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This article has been mentioned by a media organization: "Finlands statsminister i rasistskandal". Dagens Nyheter. August 10, 2004.

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Geneal Suggestion

To write this as a full length wikipedia article is very very shameful. This is not even science, it is pedestrian level excersice which was traped by people who have evil attitude to wards other races than their own. Wouldn't it be better just to write about IQ test and give some examples of contoversial studies.

I believe the table is missleading, hs no scientific value and should be deleted.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.206.234.19 (talk • contribs) 11:50, June 25, 2010 (UTC)

Well obviously, when you do not like an article in an encyclopedia even mentioning an existing piece of work without even taking sides on it, it has to be deleted. The only thing you actually seem to believe here is that we should pretend like books one may not like, doesn't exist. Here is a link (and a practice) you may like however: http://en.wikipedia.org/Book_burning 90.227.176.140 (talk) 14:41, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Wicherts et al on African I.Q.s, Lynn Thesis

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100121155220.htm

Controversial Study of African IQ Levels Is 'Deeply Flawed'

ScienceDaily (Jan. 21, 2010) - The controversial study on African IQ levels conducted by psychologist Richard Lynn is deeply flawed. This conclusion is the outcome of studies by Jelte Wicherts, Conor Dolan, Denny Borsboom and Han van der Maas of the University of Amsterdam (UvA) and Jerry Carlson of the University of California (Riverside).

Their findings are set to be published in Intelligence, Personality and Individual Differences, and Learning and Individual Differences.

In an oft-quoted literature study conducted in 2006, Lynn concluded that black Africans have an average IQ of less than 70 (compared to an average western IQ of 100). Lynn suggested that these low IQs are indicative of a low intelligence level, claiming this offered an explanation for the low level of economic development in sub-Saharan countries.

Lynn's study is well known among psychologists, and has been referenced by academics such as Nobel laureate James Watson, and the authors of the controversial book The Bell Curve -- Intelligence and Class Structure in America (Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray: Freepress, 1994).

African IQ scores prove flawed

Wicherts and his colleagues examined over 100 published studies, concluding that there is no evidence to back up Lynn's claims. Amongst other flaws, Lynn used selective data by systematically ignoring Africans with high IQ scores. The researchers also claim that African IQ test scores cannot be interpreted in terms of lower intelligence levels, as these scores have different psychometric characteristics than western IQ test scores. Until now, the incomparability of Western and African IQ scores had never been systematically proven.

The scientists point out that the average African IQ is currently comparable to the average level in the Netherlands around 1950. However, IQ scores in Western countries have risen sharply over the course of the 20th century. In view of this trend, Wicherts and his colleagues claim there are no reasonable grounds to conclude that sub-Saharan countries are poor due to the lower IQ scores of their populations. As it turns out, the average IQ of African adults is seeing a similar rising trend, which is expected to continue if living conditions in Africa improve in future.

Story Source:

   Adapted from materials provided by Universiteit van

Amsterdam (UVA).

Journal References:

Personality and Individual Differences
Volume 48, Issue 2, January 2010, Pages 91-96
doi:10.1016/j.paid.2009.05.028
Copyright c 2009 Elsevier Ltd All rights reserved.

Review

Why national IQs do not support evolutionary theories of intelligence

Jelte M. Wicherts, Denny Borsbooma and Conor V. Dolana

aDepartment of Psychology, University of Amsterdam, Roetersstraat 15, 1018 WB Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Received 16 February 2009; revised 19 May 2009; accepted 26 May 2009. Available online 24 June 2009.

Abstract

Kanazawa (2008), Templer (2008), and Templer and Arikawa (2006) claimed to have found empirical support for evolutionary theories of race differences in intelligence by correlating estimates of national IQ with indicators of reproductive strategies, temperature, and geographic distance from Africa. In this paper we criticize these studies on methodological, climatic, and historical grounds. We show that these studies assume that the Flynn Effect is either nonexistent or invariant with respect to different regions of the world, that there have been no migrations and climatic changes over the course of evolution, and that there have been no trends over the last century in indicators of reproductive strategies (e.g., declines in fertility and infant mortality). In addition, we show that national IQs are strongly confounded with the current developmental status of countries. National IQs correlate with all the variables that have been suggested to have caused the Flynn Effect in the developed world.

Keywords: Evolutionary psychology; Flynn Effect; Race differences

Article Outline

1. Introduction
2. Temporal constancy over the course of evolution?
3. Climate change
4. Changes in reproductive strategies
5. Migration and geographic distance
6. The temporal stability of IQ-scores
7. The many confounds of national IQ
8. Method
9. Results
10. Discussion
Acknowledgements
References

Corresponding author. Tel.: +31 205257067.

Personality and Individual Differences
Volume 48, Issue 2, January 2010, Pages 104-106
doi:10.1016/j.paid.2009.08.020
Copyright c 2009 Elsevier Ltd All rights reserved.

Short Communication

Evolution, brain size, and the national IQ of peoples around 3000 years B.C

Jelte M. Wicherts a, Denny Borsboom a and Conor V. Dolan a

aUniversity of Amsterdam, Department of Psychology, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Received 22 August 2009; accepted 26 August 2009. Available online 18 September 2009.

Abstract

In this rejoinder, we respond to comments by Lynn, Rushton, and Templer on our previous paper in which we criticized the use of national IQs in studies of evolutionary theories of race differences in intelligence. We reiterate that because of the Flynn Effect and psychometric issues, national IQs cannot be taken to reflect populations' levels of g as fixed since the last ice age. We argue that the socio-cultural achievements of peoples of Mesopotamia and Egypt in 3000 B.C. stand in stark contrast to the current low level of national IQ of peoples of Iraq and Egypt and that these ancient achievements appear to contradict evolutionary accounts of differences in national IQ. We argue that race differences in brain size, even if these were entirely of genetic origin, leave unexplained 91-95% of the black-white IQ gap. We highlight additional problems with hypotheses raised by Rushton and Templer. National IQs cannot be viewed solely in evolutionary terms but should be considered in light of global differences in socio-economic development, the causes of which are unknown.

Keywords: Evolutionary psychology; Flynn Effect; Race differences; Brain size

Article Outline

1. Introduction
2. IQ avant la lettre
3. Brain size
4. The Big picture
5. Conclusion
Acknowledgements
References

Corresponding author. Address: Department of Psychology, University of Amsterdam, Roetersstraat 15, 1018 WB Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Tel.: +31 205257067.

Intelligence
Volume 38, Issue 1, January-February 2010, Pages 1-20
doi:10.1016/j.intell.2009.05.002
Copyright c 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

A systematic literature review of the average IQ of sub-Saharan Africans

Jelte M. Wicherts, Conor V. Dolan a and Han L.J. van der Maas a

a Department of Psychology, Psychological Methods, University of Amsterdam, Roetersstraat 15, 1018 WB Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Received 8 October 2008; revised 6 May 2009; accepted 12 May 2009. Available online 9 June 2009.

Abstract

On the basis of several reviews of the literature, Lynn [Lynn, R., (2006). Race differences in intelligence: An evolutionary analysis. Augusta, GA: Washington Summit Publishers.] and Lynn and Vanhanen [Lynn, R., & Vanhanen, T., (2006). IQ and global inequality. Augusta, GA: Washington Summit Publishers.] concluded that the average IQ of the Black population of sub-Saharan Africa lies below 70. In this paper, the authors systematically review published empirical data on the performance of Africans on the following IQ tests: Draw-A-Man (DAM) test, Kaufman-Assessment Battery for Children (K-ABC), the Wechsler scales (WAIS & WISC), and several other IQ tests (but not the Raven's tests). Inclusion and exclusion criteria are explicitly discussed. Results show that average IQ of Africans on these tests is approximately 82 when compared to UK norms. We provide estimates of the average IQ per country and estimates on the basis of alternative inclusion criteria. Our estimate of average IQ converges with the finding that national IQs of sub-Saharan African countries as predicted from several international studies of student achievement are around 82. It is suggested that this estimate should be considered in light of the Flynn Effect. It is concluded that more psychometric studies are needed to address the issue of measurement bias of western IQ tests for Africans.

Keywords: Group differences; Black-White differences; Flynn Effect; Race differences; Cross-cultural comparison; National IQ

Article Outline

1. Scholastic achievement surveys
2. A systematic review of the literature
3. Method
3.1. Search of studies
3.2. Our inclusion criteria
3.2.1. Norms
3.2.2. Standardized test administration of entire IQ test
3.2.3. No reported problems during testing
3.2.4. No measurement bias
3.2.5. Normal samples
3.3. Statistical analyses
4. Results
4.1. Draw-a-Man test
4.2. Kaufman-Assessment Battery for Children
4.3. Wechsler Scales
4.4. Culture Fair Intelligence Test
4.5. Other IQ tests
4.6. Meta-analytic analyses
4.7. Publication bias
5. Conclusion
Appendix A. Appendix
References

Corresponding author. Tel.: +31 205257067; fax: +31 206390026.

Intelligence
Volume 38, Issue 1, January-February 2010, Pages 30-37
doi:10.1016/j.intell.2009.11.003
Copyright c 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The dangers of unsystematic selection methods and the representativeness of 46 samples of African test-takers

Jelte M. Wicherts, Conor V. Dolan a and Han L.J. van der Maas a

a University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands Received 13 October 2009; accepted 6 November 2009. Available online 3 December 2009.

Abstract

In this rejoinder, we criticize Lynn and Meisenberg's (this issue) methods to estimate the average IQ (in terms of British norms after correction of the Flynn Effect) of the Black population of sub-Saharan Africa. We argue that their review of the literature is unsystematic, as it involves the inconsistent use of rules to determine the representativeness and hence selection of samples. Employing independent raters, we determined of each sample whether it was (1) considered representative by the original authors, (2) drawn randomly, (3) based on an explicated stratification scheme, (4) composed of healthy test-takers, and (5) considered by the original authors as normal in terms of Socio-Economic Status (SES). We show that the use of these alternative inclusion criteria would not have affected our results. We found that Lynn and Meisenberg's assessment of the samples' representativeness is not associated with any of the objective sampling characteristics, but rather with the average IQ in the sample. This suggests that Lynn and Meisenberg excluded samples of Africans who average IQs above 75 because they deemed these samples unrepresentative on the basis of the samples' relatively high IQs. We conclude that Lynn and Meisenberg's unsystematic methods are questionable and their results untrustworthy.

Keywords: Systematic literature review; National IQ; Group differences in IQ

Article Outline

1. Introduction
2. The full database
3. Inconsistent rules to determine representativeness
4. What is representative?
5. Conclusion
Acknowledgements
Appendix A. Supplementary data
References

Corresponding author. Department of Psychology, Psychological Methods, University of Amsterdam, Roetersstraat 15, 1018 WB Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Tel.: +31 205257067; fax: +31 206390026.

Learning and Individual Differences
Article in Press, Corrected Proof - Note to users
doi:10.1016/j.lindif.2009.12.001
Copyright c 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Raven's test performance of sub-Saharan Africans: Average5 performance, psychometric properties, and the Flynn Effect

Jelte M. Wicherts a, Conor V. Dolan a, Jerry S. Carlson b and Han L.J. van der Maas a

a Department of Psychology, Psychological Methods, University of Amsterdam, Roetersstraat 15, 1018 WB Amsterdam, The Netherlands

b University of California, Riverside, United States

Received 19 May 2009; revised 19 November 2009; accepted 3 December 2009. Available online 16 December 2009.

Abstract

This paper presents a systematic review of published data on the performance of sub-Saharan Africans on Raven's Progressive Matrices. The specific goals were to estimate the average level of performance, to study the Flynn Effect in African samples, and to examine the psychometric meaning of Raven's test scores as measures of general intelligence. Convergent validity of the Raven's tests is found to be relatively poor, although reliability and predictive validity are comparable to western samples. Factor analyses indicate that the Raven's tests are relatively weak indicators of general intelligence among Africans, and often measure additional factors, besides general intelligence. The degree to which Raven's scores of Africans reflect levels of general intelligence is unknown. Average IQ of Africans is approximately 80 when compared to US norms. Raven's scores among African adults have shown secular increases over the years. It is concluded that the Flynn Effect has yet to take hold in sub-Saharan Africa.

Keywords: Black-White differences; Cognitive abilities; Cross-cultural comparison; Measurement equivalence; Measurement invariance

Article Outline

1. Introduction
2. Is average IQ of Africans really below 70?
2.1. Method
2.1.1. Selection bias
2.1.2. Search of studies
2.1.3. Exclusion criteria
2.1.4. Converting raw scores to IQ
2.2. Results
2.2.1. Raven's Standard Progressive Matrices
2.2.2. Coloured Progressive Matrices
2.3. Conclusion on the average IQ of Africans
3. The Flynn Effect
3.1. Flynn Effect in Africa
4. Measurement problems and psychometric comparability
4.1. Reliability
4.2. Convergent validity
4.3. Factor analytical results
4.4. Measurement invariance
4.5. Criterion validity in educational settings
4.6. Conclusion on psychometric properties
5. General discussion
Acknowledgements
Appendix A. Appendix

Converting raw scores to IQs

Appendix B. Appendix References

Corresponding author. Tel.: + 31 205257067; fax: + 31 206390026.

Should be merged with IQ and Global Inequality.

I have a reliable source that goes farther than what this article says, that the second book was a follow-up to the first, and says that the two books, and also Race Differences in Intelligence (book) all rely on the same review of the literature, and can often be cited as just one source. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 03:47, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

This has merit. If there were a merge, it should be from the conceptual article here, since there's little in the other and the material from these authors ATM is the central material on the subject. Lycurgus (talk) 23:07, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

I agree that they should be merged. The criticism section for one would also apply to the other-- it would consolidate things greatly as I think that most serious scholars started ignoring this after the first book (hence so few reviews.) futurebird (talk) 02:44, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

No. The later book uses much more data than the first book. Which is why the IQ values differ to some degree. Also contains much more calculations on associations to other factors. Also the later book in response to the critique made corrections and provided additional evidence so the earlier critique does not necessarily apply.

Furthermore, scientific books in Misplaced Pages are usually not merged this way.Miradre (talk) 07:57, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

In addition studies using the IQ scores cannot be easily compared since the scores are different. Thus the literature reviews, data, correlations, conclusions, criticisms, and further research differ more or less between the books. I have also expanded the material related to the later book considerably and plan to do more on the subject. So none of the reasons given above apply. See no reason to merge and very difficult to do practically. Miradre (talk) 04:45, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

I think merging would be a bad ideaThreadnecromancer (talk) 05:16, 21 November 2010 (UTC)Threadnecromancer

I agree that these two separate articles about two separate books released four years apart should remain separate. Each of these articles clearly and succinctly explains its relation to the other in the lead section. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 05:28, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Remove the table/ranks

I don't really see the table of national IQ values/ranking to be useful to the article. It only repeats verbatim what is in the book and doesn't add to our article's analysis of it. Furthermore it is a magnet for vandalism likely prompted by the kind of dismay exemplified in the post immediately before this one. I say deleting it would do no harm and would save a lot of trouble. —Elipongo (Talk contribs) 16:40, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

I think the appropriate guidelines here are WP:EMBED and WP:NOT#STATS. Based on those, it would probably be best to use secondary sources as a basis for selecting some representative values to present in prose form. aprock (talk) 17:03, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

The national IQs are the gist of the book, and the main reason why anybody might want to read an article about the book. They should not be removed. The fact that they are a magnet for vandalism is certainly not a reason for removal. This and other similar articles should be made off limits to IP editors.--Victor Chmara (talk) 14:17, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

• Support removal. I would also support removing the list of national IQ values. While it is "only" presenting the contents of the book, it very much looks like presenting factual data. But this book is NOT a reliable source by any means and even then it would be a primary source. Personal speculation as to why somebody might want to read this article is beside the point (and OR).Volunteer Marek (talk) 19:59, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose removal. If removed in this case, Misplaced Pages should be ruthlessly censored to remove content gleaned from other books with which individual Misplaced Pages editors disagree or from books by authors considered by individual Misplaced Pages editors as espousing questionable views or published by publishers (Greenwood Publishing Group in this case) which individual Misplaced Pages editors consider unreliable. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 00:22, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

If the data is to be removed based on censorship I agree wholeheartedly. aprock (talk) 02:04, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Removal of "related studies"

Aprock recently removed this article's "related studies" section which discussed later studies that build upon this book. I disagree with this removal. With this removed, the description of the book's reception is now nothing but criticism, and the book's reception is definitely more nuanced than just 100% negative. Additionally, some of the criticism already in the article is synth because it's cited to sources that don't even mention the book like "Guns, Germs and Steel" and Neisser's article on rising IQ scores. I'd like to combine the now-removed section and the "criticism" section into a single section called "reception" while removing the synth sources. Any objections?Boothello (talk) 01:18, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Including summaries of articles which just cite the book is not appropriate for this article. If sources which cite the book also discusses the book, then including something about what they say about the book might be worthwhile, although a passing mention in an otherwise primary source probably isn't due. aprock (talk) 04:34, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

One thing notable about this book is that a lot of other authors have built upon it by doing new analyses of its global IQ data, even though most authors generally disagree with the book's conclusions on national IQ causing national income. In this respect it's had a big impact on this area of psychology, and the article here should indicate that. The section you removed went into too much detail about these follow-up studies, but it's important that they exist and this shouldn't be left out completely. I assume you're fine with me at least removing the stuff that's obvious original synth, right?Boothello (talk) 06:41, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

If you have a secondary source which says as much, then by all means introduce the source. aprock (talk) 02:35, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

This is talked about in chapter 11 of Hunt's Human Intelligence, though it'd be nice if the part on this was more detailed. Victor Chmara also mentioned a few times that Lynn and Vanhanen are considered pioneers in the area of international IQ comparisons, so he may know some additional sources for that, I'll ask him if he has suggestions.Boothello (talk) 01:29, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

I see no problem with correctly summarizing Hunt's discussion of their work from the 2010 edition of Human Intelligence. aprock (talk) 04:55, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

The problem is that Lynn's research on national IQs is spread over numerous publications, whereas this article is about just one book. Hunt says in his book (p. 436) that the two books and several articles by Lynn and Vanhanen "reinvigorated the field" and that while he is critical of this work "they deserve credit for raising important questions in a way that has resulted in interesting and important findings". Similarly, in an article to be published in an upcoming special issue of Personality and Individual Differences devoted to Lynn's work, James Thompson writes:

Lynn’s major contribution to the issue of race differences in intelligence is the assembly of world wide data for the intelligence of 10 races (Lynn, 2006). Hitherto, the work of (Jensen, 1998) and (Eysenck, 1971) and others had been largely confined to the black-white difference in the United States.

In IQ and the Wealth of Nations (Lynn & Vanhanen, 2002) collected measured IQs for 81 nations and estimated IQs for 104 nations using the IQs of similar neighbouring countries. They reported that for the 81 nations the correlation between national IQs and per capita income (real GDP) in 1998 was 0.73, and for 185 nations 0.63. They concluded that national IQs explain 53 per cent of the variance in per capita income (.73 squared = 0.53). Thus, they argued that national IQs are the single most important variable in the determination of national per capita income, and that the remaining 47 per cent can be largely explained by the degree to which nations have free market economies and natural resources.

Taking Lynn’s work on national differences in IQ as a whole, two features stand out. First, the work attracted hostility from main stream establishment media. Major publishing houses would not be associated with it, and even when the books were eventually published many major journals would not review them. Second, notwithstanding this attempt to sideline Lynn’s findings, the work had considerable impact, and that impact continues to grow. The harsh treatment of Nobel Laureate James Watson in 2007, forced to retire from the Chancellorship of Cold Spring Harbour Laboratory after he quoted Lynn’s work, showed the extent to which ideological ostracism can distort the progress of science. If even the founding father of DNA research could not make a comment about genetic differences in intelligence, the threat to all other researchers was made very clear. In subsequent years, citations to Lynn’s work increased, such that his findings served as the basis for further modelling of national differences in wealth, sometimes in more popular texts that brought Lynn’s finding and theories to a much wider audience. Despite all attempts to ignore his findings, Lynn’s dogged accumulation of data made a considerable contribution to understanding human differences.--Victor Chmara (talk) 16:13, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

I suspect Nations and intelligence may be a better place for discussion of the broader body of work. aprock (talk) 19:24, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

Just to be precise, the p436 quote is:

Richard Lynn and Tutu Vanhanen , invigorated the field with the publication of two challenging books and some related papers. I shall be highly critical of their empirical work, and even more so of their interpretations. They do deserve credit for raising important questions in a way that has resulted in interesting and important findings.'

Hunt gives them credit for opening up the field of study, but that the specific research in their two books is of questionable quality. aprock (talk) 19:29, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

Victor: Thank you for pointing out this helpful source. Aprock: You did say earlier that you think it's fine to mention the impact this book has had on psychology as long as it's cited to a secondary source, and indicated that you think it's okay to use Hunt's book. Most secondary sources that explore this about IQ and Wealth of Nations do so in the context of Lynn's work in general, but I'll try to focus on the reception of this book in particular. And I'd obviously include any criticisms made by these sources. Is it fine with you if I try adding some stuff about this? My internet access is a bit sporadic at the moment but I intend to do it whenever I have the time.Boothello (talk) 02:28, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

To be clear, you are generally invited to add content from any secondary source as long as it remains WP:DUE and WP:NPOV. aprock (talk) 02:32, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

I'll go ahead with the changes now, sorry for taking so long. As discussed above, I'm going to add some material about this book's impact on psychology cited to Hunt, and to the source Victor Chmara suggested. I'll also remove the criticism that's synthesis from sources that don't mention IQ and the Wealth of Nations. I looked through the sources that Aprock removed a while ago, and some of them are actually book reviews, or studies whose purpose was to specifically evaluate the book's conclusions. As such, I think it's good for sources like that to be included in the article, so I'm adding some of them back. However I'll be careful to not give these sources excessive weight as they had before.Boothello (talk) 06:11, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

While some of the stuff you removed/added/changed may have been legitimate you put it all into one big sweeping edit which very obviously included a bunch of IDON'TLIKEIT edits as well. How about bringing up each specific issue on talk first? Volunteer Marek  03:58, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

I don't think this is helpful. There is a discussion above this that reached a consensus on what to do in this article, and you didn't participate in that discussion. But now that I'm implementing the changes we discussed, you aren't accepting that outcome. You also aren't raising any objections to specific changes, or to any of the points I made above where I explained the justification for them. I'll try to explain the justification for them here in more detail.

• As stated above, the sources from Diamond, Neisser, Gay, Sarason, Leah, Verney, Shuttleworth-Edwards, and Kaniel are not discussing this book, and bringing them up as criticisms of the book is synthesis. Some of these sources predate the book by more than 20 years. Most of the material that I removed is either cited to sources that don't discuss the book or is completely uncited.

• Each review of the book should be given close to the same amount of weight. In the version that you restored, some of the negative reviews have an entire paragraph devoted to them, while some of the positive or neutral reviews are left out entirely. The handling of the Richardson review is particularly unbalanced, because the article cites it in four separate places in addition to the lead, and readers who don't look at the references will get the impression that each of these places is an entirely separate criticism. This is an especially bad example of undue weight, because it's actually misleading if you don't look closely. Everything I removed that wasn't either synthesis or unsourced was an example of giving an excessive amount of space to some reviews.

• The Paliaret, Miller, Hunt, Weede, Dickerson, Whetzel, and Jones sources are all specifically evaluating the book's conclusions, and they should not be excluded. But you removed all of those. Do you have any explanation for why these sources should be removed?

I recall the debate we had here on the main R&I article. I hope you do too. You stated there that it was important for the article to send the right message that the hereditarian hypothesis was a fringe theory. Wanting to make an article send a particular message is essentially the same as trying to push a POV. In an article like this one, the appropriate course of action is to look up the sources that are specifically discussing the book, and give each review an approximately equal amount of weight. That means we shouldn't provide a huge amount of space to any one of the critical sources, and also that we don't provide a lot of space to the more positive sources, such as the Miller and Thompson articles. There are more negative reviews than positive reviews, so if we do this the article will still have an overall negative slant, but only as negative as the source material is - no more and no less.

So far, the only specific criticisms you offered about my changes are that I should include more of the criticisms from Paliaret and that I should include Richardson’s general opinion of the book as well as his specific criticisms. I can fix both of those things, and I can also fix any other specific problems that you point out. But reverting to the version from before my edit is restoring synthesis and unsourced material, and removing at least seven sources that there is no reason to exclude. The article can't be left this way. I will restore the changes that I made, while also following your suggestions about the Richardson and Paliaret sources. You're welcome to suggest any other specific changes, but please do not keep removing sources that specifically discuss the book while restoring those that don't.Boothello (talk) 05:40, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

There is a discussion above this that reached a consensus on what to do in this article - which discussion are you referring to? I see a discussion about adding Hunt and that's fine. However I see no discussion or consensus over whether

• As stated above, the sources from Diamond, Neisser, Gay, Sarason, Leah, Verney, Shuttleworth-Edwards, and Kaniel are not discussing this book, and bringing them up as criticisms of the book is synthesis. - all I see is you making that claim but no discussion regarding the fact.
• Each review of the book should be given close to the same amount of weight. - again no discussion about this, and this isn't even something you brought up before. You just pulled it out now. And I very much disagree with this. Not all reviews are equal. Reviews from notable people should obviously be given greater weight. The fact that virtually all economists - the people who usually study "Wealth of Nations" - regardless of their political affiliation think the book is junk is quite important and should be given a major prominence.
• The Paliaret, Miller, Hunt, Weede, Dickerson, Whetzel, and Jones sources are all specifically evaluating the book's conclusions, and they should not be excluded. But you removed all of those. - I removed Paliaret specifically because the text was misrepresenting the review (this article cherry picked one semi-positive sentence at the end after many many many paragraphs of criticism). I dunno about others, I might have removed them when I reverted your edit simply because you were making a whole bunch of changes under the pretense that these were discussed and approved here while they clearly weren't.

So I think my es that this claim of "per talk discussion" was just used as an excuse to remove a whole bunch of sourced and useful material. All that was discussed was adding Hunt. The other stuff was not discussed nor agreed to. Indeed, some of constitutes quite sketchy propositions. You are basically trying to use the fact that aprock above agreed to one thing (add in Hunt) to carry out a whole slew of potentially POV edits under the guise of "consensus". This is why I reverted you.

Do one thing at a time. Put in Hunt, sure. But leave the other stuff alone, and bring it up here first.

 Volunteer Marek  14:13, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

The standard for discussions at Misplaced Pages is that when an editor proposes a change, either other editors object to it or they don't. If they don't, the change gets made. You're making a lot of the fact that when I brought up the synthesis issue and the sources that Aprock removed, Aprock and Victor Chmara didn't specifically say "I approve of your proposal." It's enough for a discussion to be resolved if after a change has been proposed, in the discussion that follows nobody objects to it.

Anyway, the issue isn't even whether you think there was a consensus. It's that both times you reverted me, the only justification you gave is that you think these changes haven't been discussed enough. Even if these changes didn't have consensus, "no consensus" is never a valid reason to revert if you aren't raising specific objections. Misplaced Pages has an essay about this: Misplaced Pages:Don't_revert_due_solely_to_"no_consensus"

If you're going to reject every change that I've made, you need to tell me why you think it's a problem to remove criticism of the book cited to sources that aren't discussing the book. You need to tell me what you think was wrong with my modified summary of Paliaret, which included what he had to say that's negative in addition to his slightly positive conclusion at the end of the review. You need to tell me what specific reviews should be given more weight than I gave them. I actually did give a little more weight to the more notable reviews, but they should be given closer to equal weight than they are in the current article. Currently, the positive reviews are excluded entirely and a handful of negative ones are dominating. For example, as it is right now the Richardson review is given around three times as much space as most other reviews, not including those that the article doesn't mention at all. You say "I dunno" about most of the sources you removed - I hope I am not supposed to consider that an adequate justification for both times you removed them.

When an editor is reverting, he is supposed to explain specifically what things he's objecting to. You haven't done that, and for most of the sources you removed, you don't even seem sure whether removing them was justified. Let me ask you again: what specific things about my edits do you think are a problem, and why? If there are specific things that you need to be different about it, then I can change them. But if "not enough discussion" is an adequate reason for a revert, then we should also undo Aprock's initial removal of these sources (which was not discussed at all) and restore the article to the way it was in July.Boothello (talk) 16:56, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

The standard for discussions at Misplaced Pages is that when an editor proposes a change, either other editors object to it or they don't. If they don't, the change gets made. You're making a lot of the fact that when I brought up the synthesis issue and the sources that Aprock removed, Aprock and Victor Chmara didn't specifically say "I approve of your proposal." It's enough for a discussion to be resolved if after a change has been proposed, in the discussion that follows nobody objects to it.

That's not really the standard for discussions at Misplaced Pages but let's go with it. The problem is that you made several proposals and people began discussing one of them - the inclusion of Hunt. You took that as tacit approval of your other proposals, which were not only not discussed, agreed upon, but not even well articulated. Anyway, here I am objecting to it, especially after I've seen what it entails.

It is up to you to articulate the changes you want to make. You are making one huge wholesale edit that mixes a whole bunch of things up. Take it one thing at a time. For example, I disagree with the way you're trying to downplay the criticisms of the book made by economists. Let's discuss that, here's your chance. Volunteer Marek  02:45, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

I think I have articulated my changes well enough now. I listed several sources that shouldn't be cited as criticism of the book because they are not discussing the book. That's why I removed them. I also explained why I added several sources that are specifically evaluating the book's conclusions that were being excluded. If you disagree with either change, it's your responsibility to explain why. When I'm explaining the justification for my edits, objecting due to "no consensus" is not really different from WP:JUSTDONTLIKEIT (as the essay I linked to points out).

If your priority is to not change anything without consensus, then the best thing to do is restore the content that Aprock removed in August. There was never a consensus for that change either. I stated above that I objected to this removal, but instead of reverting it I made a novel edit to reincorporate some of this material. You undid the edit I made in response to Aprock's edit, but it would make more sense to undo them both. As long as there's no consensus for either Aprock's change or mine, do you mind if I restore the article to the way before either of them? The article should stay how it was in July if we can't reach a consensus for either of these changes. But I would still prefer to move forward rather than back, so I'll try to reach a consensus with you on this:

If you compare the section about the book's reception among economists in your version of the article to the same section in mine, I actually changed this section very little. Your version of this section has two reviews, one by Nechyba and one by Ervik. I did not change the summary of Nechyba at all. I made the summary of Ervik's review slightly shorter, from 130 words to 80 words, and I added a brief mention of one economist who reviewed the book positively (Miller). 130 words is more space than is given to almost any other review, and Ervik is no more notable than many other authors cited in the article. I think this is an excessive amount of space for one review.

In your version of the article, the Ervik and Nechyba reviews are both also discussed a second time in the first paragraph of the "criticism" section. In Ervik's case, there is a quote from him that actually appears in two different places in the article: "the authors fail to present convincing evidence and appear to jump to conclusions." I removed one appearance of this quote because it does not need to be included twice. I didn't change the fact that the Nechyba review is discussed in two different places, but I probably should. If you think it's necessary to split the summary of a review between two different parts of the article, and have the exact same quote appear in two different places, could you please explain why?

I don't think I've downplayed the book's criticism from economists. I've only given the Ervik review an amount of space that's more consistent with some of the other reviews. I also added back the one positive review from an economist that Aprock removed, and took out some material that was duplicated. If you think there's a better way I should have done so, I'm open to suggestions.Boothello (talk) 19:03, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

I think I have articulated the logic behind my changes as clearly as can be expected. I explained the reasons for the sources I added and the ones I removed. I also explained why I made the changes I did to the section about reviews from economists. You've still yet to offer any content criticisms about specific changes I made. To be honest, some of the things you're trying to defend are a bit absurd, like having the exact same quote appear in the article in two different places. You're still welcomed to explain why you think your version is better, but in the absence of such an explanation, the proposed changes should be implemented. As I said, "no consensus" is never enough of an objection on its own when someone is offering content-based justifications their changes.

If you're intending to revert again, please be specific about what changes you're objecting to, and why. And I mean more specific than saying I "downplayed" the criticism from economists without explaining what you mean by that. If you revert it also needs to be to the July version: my edit was a direct response to Aprock's removal of content, and there was certainly never a consensus to keep the article that way. However, it would be better if rather than a blanket revert, you could try building upon my changes and improving the things you think need to be improved. I think my version is at least an improvement over the current version, in terms of removing synthesis and unsourced material as well as adding relevant sources that were being left out. If you keep just reverting these changes (especially without explaining specifically what I'd need to do differently to make you happy), it'll be impossible to ever make progress towards improving the article.Boothello (talk) 10:47, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Miller

I've readded the quote from the Economic Journal as it is pretty succinct and illustrative. I've also removed the Edward Miller review. I can see that being put back in BUT ONLY IF his connections to Pioneer Fund, Mankind Quarterly, as well as all the controversy he's caused over the years are made explicit so that readers know the background of a person who's giving this positive review to this book. Volunteer Marek  20:50, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Adding that he's controversial is fine, but when introducing a living person in a single sentence, it is not the place to list every criticism that's been made against them. This point has been addressed before, when you were trying to introduce researchers as "Pioneer Fund grantees" without including that they're professors, members of the editorial boards for peer-reviewed journals, etc. Consensus decided that it's not NPOV to list all of an author's negative connections without any of the positive ones, and Miller's case is no different. It's enough to say that he's controversial.

In general, there's absolutely no policy-based justification for completely excluding a source just because the author is controversial. Neither WP:NPOV nor WP:RS say that an author being controversial is a reason to exclude them. NPOV policy demands that we include all significant viewpoints that have been published in reliable sources in proportion to their prominence. So Miller shouldn't be given as much space as most of the other reviewers, but he should still be mentioned.Boothello (talk) 21:59, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Sigh. We are running into the same problem over and over again. And that is the fact that these Pioneer Fund guys all "peer review" (sic) each other's publications, give good reviews to each other's books etc. And this is a pretty a very limited group, all of whom are controversial, to put it mildly, and where pretty much everyone else is very critical of this line of research or just ignores it as racist nonsense. Before this issue came up with various fring-y psychologists now it seems you've found an economist that fits into the framework as well.

What some editors have been doing is trying to downplay the fact that all these guys are connected to the - racist organization - Pioneer Fund, and the - racist journal - Mankind Quarterly. And then they try to invoke BLP to hide from Misplaced Pages readers any criticisms or explanation of what exactly it is that makes these people "controversial". It's dishonest, really.

I think BLP is a very important policy but this is another instance where it is being simply abused. You can't have it both ways. You want to keep out all the specific reasons for why a particular person is controversial, fine. It makes sense for their biographies and closely related articles (though even there it's a judgment call). But you can't turn around and try to pretend that all these people are just ye' ol' regular' folks doing some kind of scientific research at universities when they're up to their ears in controversy. Either don't use them as sources as all, per FRINGE, or do the decent thing and explain to the reader what their background is.

If you think that describing their actual background is a "BLP violation" (given how controversial these folks are, it's not, but let's suppose for the moment that it is) I'm fine with keeping it out. In that case, just remove it. But if you are going to present their "research" or "reviews" or other statements then we have an obligation, per NPOV to explain who these people are. And that involves putting text which describes their "controversial" background. What you can't do is have your cake and eat it too. You can't put their statements in and at the same time pretend that they're not who they are.

So no. It's not enough to call him "controversial". The only realistic choices are to either exclude Miller, per FRINGE. Or to put it in but be honest about the nature of this person and his connections, and not try to WP:GAME BLP to whitewash the nature of his statements. BLP does not prohibit us from including text critical of say, David Duke, in the relevant articles (particularly if someone tries to use David Duke as a source).

And btw, simply ... it's just not true when you say that "This point has been addressed before, when you were trying to introduce researchers as "Pioneer Fund grantees" without including that they're professors, members of the editorial boards for peer-reviewed journals, etc. Consensus decided that it's not NPOV to list all of an author's negative connections without any of the positive ones". In fact the consensus was actually that it is necessary to give the appropriate background - their PF status - in these kinds of cases. Same thing here. Don't make stuff up.  Volunteer Marek  22:34, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

I am referring to the discussion we had on the R&I talk page in May, when you tried to add the "Pioneer Fund grantee" qualifier to researchers mentioned in the lead of that article. I will quote what several other editors from that discussion said. Maunus: "I don't think that it is a good idea or NPOV to mention the pioneer fund every time we mention someone who is a pioneer fund grantee, it is not very NPOV since for each of them they also have other credentials that might be relevant and picking this particular one every time is slanted. I suggest only mentioning the pioneer fund when the article is discussing issues about history of research and about funding, not when we mention individual grantees."

Maunus again, on your claim that everything connected to the Pioneer Fund is fringe: "Unfortunately I don't think it is possible to use the term fringe for the hereditarian viewpoint, also I think the Pioneer issue shouldn't be pushed too much since there is also a dynamic that drives hereditarians to the pioneer fund for funding because mainstream funding sources are reluctant to fund that kind of studies - its not just that the pioneer fund pays people to produce hereditarian research - rather people who would be hereditarians anyway look there for funding. The reason this isn't fringe is the sheer amount of controversy and debate generated by the studies , fringe studies usually don't attract volumes of rebuttal but are met with silence. Secondly there are also notable scholars who occupy intermediary positions of different kinds such as Neisser, Flynn, etc. who are neither completely in either camp, this would be difficult with real fringe studies that are simply considered to be impossible to reconcile with the mainstream, secondly we have the issue that there are so many of the hereditarians (something like 50 people signed the mainstream science statement) and the fact that the APA report is clear in considering the position a reasonable one in principle (though not supported by evidence)."

Victor Chmara: "There is certainly no consensus to mention Pioneer in the lead section. If anything, there's a consensus against that. If we start inserting all sorts of qualifiers and insinuations so as to cast doubt on the motives of the hereditarian researchers, we will have to do that with the anti-hereditarians, too. For example, should Stephen Rose be described in the article as a "polemicist on the left" or "the last of the Marxist radical scientists", as he has been described in the Guardian (see his article for references)? I hope we will not go down that road. The problem with mentioning affilitations that some scientist may have is that everybody has multiple affiliations, and choosing which one to mention and how to mention it is a completely arbitrary process driven by personal biases. It's best to just neutrally describe these people as psychologists, anthropologists or whatever, and if some affiliations are relevant, discuss them more in more detail in one place in the article and/or in a dedicated article as is currently done with Pioneer."

VsevolodKrolikov, too. By the end of the discussion, four people (including myself) disagreed with you and 0 agreed, and you made no further attempt to defend your position.

This whole discussion is a time-waster. We spent a long time discussing this in May, you ultimately failed to get support for your perspective, and eventually you dropped out of the discussion. But now you're repeating the exact same points that you made then, without acknowledging any of the opposition you got about it last time. This is a textbook WP:IDHT attitude. Do we have to rehash the entire discussion here again?

If we do, I guess we should notify the editors who were involved in the previous discussion. I have one question you need to answer first: do you even have a source saying that Edward Miller is a Pioneer Fund grantee? He's certainly a controversial person, but I cannot find any evidence that he's received money from the PF at all. If he's not, then your claim about PF grantees supporting one another is meaningless here.Boothello (talk) 00:04, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

You are cherry picking quotes and misrepresenting the discussion (though yes, you're right in that I gave up after putting up with your tendentious and stubborn editing). Miller got a grant from the PF but the UNO turned it down after protests. Miller has been accused of racism by the NAACP, local newspapers and other organizations. Most of his "research" is NOT published in economic journals but in places like the racist, white supremacist journal Mankind Quarterly. To call him "controversial" is disingenuous, as you well know. Either don't try to use people like that as sources, or explain to the reader who they really are. That's what NPOV is. Volunteer Marek  10:55, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

"You are cherry picking quotes and misrepresenting the discussion " - specifically:

• Your link to Vsevolod's statement is him replying to you and Ramdrake, not me. Furthermore even in your own statement you acknowledge that Ramdrake and AndyTheGrump agreed with me, so much for your claim By the end of the discussion, four people (including myself) disagreed with you and 0 agreed.
• You are also ignoring a subsequent comment by another editor, ItsmeJudith, which agreed with mentioning the PF affiliation .
• Additionally, even here Vsevolod's saying that it's not necessary to add Pioneer Fund status, but that we shouldn't described/use Murray as an "intelligence researcher" either - which is pretty much what I'm saying here.
• Furthermore, Maunus clarified his statement here , where he did say it was important to mention PF when it was relevant.

If you're going to misrepresent past discussions and statements, at least don't be so obvious and blatant about it.

Anyway, here it's not strictly speaking the Pioneer Fund funding issue. That's a small portion of it. The bigger portion is the controversy, the publications in racist journals like Mankind Quarterly, etc. etc. etc. Don't just sit there and pretend that Miller is just a ye' ol' regular source, when you know very well that it isn't. Volunteer Marek  11:16, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

I was referring to the end of the discussion, because what matters most in determining consensus is who can defend their position using policy-based reasoning. AndyTheGrump took your perspective early on in the discussion, but when Maunus and Victor Chmara addressed his points he made no attempt to respond to what either of them said. After they addressed his points he just dropped out of the discussion, a long time before you did. Everyone else you mentioned agreed with you about another issue, but not this one. To recap, there were two issues related to the Pioneer Fund being discussed:

1: Whether the Pioneer Fund is relevant enough to race and intelligence to be mentioned in the article's lead section at all.

2: Whether when an individual researcher is being introduced, it's appropriate to introduce them with the fact that they're a Pioneer Fund grantee.

Ramdrake, Itsmejudith and Maunus took your perspective on the first point, but Ramdrake and Itsmejudith didn't express an opinion either way on the second one. And Maunus specifically said that he agreed with you about the first point but not the second. The second point is the relevant one here since this isn't the R&I article. That's why I didn't list Ramdrake and Itsmejudith, as well as why I didn't mention Sightwatcher, who disagreed with you on the first point but didn't comment either way about the second one. And whether Charles Murray is an intelligence researcher has nothing to do with this article either, so let's stay focused on point #2.

I'm confused about why your perspective on this is still the same as before, since you never made an attempt to respond to Victor Chmara or Maunus's points that I quoted from the previous discussion. If you’re going to continue editing on the assumption that it’s okay to introduce an author by mentioning only their negative connections and none of the positive ones, this discussion is going to keep cropping up again and again.

Hopefully I've now clarified what I meant about the discussion in May: not that consensus opposed you about everything in that discussion, just that it did about this one issue. So now let me ask you this one more time. Apart from whatever other issues we discussed there, do you accept that consensus opposed you about point #2 above? In the comment from him that I quoted, Victor Chmara specifically pointed out that consensus opposed you about this, so I can't be the only one to conclude this. If you can't accept that outcome, I guess I'll have to contact the people involved in the earlier discussion so we can try to resolve this a way that we won't keep having to periodically re-discuss it.Boothello (talk) 16:54, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

This is your own idiosyncratic (and not very accurate) interpretation of the previous discussion. Bottom line is that if you're going to try and use extremely controversial sources in an article, like Miller, then NPOV requires that the nature of what makes them controversial is explained to the reader.

This is especially true for sensitive topics such as this one, where the person in question has published multiple articles in a journal which has been described by reliable sources as "white supremacist" and "racist" (as well as other controversy). The fact that one of the authors of this book also happens to be one of the editors-in-chief of this journal (where Miller got published a good bit) makes this doubly relevant. Volunteer Marek  19:24, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

(And I'm still wondering why anyone would be so insistent and adamant on using such a source - with such connections - in the first place). Volunteer Marek  19:26, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Oh, and actually this whole discussion is moot since the particular journal we're talking about, Journal of Social, Political, and Economic Studies, is not a reliable source anyway. Volunteer Marek  19:37, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

It's not Miller and his review that I'm adamant about, I have no personal feelings about him in particular. It's the big picture I'm concerned with here. You have a pretty long history of looking for excuses to remove reliably sourced material that you don't like, as well as adding disparaging qualifiers about the sources when you can't get rid of them. An example of removing RS material: Here you removed a paper published in the journal Intelligence claiming it wasn't a reliable source because the author is Satoshi Kanazawa. Obviously he's been criticized plenty, but the purpose of peer review is for someone's work to be vetted by other academics in that field, and Intelligence is the most respected journal in psychometrics. WP:RS does not support removing material published in a respected journal just because the author is controversial. An example of adding disparaging qualifiers: In this edit you introduced Hans Eysenck as Hans Eysenck, known for his support of the idea that some races are inherently inferior It still bewilders me that you apparently believe that's the most notable and neutral thing you can think to say about the second-most cited psychologist in the 20th century.

Myself and other editors have repeatedly and patiently explained to you why this kind of editing is a problem. I've never been sure whether you got the point or not. For a while I was optimistic, but now you're repeating the same claims about what you think is or isn't neutral or reliable that you used to justify edits like those linked above. Your position seems to be no different now than it was months ago. The Miller review itself isn't a big deal. It's just frustrating that you still think edits like these are justified, so we can expect you to continue making them in the future, which will lead to endless arguments.

I don't know much about the journal that published the Miller review. I'm open to possibly being convinced that this journal is somehow not a reliable source. But I am going to be naturally skeptical about this after hearing you claim that Intelligence isn't reliable when the authors of papers in it are controversial. The only relevant thing I can find about the Journal of Social, Political, and Economic Studies is that it’s connected to Roger Pearson, who’s another example of a researcher who’s been involved in lots of controversy but who’s also made some important contributions to the understanding of heredity. Misplaced Pages's article about this journal cites only a single source which says that the journal is connected to Pearson (without actually criticizing the journal). If you think this journal is unreliable, you need to demonstrate that. Its connection to someone controversial is not enough. You’ll need to find sources that say there’s something wrong with the journal itself, the same way sources have said about Mankind Quarterly for example. Unless a substantial body of sources are specifically saying that a journal is unreliable, the standard assumption for peer-reviewed material is that it’s reliable.

I said that it's fine to state that Miller is controversial in a concise and neutral manner. But you've indicated with your comments above (and with your revert) that you aren't satisfied with that, and that what you want is the same sort of disparaging aside that you added about Eysenck. This is not good editing policy.

Anyway, it looks like that we won't be able to resolve this without outside input. I'll contact some of the editors who were involved in the earlier discussion. For now I think we should limit it to people who are still involved in this topic area currently and so will not need to familiarize themselves with the issue. Maunus and Victor Chmara are the two who've been most active on these articles recently, so I'll start with them, and we can contact additional people if that's necessary.Boothello (talk) 00:18, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

• I think that this case is slightly different from the other cases I've commented about, because here it seems to be a PF grantee (if that is the case? his article doesn't mention any PF grants) reviewing a book authored by someone who's on the board of directors. Even disregarding the fact that it suggests that Miller is predisposed favorably towards Lynn's view of the topic there is also a potential financial conflict of interest. I am not sure about what to do in this case I must admit - in one way adding the information is a kind of synthesis (unless some source mentions his possible conflict of interest - perhaps he mentions it in the review itself, that would certainly be the most honest of him) but it also seems to be significant information that a reader should know. I am in two minds. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 00:59, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

It's not Miller and his review that I'm adamant about, I have no personal feelings about him in particular. - yet your continued insistence on inserting authors like Miller, and others, associated with PF or Mankind Quarterly, or others associated with race related controversy. Actions speak louder than words.

I don't know much about the journal that published the Miller review. - I'm guessing that's why you didn't wiki-link to it, even though it has its own article, as in that case it would've been easier to find out what kind of journal it was. So sure, you keep putting in all these sources associated with that journal, and all these sources associated with its sister journal MQ, but you don't know much about it. Ok, assume good faith and all that, you didn't know.

Anyway, it looks like that we won't be able to resolve this without outside input. - yeah, why don't you explain to this outside input that you're going to ask for how you insist on inserting "researchers" associated with racist organizations and "white supremacist" journals into various articles, and how you try to pretend that this kind of background of these sources somehow doesn't matter. And then you can tell them how I'm mean and nasty because I insist that if these kinds of racist-associated sources are included in the article the least we can do is explain to the reader who they are. Seriously, I get really sick of playing these stupid games. You know who these people are. I know who these people are. There's no way in the world that you can pass them off as just regular non-controversial authors. And even if you somehow pulled that stunt off convincingly (and maybe you do, to these "outside inputs"), there's no way you can pull off the double summersault of at the same time pretending that you have no idea who they are or where they come from. Stop lying. Because that's what you're doing. Enough.

@Maunus - Miller got a grant from PF but the University of New Orleans made him turn it down after much controversy. He wrote a letter to local newspapers saying some messed up stuff and spoke up in praise of David Duke. The NAACP complained and the university tried to distance himself as much as possible from him (while respecting the fact he's tenured). Ever since ... for ever, but at least since he started writing wacky stuff about intelligence, and about how blacks have smaller brains than whites, and are henceforth dumber, no respectable economics journal has published anything by him. Hence, virtually all his publications are in trash like Mankind Quarterly and the Journal that Boothello has been trying to pass of as legitimate above.

 Volunteer Marek  02:26, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

And, oh my god! - Here you removed a paper published in the journal Intelligence claiming it wasn't a reliable source because the author is Satoshi Kanazawa. Obviously he's been criticized plenty - are you seriously faulting me for removing crap from Satoshi Kanazawa, the guy who claimed to have "scientifically" (sic) proven that black women are uglier than white women, from these articles of yours? If there's something wrong with this, it's that you tried to put this kind of stuff into Misplaced Pages articles in the first place.  Volunteer Marek  02:29, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

If he turned out not acceting the grant then we can't describe him as a PF grantee, and he hasn't got a COI. We probably should characterize him as a non-neutral observer, for example "a vocal proponent of the hereditarian explanation of the Racial IQ gap".·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 03:05, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Ok. That's not the issue. I was not trying to describe him as a PF grantee. That's Boothello pretending that I was. What I was saying is that he a controversial author and the controversy should be explained. The COI has to do with the fact that most of his publications are in the Mankind Quarterly (or the associated journal), and Lynn, the author of this particular book is one of the editors in chief of that journal.

All that is neither here nor there however, as the journal which Boothello was trying to insert into the article is not a reliable source. So the issue is moot. Volunteer Marek  03:31, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Mankind Quarterly and other similar publications are reliable sources, at least for the viewpoints of the authors of articles published there. We do not require an academic journal to have good credentials to be considered reliable. Even if these journals were published by an advocacy group or political think tank directly they would still be reliable sources for those viewpoints. I am afraid that you are misapplying policy here to keep out a view that you consider to be wrongheaded. Per NPOV rongheaded views also gets to be included according to their significance. In this case I would argue that a favorable review in a journal edited by its author and which is automatically favorable to any book presenting the general argument is not very significant. Probably should have no more than a line per WP:WEIGHT. Perhaps it should even be written into a line together with other favorable reviews in similarly insignificant sources. e.g. Several proponents of the hereditarian view published favorable reviews of the book (Rushton xxxx, Eysenck xxxx, Miller xxxx, Jensen xxxx) (this is an example I don't think rushton and eysenck reviewed this book). The significant reviews are of course the ones published in mainstream journals, by authors who are not known beforehand to be significantly biased for or against the hereditarian theory. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 03:43, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Well, no, not exactly. MQ, and similar publications are reliable sources for their own viewpoints (and even there this gets close to violating WP:PRIMARY), but they are not reliable sources in regard to outside facts or commentary. Specifically, we can include what MQ or Miller say about a particular topic, but then we need to attribute - and attribution doesn't mean just say "MQ" or "Miller", say this and that, since most readers can't tell Miller from Milton - these views properly. And that means explaining who these people are, what they are known for and what side they are associated with. I've edited in a lot of areas on Misplaced Pages and I've NEVER seen the policy applied in a way which says that any ol' crazy source can be used as long as we just "name" it. Otherwise you got David Irving being put into the article on the Holocaust with only "Mr. Irving says this and this".

And this is what I've been saying all along. Either we use Miller but we explain who he is and what he is known for and the fact the publishes in MQ, or we just simply leave it out (per WP:WEIGHT).  Volunteer Marek  04:46, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Maunus, I'm okay with your suggestion that the most significant reviews are the ones by authors who are not known beforehand to be significantly biased for or against the hereditarian theory. Do you think this applies to other books too? I'm thinking of Race, Evolution, and Behavior in particular. When that article mentions the reviews by Arthur Jensen, Hans Eysenck and Glayde Whitney, it includes that all three are Pioneer Fund grantees. But it doesn't include qualifiers about the reviews by Richard Lewontin and Joseph L. Graves, who are two of the most prominent anti-hereditarians alive today. The same probably also goes for Francisco Gil-White, who's well-known for his opposition to the biological concept of race (as mentioned in his article) and is the author of "Resurrecting Racism: The modern attack on black people using phony science."

Miller could be introduced by saying something like, "Edward Miller, a proponent of the hereditarian perspective about race and intelligence" but we should be consistent. If it applies to researchers who are known to be biased either for or against the hereditarian theory, then it should apply to people like Lewontin and Graves as well as to people like Jensen, Eysenck or Miller.Boothello (talk) 22:52, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Hmmmm. I can see that that is the logical consequence of my argument - however as I think you probably intuit I am not actually in agreement with that consequence. I think that there is a difference between when a proponent of a minority view receiving good reviews by ones friends and economic supporters who share his viewpoint, and when he receives substantial criticisms of his methods and data by scholars who have published similar criticisms before, and are known to be critical of the general line of research. I think here it becomes relevant to recognize that the majority view is against Lynn and considers the line of research he represents to be unsound - the fact that it receives unsubstantiated praise from others belonging to that minority is less relevant than the substantiated criticisms from the majority. Perhaps if a particular review was a pure trashing obviously not based on a reading of the book but on preconceived opinions (I could see some anti-hereditarians write such a review but probably neither Graves nor Lewontin) it could be summarised as "anti-hereditarians x and y flatly rejected it". I think it probably has to be determined on a case by case basis and not as a blanket decision. Generally I think reasoned negative reviews are more relevant than purely positive ones. And then I think that when a book receives generally negative attention with a few good ones by persons who have clear connections to the author, then the those good ones weigh less. Conversely positive comments within a critical review weigh more (e.g. Hunt's) than a simple hatchet job . For Race, Evolution and Behavior the tendency of negative reviews from everyone but Rushton's close personal friends is so significant that it cannot be denied. And Graves review is based on the fact that he is a main authority on the problems with the method Rushton uses. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 23:40, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

In Race, Evolution, and Behavior, I'm more concerned with weight than I am with qualifiers or the lack thereof. In that article, Jensen's quote is 30 words, Eysenck's is 42 words, and Harpending (a well-known hereditarian but with no connection to the Pioneer Fund or Rushton) gets 63 words. The quote by Graves however is 270 words - more than all hereditarians combined. Even if Graves doesn't need a qualifier, I'm not sure the prevalence of his perspective justifies his quote being longer than all of the hereditarians put together. Wahlsten and Barash are also individually given more space than all of the hereditarians combined. I don't really think this makes sense, especially when you compare Graves and Harpending: both are experts in their relevant field and are well-known for their viewpoints, neither has a connection to Rushton or the PF. I don't think Graves should have four times the space that Harpending does. Your principles on this seem reasonable, but in this case I think it's being carried to the illogical extreme and could be improved.

Also, what do you think about my proposed wording for the Miller review in this article?Boothello (talk) 02:46, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

The discussion about Race, Evolution, and Behavior should take place on that article's talk page, not here. And again, with respect to Miller and sources such as the Mankind Quarterly or the Journal of Social, Political, and Economic Studies (which is the one where Miller's review was published), they are only reliable sources for statements about themselves. They are NOT reliable sources for anything else - including reviews such as this one. If we were to allow any kind of source to be a reliable source "for its own opinions" then we would be allowing for stuff published by, say, Stormfront (since organizations almost by definitions publish "their own opinions), on Mein Kampf, with only some minor qualification that such a source is "controversial". That's not Misplaced Pages's actual policy on reliable sources.

Again - and I feel like I need to clarify this once more since Boothello has been misrepresenting my position here and on various people's talk pages - my opinion is that we simply do not use sources such as MQ and JSPES (per not-RS, UNDUE, etc). BUT IF somebody, like Boothello, insists on putting such sources (you can keep calling them "hereditarian" if you want, other reliable sources call them "racist") into articles then YES, it IS necessary that the nature of such sources is made clear to the reader, in a manner that is not just some off-hand comment that they're "controversial". Galileo was "controversial". This is different. Volunteer Marek  03:20, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

I am sorry but there is no policy based reason for excluding these publications out of hand, or for requiring descriptions of them in all contexts. That is not how the RS policy works. All arguments about whether to include specific pieces published in those journals will have to rest on WP:WEIGHT and on a case by case evaluation of the material and its relation to the article and to the general weighting of viewpoints.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 22:09, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

Just very quickly off the top of my head (since I'm a bit busy at the moment), there's plenty of reasons why these publications would not be considered reliable. WP:UNDUE is just a tip of the iceberg. Specifically, the WP:RS policy states:

• Articles should be based on reliable, third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. - Do journal such as Mankind Quarterly and JoSPES have a "reputation for fact-checking and accuracy"? I don't think so. They do have a reputation for pushing a particular fringe agenda, which is why they are described as "racist" and "white supremacist" in most other mainstream publications.
• However, some scholarly material may be outdated, in competition with alternate theories, or controversial within the relevant field. Try to cite present scholarly consensus when available, recognizing that this is often absent. - this is describing potentially "scholarly" sources which may still fail to be reliable. The part about "controversial within the relevant field" certainly applies here. The injunction to present mainstream scholarly consensus does as well.
• Let me quote this one in full: Material such as an article, book, monograph, or research paper that has been vetted by the scholarly community is regarded as reliable. If the material has been published in reputable peer-reviewed sources or by well-regarded academic presses, generally it has been at least preliminarily vetted by one or more other scholars.. Obviously the source under discussion has been ... published. But has it been "vetted" by the scholarly community? AND there is that word "reputable" in front of the "peer-reviewed sources" in that statement. Do you really think journals such as MQ are "reputable"? I would very much beg to disagree on that.
• One can confirm that discussion of the source has entered mainstream academic discourse by checking the scholarly citations it has received in citation indexes. A corollary is that journals not included in a citation index, especially in fields well covered by such indexes, should be used with caution, though whether it is appropriate to use will depend on the context. - this is actually a good question; how much has Miller's review been cited by others? Or, more broadly, how often is JoSPES or MQ cited by "reputable" (I mean, really reputable) journals in this field? Here, this is my field - economics - rather than yours, and I can tell you the answer; pretty much never. Note that Miller started publishing in MQ and JoSPES AFTER he got tenure. If he had published in those journals before tenure, I honestly very much doubt he would have gotten it. Certain kinds of publications are seen as a "minus" on one's CV rather than a "plus" and these kinds of journals would be a very very very big minus.

This one goes right to the hear of the matter: Care should be taken with journals that exist mainly to promote a particular point of view. A claim of peer review is not an indication that the journal is respected, or that any meaningful peer review occurs. Journals that are not peer reviewed by the wider academic community should not be considered reliable, except to show the views of the groups represented by those journals.. Do journals like MQ and JoSPES exist to promote a particular point of view? Yes they clearly do (a view described as "racist" and "white supremacist" by truly reliable sources). Are they reviewed by the wider academic community? No they are not, most people outside the MQ/PF circles just ignore this kind of trash since even engaging these kinds of people in a discussion in a way legitimizes them (hence we see difference between Misplaced Pages and the actual scholarly community here). The closest example of where this did happen is when James Heckman (a bone fide conservative and an old school "Chicago School" economists who not just knows, but probably invented the secret conservative-Chicago-school-economist hand shake) actually bothered to review The Bell Curve (and slapped it around a good bit) - but that was an exceptional case.

This is important because this is exactly what we have here: journals like MQ and JoSPES are "peer reviewed" in the sense that other people associated with these journals read and praise the articles by others. This is no different than if I started a journal called "Journal of Volunteer Marek is a Superior Being Studies" and then had some of my college drinking buddies published in it, with praises for whatever I said. It would be "peer-reviewed" and it might even have "scholarly" pretensions (in fact, it would have very very very large scholarly pretensions, bigger pretensions than all the other weak sauce journals out there. The ladies would be impressed with the size of the scholarly pretensions). It would still not be reliable.

So. Just reading the first section of WP:RS makes it abundantly clear that publications like MQ and JoSPES are in no way reliable sources. I hope you don't take offense at me saying this, but it seems like it's been awhile since you've read WP:RS. Volunteer Marek  22:44, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

I think you're right - I certainly didn't remember the passage about "journals that exist mainly to promote a particular view" - I agree fully with that policy, but I actually remembered the RS policy being much more cottonmouthed about this and basically saying that a peer-reviewed journal is reliable. I am glad it doesn't, this provides a new basis for evaluating this kind of material. (While grantedly a special case, The Bell Curve was pretty much reviewed in every peer reviewed publication of a relevant field - Lynn's books aren't of course). Hmm this does suggest that reviews in these kinds of journals should have very light weighting and in this case it may not be necessary to include the review at all. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 22:52, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I do think the Bell Curve is a different case. Volunteer Marek  23:47, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

I don't think there's a disagreement between RS policy and what you said earlier, Maunus. RS policy states how we should handle "journals that exist mainly to promote a particular point of view" which I think everyone agrees applies to Mankind Quarterly. This journal is still a reliable source "to show the views of the groups represented by those journals" but for nothing else. You pointed out that MQ (and similar journals) are reliable sources about the viewpoints of authors published there, which is the same thing that RS policy says. I would not cite MQ for information presented as fact. But I think that when a paper by someone like Lynn or Rushton is published in MQ, that paper is a reliable source about Lynn or Rushton's opinion. Which is basically consistent with RS policy and what you said.

I think that's all beside the point, though. I've been trying to research the Journal of Social, Political and Economic Studies, and I can't really find anything to suggest it's in the same category of journals as Mankind Quarterly. The wikipedia article about it describes it as "associated with the political far right" but the article's single source does not support that. The source only says that the journal is associated with Roger Pearson, who is known for having far-right viewpoints. But I think it's OR as well as "guilt by association" to assume that a journal must be far-right because it's associated with someone who is. I have found information alluding to the fact that far-right papers are sometimes published in the journal, but I've only found people claiming that the entire journal itself is far-right in blogs and self-published websites. What's more is that I found this journal being cited for a ton of mainstream academic publishers on Google Books and Google Scholar like the University of Illinois Press, the American Journal of Political Science, and the British Library of Political and Economic Science. I don't think that any of this supports the conclusion that the journal is unreliable.Boothello (talk) 02:12, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

Boothello, you are still misunderstanding/misrepresenting WP:RS. Journals like MQ or JoSPES are reliable sources for what they say about themselves. They are not reliable sources for ... pretty much anything else. In other words, if MQ publishes a statement which says "we are the shiznitz when it comes to race research" we COULD say in the relevant article that "the journal Mankind Quarterly describes itself as the shiznitz in regard to race research" (and then follow that up with what other sources say for sake of NPOV). But if Mankind Quarterly publishes a statement which says "blacks are intellectually inferior to whites" (as it more or less does) we CANNOT put into an article that "blacks are intellectually inferior to whites" and then slap a inline citation to MQ at the end of that claim and make it look legit. We CANNOT even put into an article that "according to the journal Mankind Quarterly blacks are intellectually inferior to whites" and then slap a inline citation to MQ. EVEN MORE, we CANNOT even put into an article "according to the controversial journal Mankind Quarterly blacks are intellectually inferior to whites" etc. The most we could do is put into an article that "according to the journal Mankind Quarterly, which has been described as "racist" and "white supremacist" , blacks are intellectually inferior to whites" - even in that situation most of the time we probably shouldn't even do that and simply ignore what MQ has to say, per WP:UNDUE (and this is actually where WP:UNDUE comes into play, after the WP:RS test has been applied). As I pointed out and outlined above, this is basically what WP:RS instructs.

And in point of fact, this is basically common sense. Pretty much any source is a reliable source in how it views itself. But it doesn't follow that any source is a reliable source for its own opinions. Again, otherwise we could put in David Irving opinions on the Holocaust into the Holocaust article because "David Irving is a reliable source for views represented by David Irving" (which is essentially tautological). At that point any source what so ever becomes a reliable source. That IS NOT - by common sense or Misplaced Pages policy - what WP:RS says (and as a broader comment, I'm generally of the opinion that Misplaced Pages's fundamental policies are actually fairly smart and intuitive, it's just that they get misapplied, used and abused, and misrepresented so much that even good faithed editors get lost in what they are really about - which is what seems to be happening here).

 Volunteer Marek  03:59, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

Marek, I think you are confusing WP:RS and WP:UNDUE. We don't include Irving's views in the article about the Holocaust because the Holocaust is a very broad, high-level topic, which cannot go into major detail about any single aspect. It's not because there aren't reliable sources that discuss Irving's views - they've been discussed in some newspapers. His viewpoints aren't included in that article because they're not notable enough to be included. This article is different, because here there is an entire section devoted to reviews of the book, and there are only around ten reviews of it in existence. Since this is not a high-level topic like the Holocaust, it's possible for every review of the book to be mentioned, although some should obviously be given more space than others.

But this doesn't even matter, because sources do not support the idea that JoSPES is unreliable. Please look at the new source that Maunus added to the article about this journal and what it says. To quote:

"After a number of academic appointments he moved to Washington to found the Council on American Affairs and the Journal of Social and Political studies (later expanded to the Journal of Social, Political and Economic Studies), which eschewed the old rhetoric of Nordic solidarity in favor of a more mainstream conservative orientation and featured contributions by such public figures as Jack Kemp and Jesse Helms as well as analyses by academics."

According to Tucker's book, JoSPES is not a racist, white supremacist, or far-right journal. Tucker considers it a mainstream conservative source. Therefore it's inaccurate to use the term "far-right" for this journal, "conservative" would be a better word. If your perspective is that when a source has a mainstream conservative orientation that makes it unreliable, policy does not support you about that.Boothello (talk) 18:28, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

Sigh. According to Tucker's book, JoSPES is not a racist, white supremacist, or far-right journal. - where do you see that in Tucker's book? All he says is that he eschewed blatantly racist rhetoric. And if you keep reading (pg. 178) that Tucker says that JoSPES under Pearson's stewardship cannot "be considered research" and that it was no "less tendentious" (compared to earlier, outright racist, stuff).

Here another source compares MQ and JoSPES and states that that they only have the trappings (i.e. not the real thing) of scholarly works.

Here is more .

And of course there's way more of this out there, you just have to look. A true conservative would be deeply offended by this conflation of regular conservatism and racism as exemplified by publications like MQ and JoSPES.  Volunteer Marek  20:58, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

Marek, did you read the sources you just posted? The quotes you posted from the first are related to Pearson's personal activities and motives, not the quality of the journals themselves. More importantly, this paragraph is discussing Pearson's activities while he was a Pioneer Fund grantee, which according to the book lasted until 1999. It's a big leap to think this is saying anything about the quality of JoSPES, and an even larger one to think it's saying anything about the quality of that journal in 2002. The third source you posted is a self-published post from a mailing list. Only the second source is both reliable and discussing the journal itself. This is what is says in entirety:

"The anthropological journal Mankind Quarterly, edited by Pearson, has the trappings of a truly scholarly publication but devotes most of its space to articles about race differences and eugenics, as does the Journal of Social, Political and Economic Studies, also edited by Pearson."

You're making a big deal out of the word "trappings" but the only thing being criticized here is that these journals devote a lot of space to race differences. This does not come close to supporting your claim that the journal is "racist" or "far right" or "white supremacist". You're trying way too hard to find sources that support your claims. The standard practice for sourcing at Misplaced Pages is to look at what the most prominent sources say, and then base the article on that. It's not to start off with what you want the article to say, and then look for a source to support it. But in your case you're citing the archives of a mailing list, which you could not have any reason to do unless you were searching specifically for a source that supports the claim you want to make, and then having a lot of trouble finding one.

The most prominent source that talks about this journal (not about Pearson as a person) appears to be the one that Maunus cited in the article about the journal. That source just calls JoSPES a mainstream conservative journal. If you want to include what's said in the Stevenhagen book, then we can call it a mainstream conservative journal that often discusses race differences. But that's the most we can say that's supported in reliable sources and the articles should be edited to reflect that.Boothello (talk) 23:34, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

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