Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 14:44, 23 May 2010

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Race and intelligence article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic. New to Misplaced Pages? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help. Assume good faith Be polite and avoid personal attacks Be welcoming to newcomers Seek dispute resolution if needed Article policies Neutral point of view No original research Verifiability

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Archives: Index, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103Auto-archiving period: 7 days

	Race and intelligence was a good articles nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There may be suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.
Article milestones Date Process Result June 14, 2005 Articles for deletion Kept June 24, 2005 Peer review Reviewed July 18, 2005 Featured article candidate Not promoted August 25, 2006 Good article nominee Not listed December 4, 2006 Articles for deletion Kept Current status: Former good article nominee

This article has not yet been rated on Misplaced Pages's content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects:

Please add the quality rating to the {{WikiProject banner shell}} template instead of this project banner. See WP:PIQA for details. Psychology Mid‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Psychology, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Psychology on Misplaced Pages. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.PsychologyWikipedia:WikiProject PsychologyTemplate:WikiProject Psychologypsychology Mid This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale. Please add the quality rating to the {{WikiProject banner shell}} template instead of this project banner. See WP:PIQA for details. Sociology Mid‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Sociology, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of sociology on Misplaced Pages. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.SociologyWikipedia:WikiProject SociologyTemplate:WikiProject Sociologysociology Mid This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

view · edit FAQ Is there really a scientific consensus that there is no evidence for a genetic link between race and intelligence? Yes, and for a number of reasons. Primarily: No evidence for such a connection has ever been published. A statement signed by 143 senior human population geneticists states categorically that genetics research in no way supports the view that "recent natural selection has led to worldwide differences in I.Q. test results". (See this, this, and this for context.) As understanding of the human genome and the science of population genetics advances, it has become increasingly clear that race is not a biologically meaningful way to categorize human population groups. See for example this statement by the American Association of Physical Anthropologists. Even if we take ancestral population groups to be proxies for race, most subject-matter experts agree that cognitive differences between such such groups are unlikely to exist. A group of prominent geneticists explain why here. Extensive evidence has been published which indicates that observed differences in IQ test performance between racial groups are environmental in origin. A group of leading psychologists summarizes some of these findings here. Most researchers view the idea of a genetic connection between race and intelligence as scientifically obsolete. See e.g. this statement by the editorial board of Nature. Isn't it true that different races have different average IQ test scores? On average and in certain contexts, yes, though these differences have fluctuated and in many cases steadily decreased over time. Crucially, the existence of such average differences today does not mean what racialists have asserted that it means (i.e. that races can be ranked according to their genetic predisposition for intelligence). Most IQ test data comes from North America and Europe, where non-White individuals represent ethnic minorities and often carry systemic burdens which are known to affect test performance. Studies which purport to compare the IQ averages of various nations are considered methodologically dubious and extremely unreliable. Further, important discoveries in the past several decades, such as the Flynn effect and the steady narrowing of the gap between low-scoring and high-scoring groups, as well as the ways in which disparities such as access to prenatal care and early childhood education affect IQ, have led to an understanding that environmental factors are sufficient to account for observed between-group differences. And isn't IQ a measure of intelligence? Not exactly. IQ tests are designed to measure intelligence, but it is widely acknowledged that they measure only a very limited range of an individual's cognitive capacity. They do not measure mental adaptability or creativity, for example. You can read more about the limitations of IQ measurements here. These caveats need to be kept in mind when extrapolating from IQ measurements to statements about intelligence. But even if we were to take IQ to be a measure of intelligence, there would still be no good reason to assert a genetic link between race and intelligence (for all the reasons stated elsewhere in this FAQ). Isn't there research showing that there are genetic differences between races? Yes and no. A geneticist could analyze a DNA sample and then in many cases make an accurate statement about that person's race, but no single gene or group of genes has ever been found that defines a person's race. Such variations make up a minute fraction of the total genome, less even than the amount of genetic material that varies from one individual to the next. It's also important to keep in mind that racial classifications are socially constructed, in the sense that how a person is classified racially depends on perceptions, racial definitions, and customs in their society and can often change when they travel to a different country or when social conventions change over time (see here for more details). So how can different races look different, without having different genes? They do have some different genes, but the genes that vary between any two given races will not necessarily vary between two other races. Race is defined phenotypically, not genotypically, which means it's defined by observable traits. When a geneticist looks at the genetic differences between two races, there are differences in the genes that regulate those traits, and that's it. So comparing Africans to Europeans will show differences in genes that regulate skin color, hair texture, nose and lip shape, and other observable traits. But the rest of the genetic code will be essentially the same. In fact, there is much less genetic material that regulates the traits used to define the races than there is that regulates traits that vary from person to person. In other words, if you compare the genomes of two individuals within the same race, the results will likely differ more from each other than a comparison of the average genomes of two races. If you've ever heard people saying that the races "are more alike than two random people" or words to that effect, this is what they were referring to. Why do people insist that race is "biologically meaningless"? Mostly because it is. As explained in the answer to the previous question, race isn't defined by genetics. Race is nothing but an arbitrary list of traits, because race is defined by observable features. The list isn't even consistent from one comparison to another. We distinguish between African and European people on the basis of skin color, but what about Middle Eastern, Asian, and Native American people? They all have more or less the same skin color. We distinguish African and Asian people from European people by the shape of some of their facial features, but what about Native American and Middle Eastern people? They have the same features as the European people, or close enough to engender confusion when skin color is not discernible. Australian Aborigines share numerous traits with African people and are frequently considered "Black" along with them, yet they are descended from an ancestral Asian population and have been a distinct cultural and ethnic group for fifty thousand years. These standards of division are arbitrary and capricious; the one drop rule shows that visible differences were not even respected at the time they were still in use. But IQ is at least somewhat heritable. Doesn't that mean that observed differences in IQ test performance between ancestral population groups must have a genetic component? This is a common misconception, sometimes termed the "hereditarian fallacy". In fact, the heritability of differences between individuals and families within a given population group tells us nothing about the heritability of differences between population groups. As geneticist and neuroscientist Kevin Mitchell explains: We need to get away from thinking about intelligence as if it were a trait like milk yield in a herd of cattle, controlled by a small, persistent and dedicated bunch of genetic variants that can be selectively bred into animals from one generation to the next. It is quite the opposite – thousands of variants affect intelligence, they are constantly changing, and they affect other traits. It is not impossible for natural selection to produce populations with differences in intelligence, but these factors make it highly unlikely. To end up with systematic genetic differences in intelligence between large, ancient populations, the selective forces driving those differences would need to have been enormous. What’s more, those forces would have to have acted across entire continents, with wildly different environments, and have been persistent over tens of thousands of years of tremendous cultural change. Such a scenario is not just speculative – I would argue it is inherently and deeply implausible. The bottom line is this. While genetic variation may help to explain why one person is more intelligent than another, there are unlikely to be stable and systematic genetic differences that make one population more intelligent than the next. What about all the psychometricians who claim there's a genetic link? The short answer is: they're not geneticists. The longer answer is that there remains a well-documented problem of scientific racism, which has infiltrated psychometry (see e.g. and ). Psychometry is a field where people who advocate scientific racism can push racist ideas without being constantly contradicted by the very work they're doing. And when their data did contradict their racist views, many prominent advocates of scientific racism simply falsified their work or came up with creative ways to explain away the problems. See such figures as Cyril Burt, J. Phillipe Rushton, Richard Lynn, and Hans Eysenck, who are best known in the scientific community today for the poor methodological quality of their work, their strong advocacy for a genetic link between race and intelligence, and in some cases getting away with blatant fraud for many years. Isn't it a conspiracy theory to claim that psychometricians do this? No. It is a well-documented fact that there is an organized group of psychometricians pushing for mainstream acceptance of racist, unscientific claims. See this, this and this, as well as our article on scientific racism for more information. Isn't this just political correctness? No, it's science. As a group of scholars including biological anthropologists Agustín Fuentes of Princeton and Jonathan M. Marks of the University of North Carolina explain: "while it is true that most researchers in the area of human genetics and human biological diversity no longer allocate significant resources and time to the race/IQ discussion, and that moral concerns may play an important role in these decisions, an equally fundamental reason why researchers do not engage with the thesis is that empirical evidence shows that the whole idea itself is unintelligible and wrong-headed". These authors compare proponents of a genetic link between race and IQ to creationists, vaccine skeptics, and climate change deniers. At the same time, researchers who choose to pursue this line of inquiry have in no way been hindered from doing so, as is made clear by this article: . It's just that all the evidence they find points to environmental rather than genetic causes for observed differences in average IQ-test performance between racial groups. What about the surveys which say that most "intelligence experts" believe in some degree of genetic linkage between race and IQ? These surveys are almost invariably conducted by advocates of scientific racism, and respondents to these surveys are also almost exclusively members of groups that promote scientific racism. In short, they are not representative samples of mainstream scientific opinion. These surveys tend to have very low participation rates, and often consist of fewer than 100 respondents. Many of the surveys suffer from methodological flaws, such as using leading questions. This leads to an increase in responses from those who agree, and a decrease from those who disagree. Generally speaking, the better the methodology of the survey, the lower agreement it shows with the claim of a genetic link between race and intelligence. Even the most poorly structured surveys, conducted among members of groups that are dominated by advocates for scientific racism, show much doubt and difference of opinion among respondents. The vast majority of respondents have absolutely no qualifications to speak on genetics. Is there really no evidence at all for a genetic link between race and intelligence? No evidence for such a link has ever been presented in the scientific community. Much data has been claimed to be evidence by advocates of scientific racism, but each of these claims has been universally rejected by geneticists. Statistical arguments claiming to detect the signal of such a difference in polygenic scores have been refuted as fundamentally methodologically flawed (see e.g. ), and neither genetics nor neuroscience are anywhere near the point where a mechanistic explanation could even be meaningfully proposed (see e.g. ). This is why the question of a genetic link between race and intelligence is largely considered pseudoscience; it is assumed to exist primarily by advocates of scientific racism, and in these cases the belief is based on nothing but preconceived notions about race. What is the current state of the science on a link between intelligence and race? Please see the article itself for an outline of the scientific consensus. What is the basis for Misplaced Pages's consensus on how to treat the material? Misplaced Pages editors have considered this topic in detail and over an extended period. In short, mainstream science treats the claim that genetics explains the observable differences in IQ between races as a fringe theory, so we use our own guidelines on how to treat such material when editing our articles on the subject. Please refer to the following past discussions: RfC on race and intelligence Race and IQ: "no evidence" for genetic component? RfC: What sources should we use to establish notability and relative balance of different viewpoints? No "direct" evidence for a genetic component RfC on racial hereditarianism

Archives

Index 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100 101, 102, 103

This page has archives. Sections older than 7 days may be automatically archived by Lowercase sigmabot III.

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Race and intelligence article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic. New to Misplaced Pages? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help. Assume good faith Be polite and avoid personal attacks Be welcoming to newcomers Seek dispute resolution if needed Article policies Neutral point of view No original research Verifiability

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Archives: Index, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103Auto-archiving period: 7 days

Please: place new messages at bottom of page.

Significance and policy relevance (revised)

I think it's time for me to post the new draft of my proposal for this section, incorporating the revisions to it that Maunus and Slrubenstein suggested. This would replace the "policy relevance" section in the existing article; I think the quote from Gottfredson that's in my proposal is a more concise explanation of the same thing that's explained by the current article's quote from Jensen and Rushton.

See also: Practical importance of IQ

Within societies

Whatever the cause of the racial IQ gap, its effects are also a cause of concern to some. Reviewing the literature on the effects of intelligence, the American Psychological Association has concluded that the characteristics measured by IQ tests predict many socially important outcomes, including educational performance, job performance, law abidingness and income, and they conclude that those characteristics are one of several factors influencing social outcomes, and that for school performance it may even be the strongest. On the basis of this relationship, several scholars have concluded that the racial disparities in these areas are partly the result of the IQ gap. Some have also argued that the causal relationship between these variables and IQ points in the opposite direction, meaning that high income and social status cause high IQ rather than the reverse.

In The Bell Curve, Murray and Herrnstein conclude that when Blacks and Whites are compared while adjusting for IQ, the difference in many social and economic variables shrinks or disappears. For example, controlling for IQ shrinks the income gap from thousands to a few hundred dollars, cuts differential poverty by about three-quarters and unemployment differences by half. At a given IQ level, the odds of having a college degree and working in a high-level occupation are higher for blacks than for whites. Studies outside of The Bell Curve that have produced similar results are Nyborg and Jensen (2001) and Kanazawa (2005). Another study by Bowles and Gintis concluded that wealth, race and schooling are important to the inheritance of economic status, but IQ is not a major contributor. Since race, schooling and IQ are all correlated, the exact causal relationship between them is difficult to determine.

Between nations

Several studies have found that average IQ scores of nations correlates significantly with a number of other factors including average health, average income, infant mortality and crime. In Richard Lynn’s IQ and the Wealth of Nations, Lynn proposes that differences in the intelligence of their populations is the primary cause of these differences in societal factors. Lynn’s book has been sharply criticized by other researchers who recognize the correlation between these factors and IQ, but disagree with Lynn as to the causal relationship between them.

Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel argues that historical differences in economic and technological development for different areas can be explained by differences in geography (which affects factors like population density and spread of new technology) and differences in available crops and domesticatable animals. It is also possible that these environmental differences may operate in part by selecting for higher levels of IQ. Voight et al. (2006) state that "a number of recent studies have detected more signals of adaptation in non-African populations than in Africans, and some of those studies have conjectured that non-Africans might have experienced greater pressures to adapt to new environments than Africans have."

For high-achieving minorities

The book World on Fire notes the existence in many nations of minorities that have created and control a disproportionate share of the economy, a market-dominant minority. Examples include Chinese in Southeast Asia; Whites, Indians, Lebanese and Igbo people of Western Africa; Whites in Latin America; and Jews in pre-World War II Europe, modern America, and modern Russia. These minorities are often resented and sometimes persecuted by the less successful majority. Examining the over-representation of certain minority groups in high-paying professions in the United States, Nathanial Wehl has concluded that this is a consequence of their above-average IQ. Cochran and Harpending have made this proposal about Ashkenazi Jews, which make up on 3% of the United States population but have won 27% of its Nobel prizes, which these authors attribute to them having an average IQ somewhere between one-half and one standard deviation above the White average. (See "Ashkenazi intelligence".)

Some studies have shown significant variation in IQ subtest profiles between groups. In one analysis of IQ studies on Ashkenazi Jews, for example, high verbal and mathematical scores, but average or below average visuospatial scores were found. In a separate study, East Asians demonstrated high visuospatial scores, but average or slightly below average verbal scores. The professions in which these populations tend to be over-represented differ, and some believe the difference is directly related to IQ subtest score patterns asserted to exist. The high visiuospatial/average to below average verbal pattern of subtest scores has also been asserted to exist in fully assimilated third-generation Asian Americans, as well as in the Inuit and Native Americans (both of Asian origin).

Addressing the IQ gap

Main article: Intelligence and public policy

Because of the real-world effects associated with IQ, some scholars believe that addressing the racial IQ gap is a pressing social concern. One effort to address the IQ gap often advocated by educators is more equitable funding for education. Arthur Jensen has argued that in order to adequately address differences in educational outcomes, both between individuals and between races, it is necessary to provide educational services that are tailored to each person's ability.

Critics of research in this area have asserted that research in race and intelligence can never escape its association with the eugenics movement and scientific racism of the early 20th century, as well as that even modern research in this area is likely to be ideologically motivated. In response to this and similar criticisms, Linda Gottfredson has argued that a genetic contribution to the IQ gap does not in itself demand any particular policy response: while a conservative/libertarian commentator may feel the results justify, for example, reductions in affirmative action, a liberal commentator may argue from a Rawlsian point of view (that genetic advantages are undeserved and unjust) for substantial affirmative action. She has also asserted that accepting the conclusions of research in this area is actually necessary in pursuit of racial harmony:

Lying about race differences in achievement is harmful because it foments mutual recrimination. Because the untruth insists that differences cannot be natural, they must be artificial, manmade, manufactured. Someone must be at fault. Someone must be refusing to do the right thing. It therefore sustains unwarranted, divisive, and ever-escalating mutual accusations of moral culpability, such as Whites are racist and Blacks are lazy.

The APA concludes their 1995 report Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns with a statement that further research in this area is necessary because of its social and scientific importance, as well as a warning against anyone who would consider the debate over this topic fully resolved:

In a field where so many issues are unresolved and so many questions unanswered, the confident tone that has characterized most of the debate on these topics is clearly out of place. The study of intelligence does not need politicized assertions and recriminations; it needs self-restraint, reflection, and a great deal more research. The questions that remain are socially as well as scientifically important. There is no reason to think them unanswerable, but finding the answers will require a shared and sustained effort as well as the commitment of substantial scientific resources. Just such a commitment is what we strongly recommend.

1. Attention: This template ({{cite doi}}) is deprecated. To cite the publication identified by doi: 10.1037/0003-066x.59.1.7 , please use {{cite journal}} (if it was published in a bona fide academic journal, otherwise {{cite report}} with |doi= 10.1037/0003-066x.59.1.7 instead.: "Sub-group differences in performance on high-stakes tests represent one of American society's most pressing social problems, and mechanisms for reducing or eliminating differences are of enormous interest" (p.11).
2. ^ Neisser, U., Boodoo, G., Bouchard, T. J. Jr., Boykin, A. W., Brody, N., Ceci, S. J.; et al. (1996). "Intelligence: Knowns and unknowns" (PDF). American Psychologist. 51: 77–101. {{cite journal}}: Explicit use of et al. in: |author= (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)"In summary, intelligence test scores predict a wide range of social outcomes with varying degrees of success. Correlations are highest for school achievement, where they account for about a quarter of the variance. They are somewhat lower for job performance, and very low for negatively valued outcomes such as criminality. In general, intelligence tests measure only some of the many personal characteristics that are relevant to life in contemporary America. Those characteristics are never the only influence on outcomes, though in the case of school performance they may well be the strongest."
3. Attention: This template ({{cite doi}}) is deprecated. To cite the publication identified by doi: 10.1016/S0160-2896(97)90017-9, please use {{cite journal}} (if it was published in a bona fide academic journal, otherwise {{cite report}} with |doi= 10.1016/S0160-2896(97)90017-9 instead.
4. Attention: This template ({{cite doi}}) is deprecated. To cite the publication identified by doi: 10.1016/S0160-2896(97)90014-3, please use {{cite journal}} (if it was published in a bona fide academic journal, otherwise {{cite report}} with |doi= 10.1016/S0160-2896(97)90014-3 instead.
5. Inequality by Design: Cracking the Bell Curve Myth by Claude S. Fischer, Michael Hout, Martín Sánchez Jankowski, Samuel R. Lucas, Ann Swidler, and Kim Vos. Page 191.
6. ^ Hernstein, Richard J. (1994). The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life. New York: Free Press. ISBN 0-02-914673-9. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
7. Attention: This template ({{cite doi}}) is deprecated. To cite the publication identified by doi: 10.1016/S0160-2896(00)00042-8, please use {{cite journal}} (if it was published in a bona fide academic journal, otherwise {{cite report}} with |doi= 10.1016/S0160-2896(00)00042-8 instead.
8. Attention: This template ({{cite doi}}) is deprecated. To cite the publication identified by doi: 10.1016/j.joep.2004.05.001 , please use {{cite journal}} (if it was published in a bona fide academic journal, otherwise {{cite report}} with |doi= 10.1016/j.joep.2004.05.001 instead.
9. Bowles, S. and Gintis, H. (2002). "The inheritance of inequality" (PDF). Journal of Economic Perspectives. 16 (3): 3–30. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
10. Charlie L. Reeve year = 2009. "Expanding the g-nexus: Further evidence regarding the relations among national IQ, religiosity and national health outcomes". Intelligence. 37: 495-505. {{cite journal}}: Missing pipe in: |author= (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
11. Earl Hunt and Werner Wittmann year = 2008. "National intelligence and national prosperity". Intelligence. 36: 1-9. {{cite journal}}: Missing pipe in: |author= (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
12. Hanushek, Eric A. and Woessmann, Ludger, The Role of Education Quality for Economic Growth (February 1, 2007). World Bank Policy Research Working Paper No. 4122. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=960379
13. Jones, Garett, and Schneider, Joel W (2005). "Intelligence, Human Capital, and Economic Growth: a Bayesian Averaging of Classical Estimates (BACE) Approach" (PDF). {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
14. Thomas Volken, "The Impact of National IQ on Income and Growth."
15. Richard Nisbett argues in his 2004 The Geography of Thought that some of these regional differences shaped lasting cultural traits, such as the collectivism required by East Asian rice irrigation, compared with the individualism of ancient Greek herding, maritime mercantilism, and money crops wine and olive oil (pp. 34-35).
16. Wade, Nicholas (2006). Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors. New York: Penguin Press. ISBN 1-59420-079-3.
17. Attention: This template ({{cite doi}}) is deprecated. To cite the publication identified by doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0040072, please use {{cite journal}} (if it was published in a bona fide academic journal, otherwise {{cite report}} with |doi= 10.1371/journal.pbio.0040072 instead.
18. Attention: This template ({{cite doi}}) is deprecated. To cite the publication identified by doi: 10.1093/molbev/msg092, please use {{cite journal}} (if it was published in a bona fide academic journal, otherwise {{cite report}} with |doi= 10.1093/molbev/msg092 instead.
19. Attention: This template ({{cite doi}}) is deprecated. To cite the publication identified by doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0020286, please use {{cite journal}} (if it was published in a bona fide academic journal, otherwise {{cite report}} with |doi= 10.1371/journal.pbio.0020286 instead.
20. Attention: This template ({{cite doi}}) is deprecated. To cite the publication identified by doi: 10.1093/molbev/msh192, please use {{cite journal}} (if it was published in a bona fide academic journal, otherwise {{cite report}} with |doi= 10.1093/molbev/msh192 instead.
21. Attention: This template ({{cite pmid}}) is deprecated. To cite the publication identified by PMID 15356276, please use {{cite journal}} with |pmid= 15356276 instead.
22. Attention: This template ({{cite pmid}}) is deprecated. To cite the publication identified by PMID 16251465, please use {{cite journal}} with |pmid= 16251465 instead.)
23. Weyl, Nathaniel (1969). "Some comparative performance indexes of American ethnic minorities". Mankind Quarterly. 9: 106–128. {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |month= (help)
24. Weyl, Nathaniel (1989). The Geography of American Achievement. Washington, D.C.: Scott-Townsend. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |coauthors= and |month= (help)
25. G. Cochran, J. Hardy, H. Harpending, Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence, Journal of Biosocial Science 38 (5), pp. 659–693 (2006).
26. Attention: This template ({{cite doi}}) is deprecated. To cite the publication identified by doi: 10.1017/S0021932005027069, please use {{cite journal}} (if it was published in a bona fide academic journal, otherwise {{cite report}} with |doi= 10.1017/S0021932005027069 instead., p. 4
27. Lynn,
28. Mackintosh, N. J. (1998). IQ and human intelligence. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-852368-8. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |coauthors= and |month= (help), p.178)
29. Lynn, R. (1991a). "Race Differences in Intelligence: A Global Perspective". Mankind Quarterly. 31: 255–296. {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |month= (help)
30. Attention: This template ({{cite doi}}) is deprecated. To cite the publication identified by doi: 10.1037/0003-066x.59.1.7 , please use {{cite journal}} (if it was published in a bona fide academic journal, otherwise {{cite report}} with |doi= 10.1037/0003-066x.59.1.7 instead.:
31. Achieving Equitable Education in Calhoun County
32. Educational Studies: A Journal of the American Educational Studies Association
33. For example see Jensen (1970): "To me, equality of opportunity does not mean uniform treatment of all children, but equality of opportunity for a diversity of educational experiences and services. If we fail to take account either of innate or acquired differences in abilities and traits, the ideal of equality of educational opportunity can be interpreted so literally as to be actually harmful, just as it would be harmful for a physician to give all his patients the same medicine."
34. e.g., Sternberg, 2003, pp. 386–387
35. Gottfredson 2005b

This section isn't necessarily finished, but I don't think there's anything else I can know that I should change about it without receiving more feedback. Are other people satisfied with this section, or are is there anything else that I should change about it? --Captain Occam (talk) 20:02, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Something's wrong with the reference list for this section. Even though the references I'm using here aren't all the same as the references I used in the previous version of my proposal, it's displaying the reference list from the previous version rather than the current one. I'll see if I can figure out how to fix this, but if I can't, I guess other people might have to just edit this section and look at the source text to see what sources are being cited by this version. --Captain Occam (talk) 20:08, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Well, it looks like I’m not going to be able to figure out how to get the sources to display here properly. If anyone else can tell me how to fix this, or fix it themselves, I’d appreciate that.

It’s now been around a day since I posted this, and nobody has offered any further suggestions about it. I consider this a good sign, since I was specifically requesting critiques, and when I posted the previous draft of this section I received several critiques within a few hours. Obviously lack of comments doesn’t in itself constitute consensus, but it’s important to remember the level of support that this section has received already, and that it was part of the article outline that we decided on during mediation. The question here isn’t whether or not to include this section at all, but what other people think this section should or shouldn’t include. I’ve received several suggestions about this, and modified my draft based on all of them, but if nobody has any more then I think it’s ready to be added to the article.

I’ll wait a little longer before I add it, though, just to make sure nobody has any other changes to suggest. --Captain Occam (talk) 18:58, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Not so fast. This section is still undeservedly bloated in size, still tries to present all viewpoints as if they had equal validity, and still misrepresents the conclusions of the APA report. And that's just for starters.--Ramdrake (talk) 20:38, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Oh, you’re back online. If you’re going to resume participating here, the first thing I recommend that you do is familiarizing yourself with the outcome of the mediation case, since I recall you having been offline during the end of it. When we agreed during mediation to include this section in the article, the general content we were agreeing on was the content that’s in this section of January’s version of the article. Obviously it can be tweaked, but we shouldn’t be making any fundamental changes to it, since that would be turning it into something different from what was agreed on.

I’m also not sure what you mean by misrepresenting the conclusions of the APA report. If you look at the sourcing for this part of the draft, it’s quoting this paragraph:

In summary, intelligence test scores predict a wide range of social outcomes with varying degrees of success. Correlations are highest for school achievement, where they account for about a quarter of the variance. They are somewhat lower for job performance, and very low for negatively valued outcomes such as criminality. In general, intelligence tests measure only some of the many personal characteristics that are relevant to life in contemporary America. Those characteristics are never the only influence on outcomes, though in the case of school performance they may well be the strongest.

As far as I can tell, stating that the APA has concluded that “the characteristics measured by IQ tests influence many socially important outcomes” is an accurate summary of this paragraph. If you disagree, you need to be more specific about how this paragraph can be summarized more accurately. --Captain Occam (talk) 22:47, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Inclusion of this section was explicitly not agreed to in mediation. "Significance of group IQ differences The scope and depth of this section is yet to be finalized. It's inclusion is pending review of a proposed outline describing it's content and scope." A.Prock (talk) 00:11, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Aprock, both Maunus and I have explained this to you already. We agreed to include this section. What we did not agree on was its exact structure (that is, its scope and depth), which is what was still pending as of when mediation concluded. If you keep claiming this while not acknowleding what either Maunus or I have explained about it, it’s going to be difficult for me to continue assuming good faith about you with regard to this. --Captain Occam (talk) 00:39, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

No, we did not. I posted the relevant quote from the mediation page: "... it's inclusion is pending ..." Regardless, it's probably more constructive to focus on content and sourcing instead of trying to argue for false consensus. A.Prock (talk) 00:45, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

When Maunus explained this to you, you didn’t respond to him at all. As far as he and I could tell, you had no counter-argument to what he had to say about it. Are you now intending to just keep repeating the exact same thing you were saying to him that he already answered?

Content and sourcing is what I’ve been trying to focus on here, and my revision incorporates every suggestion that’s been made about this section. If you have more revisions to suggest, you’re welcome to go ahead, but I’ve answered all of your questions as far as sourcing is concerned. --Captain Occam (talk) 00:53, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

I am in fact going through two papers that you think are central to this entire section. I'll let you know when I'm done doing that. With respect to the false consensus that you keep trying to push, I don't think that really qualifies as content. A.Prock (talk) 03:29, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Nice job Occam. This article is crying out for more discussion of socio-political context, and this a very well written, comprehensive and neutral discussion. I fixed the refs too. mikemikev (talk) 05:23, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

I have made a few corrections which I hope are not very controversial. The most controversial is that I have changed the "Arthur Jensen is known for" sentence. He really is not known for arguing individual differentiation in education although he clearly has - Howard Gardner is known for making that argument, not Jensen. What Jensen is known for is the other part of his argument namely for racially based differentiation. In Jensen on Jensenism he even tacitly acknowledges that he is mostly (in)fanous for that part of his conclusion. I am still not sure that this section is what we are looking for - especially the first two paragraphs seem weirdly uninformative and besides the point. I am also not comfortable with the sole quote being from Gottfredsson. Even balanced with another view there would satill be the question about which view comes first and which gets the last word. I think avoiding quotes other than the APA one might be a good idea. I also think it would be a good idea to mention as Slrubenstein has suggested the fact that affirmative action policies have been implemented partly with the iq gap as motivation - the government tacitly acknowledging an environmental explanation of it. Also I would suggest to both Aprock and Occam to stop bickering about whether there is previous consensus to include this section - it doesn't matter. If we are to include it we will have to do so by forming a new consensus anyway. So build consensus please, work forward not backwards. Oh, and I am undecided about whether this section would improve the article so don't count me as weighing towards a consensus either way. ·Maunus·ƛ· 06:41, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

I disagree with a couple of these changes. First, if you read the portion of the APA report that I quoted, they’re saying more than just that IQ correlates with these social factors—they’re saying that the characteristics measured by IQ tests influence them. (And they use that word for it, along with “account for”.) I’m not sure what it is that’s difficult about this, but please read the part of their report that I quoted above. Unless you’re deliberately reading it in a very weird way, it’s clear that they’re asserting a causal relationship in that paragraph.

I also disagree with this sentence: “While Arthur Jensen is best known for arguing in favour for racially based differentiation in educational methods and expectations”. Jensen has never actually advocated treating people differently on the basis of race. If you read the 1970 article from him that’s being cited here, or his one from 1969 that first made him controversial, he makes it very clear that he thinks educational methods should be based on individual ability, and the reason this will result in unequal results between races is because (due to either genetic or environmental factors) mental ability is distributed unequally between races. If we’re going to describe Jensen’s position in a single sentence, I think it’s important that we describe what Jensen actually said, rather than what some others claimed that he said.

Unless you have a counter-argument to these points, I think I should change the wording of these sections back to something like what it was before. You’re welcome to suggest any other changes, though. --Captain Occam (talk) 06:59, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Then I think the Jensen sentence and quote should be left out all together reading your version anyone with a cursory knowledge are going to giggle when they read the sentence explaining that Jensen is known for making the opposite argument than the one he is known for. It reads like a hilarious attempt at whitewashing Jensen by turning him into Howard Gardner. He clearly does argue that blacks learn best by rote memory for example and that race should be taken into account when devising educational strategies.·Maunus·ƛ· 07:08, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

I think it's more important to put what Jensen said than what he is known for. After all, wikipedia is here to inform. mikemikev (talk) 07:25, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

It was Occam's choice to make the phrase about what Jensen is known for. ·Maunus·ƛ· 07:27, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Well, good job for spotting it. It should be changed. mikemikev (talk) 07:29, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

All right, I got rid of “is known for” and changed it to just “Jensen has argued”. Maunus, is that satisfactory to you? --Captain Occam (talk) 07:32, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Well, admittedly I haven't read that much Jensen yet, but I am uncertain whether that quote adequately reflects the sum of his opinions about what kinds of educational strategies should be used to remedy the iq gap. Apparently Tucker (and several others) analyses his general drift to be a little more controversial than merely saying that "education shouled be differentiated to the individual". If that really was what he was saying all those studies in race and Iq would be redundant, and he certainly wouldn't have attracted the negative attention that he has. My intuition tells me there is more to the issue and that he has made other proposals as well. If you could find a secondary source that summarises Jensen's ideas on educational policies in relation to the race/IQ gap I would be less concerned with cherry picking of quotes.

The source I’m using for this actually is secondary. (Perhaps I ought to make that clear in the citation.) Jensen’s 1970 article about this is being quoted by Hans Eysenck in his 1971 book The IQ Argument in order to provide a concise explanation of Jensen’s position. I’m not sure whether Eysenck is neutral enough for you; if he isn’t, let me know what kind of source you’re looking for and I’ll see if I can find something better.

I guess I’ll also try to provide a concise summary of how Jensen came to be the center of this controversy, if you’re confused about this. Throughout the 1960s, school districts across the U.S. were trying to remedy the racial IQ gap through compensatory education, and in 1967 the United States Commission on Civil Rights released a report saying that these programs had not produced any lasting gains for the children they were intended to help. Since Jensen was a fairly well-respected educational psychologist (although not known for his views on race), Harvard Educational Review requested that he write a paper describing his views on this issue, including his views on the cause of the racial IQ gap. In his paper, Jensen proposed that the reason why compensatory education programs weren’t working was because differences in IQ had a partially genetic basis, including the difference in average IQ between races. And for that reason, he said that trying to close it by providing the same educational resources to everyone was unlikely to work; instead education should be tailored to each person’s individual ability.

His proposal that genetics were contributing to the racial IQ gap was what made him so controversial. I think you know how the wider academic community reacted to that idea, but Jensen didn’t back down about it. And according to him, the main reason why he didn’t was because he felt that the idea of IQ being environmentally determined was being used as the basis for educational policies that were ineffective. Since this included policies intended to close the racial IQ gap, studying the cause of this gap was something that he considered necessary also. One specific example of this that’s described in his article quoted by Eysenck is that since the low average IQ of blacks was regarded as only the result of discrimination, low-IQ black students were being excluded from the remedial classes that were designed to help low-IQ whites, and which Jensen thought would be able to help low-IQ blacks also.

I’ve tried to describe this as neutrally as possible, but anybody who thinks I’ve left out something important is welcome to add it. Something else that I think it’s important to keep in mind here is that within the actual debate over this topic that exists in psychometrics, Jensen’s most prominent opponents such as Flynn, Nisbett and Neisser generally don’t think of him as a racist or a political advocate—they just think he’s interpreting the data incorrectly. Flynn in particular is striking for the amount of respect that he shows Jensen while writing about him, despite disagreeing with his conclusions. The point of mentioning this is that I think the people who have the most accurate impression of Jensen are usually going to be the people who’ve devoted the largest portions of their careers to debating against him (and this is true of Flynn more than anyone else), and these also tend to be the people who don’t view him nearly as negatively as people like Tucker do.

If you’re going to offer your advice about how to describe Jensen’s opinions in this article, I think it would be worthwhile if you could familiarize yourself a little with the ways he’s described them. Eysenck’s 1971 book about this is out of print, but Jensen’s original 1969 HER article is famous enough that it shouldn’t be hard to find. He also provides a fairly good overview of his opinions in his interview by Frank Miele in Intelligence, Race and Genetics: Conversations with Arthur R. Jensen. --Captain Occam (talk) 08:59, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Thank you very much for that well written summary. I shall happily defer to Flynn, Nesbitt and Neisser to characterize Jensen's opinions. However it stands to reason that there is nothing controversial about saying that educators should differentiate their teaching to best suit the individual. And that ascribing him this viewpoint isn't really informative (other than perhaps to make readers question their preconceived opinions about him) The controversial part of Jensens ideas on education is that he ascribes a significant part (I don't know how significant, but surely more than many others) of the differences between individuals to their racial background. In your wording the reader will simply be forced to agree with Jensen and wonder why everybody seems to think he is wrong. I will of course familiarize myself with Jensen eventually, but at the moment I am more invested in finding out how secondary sources describe his work. And I am invested in finding the places in the article where I find the APA reports conclusions to be misrepresented. And I am even more invested in finding sources for the anti-hereditarian and race and iq sceptic viewpoints which I still find to be underrepresented in the article. ·Maunus·ƛ· 11:12, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

“The controversial part of Jensens ideas on education is that he ascribes a significant part (I don't know how significant, but surely more than many others) of the differences between individuals to their racial background. In your wording the reader will simply be forced to agree with Jensen and wonder why everybody seems to think he is wrong.”

I agree that the controversial part of Jensen’s opinion is his view on the cause of the racial IQ gap, but isn’t his view about this sufficiently explained by other parts of the article? This particular paragraph is just describing the differing views about how education should be handled. If other parts of the article already make it clear what the most controversial part of his ideas are, I don’t think it’s necessary to emphasize this every time we present Jensen’s viewpoint about anything else. --Captain Occam (talk) 16:43, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Lynn wrote IQ and the Wealth of Nations with Tatu Vanhanen.

In World on Fire, Amy Chua does not argue that the phenomenon of "market-dominant minorities" is caused by IQ differences. While it's possible and in some cases, I think, probable that the phenomenon is due to IQ differences, it's original research to suggest that that is the case. Nathaniel Weyl's (not Wehl) arguments were not made in connection with Chua's book.

I don't think Jensen has ever argued for racially segregated education. Rather, he may have said that desegregation did not reduce the black-white school achievement gap as indicated also by the Coleman Report (in fact, I remember reading that Jensen conducted research on just this topic in the late 1960, until his project was terminated by his funders when the initial negative results came in). He may also have stated that low-IQ individuals benefit more from rote learning, but that applies to all races. Furthermore, I don't think we should quote something Jensen wrote in 1970, as his views may have changed. For example, back in 1970 his conception of intelligence was not based on g.

The section is also too long.--Victor Chmara (talk) 00:24, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Some problems with article

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And this is unacceptable behavior at Misplaced Pages.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Preliminary Review of Significance and Policy Relevence (revised) Section

General notes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I hope we can separate two things:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Doll study

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More problems

I've added -tags to several statements in the article that makes claims to consensus about different view without making the appropriate caveats. I would appreciate if we could discuss the issues here. Unfortunately, it being night here, I don't have time to present my arguments in full now, but I hope you will not remove the tags before we have discussed them. I will explain myself in more detail tomorrow, but for now the edit summaries and the tags themselves will have to suffice.·Maunus·ƛ· 19:25, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

I noticed the tags, but for most of them, the facts are well-documented in the literature. I can provide lots of cites after you explain the problem with them. -Bpesta22 (talk) 22:50, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Its not really enough to provide citations - for all of these statements we can find citations in favour and against. It is a question of finding the most neutral and balanced way of providing the conflicting views.

• IQ tests measure many of the qualities that people mean by intelligent or smart" - This statement is problematic for several reasons. First because "people" do not necessarily mean the same thing when they say those word. Concepts of "smart" are culturally sensitive and the APA report describes (in the section "cultural variation" p. 79-80) that conceptions of intelligence vary substantially from culture to culture and even between subcultures of the same culture. Secondly because an equally valid statement would be that "IQ tests do not measure most of the qualities people mean by intelligent or smart" - because IQ tests typically do not measure practical or creative intelligence as proposed by steinberg and others, or a number of other qualities that "people" might mean when they say smart e.g. "street savvy", "smooth", "well adjusted", "adaptable", "survivor skills", "photographic memory" etc. In my opinion the best solution would be to not include this statement at all, since it is both too fuzzy and too difficult to make precise. If we want to make it precise we would have to write at length about exactly what it is that intelligence tests measure and do not measure and how that varies from different conceptions of intelligence, both scientific and popular.

This statement is a paraphrase of what the cited sources claim. This is what the APA report, Dreary, Mackintosh all say. (I have not consulted Bartholomew). Moreover, the lead in sentence of this section provides a link to the IQ tests article which goes into all your comments in detail. I have never seen a secondary source which disagrees with this statement. Can you provide a citation? David.Kane (talk) 13:33, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

The APA report, as I wrote above does not make this claim without making a lot of caveats and qualifications.·Maunus·ƛ· 15:55, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

True, But the goal if this section is to write a short overview of the topic, with pointers toward secondary sources and other Misplaced Pages articles. Entire books are, as you know, written on this topic. We can't fit in everything. How would you change this sentence to make it better? David.Kane (talk) 18:58, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

• "IQ tests predict school and job performance to a degree that does not significantly vary by socio-economic or racial-ethnic background." I'm not quite sure what the part about racial-ethnic background means exactly. And anyway the APA report states that IQ predicts school performance at a .50 correlation and job performance at a .54 correlation which means that IQ only predicts 29% of job performance and 25% of school achievement. Simply writing that "IQ predicts schoo and job performance" doesn't sufficienty reflect the other 75-71% of performance which is not predicted by IQ. Again we have a situation where it is equally vaid to write "Iq only predicts less than a third of job and school performance, the rest is accounted for by other factors such as interpersonal skills, experience, personality etc. which we are not at present able to adequately measure". (paraphrased from the APA report p. 83) How do we give due weight to the other 71 percent?

Again, the statement is true and can be found in (almost) every secondary source. IQ tests do predict these things. They do not perfectly predict them. I guess that we might quibble about the addition of an adverb. "Partially predict," perhaps? And, again, there is not a single secondary source that disagrees with this claim. David.Kane (talk) 13:36, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

They do not perfectly predict them - the predict a part of them - and sometimes that part is fairly small. Again the Apa report makes a lot of qualifications when it makes this claim. It does so because not making them makes the statement untrue.·Maunus·ƛ· 15:55, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

How, specifically, would you rewrite this sentence? To me, it is obvious that "predict" does not mean "perfectly predict with 100% accuracy," but I am happy to see your suggestion. "partially predict?" "predict somewhat?" David.Kane (talk) 19:01, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

• "intelligence is heritable." It is incredible that this has been allowed to stand so long since it simply states the hereditarian view as proven fact with no contradiction. This is certainly not what the APA report states.

This is a statement of fact. It can be found in every secondary source. Have you consulted them? Look at page 85 of the APA report. "Across the ordinary range of environments in modern Western societies, a sizable part of the variation in intelligence test scores is associated with genetic differences among individuals." David.Kane (talk) 13:42, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

"sizeable part" and "associated" does not equal "intelligence is heritable" sorry.·Maunus·ƛ· 15:55, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Are we having a semantic dispute? Consider this sentence: "height is heritable." Is that a true statement that might be included in a Misplaced Pages article? If so, the case is the same. After all, height is also strongly influenced by environment, nutrition and so on, just like intelligence. David.Kane (talk) 18:55, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

• "Family environment and community culture affect IQ, more so in children than in adults." I didn't tag this statement, but it seems problematic as well. What is it supposed to mean exactly? That the environment during childhood influences an adults intelligence more than his adult environment? Or that the influence of environmental factors in childhood are gradually compensated for as individuals grow up? The first interpretation seems right, the other one seems problematic.

Again, these statements come directly from secondary sources. Assign 100 babies to families at random. The environment/culture will affect their measured IQ at age 10. Look at those same babies at age 20, and the effects will be much smaller. But, since you did not understand the meaning, then, obviously, this could be written better. Suggestions? David.Kane (talk) 13:47, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

• "Although modern IQ tests are unbiased" This isn't supprted by the APA report which says that there is no "simple bias" but then goes on at ength describing possible factors that might contribute to creating a complex bias (stereotype threat, cultural differences, lack of prior education (Nisbett also describes considerabe improvement in performance by backs after a short introductory course)) and later in the section test bias answers that there is a clear "outcome bias" against blacks, but no "predictive bias". Nisbett 2009 clearly finds the caim that even the least biased tests such as the Raven Progressive Matrices which he describes as "allegedly culture fair" - and as "the least cuturally biased". This shows that in his view there is no culture neutral test ony degrees. ·Maunus·ƛ· 09:54, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

These are all legitimate NPOV concerns. We cannot object to representing the views of psychometricians. But in most cases, the preentation of any view requires context, and in some cases more detail = more clarity. And when there are other views, even if they come from social scientists who are not psychometricians, NPOV requires us to add those as well. I think all of Maunus's points are constructive and we should edit the article accordingly. Slrubenstein | Talk 11:43, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

I would like to add that these objections could also be made by psychometricians such as Robert Sternberg and psychologists like Stephen Ceci and RIchard Nisbett.·Maunus·ƛ· 12:01, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

With due respect, Maunus, it doesn't seem like you understand the area well enough to make accurate contributions. A .50 correlation is massive in this area. The practical utility of IQ predicting job performance (e.g.) is staggering. One can even quantify how well .50 as a validity coefficient works for selection accuracy (this stuff was figured out about 100 years ago and applies to any test-- not just iq tests).

Suppose 100 people apply, 50 are qualified and 50 need to be hired. Just randomly hiring people will result in 50% accuracy, obviously (of the 50 hired; 25 will not be qualified and eventually quit or be fired). If we use the IQ test with .50 validity to hire, the accuracy rises to 76%. Now 3/4 of the hired people are qualified. If a wise hiring manager increases the number of applicants (from the same pool) such that only 25% need to be hired, the accuracy rises to 92% in this example! The IQ test alone increases accuracy from 50% chance levels to 92%!

Context is also needed. In selection, validity of .20 can be useful (if the test is not too expensive). The best personality does (conscientiousness) is a validity of .30. Most traditional measures (unstructured interviews; reference checks) have much lower validity. In fact, IQ emerges as the *single* best predictor of job performance yet discovered. From this factual perspective, it's ignorant to complain that .50 is weak.

Pick other important social outcomes (income, health, crime, education levels) and IQ emerges as the single best predictor. The effect of IQ on most things is huge from a statistical point of view. When I get more time, I will provide examples (one I remember, the effect of IQ on job performance is bigger than the effect of Viagra on erectile dysfunction).

None of this addresses the race / IQ gap, but it's clear that IQ is the most powerful variable in social science. -Bpesta22 (talk) 14:22, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

One other thing for extreme clarity here. Stereotype threat is the current go-to / let's hug explanation for race differences. The effect though is tiny and relatively unreliable. Compare the effect of IQ predicting job performance to stereotype threat affecting test scores (as one example).

I invite you to calculate how much of the variance in the race gap is unexplained by ST. By your logic, we should remove the ST section. -Bpesta22 (talk) 14:27, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

I am not advocating removal of any section - I am advocating making qualifications of statements that allow us to be precise about what the sources say. .50 correlation is huge...compared to what? compared to correlation .00 yes. But huge enough to allow to say "x predicts x" I don't think so, and reliable sources like Sternberg, Nisbett and other also don't think so.·Maunus·ƛ· 15:55, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

I may not fully understand the statistical implications, but I don't need to: we have reliable scholars within psychometry (Sternberg), psychology (Nisbett, Ceci, Kamin) who hold these views about intelligence - they have to have a voice and the article cannot simply assume the hereditarian viewpoint to be true untill there is a consensus about that in the science. The APA report has been described by most editors here as the most mainstream and objectove source - It does not say that intelligence is heritable, that intelligence is G or that effects of IQ on jobperformance is huge. It makes some other statements that are much more nuanced and those are the ones we need to incorporate here.

They are wrong if they indeed claim that .50 is trivial (it's such an ignorant statement; could you quote where they claim the .50 correlation has no practical value?). Forget about IQ tests and use Wiki itself as a source:

http://en.wikipedia.org/Effect_size#Pearson_r_correlation

The guy who basically invented effect size (Cohen) adopts a convention where r = .37 or higher is large. That makes r = .50 huge (the gap itself is 1.0 which I guess is vast). This has nothing to do with IQ. Any correlation for anything this large is big. It's impossible mathematically for (e.g.) the .50 correlation between IQ scores and GPA not to show itself in the real world. .50 is very practically significant. I'm "in" this area because I don't know of any other variable that predicts stuff so well. Do you know what the effect size is for stereotype threat, for reference? If one could find a drug that has a .50 correlation with cancer treatment outcomes, we'd be marketing as the cure. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bpesta22 (talk • contribs) 20:23, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

BPesta, it does not matter if they are wrong. I am speaking to you as BPesta, wikipedia editor. First, we never put our own views in an article. Second, Misplaced Pages is about verifiability, not truth. No one contests that some people think they the views Maunus is referring to are right - Maunus just wants this properly attributed. And if there are significant views from reliable sources that question those views, we have to add them too, properly attributed and sourced. Now if Bryan Pesta, published author, says in a reliable source that Nesbitt or anyone else is wrong we can add that too, properly attributed and sourced. Misplaced Pages must present all significant views from reliable sources. If there is a conflict, we should contextualize and properly attribute conflicting views. It is fine for Misplaced Pages to say x, y and z say this view is right, and a, b, and c say it is wrong (that is "verifiability," we are not claiming what is right or wrong, only that there are those who argue it is right or wrong. Misplaced Pages editors cannot prove what is right or wrong, but by providing verifiable sources we can prove that someone - or many - have written that something is right or wrong). It simply is not for a Misplaced Pages editor to be the arbiter of truth. Slrubenstein | Talk 16:52, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Slu, thanks. I am still trying to rectify how a scientific article would support a claim versus how Wiki does. Where I depart from Wiki rules, obviously, the Wiki rules should win. But, my criticism here is purely math driven. If an article claimed 2 + 2 = 5, I doubt wiki would publish that here just because the article could be verified. Claiming that a .50 correlation has no practical value is about as wrong. -Bpesta22 (talk) 04:14, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

No one is claiming that .5 isn't a strong correlation - I am claiming that it is imprecise and misleading to say that "x predicts Y" when the correlation between them isn't 1. We should say to which degree x predicts y. I want to change the current wording "2 + 2 = a whole bunch" to "2 + 2 = 4". ·Maunus·ƛ· 05:57, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

I was intrigued by what David Kane said about, "IQ tests do not measure most of the qualities people mean by intelligent or smart". This reminds me of the concept of emotional intelligence or, in general, the Theory of multiple intelligences. Someone might be a genius in music or a lightning calculator and yet be underdeveloped (less skilled?) in other areas of life (see "Savant syndrome").

Is it still true that most IQ tests measure only one or two aspects of what Howard Gardner calls intelligence?

• Traditionally, schools have emphasized the development of logical intelligence and linguistic intelligence (mainly reading and writing)

If so, what bearing does that have on our article-writing task? For example, are the correlations between IQ and success noted in The Bell Curve related only (or chiefly) to those two factors? At the risk of veering off into WP:OR, I would speculate that someone with great musical ability would be a much more highly paid entertainer than someone whose skill set is strongest in figuring out what combination of chemicals can produce rubber most cheaply. Then there's the kind of intelligence developed by physical education. How about those top athletes, eh? --Uncle Ed (talk) 18:05, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

The problem is no one has yet devised a measure of any of Gardner's IQ's that doesn't also correlate strongly with g (or predict things once g is removed). Also, I would not call athletic or musical ability intelligence. They are important abilities, but not cognitive ability / g.

Musical ability is obviously a cognitive ability - so is visuo spatial ability which is a great part of athletic ability.

IIRC, g is a purely correlative construct, not an actual thing. A.Prock (talk) 05:46, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

So is Extroversion; Leadership; Musical ability; Religiosity; Liberalism. Yet people seem to have no problem assuming this things exist as latent constructs that can be measured via "tests". -Bpesta22 (talk) 18:04, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

There are several different views about this among those who believe G exists - to some it is a statistical artefact to others it is a biological variable like "neuron processing speed" or some such.·Maunus·ƛ· 05:54, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

@Bpesta, I'm pretty sure that there is no real consensus on how valid the various personality/religiousness/politicality are. A.Prock (talk) 19:47, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

David Kane's revert

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Consensus

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

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

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

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

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

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

Intelligence

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Race

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

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

Race and Intelligence

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mathsci, this is incredibly simple.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maunus, I have two suggestions for you about this:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Arguments in favour of the Genetic hypothesis w. counterarguments from Nisbett

I think the article should contain explanations of all the arguments and counteraguments presented in the Appendix of Nisbett 2009:

1. H&M argue statistically that if environmental causes should account for the IQ gap the environement of all blacks would have to be as bad as for only the lowest 6-2% of whites.

Nisbett counters this by using Lewontins argument that causes of in group variation and outgroup variation need not be the same.

That doesn't counter it. High within group heritability places a constraint on pure between-group environmentalism, so this calculation is correct. See Philosophy of Science that Ignores Science: Race, IQ and Heritability, Neven Sesardic. It doesn't really matter whether the X-factor is the same for both groups. mikemikev (talk) 13:23, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

That is Nisbetts argument, if you have counter counter arguments then please source them to reliable sources. ·Maunus·ƛ· 13:32, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

1. The race gap is bigger on "culture fair" IQ tests.

1. Nisbett counters by saying that the Flynn effect IQ gains is larger for culture-fair tests.

1. IQs of Subsaharan Africans are as low as 70 or 75 on average.

Nisbett counters by saying that that is so low that the socres obviously do not mean the same as they do for Europeans. People with 70 average IQ could not survive in hostile environments. Furthermore the conclusions for these scores are based on highly environmentally responsive tests and on a small body of data. Other studies show that scores have risen in African popoluations by as much as 1.75 SD, and that a few months of education raise scores by as much as .70 SD. Nisbett concludes that the Flynn effect has not yet taken effect in Subsaharan Africa.

1. H&M & Rushton & Jensen 2005 argue that the reason African Americans have a mean IQ of 85 instead of 70 like in Subsaharan africa correlates with their estimated 20% admixture of "white" genetic material.

Nisbett counters that this would mean that a 50/50 African/European genetic mixture would have an IQ of 115.

1. Black performance is worse on heavily g-loaded subtests.

Nisbett counters that the WISC tests on which these data are based do not have much differentiation of g-loading. Flynn argues that the WISC is tilted towards crystallized as opposed to fluid g. The gap is biggest for crytallized g tests, but for fluid g-tests the flynn effect gains over time are higher.

1. Blacks do worse in tests with high inbreeding depression.

Nisbett counters that IQ gains on tests with high inbreeding depression are also more affected by the Flynn effect IQ gains, which would suggest that if the inbreeding depression is genetic in origin then so is the Flynn effect (which he finds absurd).

1. Whites have bigger brains than whites and among the white population high IQ individuals have bigger brains than low IQ individuals.

Nisbett counters with the ingroup/outgroup variation argument. Then he counters by saying that the male female gap in brain size is bigger than the black/white one. Then he mentions the existence of a high IQ/small brainsize group of people in ecuador. (wtf?) One sample of black females say that cranial capacity is the same as whites but IQ gap as the same 1 SD. Finally brain size is subject to prenatal environmental detrimental effects that black foetuses are more likely to experience.

1. Reaction times are slower for blacks.

Nisbett counters with the ingroup/outgroup variation argument. Then he says that variability in reaction time among asians is higher than among whites - variability usually being correlated with a lower IQ. He then states that movement time is also correlated with IQ and blacks have lower movement time than whites - suggesting then higher IQ.

1. Blacks regress towards a lower mean.

Nisbett counters that the same prediction can be derived from an environemental explanantion.

·Maunus·ƛ· 08:10, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

“I think the article should contain explanations of all the arguments and counteraguments presented in the Appendix of Nisbett 2009”

To some extent, the article does this already. What you’re suggesting is very close to what David.Kane was trying to accomplish when he wrote the majority of the “variables potentially affecting intelligence in groups” section. However, something to keep in mind is that Nisbett is far from the only researcher in this area who disagrees with the hereditarian perspective. In some cases, there are pro-environmental arguments which are common in the source material but which Nisbett doesn’t mention, in which case those arguments should still be included here; while other arguments used by Nisbett are used by almost nobody other than him, in which case giving Nisbett’s viewpoint equal validity with the viewpoint held by most pro-hereditarian researchers would be WP:UNDUE.

Please keep in mind that when I refer to undue weight, I’m not referring to giving undue weight to the 100%-environmental perspective in general; I’m just talking about specific arguments that Nisbett uses. An even more obvious example of the same thing is Gould’s anti-IQ arguments in The Mismeasure of Man, which are rejected by the vast majority of psychologists, regardless of whether they agree or disagree with Jensen about the cause of the IQ gap. As far as I’m aware, the current article describes all of these arguments with about the same degree of prominence as they have in the source material (with the exception of the “processing efficiency” section, which I intend to make shorter), although David.Kane can explain how this is the case more specifically than I can. --Captain Occam (talk) 23:56, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Comment from a non-editor:

• A good secondary source (possibly to check mainstream views) is the 436 page 2002 book edited by Jefferson M. Fish, "Race and Intelligence: Separating Science from Myth". This book has contributors from many disciplines. Not all of it can be read on the web (I now have a copy). Wikipedians have no way of evaluating primary sources except through secondary sources. That is why secondary sources are preferred. The books of Nisbett or Fish are secondary sources. The sections are:

1. A scientific approach to understanding race and intelligence, Jefferson M. Fish
2. The genetic and evolutionary significance of human races, Alan Templeton
3. The misuse of life history theory: J. P. Rushton and the pseudoscience of racial hierarchy, Joseph L. Graves
4. Folk heredity, Jonathan Marks
5. The myth of race. Jefferson Fish
6. Science and the idea of race: a brief history, Audrey Smedley
7. The Bell Curve and the politics of negrophobia, Kimberley Welch
8. An anthropologist looks at "race" and IQ testing, Mark N. Cohen
9. African inputs to the IQ controversy, or why two-legged animals can't sit gracefully, Eugenia Shanklin
10. Cultural amplifiers of intelligence: IQ and minority status in cultural perspective, John Ogbu
11. How heritability misleads about race, Ned Block
12. Selection of evidence, misleading assumptions, and oversimplifications: The political message of The Bell Curve, John L. Horn
13. Test scores, education and poverty, Michael Hout
14. Intelligence and success: is it all in the genes? Bernie Devlin, Stephen Fienberg, Daniel Resnick & Kathryn Roeder
15. Compensatory preschool education, cognitive development and "race", Steven Barnett and Gregory Camilli

One of the points here is that the researchers in the circle of Jensen, Rushton et al never discuss the biological problems with "race": they evade this issue. The articles in this book, which form a whole, discuss all of these problems - eg the "folk" notions of both "race " and heredity - instead of taking them as given. If a secondary source discusses them in detail, as here, so should the article. It's simply a question of summarising various parts of the book, which has partially been done by Jefferson Fish in chapter one. Mathsci (talk) 19:15, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

This would be a tertiary source (and a ridiculously fringe one). 146.179.213.158 (talk) 16:39, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

This source is not a secondary source. It is a collection of a dozen or so articles, each of which is a primary source, no different than other articles published in the scientific literature. MathSci constantly (and correctly!) harps on the wisdom of using secondary sources (Loehlin, Mackintosh, Nisbett, Flynn and so on) for this article. I agree. David.Kane (talk) 16:44, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Articles can be primary, secondary, or tertiary sources. If an article is reviewing a collection of past research without making new conclusions it is certainly a secondary source. A.Prock (talk) 18:29, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Okay, since we all agree this is a valuable source, can Maunus or MathSci or whoever has access to it add appropriate material to the appropriate sections of this article? Slrubenstein | Talk 19:07, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Would it be possible to discuss before adding? A lot of this stuff seems fringe. 146.179.213.90 (talk) 19:50, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

What have we done to deserve all these Imperial College IP editors? Are they meatpuppets or sockpuppets of another London editor that regularly edits this page?

The book is an organised and coordinated set of articles, described in the first chapter by Fish. The book is a secondary source. Summarising the articles - eg the ones on folk race and folk heredity - is a fairly simple exercise and a much better way of writing wikipedia articles than acting as if we understand anthropology, statistics, sociology, education, psychology, history, biology, genetics, etc, although there obviously are several incognito experts on some of these topics here. I don't think anyway that professors at University of California, Berkeley are necessarily fringe, are they? Some might be, particuarly if they have been at the centre of a controversy at some stage, but I don't think that applies to the likes of Michael Hout or John Ogbu. Is there something I'm missing here? Is there something fringey about Hout being a member of the National Academy of Sciences? Aren't these both in fact very distinguished academics in their spheres? Mathsci (talk) 21:39, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

about pelvic size

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dubious tag on the brain size hierarchy section

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

Lieberman is absolutely note a rationalist, he is a marxist. Hundreds of studies have clearly demonstrated that the cranial capacity of blacks was smaller, their pelvis is smaller and the cranial capacity is less than the third week of pregnancy! It should not include Lieberman is an obscurantist who denies the very foundations of the theory of évolutionK.

• Former good article nominees
• Old requests for peer review
• All unassessed articles
• B-Class psychology articles
• Mid-importance psychology articles
• WikiProject Psychology articles
• Start-Class sociology articles
• Mid-importance sociology articles