thereby rendering 'both wide and narrow' equivalent. mikemikev (talk) 12:59, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

(e/c) Ludwigs: I'll be honest, and I think you've been hinting at them: We've got much bigger problems if we can't at least acknowledge that a good portion of the wide-context needs to be included in the narrow-context article. I don't think this has gone unacknowledged by any editors, though :-)

Mike: It would include the narrow-context, but it would be swamped. That's Aryaman's worry, I believe. Xavexgoem (talk) 13:00, 15 January 2010 (UTC) To be clear: the narrow option just means the academic research is more exclusive within the article

So you need to remove the 'both' option, or votes for the wide/both option will be halved. mikemikev (talk) 13:15, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm fairly sure this is an equivocation on what I mean (not with intent, but I rarely get to use the word equivocation :-p). Would it be better if I used academic and political + academic instead of narrow/wide? That's all I'm getting at. Xavexgoem (talk) 13:29, 15 January 2010 (UTC) And remember, I'm just talking about the content of that article. The other option moves to... wait, I see what you mean.

Before I vote, let me ask something: Would it be possible (both in an article-naming protocol sense as well as in terms of people's views) to have one article named "Race and intelligence" and one named "Race and IQ"? I might be overlooking something, but that strikes me a good solution which would help make it clear that the two articles, while discussing related issues, have two different focal-points. Could we live with that? --Aryaman (talk) 17:17, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

I really like the idea of of using "Race and IQ" as a place where the more scientific aspects are described. Aprock (talk) 18:01, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, that'd be #2 on the poll :-) Xavexgoem (talk) 18:28, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

I think the main article R&I should cover the broad understanding, but I really think a detailed survey of recent and ongoing research need to be prominently featured. I think the best way of doing that is to have a sub article which goes into the nitty gritty and a reasonable summary early in the article. In fact, I personally like the idea of making this more of a meta-disambiguation page which summarizes many of the other related articles. But most importantly, I think the scientific research needs it's own page with a narrowly defined scope so that it can escape the various POV issues that R&I currently has. Aprock (talk) 17:43, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

With Aprock's vote, it's good to see people have not entirely forgotten about this mediation. However, I'd really like to get this thing to a point where we can resume editing again. Since I don't want to do any canvassing, could the mediator(s) please 'gently prod' those who have not voted yet? :) Thanks, --Aryaman (talk) 19:10, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

I think the best way to go is to go ahead and create the Race and IQ page, and move most of the scientific discussion from R&I into there, changing the redirect from the silly GD&I page to Race and IQ. I think it's still not clear what R&I should be exactly about (since it's supposed to be "broad"), but editing on R&IQ shouldn't be hindered by content questions. That's just my opinion though. Aprock (talk) 19:22, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Please, let's not get ahead of ourselves. We're discussing what to do with the Race and Intelligence article. We don't need to launch in an effort to create another article yet. Also, we need to be careful not to make any new article into a POV fork, which seems a real possibility, according to some of the comments I've seen here. Just my tuppence.--Ramdrake (talk) 19:29, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

I don't agree with the Race and IQ article for two reasons:

• I am trying to prevent the research from being separated from the social context it developed in; creating a separate article will just shift that basic problem to a different page
• IQ is a technical term relating to a particular way of measuring intelligence - using it in the article title is potentially misleading. --Ludwigs2 19:53, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm not at all worried that Race and IQ would constitute a POV fork. I think the social context question is a fine one, and should probably be addressed in both articles, with the bulk of the coverage in the more broad article and with the research minded one clearly summarizing and referring to those issues. With respect to using IQ in the title, I view it as clarifying, not misleading. Most of the research has been done with respect to IQ (or values which the researchers hope act as proxies). Because IQ is generally known to be a limited representation of intelligence, including that constraint in the title makes it much more clear that any results discussed in the article only apply to this one aspect of intelligence. Aprock (talk) 20:07, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Ludwigs here. We don't need another article which will just potentially shift the problem. We need to resolve the issue, not move it.--Ramdrake (talk) 20:25, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

I don't think the problem of people wanting to elevate the hereditarian hypothesis is going to go away. Aprock (talk) 00:51, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

The reason I haven’t voted in the poll is because I don’t have a strong opinion either way about whether or we should create “Race and IQ” as a separate article from “Race and intelligence”. I definitely agree that we need at least one article which focuses on the debate in psychometrics (that is, the narrow scope), but I also think we already have numerous other articles which address most of the social questions that would go in the wide-scope article.

I think it would be fine for “Race and intelligence” to be about the narrow scope, while leaving the wide-scope content to other articles which exist already. However, I’m not going to stand in the way of creating an additional article about the wide-scope content, if that’s what consensus ends up supporting. All that really matters to me is that we have an article which covers the psychometric debate with sufficient focus to explain all of the data it involves, which the current article doesn’t. --Captain Occam (talk) 01:20, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Ramdrake: We have been trying to "resolve" the issue for 2 months now. Perhaps I am just a pessimist, but splitting the overall article up (i.e., moving some parts elsewhere) is the only idea, in various permutations, that has received anything other than narrow support. Why are you against even giving this a try? What is the worst thing that could happen? David.Kane (talk) 04:39, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

David, I've been around the article for years (quite litterally) and have seen it split into several articles, only to see the articles fused back together after a few months. While the idea seems tempting, I don't think it can work that way. People will always push to present this kind of research as standard run-of-the-mill academic research whereas in fact it is marginal. This marginality needs to be pointed out, in order for the article to be neutral (relative to the real world).

I'm also concerned with several editors' depiction of including information from other venues on the subject as giving a "social" context. There are many venues of science which have considered and rejected the subject, and that is in great part why there are so few scientists studying the matter, and why they are just about all confined tomone sub-specialty of psychology (psychometrics).--Ramdrake (talk) 14:36, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

I do not find the distinction between narrow and broad context useful. Certainly, there are different contexts, but which one is narrow and which one is wide is perhaps contentious or vague. Let's just label whatever contexct we mean. Now, my understanding is that the debate over race and IQ is largely a public policy debate, led by scholars who are experts in education, the institution with which policy-makers are concerned. These scholars (like Jensen) are academics and have PhDs but are concerned primarily with public policy. I certainly see room for an article on these debates, which would include those researchers addressing public policy debates. I agree with Ramdrake that many of these are psychometricians.

Race is a social construction, and from what I have read racial identity of IQ subjects is usually determines through self-identification.

There is a good deal of research on the heritability of IQ conducted by those scholars who are experts on heritability, i.e. geneticists. As far as I know, most of them are not concerned with race. I can see this research in another article. this would not be a POV fork, but a content fork, and it would enable us to cover those debates that geneticists actually are concerned with, which have to do with the fetal environment for different kinds of twins and none of the stuff sociologists looking to explain racial differences in IQ look at. As far as I can tell those who claim that races are unequal (in IQ) for largely genetic reasons are a fringe. Slrubenstein | Talk 16:42, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Slrubenstein, you're arguing for the wide-scope article, which is fine. You want to see this as a public-policy debate. For psychometricians, the debate revolves around the reliability of data sets and the statistical evaluation of that data. Can you see the distinction here? To present modern psychometry as being driven by public policy is to misrepresent their intent. Does anyone really believe Jensen conducted his research on the g factor to influence public policy?

Right now we have at least 6 editors willing to support the creation of a narrow-scope article. Of those 6, 4 have said they would not object to the creation of an article which explores "race and intelligence" from a wider scope. I think we're finally making some progress, and that this proposal could resolve the outstanding issues with this article.

Ramdrake has made it clear that s/he thinks an article devoted to "Race and IQ" equates to "pushing this kind of research as standard run-of-the-mill academic research whereas in fact it is marginal". Other than its hotly contested subject matter, what makes this research so "special" (read: non-academic and undeserving of a neutral presentation)? We have an article on Near death experiences, despite the fact that it is quite "marginal" within the professional psychological community, and no other field of science would seriously entertain it as anything other than an effort to substantiate the psychological needs of the religious and the socio-political needs of their institutions. We seem to be able to discuss that narrow field of research neutrally and intelligently without providing the reader with reams of "context" on "the historical factors contributing to the emergence of NDE research", and without discontented editors harping that the subject needs to be presented as "marginal", "fringe science" or even "pseudo-science", or that we need to include the views of anthropologists, biologists, and sociologists in that discussion. It is my firm belief that if this were about anything other than "race", we would have resolved this issue long ago and moved on to more productive editing.

Yes, both Slrubenstein and Ramdrake have been actively involved with this article for several years. Many other editors have come and gone, yet both of them have remained - as have the problems. We now have some agreement in this relatively "new" group of editors that splitting this into two clearly defined articles is a good way to proceed. I'd rather we move forward than sit and listen to the same arguments which fill several years worth of archives. --Aryaman (talk) 18:07, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

I think it is pretty obvious that Jensen's research was driven by a desire to contribute to or inform public policy. This is true of much research and I see nothing wrongg with it, nor do I see anything wrong with saying so. If your point is that there are also debates about the reliability of IQ tests, well, I have no quarrel with that or with covering that in an article. My main problem is with people who wish to include fringe views about genetics and IQ - views that are not considered mainstream by geneticists and that misrepresent debates among people who study inheritance and IQ. There is a big difference between the matter at hand and NDE, which I am sure even you can see: so far, research on NDE has not sought to influence public policy. Research on race and IQ scores is of great concern to policy-makers. That said, if you are sugesting to model an article relating to Race and IQ on NDE, well, fine by me. But to my mind that calls for multiple articles (as we have with evolution and creationism and intelligent design) because there are people who research race and IQ who are not fringe scientists. You seem to be confusing an object of study with a point of view. Near death experiences are objects of study, the view that they reveal something about an afterlife is a fringe view. Race and IQ is an object of study, the view that average differences are largely due to genetic factors is a fringe view. I'd like to see an article - or articles - that do justice to the legitimate research on race and IQ. If you are saying we should have another article for the fringe views, well, okay, but we would need to do so in a way that does not create a POV fork. These fringe views are notable as far as I can tell only outside of the scientific community, i.e. in public debates. Why not cover it in an article that is about public debates over race and intelligence?

As to "the same arguments," it cuts both ways and I do not see how comments like that express any assumption of good faith. I am trying to respond to your comments reasonably and expect the same. Slrubenstein | Talk 18:19, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Let's stick to the facts. There are specialized journals and scholarly conferences in which all of these topics, including the evidence for and against a genetic contribution to IQ differences between races, are discussed with academic detachment -- and not simply as fringe theories like intelligent design but as empirical and scientifically answerable questions. That should be all we need to substantiate the topic of race and IQ research for inclusion in its own right. Further, the volume of this literature and the context in which it typically appears does not make it especially well suited to be put into the same article as a socio-political debate -- the psychometricians certainly protest that they're empirical conclusions should be evaluated as science first, not politics. Further, as a practical matter, the integration of these two approaches (science on the one hand and politics on the other) just doesn't seem to be able to be accomplished by editors of Misplaced Pages. For the sake of making a distinction that will lead to lasting agreement, and a distinction that is rooted in a real-world difference, we need to put the psychometrics in its own article. --DJ (talk) 18:37, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

OK, let's drop the political background. The historical background itself would be interesting, but maybe not necessary to include. However, presenting it solely from the viewpoint of a few psychometricians is building a walled garden. If we present the science, we need to present the science as it is also seen by geneticists, anthropologists, etc. We need to present the subject in its entirety, and not selectively choose those who debate the subject a la Rushton (or Jensen, or whomever). If we do that, we are doing nothing but building a POV fork. And even local consensus cannot override Misplaced Pages community policies.--Ramdrake (talk) 20:26, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

We've agreed in the past that the Neisser et al. report is probably the best single piece of literature for presenting the academic context in which this debate takes place, as well as for presenting the "mainstream" views on the individual issues concerned. Using it as a guide in framing the article is something I think everyone either has or would agree with, and I don't see how doing so could be considered "building a walled garden" in respect to other disciplines. --Aryaman (talk) 10:04, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

When DJ mentions sociological debates, she conflates two different debates. One is on the social causes of IQ differences between races. I agree that this belongs in a different article than the one on psychometrics. There is a separate debate on the sociological and political forces shaping psychometric research. This cannot be detached from our coverage of thpsychometric literature. If there is too much material for one article I suggest doing what we do elswhere: have an ommibus article, that summarizes psychometric research and debates among psychometricians, and that also summarizes sociological analysis of tpsychometrics, linked to separate articles that go into detail on these to related topics. Slrubenstein | Talk 14:36, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Question: we already have an article on heritability of intelligence to cover research by geneticists. Why shouldn't the article on g-factor of intelligence be our main article for covering psychometrics and debates among psychometricians? I agree the article neds work, but hey, isn't that one purpose of talk pages, to figure out ways to improve articles (the article on the inheritance of intelligence also needs work). It seems to me that we already have a great article that covers psychometric research on intelligence. Slrubenstein | Talk 14:39, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

g factor is not the place for this debate. Neither are the articles on Heritability of IQ, Psychometrics, Psychometric approach to measuring intelligence, Environment and intelligence or any of the articles listed in the Category "Race and intelligence controversy". Those issues play a role in "Race and IQ", but we can't shift this debate into those articles. (And isn't it odd that we have a category titled "Race and intelligence controversy", but we can't seem to write an article on the actual science which lies at the root of this controversy?) --Aryaman (talk) 14:59, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

I assume you agree with my other point, I am glad you did not find it objectionable. As for "the actual science that lies at the root of this controversy" can you clarify just what you meant? I thought that the science covered in Heritability and IQ and General intelligence factor are the "actual science" at the "root" of this controversy. What science at the root of this controversy is not covered by these two topics (or the other three you added to the list)? Slrubenstein | Talk 18:09, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

With your "other point", do you mean that in which you refer to DJ? If so, I prefer to let him/her say whether or not s/he is "conflating two different debates". As far as their being a "separate debate on the sociological and political forces shaping psychometric research": do you have reliable sources which discuss the "debate on the sociological and political forces which shape psychometric research"? I'm not aware of such debate within the psychometric community, though I suppose there may be well be such debate in other disciplines and/or in the general public in regards to psychometry. Psychometricians take their research seriously, and they debate the data sets, statistical analyses and various interpretations of that data. For example, Flynn, an "environmentalist", does not agree with Jensen, a "hereditarian", in regards to the interpretation of the data, but maintains respect for him as a scientist and for his work. To get sweeping criticism akin to "the results of psychometric studies which claim to demonstrate that at least some of the difference in average IQ between racial groups is due to genetics is just academic racism under a different name", you have to go outside the discipline. Within psychometry, this is a perfectly "valid" option, and cannot be ruled out categorically.

By "actual science", I mean the studies which have been conducted on "race and IQ". Heritability is one aspect, IQ is another, and the g factor is yet another. All of these and more play a role in studies on race and IQ - which is why we can't file this debate under any one of those headings. --Aryaman (talk) 18:36, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

(ec)Well, since race is a social construct I would think that the core scientific research on race and IQ as such would be by sociologists. As for a "separate debate on the sociological and political forces shaping psychometric research," yes, I do have reliable sources which discuss the "debate on the sociological and political forces which shape psychometric research." You are right that there is no such debate within the psychometric community, but why would anyone expect there to be one? Psychometricians are not trained sociologistds or political scientists, so I would not expect them to conduct research on sociological and political forces shaping their work. The research would be conducted by sociologists and others - aside from the sociology of science there are a number of historians and anthropologiss who study scientists and play a leading role in Science and Technology Studies. By the way, the question of whether psychometricians take their work seriously or not is not an issue, as best I can tell, in the research os social scientists who study science and scientists. Shamans take their work very seriously and when they enter an altered state of consciousness and heal someone, they believe that they are working within the most serious traditions of their vocation. Physicians take their work very seriously when they do their work too. That both sets of actors may be subject to social and political forces is something medical anthropologists and sociologists are concerned with, not shamans and physicians. The same is true for psychometricians.

I did not know that Flynn or Jensen had degrees in genetics, and am still not sure how genetics is a branch of psychometrics.Slrubenstein | Talk 19:31, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Why are we going over this again? "I would think..." Well, the fact of the matter is psychometricians are the folks to go to when you want to know about race as a factor in intelligence research. Psychometricians are the experts in intelligence research, and they can tell you about numerous factors involved in the development of intelligence, including socio-economic status, health, and yes, even some claim to tell us about race. Now, are you going to tell me that we need to get an economist in here to "balance out" what a psychometrician says about the role of SES in IQ? Seriously? Give me a break, Slrubenstein. --Aryaman (talk) 19:42, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

You are joking aren't you? You keep arguing AS IF I am saying psychometricians have nothing to say about race. Where have I ever said that? What I have pointed out is that they are not qualified for research on genetics. Don't you know that psychometricians use statistical methods applied to their data, and the data they get on race is almost always self-reported? Yes, yes, yes of course they can make claims about race and IQ, understanding that race is a social construct. This still is not close to doing research on genetics. I once again point out that neither Flynn nor Jensen have degrees in genetics, and genetics is not a branch of psychometrics. Of course they can analyze the relationship between IQ score and the race of the respondent. That is asking a question about intelligence and race, a social construct. That is not research on genetics. That is my point. And given that sociologists (and anthropologists, although they research different questions about race) are the experts on race, you should not be surprised that sociologists study the relationship between race and IQ.Slrubenstein | Talk 20:12, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

this proposal is a pov-fork

I don't buy the premise that there is a "wide context" and a "narrow context". What you're saying is that you want to create an article that only covers the work of hereditarians as if this work is a subject in it's own right. But who says this? What supports this conclusion? From my point of view this split represents nothing more than a pov-fork. Can anyone explain to me why this is not simply a pov-fork? It's not justified in the literature on this subject. Can someone point out where there is a consensus in the academic literature that this division exists? This is not content forking, it is pov-forking plain and simple. I'm totally opposed, this proposal amounts to saying that those who support the hereditarian hypothesis should have their own article. This is totally against wikipedia's normal content policy isn't it? Alun (talk) 19:27, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

I think you've misunderstood the proposal. This is not about "creating an article that only covers the work of hereditarians". I'm not quite sure where you got that, but it should be evident from the above discussion that we're discussing limiting the scope of the article to the psychometric debate. In other words, including both "hereditarian" and "environmental" POVs. So, no, it's not a POV-fork. --Aryaman (talk) 19:33, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Actually Arya it is clear that the proposal is not to limit "the scope of the article to the psychometric debate". Read the proposal, it is to split the article into two, with one article covering the so called "narrow context" and the other article covering the so called "broad context" neutrally. That is a pov-fork and should not be allowed. There is nothing in the literature that would suggest that the academics who research this ever split the field into two in this way, it's an invention of wikipedia editors to allow this pov-fork. I suggest you read the proposal again because it clearly suggests splitting the article and you don't seem to understand that. Alun (talk) 04:13, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Wobble has a point, in the sense that in the field of psychometrics alone, the hereditarian hypothesis is taken seriously. However, it isn't really taken seriously in any other relevant (population genetics, anthropology, sociology, etc.) venue of science. This needs to be pointed out, lest we frame this research improperly.--Ramdrake (talk) 19:54, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

break

Slrubenstein: Races are not 'social constructs', they are examples of genetic clustering as a result of divergent evolution. You might as well say that apples and oranges are social constructs because we do not (yet) have a precise genomic definition, and that a sociologist would be best placed to measure the relative concentrations of malic acid in these fruits. mikemikev (talk) 21:06, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Sorry Mike, but current scientific consensus is that races are social constructs. I can supply many refs to that effect if you wish.--Ramdrake (talk) 21:09, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Please do if it's not too much trouble (on my talk page). mikemikev (talk) 21:26, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Ramdrake, we’ve been through this before when we were debating about the Race and genetics article. Yes, races are social constructs, but they’re social constructs that correlate quite strongly with genetic clusters based on biogeographical ancestry. This fact is important in medicine, because races often have varying rates of reactions to certain drugs. For doctors to assume that race is “biologically meaningless” would not only be erroneous; it would be somewhat dangerous. And most of the references that you and other have provided about race and genetics acknowledged this.

Bringing up the “social construct” point here is really a red herring. If the correlation between social races and genetic clusters is strong enough for races to vary significantly in one biological trait (reactions to drugs), then it’s possible—at least in theory—for them to also vary in another biological trait (average IQ). That doesn’t necessary mean they do, but as Nisbett points out in Intelligence and How to Get It, whether or not this is the case is an empirical question which can’t be answered A priori. --Captain Occam (talk) 21:29, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Actually Captain what you're saying is not accurate. Concepts of "race" only sometimes "correlate with genetic clusters based on biogeographical ancestry", and often it's not strong at all. Most medical researchers fully acknowledge that using "race" as a proxy for biogeographical ancestry is often imprecise and inaccurate, and can lead to bad medicine, but argue that "race" can serve as a useful proxy. They argue that inthe future when individuals can be screened genetically routinely, then the use of "race" as a proxy will be irrelevant. So I think you're being less than accurate in what you're saying. Alun (talk) 04:13, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Let's please stick to the science: "Yes, races are social constructs, but they’re social constructs that correlate quite strongly with genetic clusters based on biogeographical ancestry." The accuracy of this statement depends largely on the size and history of the population we are talking about. If you define the Black race based on studies of Blacksliving in the US, and then do drug tests on different populations in the US and discover that one works better with Blacks, this is because you are really using "race" as a proxy for a population in the US and as long as the drug tests and prescription of that drug are on African Americans, it all works out. When you move to peoplewho are also consider members of the Black race but who are part of a population the drugs were not tested on (say, Kenyans) you can and often do run into trouble because you are no longer working with the same population. In short, as long as Americans are talking about Americans, it can appear as if the self-designated term correlates very highly with certain biological traits. The fact is, this kind of association has to be handled cautiously and there have been members of the medical community who have called attention to times when assumptions about the correlation between race and biogenetic "clusters" does not work at all. In other words, what you are presenting as straightforward science is not. (1) it is more controversial than you suggest and (2) when there is no controversy, people are using the terms in far more restricted senses than you seem to be. Slrubenstein | Talk 21:39, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

I'd also like to point out that we need to be very careful with ascriptions here. clearly there are genetic markers that distinguish between different races. however, the move from saying there are genetic markers that distinguish between races to saying that races are genetically distinct is highly contentious. there are, for instance, genetic markers that distinguish redheads, that distinguish people of Nordic descent, that distinguish Koreans from Vietnamese, and none of these unique marker clusters are used to indicate separate races. Koreans are an excellent case in point, incidentally - they were largely reviled by the Japanese before and during WWII (to the extent of being considered a separate and lesser race, if I remember correctly), but that racial segregation was largely wiped out by the American occupation of Japan and the Korean war, and only remains today as a distinct form of prejudice. --Ludwigs2 22:29, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

• "clearly there are genetic markers that distinguish between different races."- Seriously? Where do you get this information from? I think this would be news to any serious geneticist. If you want to make wild claims like that in an article then I'm going to demand an extremely good source. I know of no reputable scientist who would make such a claim. Indeed there are hundreds, probably thousands of published works from both geneticists and anthropologists that say the exact opposite. I know of no one who is reputable who would make this claim. Can you support this with a citation? Alun (talk) 04:13, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

I don’t think anyone here is arguing that races are “genetically distinct” in the sense that there’s a clear boundary between one and another, or that a person can only belong to a single race. The idea of races as distinct, platonic categories is one that definitely lacks any basis in biology, and I don’t think anyone who supports the herediarian position claims to advocate this idea. The only thing which matters here is that certain alleles are distributed unequally between races, and that some of these alleles can have biological effects (as in the case of drug responses).

Until more of the genes which influence IQ have been identified, this is about the most that genetics can tell us on the topic of race and intelligence—that it’s possible in general for genetic traits to vary between races, and that it’s an empirical question whether or not they do in any particular case. For this reason, while the social and genetic meanings of race might be relevant to provide some background information for the narrow-scope article, they can’t provide much evidence either way in the debate (among psychometricians) about whether the empirical evidence indicates that the genes whose distribution varies between races include genes which influence IQ. --Captain Occam (talk) 23:12, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

There is a slippage here. Anyone can tell you that genes can vary among humans. I still have trouble making the link to race and intelligence. Geneticists use twin studies to measure the heritability of IQ and there are plenty of things that they can speak to, and are still debating - race and intelligence just doesn't seem to be one of them. And I have yetto see any evidence that any debates among psychometricians concerning variation in IQ scores among races indicates ánything about genes. As I said above, psychometricians are not geneticists; genetics is not a branch of psychometrics; their research on race and IQ has not demonstrated anything about genetics. It is not their field. Slrubenstein | Talk 01:59, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Why are allowing this (meta-)discussion to derail the mediation? Slrubenstein doesn't like the fact that psychometricians make statements regarding potential genetic factors in the development of intelligence - because they are not geneticists. So? The fact is, they do. They also talk about gender, the physical environment, economics, nutrition, brain chemistry and a whole slew of other factors despite the fact that they do not hold degrees in those specialized fields, either. They have the responsibility to do their own literature research and apply those results to their area of expertise - psychometry. Slrubenstein thinks they've done a poor job. So? Since when are Misplaced Pages editors supposed to let those kinds of personal opinions guide their editing practices? I personally don't care if psychometricians started reporting on a potential correlation between average nose length and placement on Maslow's hierarchy: if they do it in respectable scientific journals and have their theories taken seriously by their colleagues, then it qualifies for coverage on Misplaced Pages, even if I personally think they're full of it. Let's please move forward with something more constructive. --Aryaman (talk) 02:49, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Aryaman - no need to make it personal.

I'm having one helluva time figuring out where to go from here. The straw-poll established nothing, and I'm surprised to see the level of anger among some of you. I still have the suspicion that there's an undercurrent here that I'm not aware of. It's fairly obvious to think of what that would be. Anyone care to fill me in? Xavexgoem (talk) 04:24, 22 January 2010 (UTC)