Talk:History of the race and intelligence controversy/Archive 3

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Deletion of edits by Captain Occam

The passage from Tucker [1] summarised by me with page numbers from Jensen's 1969 has been removed twice by Captain Occam. The passage appears in what is a WP:RS. This book has won three prizes, has had excellent book reviews and is published by the University of Illinois Press. It seems to summarise the primary source accurately - the pages numbers appear in the notes of Tucker. I have no idea why Captain Occam is suggesting otherwise. Does he some reason for thinking that the text of the academic William H. Tucker is inaccurate? The sentence explicitly states "as reported by William H. Tucker". I am beginning to wonder whether Capatin Occam has decided that I am one of those wikipedia editors with the same mind-set as creationists that he has criticized on the blog that he linked to his user page a few days back. Captain Occam's own personal interpretation of Jensen's article is toally irrelevant. It amounts to WP:OR and WP:SYNTH. It's for that reason we use secondary sources. Mathsci (talk) 16:22, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

I can't speak for Occam and do not want to criticize all aspects of that passage, but let me highlight at least one issue. The section contained this phrase: "He decried the "misguided and ineffective attempts to improve [the] lot" of blacks". Is that quote from Jensen (1969)? I can't find it. David.Kane (talk) 16:35, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Separate question: What do we do when reliable secondary sources disagree? I do not have access to Tucker or Woolbridge, but Loehlin's description [2] of Jensen (1969) seems radically different from the passage that Occam has problems with. Is there a standard Wikipedia policy for this? To be concrete: Are there two main theses/conclusions in Jensen (1969) or three? David.Kane (talk) 16:35, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

(ec) You are removing sourced edits. The sources do not disagree, as far as I can tell. They are complementary, In this case you can add your version of what the second summary says (with page numbers), after what I added. That is normal practice. Just write "As reported by {{harvtxt|Loehlin|author2|author3|2020}}" and include what they say. It's not up to us to decide between two different secondary sources. We include both. No need to delete text in this case. Just add the material from the second source. So please go ahead and add the extra sentences sourced to the book of Loehlin, if you think they add material not covered in the detailed summary in the next paragraph. Thanks, Mathsci (talk) 17:02, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Maunus has done exactly what I just suggested. Many thanks Maunus! Mathsci (talk) 17:16, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Part of the problem here is that there aren't any secondary sources other than Tucker which assert this either. I'm going to quote Wooldridge's description of this, since I know you at least approve of his book as a source:

"But he felt that 'the technique of raising intelligence per se in the sense of g, probably lie more in the province of the biological science than than in psychology or education': eugenic reform rather than compensatory education held out the solution to the problem of the nation's intelligence. Unfortunately, however, populations trends were dysgenic rather than eugenic. Intelligence and family size were negatively correlated; and the negative correlation was more marked in the negro than in the white population, so that the two races were drawing further apart in their average innate abilities. 'Is there a danger', he wondered, 'that current welfare policies, unaided by eugenic foresight, could lead to the genetic enslavement of a substantial segment of our population?"

That's an accurate description of Jensen's position. According to Wooldridge, Jensen's concern was that something needed to be done about the fact that people with the lowest IQs tended to have the largest families, because he felt that this would have a negative effect on blacks by causing the difference in average IQ between them and whites to grow larger over time. That's quite different from Jensen asserting that the overall number of blacks needs to be reduced, which is what Tucker is claiming Jensen said.

This is one secondary source that you approve of which disagrees with what Tucker is claiming about this. Based on what David.Kane is saying, it sounds like Loehlin disagrees with Tucker about this also. If we must include a contentious assertion from Tucker that other sources disagree with, we need to make it clear that a lot of other secondary (and primary) sources disagree with Tucker about this. --Captain Occam (talk) 16:54, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

It's totally inappropriate for wikipedians to pass judgement on secondary sources in this way. We simply use both, or in this case all three (if we include Wooldridge). We are complete dullards or ignorami as far as evaluation or interpretation of secondary sources is concerned. We just summarise the sentences we find in these sources, if they are reliable. Our personal views are completely irrelevant. In my case I don't have any - I haven't even read the primary source by Jensen. (There seems to be no properly paginated version available as a url.) That is the wikipedia way. Mathsci (talk) 17:11, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

I tweaked it to alleviate any potential confusion on this. There is no significant disagreement between the sources on these two points that I can see. Tucker is a valid source, and his assessment is attributed to him. Professor marginalia (talk) 17:17, 7 May 2010 (UTC) --Looks like another editor made some changes and it's no longer attributed to him. Professor marginalia (talk) 17:24, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Many thanks. Tweak away .... Mathsci (talk) 17:27, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

MathSci kindly provides [3] the key page from Tucker. Again, I think that the passage as written is unclear because it implies (or Tucker implies) that the phrase "misguided and ineffective attempts to improve [the] lot" is from Jensen (1969) when, in fact, it is not. I don't want to edit war but perhaps someone (Professor marginalia?) could fix that. David.Kane (talk) 17:28, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

True, I thought it was Jensens wording, not Tuckers, that needs to be clear.·Maunus·ƛ· 17:36, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

My own problem is that stating “some kind of eugenic intervention was needed to reduce their numbers” implies that Jensen thought the overall number of minorities needed to be reduced, which isn’t supported by most of the sources being used. (Except possibly Tucker.) If we’re going to make this paragraph consistent with what’s in all of the sources, we need to make it clear that Jensen was referring specifically to the negative correlation between fertility and IQ, which applies to both blacks and whites. I think my own edit makes this clearer; I hope nobody has a problem with this change. --Captain Occam (talk) 17:33, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

I think my edit set that straight. But your subsequent edit reflects maybe how you'd prefer to word what Jensen said, but that's not how Tucker did. Having read Jensen's article, I think you've understated Jensen's argument quite a bit. He was concerned that the low IQ "disadvantaged" were having large families--it's quite clear that he saw IQ to be genetic inheritance, not merely a consequence of family size. Professor marginalia (talk) 17:55, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

My edit is just based on the way Wooldridge describes this. And I think referring to Jensen’s fear of this having a “dysgenic” effect makes it clear that Jensen thought of the negative correlation between IQ and family size as having a negative effect in a genetic sense, since that’s what dysgenic means. If you think there’s a way for this to be phrased that’s more consistent with how it’s described by all three sources—Wooldridge, Loehlin and Tucker—could you please make a specific suggestion? --Captain Occam (talk) 18:01, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

I reverted. It's not our job to reconcile sources if they don't agree. If you think the differences among them are significant, attribute the claims each of them make to their own work. But we don't massage them to "fit" - we don't put words in their mouths. Professor marginalia (talk) 18:09, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

If we’re going to clearly attribute this assertion to Tucker, and make it clear that the rest of the sources disagree with him about it, that’s fine also. But it’s not consistent with NPOV for the article to just present Tucker’s view, and none of the sources who disagree with him, the way it currently does.

Could someone else (such as David.Kane) please fix this? I probably shouldn’t revert the article any more today. --Captain Occam (talk) 18:17, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

No, it's not either our job "to make it clear that the rest of the sources disagree" with Tucker. That goes far beyond what editors can do here...we're not pundits or researchers. I fail to understand either this suspiciousness towards Tucker as a reference. He's certainly not the first or only reference that recognized those claims made in Jensen's article. My-oh-my but that paper brought about a hailstorm of attention. Professor marginalia (talk) 18:27, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

The reason for this suspicion towards Tucker is precisely because so many other secondary and primary sources disagree with him. WP:UNDUE states that views should be represented in articles in proportion to their prominence in the source material. In this case we’ve got one view from Tucker, and one (different) view from everyone else. Can you understand why in this situation, presenting only Tucker’s view and nobody else’s is not acceptable? --Captain Occam (talk) 18:33, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

What kind of primary sources disagree with him? And I'm still unclear how the other two references earlier mentioned actually disagree. They may not have repeated exactly what Tucker said, but they didn't contradict him either. Jensen's paper alluded to eugenic solutions multiple times, "negative eugenics" was a term I think he used at some point. Professor marginalia (talk) 18:47, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

The papers from Gottfredson and Jensen himself (which Mathsci considers primary) disagree with this also. I don’t think you should expect them to precisely contradict what Tucker said, since the idea that Jensen wanted to reduce the overall number of racial minorities is an outlandish enough claim that I doubt anyone would bother to point out that it’s false unless they were specifically providing a rebuttal to Tucker. The description from Wooldridge is different enough from Tucker’s that I also don’t think we can just assume there’s no meaningful disagreement, and use Tucker’s account any nobody else’s.

Can’t you just accept that at the moment, there’s no consensus for this new addition to the article? You and Mathsci want it included, while David.Kane and I disapprove of it. When an editor is trying to add new content to the article, the onus is on them to gather consensus for it to be included. As long as there’s no consensus, the article remains in its pre-existing state, without the new content. --Captain Occam (talk) 19:12, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

I have mentioned this a couple of times above, but let me make this more clear. 1) The article currently misinterprets Tucker as quoting Jensen (1969). She must have been quoting something else since those words do not appear in Jensen (1969). 2) The article currently makes claims about two specific pages in Jensen (1969). But the two pages cited do not support those claims. Unless someone can point out my error, I will try to correct these mistakes. David.Kane (talk) 19:14, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

(ec) Ahem, the same quote from Jensen's article also appears here. [4] The sentence quoted there is, "future generations of Negroes ... could suffer the most well-meaning but misguided attempts to improve their lot in life". I'm going to remove the URL in the text because it is not a scan of the article by Jensen (no page numbers). It is an HTML document; it does not appear to be a copy of the HER article. Mathsci (talk) 19:38, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Yes, please do. Will you also be correcting the problem I mentioned above, involving the claim from Tucker that most of the other sources disagree with, but which is presented in the article without anything to balance it? --Captain Occam (talk) 19:32, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

See above. Mathsci (talk) 19:38, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

@Captain Occam-Jensen said, and Tucker said Jensen said, that it would be advantageous to reduce the frequency of low IQ black children in the population--he didn't say he saw an advantage to reducing number of all black people across the board. Jensen clearly said this. He was concerned that low IQ people had higher than average reproductive rates. And he expressed concerns that welfare policies were encouraging higher than average reproductive rates among the disadvantaged population who he said tended to have lower IQ scores. He also discussed eugenic solutions like increasing the prevalence of "voluntary sterilization" to reduce the number of births to retarded parents.

@David Kane-the pages I looked at do support the claims. I'll recheck the page numbers. And Tucker is accurately reflected here, although I think the quote is one of Jensen's from a 1968 paper, not the 1969. I'm not sure though-I'll try to find it too. Professor marginalia (talk) 19:40, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

“Jensen said, and Tucker said Jensen said, that it would be advantageous to reduce the frequency of low IQ black children in the population--he didn't say he saw an advantage to reducing number of all black people across the board.”

Okay, it sounds like maybe we’re in agreement about what view we should attribute to Jensen here. If that’s the case, the problem I have is just that the wording of the article is ambiguous. Saying that Jensen wanted to “reduce the number of low-IQ racial minorities” sounds like it might mean that Jensen wanted to reduce the overall numbers of racial minorities that had average IQs were below the white average. Can you (or anyone else) re-word this part of the article to make it clear that Jensen only wanted to reverse the trend of fertility being negatively correlated with IQ, which could involve either reducing the number of children among low-IQ people or raising the number among high-IQ people, rather than having it sound like it could mean that he just wanted to reduce the overall number of blacks? --Captain Occam (talk) 19:54, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

@Mathsci-per the surrounding context in the An American Health Dilemma it appears that the 1969 paper followed after Jensen wrote that quotation. Clearly it is from Jensen, and if we source it to this book we dispense with the "cloud" over it concerning which paper he said it in.

@Captain Occam-ok, I'll try and tweak it a little more. Professor marginalia (talk) 19:56, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. Yes, after a further check in both sources, that quotation comes from an article in 1968 by Jensen in "Disadvantaged Child", Vol 2. I've corrected that in the main text now. Mathsci (talk) 20:16, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Professor marginalia: your new wording is definitely an improvement, but I think it also ought to be made clearer that Jensen cared about raising the birthrate among high-IQ people just as much as he did about lowering it among low-IQ people, as well as that the same concerns applied to whites also. (Even though he emphasized it among blacks, because the dysgenic trend was especially strong among them, blacks definitely aren't the only people for which he expressed concern about this.) The current wording still sounds as though Jensen was advocating some sort of selective genocide against blacks, rather than just wanting to alter the relationship between birthrate and IQ for them, and to do the same thing for whites also. Is there any way you can make this even clearer than you have already?

Keep in mind that the same idea is discussed by the following paragraph also, so one other possible solution would be to merge this explanation into the discussion about the same topic there. --Captain Occam (talk) 20:45, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

"Lowering the birthrate" doesn't imply genocide. "Eugenics" is a loaded word, but it's one Jensen chose to use so no euphemisms should be applied in its place. Professor marginalia (talk) 22:44, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

I’m not arguing against using the word “eugenics”. I explained in my last comment what my concerns are: by focusing in on only this small part of Jensen’s opinion, we’re still making it sound like as though he was advocating measures that were specifically anti-black. (While in fact, the measures he was advocating were only specifically anti-low-IQ, and would have also applied to whites with low IQs while favoring blacks with high IQs.)

Do you understand my concerns about this? It’s apparent that David.Kane has similar concerns, and in the interest of working towards consensus I think you ought to be making an effort to address them. --Captain Occam (talk) 23:01, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Well these views of Jensen were in direct response to a pitch from the Harvard Educational Review to draft "a clear statement of your position on social class and racial differences in intelligence." His claim that the achievement gap among black students was genetic rather than environmental, and that it would widen because low-IQ blacks had higher birthrates, was widely perceived as anti-black. We're not here to repair his public reputation-we simply describe the event. Jensen's a key figure in the race/intelligence controversy during this period--it would be hard to overplay the effect his views of race disparity played in the debate. Professor marginalia (talk) 23:37, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

“We're not here to repair his public reputation-we simply describe the event.”

I agree with this, but this principle applies in both directions. Just as we shouldn’t exclude the more controversial aspects of what he suggested, we also shouldn’t be excluding certain things in order to make his ideas sound even more controversial than they actually were. As I stated above, I think the article is committing the latter error by mentioning that Jensen wanted to reduce the birthrate among low-IQ blacks, while not mentioning that he also wanted to reduce it among low-IQ whites and raise it among high-IQ blacks. Do you understand this concern? --Captain Occam (talk) 23:48, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

When dealing with primary sources, especially those involved in controversies, we emphasize what the secondary sources emphasize. The text now reflects the emphasis placed on Jensen's arguments in the source used. Tucker emphasized this, the An American Health Dilemma did as well. Remember this article isn't about Jensen, it's about his part in the controversy. If other secondary references describing his impact do it differently, we can look at those as well. (Not primary again-wikipedians cannot use them to form their own arguments to balance the secondary sources.) But again, if there are strong differences of opinion in that area then you don't re-cast the sourced claim to say something else than what the source said. You describe the most notable of those opinions, and attribute those views to their source. Professor marginalia (talk) 00:49, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

"we emphasize what the secondary sources emphasize" Agreed! But we do not give priority to one secondary source (Tucker) over other secondary sources (Loehlin, Flynn, Mackintosh, et cetera). Tucker is the only secondary source which claims that Jensen was more (or only) concerned with low black IQ and not concerned with low white IQ. So, the article ought to reflect that fact. I think the easiest way to do so is with something like Occam's phrasing. Tucker's views can, of course, be included, but we need to make clear that, among secondary sources, her views are clearly the minority. And, given WP:UNDUE it seems unwise to mention every single statement ever made by Tucker about the article. David.Kane (talk) 01:05, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

Tucker did not say he was "more or only" concerned with low IQ in blacks. And his view is certainly notable. I peered through the two Mackintosh books listed in the references and failed to find he discussed Jensen's 1969 paper at all. I don't know what Flynn reference you'd be referring to here. The Loehlin you linked above doesn't go into this question at all--it is talking about Jensen's fundamental theses-that IQ is a significant measure, its 80% genetically determined, and education can't overcome it. Loehlin does not go into at all Jensen's recommendations about reducing birthrate.

And I know Tucker is not at all the only one to place an emphasis on race in Jensen's claims and recommendations here. "Jensen stands by his 1969 prediction that the failure to address the dysgenic trend within the Black population will one day be viewed as 'our society's greatest injustice to Negro Americans'. He remains deeply concerned about the differential birth rate in the Afro-American population, as revealed by the US census. If this dysgenic trend continues over several generations the Black IQ deficit will inevitably increase, as will the levels of crime, welfare dependency, unemployment and illegitimacy within the Black population. A Biographical Appraisal of Arthur Jensen Leslie C. Jones 2003. Professor marginalia (talk) 05:12, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

Yes this material appears in multiple books. There is no question here of WP:UNDUE. The article at present does not use the word "negro" as Jensen freely did in his 1968 paper. Mathsci (talk) 05:56, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

(Outdent) Even if we accept that most secondary sources place this emphasis on Jensen’s desire to reduce the birthrate of blacks with low IQs, I think we still should use a wording that’s at least consistent with sources such as Wooldridge that describe Jensen’s proposal as being just about low IQ in general. I have a suggestion for a compromise about this, which only differs by a single word from the current revision, but I think it accurately describes Tucker’s emphasis on Jensen’s attitude towards low-IQ blacks while still being consistent with Wooldridge’s account also. I hope a change this small won’t be contentious, but if it is, I’d like anyone who isn’t happy with it to explain why they don’t like this next wording either. --Captain Occam (talk) 20:26, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

It don't quite understand why it's necessary to write a long paragraph like this to justify the insertion of one word. Mathsci (talk) 20:40, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

As David.Kane pointed out at AN/I, you have a tendency to make a big deal about any edits other people make to material you’ve added to this article, and to assume they’re malicious even if they aren’t. Even if this wasn’t obvious before, I think your reaction when David.Kane tried to fix the sourcing in this paragraph makes it clear that it generally requires extraordinary effort from any of us to get you to not react this way.

That’s intended as constructive criticism, by the way. You obviously have the ability to contribute a lot of useful content to articles like these, and I think you could benefit them a lot if you could learn to resolve disputes with other editors without immediately seeking sanctions at AN/I against whoever you disagree with. I fully expect you to reply to this with some sort of personal attack trying to justify why all of the rest of us have been making it impossible for you to edit cooperatively, and I guess that’s okay: the article still is being improved; it just takes several times longer this way than it would if the person disagreeing with us were someone like Ludwigs2, who has the same opinions that you do but is easier to get along with. --Captain Occam (talk) 21:18, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

I would strongly encourage all editors to stop the meta discussion and comment only on the content of the article and not other editors or their behaviour. ·Maunus·ƛ· 05:50, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

I have been ignoring most of what has been written here, because, as Maunus writes, it is completely unrelated to any content that is being added or could be added or for that matter to how wikipedia articles are written. Thanks, Mathsci (talk) 06:25, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Bias?

I'm not quite sure why this article is still tagged as being biased. What is the claimed bias and why does it not represent the sources used? The inflammatory article by Helmuth Nyborg does not appear to satisfy WP:RS. It it similar to a book by John Denton Carter, which contains inflammatory statements about eminent anthropologists like Franz Boas. These statements could never be added to wikipedia. Mathsci (talk) 06:20, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Is it your place to say what's inflammatory and who's eminent? mikemikev (talk) 01:27, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Ahem, that is how we decide whether something is a WP:RS on wikipedia. Statements like this [5] by JDC are inflammatory and could not be used on wikipedia - just try inserting that material in the article Franz Boas and see what happens. Nyborg writes in a similar way about Alexander Luria, and including material like that would be a BLP violation. I don't know why you mention eminence.

Since you're here, perhaps you could answer the question on bias. As far as I can see, almost everything has been covered neutrally and carefully. (Perhaps the use of tests by US immigration authorities might be included at some stage in the early history.) Mathsci (talk) 04:08, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Frank Boas?! lol.·Maunus·ƛ· 14:13, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

What are the relevant disputes over Nyborg, Boas, Luria and JDC that directly relate to the tag in this article? Professor marginalia (talk) 16:42, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Kudos to MathSci

Kudos to MathSci for the amazing job he has done with this article. It is superb. I might have an objection to some phrasing here and there (especially with regard to the description of Jensen (1969)), but progress has been made on those disputes in the past and I hope for more progress in the future. But, big picture, 99% of the material here is just amazing and accords to the very best standards of Wikipedia. Indeed, perhaps it should be nominated as a featured article? David.Kane (talk) 14:53, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

I agree that overall, this article is pretty good now, although I still have some NPOV issues with it also. My main objection at the moment is to the paragraph describing Jensen's interaction with right-wing groups in Europe, which seems to cherry-pick information about Jensen in order to cast him in a negative light. If this is how the sources describe this topic, the problem is probably that the selection of sources being used for this paragraph isn’t balanced enough, since three out of four of them take a very negative view of Jensen and his theories. If we're going to describe Jensen's involvement in politics, I think we should also mention the fact that he not only avoided involvement with segregationists in the United States; he also made it clear at several points that he was morally opposed to the idea of racial segregation. I also notice that Mathsci has also added Linda Gottfredson's article "Egalitarian fiction and collective fraud" as a source, but none of the information in Gottfredson's article is actually presented here. I think the Wikipedia article would benefit from the addition of some content from this source.

None of these things should be all that difficult to change, though, as long as Mathsci can be careful to keep the article in compliance with NPOV. I agree that as long as he's being careful about this, he can produce some very good articles. --Captain Occam (talk) 02:51, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

There's a harvtxt link to the Gottfredson article. I don't see a particular reason to include any more of her political statements, unless a reliable secondary source has quoted them. The essence of her argument has been made: those that do not agree with her point of view, that there is a genetic basis for racial differences in intelligence, are lying. Isn't that what she has written? Adding more examples of such statements would be WP:UNDUE (it obviously isn't inaccurate), unless as I say reliable secondary sources have mentioned those aspects. But after all, isn't Gottfredson a relatively minor figure academically? By contrast Luigi Cavalli-Sforza, Steven J. Gould, Christopher Jencks, Richard Lewontin or Leon Kamin are not particularly well represented from the point of view of their scientific contributions to the debate or their academic eminence. That said, the article is not really very much about science. In part it charts what happens when researchers from one discipline - psychology - try to use ideas from very different disciplines - evolutionary biology and genetics - with no formal training and with very unclear motivation.

In looking for new images (very difficult due to copyright on WP), I did by chance watch this video of Rushton talking about bushmen of the Kalahari and Australian aborigines as part of a talk he gave at the 2006 AmRen conference (he seems to have posted this video himself).[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmdxUeo4M9Q&feature=channel] Right at the end he talks about Flynn "cherry picking". Is this real life imitating the talk pages of wikipedia? I'd be more interested to see a talk in front of an unconverted audience. Mathsci (talk) 10:44, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

In part it charts what happens when researchers from one discipline - psychology - try to use ideas from very different disciplines - evolutionary biology and genetics - with no formal training and with very unclear motivation.

This is an incredibly crass statement. In your opinion, behavioural genetics is an invalid discipline, and the article should reflect this? Do you have some kind of fundamental objection to interdisciplinarianism? I'm not actually aware of any valid criticism of Jensen's use of genetics, so why would you say this? mikemikev (talk) 11:20, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

A defense of interdisciplinarty sounds rather funny coming from you Mike. When I talked about how most Anthopologists rejected the Jensenist race and intelligence paradigm you were very quick to state that anthropologists opinions about genetics related subjects shouldn't count. Yesterday I presented Sternberg, Grigorenko and Kidds opinions on the (in)validity of race as a biological concept and you were quick to dismiss suggesting that no authority in genetics had the same opinion (and when presented with two topnotch geneticist expressing the same opinion in several (admittedly second hand) quotes you dismissed them as well.) You are not being very consistent in your application of scientific rigour here...·Maunus·ƛ· 11:41, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

(ec) @Mikemikev: As far as I'm aware Behavioral genetics was not properly established in 1969. The first journal Behavior genetics appeared in 1971. None of the researchers on race and intelligence publish or are currently classified as working in that area as far as I know. Sociobiologists do, but that's a different topic. The statement I made - a general vague meta-comment - was just an aside, not a topic for open ended discussion. Lots of biologists have criticized Jensen's use of biology - I couldn't possibly comment whether they were right or wrong. Anyway wikipedia is not about WP:TRUTH. Mathsci (talk) 11:53, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Maunus, you're confusing interdisciplinary and out of field. Whether race has biological validity is purely a question for biologists. Incidentally, I can reference a paper and a book from some apex sources where the answer is yes. Whether the racial IQ gap has a genetic component is very much interdisciplinary. mikemikev (talk) 12:26, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

“The essence of her argument has been made: those that do not agree with her point of view, that there is a genetic basis for racial differences in intelligence, are lying. Isn't that what she has written?”

Actually no, and if you read the article from her, she makes it pretty clear that this isn’t her point. Her actual point is explained in the first paragraph of the article:

“Social science today condones and perpetuates a great falsehood - one that undergirds much current social policy. This falsehood, or "egalitarian fiction," holds that racial-ethnic groups never differ in average developed intelligence (or, in technical terms, g, the general mental ability factor). While scientists have not yet determined their source, the existence of sometimes large group differences in intelligence is as well-established as any fact in the social sciences. How and why then is this falsehood perpetrated on the public?”

Her point isn’t that academics are lying when they claim that there’s no genetic basis for the difference in average IQ between races, it’s that they’re lying when they claim that there’s no difference in average IQ between races at all. And then she goes on to explain how the claim that there’s no racial IQ gap is propagated, and how it affects the academic community. She also points out that the proportion of experts holding each opinion about the cause of the gap, as documented in the Snyderman and Rothman study, is also being misrepresented in the media. (Although that isn’t her main point.)

Something else you should keep in mind is that this article is itself a secondary source. The primary source that it’s summarizing is the Snyderman and Rothman study, which was published in its own separate book. For these reasons, I don’t think there’s any good reason for the Wikipedia article to not include any of what’s in Gottfredson’s article. And as I said, I think the section describing Jensen’s involvement in politics needs more balance also.

Are you willing to allow these things to be changed? I can try changing them myself, if I can trust you to not repeatedly revert me if I do. --Captain Occam (talk) 19:31, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Mathsci, if you have any objection to what I'm proposing, I'd like you to please explain it now, so we won't end up having an edit war over this when I try to add it. --Captain Occam (talk) 01:02, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Focus on secondary sources. Primary sources can be only be used here with extreme care. If this is a notable topic, secondary sources will identify why it's notable, what kinds of claims and arguments are important, and who warrants mention and to what degree. I can't help but notice from the talk page there may be some confusion about the focus is supposed to be here. This article is not to rehash the debate. It's to describe key events and issues that took place in the debate. It's not about plugging holes or reviving the debate before a new set of judges. In articles about controversial topics, if an editor is looking in primary sources to select arguments or issues to address here, 99 times out of 100 it's going too far with primary sources. Professor marginalia (talk) 01:22, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Professor marginalia, especially when the primary sources are controversial or polemic as is the case here. Looking at the secondary source I used (Winston), he has a footnote which discredits Gottfredson's interpretation:

Rushton's (1994) notion of the "equalitarian fiction" is that Blacks and Whites are genetically equal in cognitive ability. Gotffredson's (1994) notion of the "egalitarian fiction" is that "racial-ethnic groups never differ in average developed intelligence" (p. 53). I have never seen a scholarly source which maintained that groups never show mean differences in intelligence test scores. Gottfredson gives no reference for anyone who holds this position.

In other words the secondary source indicates that the primary source is making untenable assertions. That's why we use secondary sources in cases like this. Mathsci (talk) 02:09, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

As I said, Gottfredson’s paper is a secondary source; the primary source she’s writing about is the Snyderman and Rothman study, which is what originally documented the existence of this discrepancy between the views or researchers and what’s reported in the media. If you read the Snyderman and Rothman study, you can see for yourself what data this study’s conclusion (and hence Gottfredson’s conclusion) is based on. You’ve provided another secondary source which disagrees with Gottfredson’s conclusion, although apparently not commenting on the primary source which Gottfredson’s conclusion is based on, and which is about as strongly opinionated as Gottfredson’s article is. What do we do at Wikipedia when there are two conflicting viewpoints about a topic that both appear in the source literature? The answer is to include them both.

We’ve done this for lots of other parts of the article, such as mentioning that some sources associate Shockley with Jensen becoming a hereditarian, while Jensen himself credits Eysenck for this. What I’m suggesting is that we present Gottfredson’s view about the Snyderman and Rothman study, as well as any other views we can find also. If Winston talks about this study specifically, then that includes him. --Captain Occam (talk) 02:56, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Not sure I understand what your meaning here. I couldn't locate what claim Gottfredson 1994 is supposedly referencing. If she's a secondary source, what claim is it referencing? The fact that someone issues an opinion i]doesn't necessarily insure it's a notable opinion. Professor marginalia (talk) 03:35, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Gottfredson is summarizing the conclusions of both a 1987 academic paper by Snyderman and Rothman, and a book these authors wrote the following year in which they present the conclusions of their study as well as some additional data they’d gathered about the same topic. The original study is Survey of Expert Opinion on Intelligence and Aptitude Testing, which was published in Vol 42(2) of American Psychologist, and the book is The IQ Controversy, the Media and Public Policy.

Were you just wanting me to point you to the primary sources that she’s summarizing, or did you want me to go into more detail about them? If it’s the latter, this study has its own Wikipedia article also. --Captain Occam (talk) 03:59, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I meant what claim in this article is being cited? Professor marginalia (talk) 04:03, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Do you mean what claim in the Wikipedia article? Right now, nothing in this article is being cited to the article by Gottfredson, although Mathsci has added the Gottfredson article as a source. And what I’m suggesting is that now that Gottfredson’s article is being listed as a source here, we should add some content that’s actually cited to this article, because Gottfredson’s article discusses some notable and relevant topics that currently aren’t covered here.

Do you agree that now that this article is listed as a source, it would reasonable to add some of its content to the article? --Captain Occam (talk) 04:26, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

No. I don't have an opinion yet. So let me ask further, why was it added as a source? Professor marginalia (talk) 04:52, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

You need to ask Mathsci that. He’s who added it as a source, and I have no idea why he added it if he was opposed to including any information from it in the article. --Captain Occam (talk) 05:11, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Fair enough. But I shouldn't be the only one here asking this question. We need to focus on how to properly craft a wikipedia article, not how to shoehorn in whatever with legalisticy appeals to fine-printy-ish technical loopholes. Professor marginalia (talk) 05:25, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

You aren’t being clear about whether or not you think this information actually belongs in the article. I think it does, for the same reason as every other piece of information that’s in the article: because it’s relevant, notable, and described in several secondary sources, one of which Mathsci has already added to the article’s list of sources. If you consider this a “loophole”, or have some other problem with adding it to the article, you haven’t explained what your objection is to this.

If you think there’s something wrong with adding information from this source, I would like you to explain specifically what it is. WP:IDONTLIKEIT is never a valid reason to not include something. --Captain Occam (talk) 05:40, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm trying to be clear that we need more than yours, my, or any other wikieditor's opinion about what "belongs" because our opinions in "history of race/evolution controversy" don't count. What "counts" is what published reference materials indicate "counts". After two run-throughs all I've gathered is a) Mathsci added Gottfredson 1994 to the biblio and b) you say it's secondary to Snyderman-Rothman. Well, Snyderman - Rothman I don't see sourcing any claims anywhere in the article. All I have found is that it was added as a See also by a soon-after banned sock account. Neither auspicious perches from which to launch notability defenses, as far as I'm concerned. I'm not a mind-reader. So make a case why her opinions in this article are notable here? Professor marginalia (talk) 06:19, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

The reason why nothing in the article is cited to the Snyderman and Rothman study (or the accompanying book) is because Mathsci considers Snyderman and Rothman a primary source, and therefore won’t allow it to be cited here. Well, if we can’t discuss this study while citing it directly because it’s a primary source, then the obvious solution is to discuss this study while citing it to some of the secondary sources that discuss it, just like we do for any other topic in this article. One of those secondary sources is Gottfredson’s article. It isn’t her views themselves that are notable, it’s the study itself; and her paper happens to be one of the several secondary sources we can use to discuss it.

If you need to be convinced that the Snyderman and Rothman study itself is notable, look at some of the sources discussing this study that are cited by the article about it. Several proponents of the hereditarian hypothesis have brought up this study as demonstrating that their ideas aren’t as controversial within their field as the media makes them out to be, while opponents of the hereditarian hypothesis such as Ferguson, Kouyate and Taylor describe this study as meaning that racism is common among psychologists. This study is at least as notable as some of the other topics presented in the current article, such as statement from the Association of Black Psychologists. --Captain Occam (talk) 06:47, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

I would like to see a writeup of your proposed addition of the Gottfredson material, that would make it easier for me to determine whether I think it would be an overall benefit to the article or give undue weight to certain viewpoints. Apriori I don't see why a secondary analysis of a survey of opinions from psychologists should not be includable, but it would of course depend on how it is used in the article.·Maunus·ƛ· 07:34, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

(ec) Captain Occam seems not to be reading what I have written. If we add a quote that is used in a secondary sourcce, we add the secondary source plus the primary source from which it came. We do not add our own additional comments on what we think the primary source says, or even pick quotes. An example of that occurs in the "early history" section where the writings of Raymond Cattell are discussed. Captain Occam or Slrubenstein might have strong feelings about some of the things written in that primary source, but we have to take all the analysis from the secondary source. The writings of Gottfredson on this topic are similar. Captaub or Slrubenstein might have strong feelings about some of the things she writes, but if they have not been voiced by a secondary source, we simply cannot comment. This has been the pattern of editing in this article from the beginning. But if some new wikipedian, say EvaLaPen, came along, took a look at the 1933 tract of Cattell, thought it was all absolutely WP:TRUE, just like her favourite work Main Kampf, and starting adding her summary of those sentences as if they were true, we'd be in trouble, wouldn't we? That's of course an exaggeration, but it makes the point rather clearly. I don't see how we can distinguish between the primary sources of Kevin B. MacDonald or Linda Gottfredson. That's why we use secondary sources in the case of controversial articles. To avoid confusion, I have added the exact contents of Andrew Winston's footnote as a footnote to the wikipedia article. Mathsci (talk) 07:55, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Mathsci, you’re still not getting this. Gottfredson’s article is a secondary source, which is summarizing a primary source. (The primary source is the Snyderman and Rothman study.) And there are also other secondary sources which discuss this primary source, so Gottfredson doesn’t have to be the only secondary source about it that we use about it. Maunus understands this, and wants to see a proposed addition to the article summarizing this study using secondary sources such as Gottfredson’s article. Can you accept that? --Captain Occam (talk) 08:09, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

No it's a primary source from which the quotes in the secondary source have been taken. That has been standard ediitng practice in this article, and no amount of wikilawyering will change that, persistent though you are. A footnote has been added, which you seem to have ignored. I don't see any point in discussing a controversial primary source. I should wait to see what the others think. It would be nice if you could find a way of discussing content that did not continually involve arguments that involve violating wikipedia editing policies. Just to make my point again, the article of Kevin B. MacDonald is also a primary source. Your line of reasoning - that he is discussing other articles in his article - would make it a secondary source. So your argument just looks like wikilawyering to me. Mathsci (talk) 08:19, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Mathsci, what’s your definition of a secondary source? Is it the same as Wikipedia’s? This is Wikipedia’s definition:

“Secondary sources are second-hand accounts, at least one step removed from an event. They rely for their material on primary sources, often making analytic or evaluative claims about them.”

You haven’t even attempted to explain how Gottfredson’s analysis of the Snyderman and Rothman study is a primary source rather than a secondary one. Unless you do, your argument is nothing but WP:IDONTLIKEIT and WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT, with a few personal attacks thrown in for good measure. --Captain Occam (talk) 08:33, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

I think we are confusing some things here, a source can be primary and secondary at the same time. And we are allowed to use primary sources, when we agree that the way we use them is unproblematic. Gottfredson is a primary source of her own opinion and a secondary source of Snyderman & Rothman's conclusions. I think Mathsci is worried that Gottfredson's analysis of Snyderman & Rothman is not necessarily congruent with other analyses of that source since she evaluates it from one a particular viewpoint. That is however not a problem of Gottfredsson being a primary source, but rather a problem of whether she is a sufficiently objective source to be used for making objective second hand claims about other studies. This problem can be avoided by making it clear that the viewpoint included is an expression of her own personal analysis. The question then becomes whether her opinion is notable and/or requires balancing by a second opinion. That is why I don't think there is an apriori reason that we shouldn't be able to include her opinions about Snyderman & Rothman's study, but I need to see a concrete example in order to see whether it can be done in a neutral way and whether it contributes valuable information to the article. I'd be concerned whether her evaluation of the studies can be seen as sufficiently neutral not to require a second opinion for balance, in which case it might be preferable to include a third more neutral opinion or not to include opinions about the study at all.·Maunus·ƛ· 09:14, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

I don't agree in this case in using Gottfredson, for precisely the reasons you give - see below. The correct thing to do in this case, if details of the Snyderman and Rothman study are to be included, would be to find reliable secondary sources that discuss the report (not too hard). That is how that kind of editing would go. Preferably a disinterested commentator not directly involved in any of the debates from a historical perspective. Graham Richard perhaps? In the 1970s there were plenty of petitions and letters to newspapers by lobbying groups from the right and the left, which have not been discussed in detail. Anyway here the right approach is to look for neutral secondary sources if the S&R report is to be mentioned. Mathsci (talk) 09:23, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

(ec) There is no reason for any wikipedia editor to discuss a primary source like Gottfredson's paper. Gottfredson is another player in the Bell Curve debate, in the same way that Stephen J. Gould was. In Tucker's 2002 book on page 180, he gives his summary of her 1994 article, written in the full heat of the Bell Curve furore:

Linda Gottfredson, professor of education at the University of Delaware, and codirector, along with Gordon, of the Project for the Study of Intelligence in Society, argued that the socioeconomic inequality between races was the expected outcome of lower black intelligence and insisted that much "current social policy" was based on a "collective fraud", perpetuated by scientists who refused to acknowledge the intellectual inferiority of blacks.

In his footnotes (page 265), Tucker references page 53 and 55 in Gottfredson's article. We can obviously use a paraphrase of any of the above. It's enough using secondary sources. For example it's quite esay to locate secondary sources describing how in print Gottfredson claimed that another Pioneer grantee Roger Pearson had no connections with the far right (Tucker, page 206, wikilinks my own):

Particularly absurd was Gottfredson's assertion that Roger Pearson—one of the most important figures in the post-war Nazi movement, who boasted knowning "on good authority" Hitler's own words, created and published the New Patriot dedicated exclusively to anti-Semitic diatribes, and corresponded openly with leading figures in the American Nazi Party—had refused to have any contact with Earl Thomas after learning that his devoted assistant had been a party member. And, according to Gottfredson, Pearson's Mankind Quarterly—in which his pseudonymous contributions maintained that the tendency to "distrust and repel" members of other races was a biological imperative and that interracial marriages were a "perversion" of natural instincts—was merely a "multicultural journal" interested in "diversity ... as an object of dispassionate study."

Perhaps that's something useful to add to the article: it has an attached primary source, a 1990 letter from the ISAR archives. What do you think? Mathsci (talk) 09:23, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

I agree that Gottfredson would be a primary source about the debate over The Bell Curve, since she was directly involved in it. However, the information I’m wanting to add to the article is not about The Bell Curve, it’s about a 1987 study that Gottfredson had nothing to do with. As Maunus pointed out in his comment, it’s possible for a source to be primary about some topics and secondary about others, and on this topic she’s a secondary source.

If you think Gottfredson isn’t neutral enough, then that’s an entirely separate issue. However, as Maunus said, the solution to that is just to make it clear that what she’s expressing is her own opinion, and provide other sources to balance it. Can you agree to what Maunus is suggesting? --Captain Occam (talk) 09:53, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Brief sentences on opinion polls and opinion pieces/lobbying could be added if reliable secondary sources are found providing appropriate context. We're not not here to establish WP:TRUTH. Best to try to look for secondary sources that give an uninvolved historical commentary. Certainly wikipedians shouldn't try to write history themslves by a "he said, she said" method. That leads to poor or misleading wikipedia articles. As for example can be found at Mainstream Science on Intelligence which I have also tagged (and mentioned several times before). Mathsci (talk) 10:26, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Would you consider John B. Carroll an acceptable secondary source about the Snyderman and Rothman study? He’s written about it also. --Captain Occam (talk) 10:37, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

I've found one other source about this that I'm hoping you'll consider acceptable: Myron Lieberman's book Public education: an autopsy. If you don't have a problem with either of these sources, I'll add some information from them about this study to the article. (I'll also mention Gottfredson's analysis, but make it clear that this is her own personal opinion, following Maunus's suggestion.) --Captain Occam (talk) 10:52, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Please put comments about S&R below in the next section with the exact source. It's impossible to tell what you mean by a link to a wikipedia page of an author. Anyway what we do is look for all possible sources, hoping that there is some neutral historical account, not yet another person expressing a point of view about a multiple choice survey. I would allow a few days because wikipedians are very busy in real life. There is no rush. Mathsci (talk) 11:06, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

All I’m asking is whether you think John B. Carroll is sufficiently uninvolved in this issue for you to consider him neutral. Since your problem with using Gottfredson as a source is that you consider her to be too heavily involved in this debate, which is independent of any specific paper from her, you should be able to answer this question about Carroll without me having to tell you what paper from him I’m hoping to use. --Captain Occam (talk) 11:27, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Moot, now. In future please (a) respond in the new section on this topic below as requested (b) providing precise references when requested. I did my own exhaustive literature search, and looked at everything available using citation indexes. I chose Jencks, Flynn and Sternberg as academics who seem to be undisputed leaders in the subject of psychometry. I added Gottfredson since she has written so many articles on this matter and seems to have become the spokesperson for the hereditarian school. Mathsci (talk) 17:18, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

How is it moot? 146.179.213.158 (talk) 15:53, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Snyderman and Rothman (study)

There is already a wikipedia article - but it is completely ureliable because it has been extensively rewritten fairly recently by Varoon Arya (talk · contribs) to remove all criticism. Here is an old version, before the POV-pushing:

Snyderman and Rothman (study)

Here is an account (opinion piece?) published in Intelligence by Harry F. Weyher (pronounced "wire") of the Pioneer Fund:

• The Pioneer Fund, the Behavioral Sciences, and the Media's False Stories

That at least mentions that the 1996 APA report ignored completely the findings of the S&R study. I have tagged the other wikipedia article, which seems very problematic. (I have mentioned this before.) Mathsci (talk) 10:10, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Have you looked at that talk page for that article, Mathsci? The criticism that was removed had been tagged as synth for over a year, because all of it was from sources that did not actually mention the Snyderman and Rothman study. Both Varoon Arya and Ramdrake have searched for criticisms of this study published in reliable sources that specifically discuss this study, and all of the criticisms they’ve been able to find which aren’t synth have been included in the article. If you can find any other criticisms that aren’t synth and which have been published in reliable sources, though, you’re welcome to suggest them. --Captain Occam (talk) 10:28, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Firstly, Ramdrake has been in hospital for several months since November and seems only to have come out fairly recently. I hope everything is going well for him at the moment.

I'm not interested in editing that article - it seems unneutral, unbalanced and written as some kind of synthesis. Both it and Mainstream Science on Intelligence are pushing a point of view which is probably not mainstream and therefore WP:UNDUE. They are certainly both unreliable for any purposes here. But finding properly sourced historical commentary for this article is another quite separate matter.

We should be hunting for reasonable historical commentaries in neutral secondary sources. Mathsci (talk) 10:42, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Archive

This page seriously needs to be archived. The scroll bar is 5 pixals tall! 110.32.131.13 (talk) 10:03, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

BLP related deletion about Jensen

I have deleted a controversial sentence that we have argued about before. It was: "He also concluded that some kind of eugenic intervention was needed to reduce the birthrate of those with low IQs, particularly in the black population, and that as students they should be taught by relying on their ability to associate rather than understand, i.e. learning by rote, not through conceptual explanation." An uninvolved editor at WP:BLP/N pointed out [6] that he could not verify it. I agree. See there for the full discussion. Summary: When making extreme claims about a living person, the standard of proof is higher. You can't claim that Jensen made eugenics claim relating to the black population without clear evidence that he did so. Tucker saying so is not enough. (I will also note that the references to Jensen (1969) are false. Pages 95 and 115 say nothing of the sort. (Please read WP:BLP for background.) David.Kane (talk) 16:23, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

That's absolutely, completely absurd. This is a very weak objection to raise here. Where has Jensen even disputed that he said this in that article? He clearly said it. Professor marginalia (talk) 16:56, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Even if he didn't say it there are so many independent reliable sources that have interpreted his statements in that way that it cannot possibly be a BLP issue. NPOV requires that we present Jensen's own version and that the views of his opponents are attributed as being theirs. Nothing more. ·Maunus·ƛ· 17:36, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

1) Professor marginalia: Please quote the exact sentence in the article where he said it. 2) I encourage anyone involved here to participate in the conversation at BLP. The only two uninvolved editors (Rvcx and Off2riorob) to comment there have agreed with me. Summary: Claims about living people require very high standards. It is not enough to note that Tucker (or whoever) said X. 3) "so many independent reliable sources"? Really? Other than Tucker, I am unaware of any other sources that report that Jensen was wanted to reduce the birthrate "particularly in the black population." Can you provide a citation? David.Kane (talk) 17:49, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

You were involved when this was previously discussed on the talk page so I don't understand why you're re-raising the dispute here again. Jensen has a section titled, "Genetic Improvement of Intelligence" in which he advocates a "negative eugenics" approach. "There is little doubt that in the long run the surest way of changing the biological basis of intelligence is through genetic selection," he says, but he says it's unlikely to happen because popular attitudes would oppose it. He says though that "at present" a "negative eugenics" approach is a "reasonable answer," discouraging traits that "all humane persons" would agree are "human misfortunes" to be avoided if at all possible, and quotes at length some position of Elizabeth and Sheldon Reed to elevate sterilization rates among the mental retarded. He then goes on to delve into birthrates in the low income "Negro" population which clearly is of particular concern to Jensen, who repeatedly addresses the implications of links between IQ, academic and economic performance in the context of this population in particular throughout the paper. The disproportionately high birth rates in the lower income (suggestive of lower IQ, Jensen asserts) black population poses the risk, he says, of "the genetic enslavement of a substantial segment of our population". Jensen's cite for this concern is another paper focused on this population by Hill and Jaffee called, "Negro fertility and family size preferences" and published in The Negro American. Jensen writes, "Our failure seriously to investigate these matters may well be viewed by future generations as our society's greatest injustice to Negro Americans." Even Jensen has been more forthright about what he's really said than his defenders at wikipedia seem willing to be. Professor marginalia (talk) 18:35, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

"You were involved when this was previously discussed on the talk page so I don't understand why you're re-raising the dispute here again." First, my previous involvement helped to correct a major (?) mistake: asserting that Jensen (1969) said something which, in fact, it did not. Perhaps MathSci's error in that context should have caused me to look more closely. I apologize for my tardiness in revisiting this topic. Second, because I am not an experienced editor, I had never read WP:BLP closely before. I just did today. I now understand that a much higher level of proof is called for as long as Jensen is still alive. Third, this is not an open-and-shut case, on either side. That is why I brought the topic to WP:BLP/N. As you can see there [7], MathSci has received zero support from uninvolved editors. Read the discussion for the details. My summary: You can't claim that something extreme about Jensen unless you can show, directly, that Jensen said it. You can't simply rely on person X saying it. I encourage you to participate in that discussion.

As to the substance, I am happy to believe that all your quotes from Jensen (1969) are accurate. But I don't see how you get from there to what we used to have in the article. You are making a major leap. You can't make such a leap when dealing with a living person. Let me remind you, also, that you claimed above about "so many independent reliable sources." Please provide them. As best I can tell, these claims about Jensen come from Tucker alone. David.Kane (talk) 19:49, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

What "leap"? And I didn't say anything about "so many independent reliable sources". It's like the target keeps moving in here...where's the beef? What do you think the article here claimed that Jensen doesn't? Professor marginalia (talk) 19:54, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

David.Kane, whose edits yesterday were self-declared to be agnostic, today has made edits that seem to be Jensenism denial. Not only can the statements of Tucker be read directly in the HER paper, but there are plenty of other primary and secondary sources. There's the 1987 book in which Jensen reiterates these claims. There is his book on Genetics and group differences form 1973. And most directly there is this interview in LIFE magazine which seems fairly unambiguous: [8]. It's not a good sign that RegentsPark disgarees with David.Kane's point of view. Mathsci (talk) 20:10, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Professor marginalia: Apologies! I mistakenly attributed a quote from Maunus to you. My mistake. MathSci: Please provide the exact quote(s) from these sources which justifies this sentence in the article. I agree with you that Tucker makes this claim. I see no other source which makes this claim. David.Kane (talk) 21:56, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

You say Tucker said "it". You also agree with what I quoted from Jensen about what he said, but disagree it agrees with what the claim here said. To me, all three agree. So once more what, exactly, was different about how it was formulated here from how it was formulated in Tucker or Jensen? Professor marginalia (talk) 22:11, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Professor marginalia: Let me quote the objectionable sentence and take it apart bit by bit. I believe that much of it is fine. The problem is that, taken as a whole, it misleads about Jensen's writings.

• "He also concluded that some kind of eugenic intervention was needed to reduce the birthrate of those with low IQs . . . " Does Jensen actually write this? Again, I am not denying that Tucker says that he did, but I have trouble coming up with a citation in which Jensen writes: "People with low IQ should be sterilized." or "People with low IQ should be given monetary awards to not have children." Are you aware of such a quote? Again, I could easily be wrong about this. Perhaps Jensen does write something exactly like that. If so, it should certainly be included in the article.
• " . . . , particularly in the black population," I highly doubt that Jensen ever wrote this. He may have written something claiming that eugenics was "needed" for low IQ people, but he never said that this need was particular to the black population. It may be that, once this clause is removed, the sentence is fine.
• "and that as students they should be taught by relying on their ability to associate rather than understand, i.e. learning by rote, not through conceptual explanation." What does the "they" refer to in this sentence? If it is all low IQ students, then I think it is reasonable. Jensen certainly believed that different teaching methods should be used for students of different IQ. But I don't think he ever said (nor do Tucker's citations support that he ever said) that this claim applied more to black low IQ students then it does to Hispanic low IQ students or white low IQ students.

Thanks for taking a look at this. I do not think that you and I, at least, are too far away on what a good sentence would look like. David.Kane (talk) 22:23, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Jensen wrote that "There is little doubt that in the long run the surest way of changing the biological basis of intelligence is through genetic selection. It is a fact that many different behavioral traits, including those we would identify as intelligence, can be changed through selective breeding in lower animals. There is no reason to believe this does not also hold true for the human species. But I doubt that we will see any move in this direction of systematic eugenics in the foreseeable future for several reasons...[omit where Jensen outlines 2 of them]...The reasonable answer, I believe, is to think at present only in terms of negative eugenics rather than in terms of positive eugenics." A secondary source (Tucker) characterizes Jensen's asserting this as a "reasonable answer" to elevating IQ as "advocating". Whereas you are worrying about any "implication" that suggests Jensen would apply this to blacks but not Hispanics is reading too much into it. Jensen himself concentrates on black white differences because (he in other interviews has pointed out) that's the data available. It would be false to apply this to Hispanics because he didn't in this paper. And it would be false to pretend that he saw no distinction between black and white remedies. He emphasized the differences themselves, noting the "disparity" between black and white birth rates in what he called the "disadvantaged" class, and he was concerned that continuing on that path would result in even greater black and white group differences. In other words by reducing the low IQ births of blacks the academic/economic gap between blacks and whites in society would lessen. Professor marginalia (talk) 23:26, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

<= I have added some completely new content and a new secondary source (one of many available), so that the direct quotes of Jensen could be expanded. I realized, on rereading Wooldridge's summary, that I'd left out a significant bit at the end, which has now been inserted. I changed the subclause in the lede and gave a new direct quote from Tucker's 1996 book. Everything is sourced. As other editors have said, the Tucker quote is accurate and is reflected in numerous secondary sources. Mathsci (talk) 23:58, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

MathSci: WP:BLP clearly requires us to reach consensus before contentious material about a living person is added. Why do you continue to violate this policy? I may have no choice but to revert some of your changes. David.Kane (talk) 02:43, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

What contentious material? Isn't this just a repetition of the discussion you just had above with Professor marginalia?

Just as a matter of interest, why do you think Jensen gave an interview to American Renaissance in 1992 [http://www.amren.com/ar/1992/08/index.html]? (Not something that needs to be mentioned in the article since it's not described in a secondary source.) Mathsci (talk) 03:27, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

I have no idea. David.Kane (talk) 13:27, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

Professor marginalia: We are arguing over a single sentence that begins "He concluded" and that, given the context, is clearly a reference to Jensen (1969). Agreed? So, in that context, any evidence you provide to support that claim must be quotes from Jensen (1969) or from secondary sources discussing Jensen (1969). Agreed? But some of the quotes you provide are not from Jensen (1969). Can you provide quotes from Jensen (1969) to support the sentence? (If you wanted to move the sentence elsewhere and make clear that the "concluded" referred to some other article/book/speech, that would be a different matter. David.Kane (talk) 13:27, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

David.Kane, this is exasperating. All my quotes were from Jensen 1969. All of them. "He concluded" is not only sourced to Tucker, it is a perfectly adequate assessment of Jensen's own statement - to quote again, "The reasonable answer, I believe, is to think at present only in terms of negative eugenics rather than in terms of positive eugenics."

It's been very frustrating to nail the focus here. Let me lay it out this way:

• Why isn't Tucker sufficient? Because Jensen is a BLP?
• If Tucker is insufficient because this is a BLP and the claim is allegedly "contentious", how is it contentious? Does Jensen dispute it? Or does he concede to it? Do other references dispute Jensen concluded this? Or do they agree he did? More directly, for the sake of argument here, if even Jensen's own quotations confirms the same thing post 1969 (as you seemed willing to allow above) then isn't it disingenuous to argue that the claim is only narrowly "contentious" in the context of this one paper?!

So focus. It isn't our job to "vet" the strengths or weaknesses of Tucker's claims. He's the authority-we aren't. So if Tucker's to be given extra scrutiny here, by what rationale? Thanks. Professor marginalia (talk) 16:19, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

Well, perhaps I have been using a bad version of Jensen (1969). This is the one [9] I have looked at. Do you have a better one? I do not see your quote about "But I doubt that we will see any move in this direction of systematic eugenics in the foreseeable future for several reasons" or some of the others there. Am I searching poorly? This is clearly at the root of much of our disagreement. Apologies if this is my fault somehow. David.Kane (talk) 19:52, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

Leaving aside the issue of exactly what is in Jensen (1969), let me address your questions about Tucker. Imagine Tucker has written "Jensen argued in his 1969 article that the moon is made of green cheese." Now, Tucker is, we all agree, a reliable source. But that hardly guarantees that everything in Tucker is correct. If Tucker makes a clearly false claim (as above), then surely, it does not belong in Wikipedia, even though it appeared in a reliable source and even if we wrote it as "Tucker concluded that Jensen argued . . . " If Jensen were dead, then I would have less of an objection to what I see as clearly false material. (And, again, this debate originally involved a mistaken interpretation of Tucker.) But, because Jensen is alive, we must be sure that claims in Wikipedia, even if found in a reliable source are correct. I admit that this is a subtle issue that is not currently addressed clearly by WP:BLP. In this case, the claim is "contentious" in the sense that I (and other editors) think it is clearly false. Tucker is claiming that Jensen (1969) says X when, in fact, Jensen (1969) does not say X. We are doing the contending. Now, if this were some minor issue, we would probably not care. But this is a major issue. Tucker believes that Jensen argued that all blacks should be educated differently than all whites while, in fact, Jensen argued that all low IQ students should be educated differently, regardless of race. David.Kane (talk) 20:11, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

"Well, perhaps I have been using a bad version of Jensen (1969)."--No, I'm sorry. My mistake. Some of these quotes were all from Jensen's How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement 1967 paper, not the 1969. The 1969 retains some of them word for word but not all of them and I wasn't paying close attention to the date. Jensen's words, same title - different year.

So to rewind. The issue at hand is what Jensen did say, and what Tucker did say and what this article did say. This article said, "[Jensen] also concluded[3] that some kind of eugenic intervention was needed to reduce the birthrate of those with low IQs." You then asked for quotations from Jensen like, "People with low IQ should be sterilized" or "People with low IQ should be given monetary awards to not have children." We don't need those particular quotations. Taking care now to cite Jensen 1969 alone, focus on the section "Is Our National IQ declining". Jensen goes on at length suggesting the dire consequences of factors leading to a growing proportion of low IQ births, especially in the "Negro" population due high birthrates among lower IQ, lower class blacks. Low IQ black parents have disproportionately more babies, he says. "Certain census statistics suggest that there might be forces at work which could create and widen the genetic aspect of the average difference in ability between the Negro and white populations in the United States, with the possible consequence that the improvement of educational facilities and increasing equality of opportunity will have a decreasing probability of producing equal achievement or continuing gains in the Negro population's ability to compete on equal terms." He emphasizes it further: "Is there a danger that current welfare policies, unaided by eugenic foresight, could lead to the genetic enslavement of a substantial segment of our population? The possible consequences of our failure seriously to study these questions may well be viewed by future generations as our society's greatest injustice to Negro Americans." This is obviously consistent with the claim that was made here in this article and with Tucker, the secondary source. I don't know any other way to interpret it--he clearly concludes that "eugenic foresight" should factor into the setting of welfare policy, and his concern is to improve a population's IQ levels via changes in the gene frequency. He doesn't recommend sterilization or monetary awards, but he is talking about "improving" the IQ distribution of the population genetically, and he calls it eugenics. Professor marginalia (talk) 19:29, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

Summary: You claimed that X, Y and Z were in Jensen (1969). You were wrong and wasted a lot of our time. No worries. We all make mistakes. If you want to write about Jensen (1967), that would be fine. But, right now, the dispute was about Jensen (1969). In any event, I believe that MathSci's intelligent usage of longer quotes from Jensen (1969) and less of Tucker's misleading phrasing has solved almost all of the problem. In another round or two, we should be able to put that paragraph to bed. David.Kane (talk) 20:31, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

That's one summary: Here's another. Jensen said it all...so you've wasted a lot of our time here trying to twist confusions over dates into major disputes over supposedly "controversial" claims about Jensen as per BLP policy. There is no dispute about 1969. You have posed this a BLP issue pertaining to Jensen's views, not the exact dates of his remarks. If my mistake "wasted" much of your time, apply it against the amount of time you've cost us here sending us off on a wild goose "BLP" chase rather than simply clearing up some mix-up over dates. Professor marginalia (talk) 21:38, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

Comment from Jimbo Wales on standards for attributing views to Jensen

Going forward, we should probably keep in mind this comment from Jimbo Wales.

Sorry to come in late here, but I want to agree with Off2riorob on the philosophical point here. "Contentionus claims require exceptional citations" is a concise statement, beautifully put. Now, as to this particular issue, and whether that burden of proof has been met, I don't think so, but I am not certain. I read enough of the discussion which follows to think that is almost certainly has not been met, but I applaud that people do seem to agree that in order to claim that Jenson "has recommended separate curricula for Blacks and Whites" we need it from his own words, not the synthesis and conclusion-drawing of his critics.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 21:32, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Would anyone disagree with that sentiment? David.Kane (talk) 13:58, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

Well I'm actually exchanging emails with Jimbo at the moment, so I think you should wait until that's done with. Meanwhile I have added a slightly sdifferent summary of half the statement from Joan Freeman (in gifted education); and the content of the famous "eugenic foresight" quote is summarised in many other places. So I should just wait to see how things pan out. Of course Jimbo is unaware of the long and faithful summary with as many quotes (always taken from a secondary source). I am not dead set by the way on keeping the Tucker quote. I am quite happy to break it up into two halves. But just let's wait and see for the moment. Mathsci (talk) 14:26, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

It's a red herring to pose the question here isn't it? I can't find any trace of a dispute here over the statement "Jensen recommended separate curricula for Blacks and Whites." We could do with more focus and less bluster to sort through these disputes. It's clearly adding confusion to an already challenging topic. So if you're thinking that you can conveniently apply some broadly expressed "philosophical point" to the content disputes raised in the last few days here, no. It doesn't apply. Professor marginalia (talk) 15:40, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

No. There are disputes about Jensen related points in both this article and another. Wales added his comment after both had been brought up in that thread. Read the history. In fact, a different editor complained about the lack of support for the eugenics claim that I have tried to remove from here that thread. Anyway, the main point is fairly obvious. "Contentions claims require exceptional citations" when it comes to living persons. Do you disagree with that sentiment? David.Kane (talk) 15:53, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, but that doesn't work. There is nothing "obviously" contentious about "the eugenics claim" to anyone who knows about Jensen because Jensen has been surprisingly consistent about on this for decades. That's why we need to focus exactly on the particular claims in each and every case here and it's not helpful to try and airbrush claims about him with a broad brush rationale that the topic is "contentious". Virtually everything Jensen has said in the last 40 years has been contentious. The article is about the "controversy", of which he plays a key part for the last 50 years. Professor marginalia (talk) 17:06, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

I do think Wales's comment is of marginal relevance here. Beyond which, he is just one more editor and his view doesn't carry any more weight than anyone else's (although his experience and understanding of policy is probably pretty good).

My complaint was with the initial phrasing that Jensen articulated a "need" for eugenics, which I felt implied a level of advocacy that wasn't well-sourced. The new text said that he found "the solution" in eugenics, without clearly defining the problem being solved, which I feel is also a (much weaker) implication of advocacy. I've been bold and slightly reworded. It seems pretty clear that Jensen thought eugenics could prevent what he perceived as a growing racial IQ divide; I think the new wording stands on its own and there's little of value to be gained by strengthening it to imply advocacy. Rvcx (talk) 17:23, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

That works for me. Jensen sees eugenics as a far more effective remedy than education, but he's not an "advocate" in any realpolitik sense of the word. Pro-eugenics advocates do cite Jensen's work, but he's relatively passive. In his own words, he's resigned to the fact that it's so unpopular it won't happen so it's pointless to dwell much on it. He does think there's every chance that totalitarian regimes will implement eugenics programs and he predicts that by doing so they'll "pass up" those countries or cultures that don't. Professor marginalia (talk) 17:43, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

Well, I think we are making progress. The current version is much better than what we started with. I would ask Professor marginalia to keep in mind that there is a difference between making a claim about what Jensen believes now (or believed over the course of his career) and what he "concluded" in a specific article. If you want to claim that, in a specific article Jensen said X, it is not unreasonable for I or Rvcx to ask for a citation in that article which supports that point. David.Kane (talk) 19:47, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

No, that's not quite right. We don't overrule sources. We take extra care to use good sources. If something is obviously erroneous, polemical or inconsistent, yes of course it's legitimate to look more closely. If other sources contradict it, if it's an obscure cite rather than a widely accepted source, etc., these factors also into the decision. And the claims have to be faithful to the source. But the disputes here tend too often to go round in circles like this: "The article says 'In 1969 Jensen came out with an explosive paper that claimed the moon is made of green cheese.' That's a controversial claim so we need to be sure he said it in 1969. I'm not satisfied, so I reverted it." Then we waste considerable amount of time over texts where he consistently says it from 1970-2010, but because it's a controversial claim, the secondary sources are overruled. But of course, only secondary sources are sufficient to source controversial claims (We can't go cherry picking for favorites of our own. Secondary sources are absolutely critical to source controversial claims.) There is nothing controversial about whether he said it in 1969 or 1970. That's a detail that we should take care to be as accurate as possible, but it's the green cheese that's controversial, not the date. And with sources and Jensen consistent on that very point in other years, we correct such details--we don't dispense with the controversial issue altogether. That's why we need to sharply focus and express exactly what's wrong with something in order to fix the real problem. Professor marginalia (talk) 01:36, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

Departure from material in secondary source

The summary ofJensen's article is taken from Wooldridge's book. We paraphrase that summary in the text without inserting our interpretation. Here is the text in Wooldrdge's book [http;//mathsci.free.fr/wooldridge/png]. It reads

But he felt that 'the technique for rasing intelligence per se in the sense of g, probably lie more in the province of biological sciences than in psychology or eduaction'; eugenic reform rather than compensatory educationheld out the solution to the problem of the nation's intelligence.

There is no comparative here, as would be expected in an article that started "Compensatory eduction has been tried and it has apparently failed", No need to include original research by dparting from the secondary source used. That's how wikipedia is edited. We stick to the secondary source and do not include our WP:OR. Mathsci (talk) 10:33, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

You don't seem to know what a comparative is: "more". Woodson characterizes Jensen as asserting that biology would have more of an impact on raising intelligence than psychology or education. This source doesn't support Jensen as saying "we need to change people's biology", or "changing people's biology is the solution" (without qualification for what it's the solution for); only that biology would be more effective than education in raising intelligence. Rvcx (talk) 10:41, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

Mine is n close paraphrase of the secondary source. I produced two versions, the second much closer to what wooldridge wrote. Biological sciences means here eugenics not changing people's biology. It means popuplation control. Look up eugenics and look up the book of Wooldridge - not Woodson - before making howlers like this. Thanks, Mathsci (talk) 10:50, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

Since there is such disagreement in this topic, both on the part of secondary sources and the editors of the article, it is essential, when statements are attributed to persons, that accurate quotations be given from primary sources and not from secondary sources that may be biased or slanted. Xxanthippe (talk) 11:00, 30 May 2010 (UTC).

Unfortunately the article is based on secondary sources not on the WP:OR of editors. The secondary sources do not disagree. We have a secondary source and a primary source. Rvcx think the primary source means "changing people's biology". All secondary sources (3 or 4) and the rest of Jensen's article makes it clear that he is talking about eugenics, i.e. population control. We don't interpret the primary source but we can use secondary sources to quote from primary sources if there are citations there. In particular this applies especially to controversial primary sources and Jensen's paper is certainly one such. Mathsci (talk) 11:50, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

Most of you are probably aware of this already, but for those who aren't, I think I should mention that this issue is now being discussed at AN/I. --Captain Occam (talk) 12:05, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

MathSci: 1) Would you concede that other editors might, in good faith, disagree with your interpretation of both the secondary sources and of Jensen (1969) itself? 2) Looking only at the excerpts you have kindly provided, the secondary sources do, in fact, disagree. Wooldridge makes no claim that Jensen sought to treat low IQ blacks differently than low IQ whites. In fact, the excerpt you provide implies the opposite. Tucker makes the opposite claim, hence our arguments over phrases like "particularly in the black population." Can you provide a single citation from Wooldrige which supports the claim that Jensen sought to treat all blacks, irrespective of IQ, differently from all whites? If not, then the secondary sources disagree on this fundamental point. David.Kane (talk) 12:06, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

There doesn't seem to be any confusion in the secondary sources (eg there's a detailed discussion in the 1996 summary of Tucker). I prefer Wooldridge's style: I believe he was one of he brightest historians of his generation at Oxford, very All Souls College. Are you talking about Level I and Level II learning? Are you talking about Blacks on average not having much aptitude in Level II? The statements you've written seem very extreme and not like anything in the article. Tucker doesn't say that either. Indeed Tucker is quite careful in how he refers to Jensen. And so am I. I'm not anti-Jensen at all.

It might be of some help if I can tell you my personal feelings on Jensen as an academic. As I wrote to Jimbo, I'm a frequent academic visitor to UC Berkeley friendly with many septagenerians and octogenerians in the mathematics department, I view him just like one of those. Many are slightly eccentric, all are needless to say very smart, although sometimes ailing. All deserve quiet respect. Just reading Mackintosh makes it quite clear what the contributions of Jensen have been outside this particular topic. And I suspect that he has been denied various honours that would normally have come his way, such as membership of the NAS, because of this controversy. I think in 1970 while it was happening he said to reporters, "I wish this would all just go away." Again I also feel that he has unwittingly been used by other people with political agendas, which he does not share as he has stated many times. The 1969 paper was just speculative as the secondary sources say and the furore - as the article makes clear - was amplified vastly by the turbulent spirit of the sixties. I was mildly surprised to find the 1967 article of the same name at ed.gov: that article that was only 17 pages long and probably went down without a murmur. The later longer version probably misjudged the mood of the times. But it was doubtless Shockley's campaigning at the NAS and elsewhere that threw Jensen into events that were quite alien to his personality and views. On the topic of race and intelligence, apart from the empirical analysis of IQ scores, particularly in the US, I think almost nothing is known about the underlying biological mechanisms in any way that would satisfy a scientist. There has been a lot of speculation by psychologists, some of it not perhaps quite right, but as James R. Flynn wrote in Nature, speculation even when wrong can lead to unexpected new findings. In his case I think he was talking about the Flynn effect and discovered that as a result of examining some of Jensen's ideas. Sternberg, Mackintosh and Flynn all are associated with the Cambridge Psychometrics Centre which I now realize I go past quite a number of times on Free School Lane in Cambridge. I think they occupy the old Cavendish laboratory (follow the link). I could take a look in there this week if I'm not too busy marking exams. I once was the person throwing the sheets off the balcony in the Senate House some years ago for Part III of he Math Tripos, just like this picture File:Mathmo results.jpg. (I had to wear a mortarboard,) These are just are personal views and don't really affect the writing of the article. It might also be helpful to look in the short article by Tucker on scientific racists (in the refs). He explains his own attitude to Jensen right at the end and why he does not regard him as a scientific racist. Although the underlying theme might be black and white, there's no black and white in people's views.

I hope this is of some help to you. Mathsci (talk) 13:22, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

Claims of authority or personal expertise carry no weight here, Mathsci, and they are not a way to avoid requests for accurate sourcing. If you can get an article about Jensen published in a respected venue then we can use that as a secondary source. Rvcx (talk) 15:58, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

New description of Jensen (1969) from MathSci

MathSci created [10] a new version of the section about Jensen (1969) (mostly drawn, I believe from Wooldrige) in our discussion over this issue at WP:BPLN.

In his article, 123 pages long, Jensen insisted on the accuracy and lack of bias in intelligence tests, stating that the absolute quantity g that they measured, the general intelligence factor first introduced by the English psychologist Charles Spearman in 1904, "stood like a Rock of Gibraltar in psychometrics". He stressed the importance of biological considerations in intelligence, commenting that "the belief in the almost infinite plasticity of intellect, the ostrich-like denial of biological factors in individual differences, and the slighting of the role of genetics in the study of intelligence can only hinder investigation and understanding of the conditions, processes, and limits through which the social environment influences human behavior." He argued at length that, contrary to environmentalist orthodoxy, intelligence was partly dependent on the same genetic factors that influence other physical attributes. More controversially, he briefly speculated that the difference in performance at school between blacks and whites might have a partly genetic explanation, commenting that there were "various lines of evidence, no one of which is definitive alone, but which, viewed all together, make it a not unreasonable hypothesis that genetic factors are strongly implicated in the average Negro-white intelligence difference. The preponderance of the evidence is, in my opinion, less consistent with a strictly environmental hypothesis than with a genetic hypothesis, which, of course, does not exclude the influence of environment or its interaction with genetic factors."He advocated the allocation of educational resources according to merit and insisted on the close correlation between intelligence and occupational status, arguing that "in a society that values and rewards individual talent and merit, genetic factors inevitably take on considerable importance." Concerned that the average IQ in the USA was inadequate to answer the increasing needs of an industrialised society, he predicted that people with lower IQs would become unemployable while there would be an insufficient number with higher IQs to fill professional posts. He felt that the solution lay in eugenic reform rather compensatory education surmising that "the technique for raising intelligence per se in the sense of g, probably lie more in the province of biological science than in psychology or education". He pointed out that intelligence and family size were inversely correlated, particularly amongst the black population, so that the current trend in average national intelligence was dysgenic rather than eugenic. As he wrote, "Is there a danger that current welfare policies, unaided by eugenic foresight, could lead to the genetic enslavement of a substantial segment of our population? The fuller consequences of our failure seriously to study these questions may well be judged by future generations as our society's greatest injustice to Negro Americans." He concluded by emphasizing the importance of child-centered education. Although a tradition had developed for the exclusive use of cognitive learning in schools, Jensen argued that it was not suited to "these children's genetic and cultural heritage": although capable of associative learning and memorization ("Type I" learning), they had difficulties with abstract conceptual reasoning ("Type II" learning). He felt that it in these circumstances the success of education depended on exploiting the "the actual potential learning that is latent in these children's patterns of abilities". He suggested that, in order to ensure equality of opportunity, "schools and society must provide a range and diversity of educational methods, programs and goals, and of occupational opportunities, just as wide as the range of human abilities." Later, writing about how the article came into being, Jensen said that the editors of the Review had specifically asked him to include his view on the heritability of race differences, which he had not previously published. He also maintains that only five percent of the article touched on the topic of race difference in IQ.

Kudos! This version is much better than what we have had before. My comments later. What do others think? Perhaps we can iterate to agreement on this contentious topic. David.Kane (talk) 12:12, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

Many thanks David, but, apart from being copy-pasted from the article, with ref-tabs removed and being made <snall>very small, it's identical to the present content apart from the sentence that Ncmvocalist has removed. Mathsci (talk) 13:27, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

Temporary change until further notice

As an uninvolved editor, I've removed the disputed material so that the article only says:

He felt that "the technique for raising intelligence per se in the sense of g, probably lie more in the province of biological science than in psychology or education".

I am emphasising that this is a temporary change until such a time there is (1) consensus to add something else, and (2) there is no misrepresentation of sources or any other policy violations.

During the edit-war, the version that has been used by Rcvx and Captain Occam

He felt that eugenic reform would prevent this more effectively than compensatory education, surmising that "the technique for raising.... This seems to be more accepted, but it does not match what the source says - you must provide in-line citations to reliable sources if you wish to maintain that version. Currently, the source attached at the end of the paragraph is a secondary source, but what is being written does not match what the source says, and therefore, the citation is unsatisfactory.

During the edit-war, the version that has been used by Mathsci
He felt that the solution to this problem was through eugenic reform rather than compensatory education, surmising that "the technique for raising.... This seems to match what the source says, but it does not seem to carry a consensus. Please discuss this further.

All involved parties need to make a greater effort to allign their concerns, without resorting to edit-warring, incivility, or inadequately sourced claims.

Consensus isn't going to come with any more bold edits of the article - it will come from bold suggestions on this talk page - until there is a consensus, please avoid editing about that claim on this article. I hope the consensus-supported version has additional citations to that particular claim as it has proved controversial.

Note that this temporary change is purely as an alternative to getting an admin to full protect the article for something like a week because neither side is listening (and note, there are admins who are ready to protect if it continues). Good luck to the parties! Ncmvocalist (talk) 13:17, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

I don't feel very strongly about change of Rcvx so I have restored his version. I don't want to waste any time on debating this kind of minor point. That is certainly how wikipedia is edited. However, we do stick to the secondary sources and that is how this article is edited. There are far more editors actively involved on this page, such as Professor marginalia, Slrubenstein and Maunus; I think also RegentsPark who is on wikileave. I think there have been other ediors, e.g. Slimvirgin. So what happens on a Sunday afternoon is hardly representative and certainy is not indicative of any consensus. Mathsci (talk) 13:42, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

You have not been engaging in behavior that suggests you remember how Wikipedia should be edited - the same person usually doesn't make 3 identical reverts on the same page within 24 hours if that person doesn't "feel very strongly" about something, nor do they wait until the third revert before even bothering to discuss their issue(s). At least that was resolved quickly. Ncmvocalist (talk) 14:02, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

Ncmvocalist, the reason I haven’t made more of an effort to discuss this here is because it was already discussed at length at the BLP noticeboard, and Jimbo Wales offered his opinion there about these sorts of statements regarding Jensen. As I mentioned at AN/I, even though Jimbo didn’t comment on this specific piece of content, the general principle he stated was that for a claim about what Jensen advocated to appear in a secondary source isn’t enough to it to be included in an article; Jensen needs to have stated himself that he advocated it. Since in this case (eugenics) Jensen hasn’t stated this, my two reverts were enforcing not just the existing consensus on this talk page, but also what I considered to be Jimbo Wales’ instructions about how to properly abide by BLP policy. --Captain Occam (talk) 14:17, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

Suspect claim from Jensen (1968)

I just deleted this sentence: "By 1968 Jensen's emphasis had shifted. In an article published in Disadvantaged Child he decried the "misguided and ineffective attempts to improve [the] lot" of blacks through antipoverty programs and child development programs."

Perhaps it is OK, but I have my doubts. Can anyone provide the full quotation from Jensen (1968) that supports this claim? I do not have access right now. As always, WP:BLP requires that we get this absolutely correct. David.Kane (talk) 15:31, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

I very clearly recall exhaustively satisfying your challenge to this particular passage already (see talk in archive). You initially weren't satisfied because it was cited to the 1969 paper-we cleared it up that it was quoting him from 1968. The date was corrected, it now has three cites. So now, a month later, "but I have my doubts" isn't enough to revert it with. Besides your own "intuitions", what is the source of this doubt? Why do you doubt it? Professor marginalia (talk) 16:25, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

An interesting observation is that if you put this passage into the search entry in google books:

As a social policy, avoidance of the issue could be harmful to everyone in the long run, especially to future generations of Negroes, who could suffer the most from well-meaning but misguided and ineffective attempts to improve their lot.

it is completely recognized and finds the book Disadvantage Child, edited by Jerome Hellmuth. [11] Mathsci (talk) 17:50, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

Professor marginalia: Correct. MathSci (or someone else) got this wrong before. I (and others) complained until that mistake was fixed. And it only took several hundreds words to do so! At the time, I was too tired to follow up to see if you/MathSci/others had made another mistake. Perhaps you have. Perhaps you haven't. Again, I could easily be wrong about this one, but bringing up your past mistakes is probably not your best strategy for convincing other editors. As to the Google book search, can someone confirm that the reference is correct? That is, that this sentence is from the specified article written by Jensen? (I am not denying that, I just don't see it via Google books.) Finally, once we confirm that, it sure seems to me that the sentence I deleted is a highly misleading summary of Jensen's position. But I am eager to discuss the details. David.Kane (talk) 19:01, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

Professor marginalia: I left this message [12] on your talk page. I will certainly have more faith in your claims about Jensen (1968) if you could confirm that you are quoting Jensen (1969) correctly. David.Kane (talk) 19:02, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

MathSci: I see that you have put in a long form version of the quote. I think that this is reasonable. Can you confirm that the citation is correct? I do not doubt you, but I would like to see the sentence or two before and after to ensure that we are getting accurate context. I see no need to delete the quote while we are discussing this. David.Kane (talk) 19:07, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

David.Kane, this was nobody here who made the mistake. It was a careless misuse of an "ibid" to Jensen rather than an "op cit" to Jensen in the book cited, so the 1968 Jensen rather than the 1969 was identified as the source of the quote. Good grief. It was sorted out, so can we all please dispense with the silly melodrama in here? To keep the "several hundred word" arguments to a minimum, I suggest that the absolutely uncontroversial, trivial inconsistencies stop being used as some kind of "leverage" against other editors.

And I'm sorry, but this is going too too far to try and withdraw the claim on this basis. There is absolutely no evidence to suggest that google, Tucker, Byrd and Clayton aren't reliable for this. You haven't given any. Professor marginalia (talk) 19:55, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

Professor marginalia: 1) "silly melodrama?" We have an absolute obligation to get the details about a living person correct. Please read WP:BLP for a reminder. 2) Does you silence indicate that all your "quotes" from Jensen (1969) were wrong? Admitting that mistake will go some way to re-establishing your credibility. MathSci, for one, almost never makes mistakes of that magnitude. David.Kane (talk) 20:00, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

I answered it a half hour ago. Can you please stop being deliberately confrontational? Yes, I saw your message today-and responded to it as soon as I had the free time to load up the pdfs and check it out. I have both articles saved in pdf, they have the same titles, they're both Jensen. OK? I didn't pay it any mind until your pm today because this message sent us both into a completely different direction--I didn't realize the question was still on the table. Professor marginalia (talk) 20:17, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

Where did you answer it? Apologies that I can't find it. David.Kane (talk) 20:22, 30 May 2010 (UTC) UPDATE: Never mind. I found it. Thanks for the clarification. You can now understand, I hope, why I might have displayed some frustration in arguing over this point earlier. Details do matter. David.Kane (talk) 20:25, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

Another suspect claim about Jensen (1969)

I just removed this as a potential BLP violation.

Inferring that black intelligence was different from white, he suggested that black children receive different forms of education, more suited to their needs: as she wrote, "less conceptual flights of fancy and more rote learning".

The citation is to Freeman (1980). The problem is that, no where in Jensen (1969) does Jensen "infer" that "black intelligence was different from white." He notes that average measured IQ is lower, but that is hardly the same thing. I am not sure if the mistake is in Freeman or in the interpretations we are making from Freeman. The best way to fix this is to quote directly from Jensen (1969) where he makes the same claim. (Or it could be that Freeman is referring to a different Jensen article.)

As always, I don't object to controversial claims about Jensen being included in this article. Indeed, he said all sorts of controversial things! I just insist that we are accurate about the views that we are attributing to him. WP:BLP requires nothing less. David.Kane (talk) 20:18, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

Certainly Jensen introduced level I abilities (associative) and level II abilities (cognititive) and inferred from the racial IQ gap that blacks had level I abilities but on average were not good on level II which was equivalent to what was measured by general intelligence. So this seems to have to do with your own misunderstanding of the subject. Anyway what is the relevance of your understanding it or not? Surely wikipedia doesn't rely on that. Could it not be the case that her summary was accurate (even if a simplication), but you don't personally have enough expertise to evaluate it? You find an easier explanation to be that the author is lying. But you've said this about four people - Tucker, Campbell, Wooldridge, Freeman. Isn't this argument wearing a little thin by now?

Going back to this case, on what grounds would a professor of gifted education be maliciously inclined towards an expert in psychometrics? The researchers in this subject welcomed Jensen's work. Why are you claiming on wikipedia that Joan Freeman was misrepresenting Jensen in her book published by Springer-Verlag, one of the biggest and prestigious academic publishers in the world. Indeed it's clear that her summary of Jensen's Level I /Level II theory is accurate (from reading Mackintosh's book and Wooldridge's summary). Are you saying this lady was lying and that her publishers knowingly published her lies? Please could you explain why you are implicitly making these kinds of statements about a living person like Joan Freeman on wikipedia? She looks completely reasonable to me [13]. Mathsci (talk) 22:48, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

MathSci: Could you clarify where this phrase comes from? "Inferring that black intelligence was different from white, he suggested that black children receive different forms of education" This does not seem to be quote from Freeman. I assume it is your paraphrase. Can you provide a copy of the page, as you have helpfully done in the past? Again, we need to be very careful about the claims that we make about Jensen's opinions. We have made several mistakes about this in the past, for example, attributing views to Jensen (1969) that we now all agree were not there. I would like to avoid similar mistakes in the future. I am not asserting (yet) that this passage is wrong. WP:BLP just requires us to take special care. David.Kane (talk) 03:08, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

MathSci: Once again, your behavior is problematic. Instead of discussing this thoroughly on the talk page, you insist in edit warring and inserting your desired material. WP:BLP expressly forbids this. We need to come to some consensus here first, and then we can insert material. I am deleting the problematic passage again. Please discuss it here fully before adding it back. David.Kane (talk) 03:43, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

In order to solicit the views of uninvolved editors, I have brought this issue to WP:BLPN. Comments from all are welcome, but let us try to keep the discussion focused. What precise quotes in Jensen (1969) justify Freeman's claim? (Or feel free to argue that we have no business examining her claim and should just quote her correctly.) David.Kane (talk) 04:07, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

I added the full sentence which wou again reverted. Here is the whole passage from this Springer Verlag book:[14]

Jensen matched black and white chidren for socio-economic level and measured their IQs. He found that the black children's IQs covered the whole range, but that their average IQ was about 15 points lower than that of the matched white children. He interpreted this as meaning that black intelligence was different from white intelligence and so could not be measured on the same tests. He proposed that different forms of education, more appropriate to their kind of intelligence, should be given to black children. There would be less conceptual flights of fancy and more rote learning for them.

You have been reported at WP:ANI now. Mathsci (talk) 08:21, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

Freeman's summary of Jensen's work is cited to the 1972 Genetics and Education by Arthur Jensen, not the 1969 paper alone. The 1972 book is Jensen's much more "in depth" exposition on his work including the conclusions he came to for the HER paper and others. Whether or not Freeman's remark was meant to apply to the 1969 HER paper in particular, I can't say. What I can say is that her analysis of Jensen's conclusions in the book are consistent with many other sources, including Yehudi Webster's Against the Multicultural Agenda published in 1997. It reads, "In 'empirical' substantiation, Jensen carried out a series of tests on black and white students and concluded that black intelligence was congenitally inferior to that of whites, and that this partly explains unequal educational achievements. He argued further that, because a certain level of underachievement was due to the inferior genetic attributes of blacks, compensatory and enrichment programs are bound to be ineffective in closing the racial gap in educational achievements." Webster is not a harsh critic of Jensen; I'd characterize him as agreeing with Jensen in overall principle teaching "everyone the same" is a failed idea, but argues "blacks" and "whites" are meaningless "genetic" categories. The quibbling over whether or not Freeman said Jensen's conclusions were made explicitly in the 1969 paper is irrelevant. The fact is that this was not a novel interpretation of Jensen's conclusion in the paper at all, whether or not it was explicit in any particular quote. Jensen's later 1972 book elaborated at much greater length on the paper and his own conclusions on the matter, and there is general agreement that the book underscored this conclusion rather than backing away from it. In the edit reverted here, Freeman's opinion was attributed to her. And again, whether or not the 1969 paper is sufficient evidence for the claim all by itself, Jensen continued to beat that drum in his own 1972 book explaining his work. So modify the claim if necessary to the 1972 book rather than the 1969 paper, and carry on. Again, this is all easily sorted out as misplaced or inordinate reliance on the 1969 HER paper. Jensen has a wide body of work on this topic, including much, much more published within this same general time frame. Jensen's HER paper was his most infamous, but his extensive body of work that continued along these lines all play a part in the race/intelligence controversy too. It doesn't have a clean beginning or end at 1969. Professor marginalia (talk) 17:06, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

Great work, Professor. BLP does not require us to protect people. It requires us to be scrupulous about sources, and your research helps us. This is the kind of constructive input we need. David Kane's is not at all constructive, and not well-informed. Slrubenstein | Talk 18:06, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

I have included the material from Yehudi Webster, since you two were in agreement. Mathsci (talk) 15:44, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

"BLP does not require us to protect people." It appears that you have not read WP:BLP: "the possibility of harm to living subjects must always be considered" Also: "Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced—whether the material is negative, positive, neutral, or just questionable—should be removed immediately and without waiting for discussion." That is what I have been doing and will continue to do. (Reasonable editors may, of course, disagree over what "poorly sourced" means in this context, but I am happy to have such discussions on the Talk page. Until such issues are resolved, the material will not go in the article. David.Kane (talk) 02:19, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

"Freeman's summary of Jensen's work is cited to the 1972 Genetics and Education by Arthur Jensen, not the 1969 paper alone." In other words, the article, prior to my edit, was wrong. It incorrectly suggested (and still suggests?) that Freeman was describing Jensen (1969) when, in fact, she was describing Jensen (1972). I will delete the section until someone can confirm where it belongs. Again, I don't have a problem with quoting Freeman per se. I just object to inaccurate descriptions. WP:BLP requires us to get these details correct before adding material to the article. David.Kane (talk) 02:06, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

I see that the Freeman claim is no longer there. Good stuff. I just removed material from Ornstein (1982), which I have not read. 1) I could imagine including it, but we should discuss at Talk first. 2) Is a copy easily available? 3) Given that we all agree that Loelhin is high quality, why not just use their summary. Having two summaries is WP:UNDUE, don't you think? 4) The summary attributed to Ornstein was faulty. I don't know if this was Ornstein's fault or MathSci's. Jensen (1969) did not advocate treating all blacks the same. He advocated treating all low IQ students them, whatever their race. David.Kane (talk) 02:16, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

David dot kane

Please do not abuse BLP to edit war. BLP insists that any controversial claim about a living person e properly sourced. That is precisely what mathSci has been doing. You just accused him of misrepresenting a source ("I didn't see it") when in fact the source says just what mathSci claims. This can mean lonly one of two things: either you are a vindictive edit-warrior, or you do not read sources. Please clarify. Slrubenstein | Talk 12:36, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

I would like to see more care taken before reverts as well. I don't see much effort put to reading the sources cited before challenging them - nothing except the HER primary source is paid much due. Tucker is reverted before Tucker is consulted, Freeman is reverted before Freeman is consulted, etc. The 1968 cite is especially troubling--was reverted prior to reviewing Tucker, then reverted again after two more, a second secondary source and the primary Jensen 1968 were cited. It was reverted before even consulting the 1968 used to justify the revert.?. I think the role of a wikipedia editor needs to be spelled out a little better. We rely on secondary sources here-including in BLPs. There is no default position that a secondary sources aren't enough in a BLP. The relevant policy outlines the following:

• All quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged must be attributed to a reliable, published source using an inline citation- - these citations have all come from reliable published sources
• Remove immediately any contentious material about a living person that is unsourced or poorly sourced-hasn't applied here - those I've witnessed have been reliably sourced
• Avoid gossip and feedback loops-doesn't apply here
• Misuse of primary sources - this has arguably occurred in some cases, although in the other direction. There is an over-reliance on an editor's interpretation of a primary source to overrule the reliably published secondary citations-highly irregular practice at wikipedia. So highly irregular, in fact, that cited claims have been reverted for no other basis than that an editor claims be have been unable to personally consult the primary source!
• Avoid self-published sources doesn't apply to these disputes
• Using the subject as a self-published source doesn't apply
• Questionable sources and external links The only arguably applicable "questionable source" issue to consider here is the "neutrality" question. Its guideline reads that the text "fairly representing all majority and significant-minority viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in rough proportion to the prominence of each view. Tiny-minority views need not be included, except in articles devoted to them. Where there is disagreement between sources, their views should be clearly attributed in the text: 'John Smith argues that X, while Paul Jones maintains that Y,' followed by an inline citation." I think it's safe to say that few relevant references can be described as completely "neutral" towards Jensen, but there's no two ways around it, the "majority" can be thought of as "opponents" to his claims. The majority of authorities in the field do not support his views, but they aren't the "fringe"--he is. And as in the case of Freeman, the claims about Jensen are not only representative of the majority "side" expressed and cited, but also attributed to the author by name are still reverted. So either these reverts are made due to a poor understanding of these policies or from trying to game a dispute with them.

I've watched as the "policy" rationales offered to justify a revert of a single claim about Jensen continuously evolve-as soon as one policy objection is satisfied, another one gets raised, one after another. The BLP is just the most recent. Professor marginalia (talk) 18:16, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

Those making these reverts aren't giving any detailed justification at all. I agree that it looks as if they're not even bothering to consult the secondary sources. But surely if they challenge edits they must look carefully at the secondary sources.Tthe removal of one sentence from what's in a secondary source is inconsistent with the BLP policy above. Either the source is reliable, and so everything in it is correct, or it is unreliable, so that everything in it is suspect. Certainly the material that has been removed so far has come from impeccable sources, so the BLP policy seems to have been incorrectly applied in every case so far. Mathsci (talk) 19:28, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

It depends on the meaning of "poorly sourced" in WP:BLP. In just these discussions, we have seen examples of two kinds of poor sourcing. First, Wikipedia editors have misinterpreted reliable sources. The most common mistake has been attributing material as reactions to, and summaries of, Jensen (1969) when, in truth, the material/opinions has been about other Jensen work. Second, authors of (presumably) reliable sources have attributed opinions to Jensen (1969) that are, in fact, not there. How to handle that is a tricky issues. Jimbo Wales [15] thinks:

Sorry to come in late here, but I want to agree with Off2riorob on the philosophical point here. "Contentionus claims require exceptional citations" is a concise statement, beautifully put. Now, as to this particular issue, and whether that burden of proof has been met, I don't think so, but I am not certain. I read enough of the discussion which follows to think that is almost certainly has not been met, but I applaud that people do seem to agree that in order to claim that Jenson "has recommended separate curricula for Blacks and Whites" we need it from his own words, not the synthesis and conclusion-drawing of his critics. --Jimbo Wales (talk) 21:32, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Obviously, just because Wales says X does not mean that X is true or that X is Wikipedia policy, but it would be nice if MathSci, Professor marginalia and Slrubenstein were to admit that experienced (!) Wikipedia administrators like Wales share my careful approach to these issues. If you don't think that WP:BLP requires just this sort of care, then I think you need to re-read WP:BLP. Question: Why do you think that Wales agreed with me in this case? David.Kane (talk) 02:38, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Since you claim to have Jimbo Wales agreement on this please persuade him to come here to participate in the dispute over claims and references properly. You seem to feel that you have been given license to act as his proxy in support of any revert you make here, and that's not a persuasive argument to me anyway. I will repeat this again because it's not getting through--catching a 1968 cite misidentified as 1969 in a footnoted citation is not related in any significant way to what makes Jensen or claims about him "controversial". Stop rationalizing to yourself that you can use this kind of thing as a BLP-portkey that you can whip out of your pocket to eject any and all claims from the article at your will. It's undermining of your own argument if you continue to play games that way. Professor marginalia (talk) 04:01, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Quoting a subsequent comment from David.Kane in the preceding section, "I just removed material from Ornstein (1982), which I have not read." This is what I'm talking about. Professor marginalia (talk) 04:25, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Issues with Ornstein (1982) reference

I have some issues with this reference [16] to Ornstein (1982). Following WP:BLP, it should be kept out of the article until we can resolve those issues on the Talk page. 1) Is that a fair summary of Ornstein (1982)? I have my doubts since it is inconsistent with Jensen (1969). 2) To the extent that Ornstein actually wrote that, it is problematic for the same reason. 3) Regardless of 1) and 2), this is certainly WP:UNDUE because we already have a summary of Jensen (1969), both as written by us and as directly from Loehlin et al (1975), which we all agree is an excellent source. In any event, I would be interested to read opinions from others on this topic, which I view as a difficult case. David.Kane (talk) 02:48, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

David Kane, you have reverted for no good reason. 1) Take the time to check the reference yourself. Until you do, assume good faith. If you can show the article doesn't reflect the source, then you may have an argument. Right now, you don't. Yworo (talk) 04:05, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Until someone demonstrates otherwise, I think we can probably assume that Ornstein wrote this, but I agree with David.Kane's other points. We've already agreed that Loehlin is a good and neutral source to use about this, so it shouldn't be necessary to add additional sources that disagree both with Loehlin and with Jensen's paper itself. --Captain Occam (talk) 04:33, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

No, three lines on a 123 page paper is inadequate. When there are multiple possible summaries in the literature, we try to represent them properly on wikipedia. Both of you are edit warring in a disruptive and tendentious way, in this case to remove material written by an expert in administration of education. This is the normal way both of you seem to edit: not by adding content carefully from reliable sources, or even by carefully discussing and evaluating those sources, but just as vindictive edit warriors (see Slrubenstein's remarks above). Please see the discussion at WP:ANI. Mathsci (talk) 07:41, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Just a quick reminder about how wikipedia articles are edited. We find reliable secondary sources, choose the significant ones and report what they say. The summary in Loehlin et al talks is about the aims rather than the conclusions: these are different thing. Multiple other sources - from academic textbooks by major publishers (not books in popular science) and peer-reviewed papers in the top journals in educational psychology - have longer summaries which say different things. There does seems to be general agreement, however, conforming with what Ornstein wrote. None of these accounts are BLP violations: when cited on wikipedia, we accurate credit these statements to the summariser to indicate that it is his or her reading of the article. The claim that these statements are libellous is frivolous and without merit. Mathsci (talk) 08:15, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Yworo: MathSci has kindly quoted the source directly. It is inconsistent with Jensen (1969). That is the problem. Even though it is true that Ornstein claims X about Jensen (1969), we should not include X in Wikipedia unless X is true. David.Kane (talk) 11:34, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

MathSci: 1) Thanks for changing the material to a direct quote of Ornstein (1982). I think that this helps matters. 2) If you have time, would you mind making available a copy of the page(s) you are quoting from, as you have helpfully done in the past with other references. I think that many uninvolved editors will soon become involved in this dispute, so it would be handy to show them the exact quote in context. (I don't doubt that you have fairly presented the material, I just want to ensure that other editors are fully informed. 3) WP:BLP is quite strict in this regard: "Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced—whether the material is negative, positive, neutral, or just questionable—should be removed immediately and without waiting for discussion." and "The burden of evidence for any edit on Wikipedia rests with the person who adds or restores material." Captain Occam and I have both expressed doubt about this material. We need to have a thorough discussion here, and reach consensus, before it can be re-added. 4) The main problem with these edits is that Ornstein is asserting something about Jensen (1969) that does not, in fact, exist in Jensen (1969). No where does Jensen argue that all blacks should be treated differently than all whites. That claim about Jensen is, potentially, libelous. Jensen argues that low IQ students should be taught differently than high IQ students. Thanks for your help. David.Kane (talk) 11:33, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

These bad-faith allegations of BLP violations have to stop. There is no BLP issue here. If you wish to make an edit to the article, propose it on the talk page, but your consistant white-washing is making your external adgenda quite clear. Hipocrite (talk) 12:33, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

What do you believe my "external adgenda" is? David.Kane (talk) 13:10, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Not falling for it. Hipocrite (talk) 13:12, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Summarzing the state of play

Let me sum up -

All of the secondary sources say Jensen said something.

My reading of Jensens' work says he said something.

Your reading of Jensens' work says he didn't say something.

The article reflects that Jensen didn't say something.

Is that about accurate? Hipocrite (talk) 13:38, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Hipocrite: No. That is not accurate at all. Have you read all the prior discussions? We have had a series of disputes about various claims made about Jensen, both by author authors and by Wikipedia editors interpreting those other sources and Jensen himself. On at least a couple of occasions, the complaints made by me (and others) have proven to be correct and no one has disputed that. (Details available on request.) On other occasions, after discussion, I (and others) have come to agree with the edits that MathSci (and others) have made. Indeed, his major paragraph about Jensen (1969) is (almost) perfect. Now, other claims that I (and others) have made have been (and are being) disputed. And that is what Wikipedia talk pages are for! WP:BLP simply requires, and there is no getting around this, that consensus be reached before such material can appear in the article. David.Kane (talk) 13:46, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Details requested. Hipocrite (talk) 14:00, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Let's see - one of the scores of SPA's say Jensen never said the things Orenstein said he said. I find quotes of him saying the things Orenstein said he said, and I include them. The SPA reverts out (without comment on this talk page) stating "material has been removed because Jensen didn't write it," except the quotes I found from Jensen were him writing it. Why are you all not blocked, again? Hipocrite (talk) 14:18, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Can Hipocrite identify where Jensen said this:

Conversely, blacks and 'disadvantaged' children tend to do well in tasks involving rote learning — memorizing mainly through repetition; these aptitudes can be used to help raise their scholastic achievement up to a point. mikemikev (talk) 14:38, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

"Level I ability ("Associative learning ability," which "lower-class children, whether white, Negro, or Mexican-American, perform as well on") is tapped mostly by tests such as ... serial rote learning" and "I am reasonably convinced that all the basic scholastic skills can be learned by children with normal Level I learning ability, provided the instructional techniques do not make g (i.e., Level II) the sine qua non of being able to learn. Educational researchers must discover and devise teaching methods that capitalize on existing abilities for the acquisition of those basic skills which students will need in order to get good jobs when they leave school." Hipocrite (talk) 14:49, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

But the material you added refers to "blacks", all blacks. Jensen doesn't, actually he's very clear about that. mikemikev (talk) 14:57, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

The material I added is sourced to a reliable secondary source. If you have a direct quote of Jensen saying he's not refering to all blacks, I will happily add it. Please provide that quote, thanks. Hipocrite (talk) 14:59, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Here’s one quote where he says this, from page 180 of Intelligence, Race and Genetics: Conversations with Arthur R. Jensen:

"I favor any measures that would maximize free choice. It won’t lead to either complete segregation or complete racial balance. I have repeatedly emphasized, particularly in talks before educational organizations and in a recent publication, that quality education does not mean the very same program of instruction for every child, but equal opportunity for all children to receive a specific program tailored to their individual differences in general ability and in special aptitudes. I especially stress the words individual differences to emphasize that these differences cut across all racial, ethnic, and social class groups." (Emphasis in original.) --Captain Occam (talk) 15:48, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

That's nice, but it dosent in any way say that he's not refering to all blacks. It does make it clear that he is refering to more than just blacks, but it in no way makes it clear he's not refering to all blacks as being Level I ability. Please cite a source that says what you say it says, as opposed to torturning some other source into saying what you hope it says. Hipocrite (talk) 15:51, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Um, how does the quote I provided not demonstrate this? He’s stating that education should be based on individual differences in mental ability, that there are people at all levels of mental ability in all races and classes, and that this is why he especially stresses the word “individual”. I don’t think this can be much clearer than it is.

You made a reasonable request by asking for a quote in which Jensen explains this, so I provided one. But if you’re going to just be stonewalling about this now, I’m done trying to explain it to you. There’s obviously no consensus for this material at the moment, and you’ll need to at least make an effort at being reasonable if you want to build one for it. --Captain Occam (talk) 16:01, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

It appears clear that we are all in agreement, then - Jensen agrees that people are of differing abilities, but also states that disadvantaged people, including more than the fair share of blacks, are Level I vs Level II. Is that correct? Hipocrite (talk) 16:06, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

It depends on what you mean by “disadvantaged people”. Jensen thinks that people with below-average IQs are over-represented among blacks, and this opinion is shared by people who favor a 100%-environmental explanation for the IQ gap such as Neisser and Flynn; and Jensen also thinks that people with IQs below a certain level will benefit more from rote learning than from other educational methods. This isn’t the same as him advocating rote learning for blacks in general, as is stated by the wording you’ve been adding. The current article already provides a perfectly adequate explanation of Jensen’s actual opinion about this, so there’s no need to change this aspect of it. --Captain Occam (talk) 16:24, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Agreement is possible!

I just want to point out that MathSci's recent edit [17], quoting Jencks on Jensen is perfectly fine because Jencks describes Jensen's views correctly. This is a fine edit and makes the article better. Indeed, the entire section related to Jensen (1969) seems quite good to me. (Of course, it could always be made better.) I congratulate MathSci on an excellent job. (I think that he deserves credit for the lionshare of the work on the article.) I have some minor, minor quibbles with phrases like "these children" --- not clear what "these" means in this context --- and one or two other items, but, big picture, the material is an excellent overview of Jensen (1969). David.Kane (talk) 17:59, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Webster revert

Nothing more to say about Webster than my edit summary. This is what needs to be said. This article is not about Jensen. It is not a trial over what he "really" meant by what when. It is about the history of societal and academic controversies over race and intelligence. And how do you write an article about the controversy if you are going to pretend the key figures embroiled in it such as Arthur Jensen didn't provoke any controversy? It's not our role to resolve the controversy, we're here to describe it. So to review Jensen's part: Jensen's 1969 paper exploded in controversy-there were widespread protests, he became essentially an untouchable even in academia over it. Why? Come on! Why is because most people who read it thought it suggested blacks didn't do as well in school as whites because they inherited genes giving them significantly lower IQs than whites, and there's no way to raise it. It was interpreted to say their low IQs can't be raised through better education or improvements to their environment via social programs. That's why Jensen became an extremely provocative figure in race and intelligence controversy, why there were widespread protests against him, and why he became a something of a pariah. It's historic revisionism to pretend he wasn't criticized for this reason, or that this criticism was a completely manufactured hoax spread by fringy conspiracy kooks! That's what happened, right? So how is this article going to tell the story without including any of the key arguments traded in it? Professor marginalia (talk) 21:53, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Talking to myself, apparently, but take a look other articles at wikipedia such as these:

• Jeremiah_Wright_controversy#Media
• Obama_birth_certificate#Claims_that_Obama_was_not_born_in_Hawaii
• Michael_Savage_(commentator)
• Madoff investment scandal

They include quotations representative of the "controversy" the article is addressing and any lack of "neutrality" is no barrier against them even when it's unflattering to a living person. OKAY? Gotta get this straight--we have to be neutral in as accurately representing the controversy as it occurred. It is not even permitted for us at wikipedia to create a whole different narrative of the controversy to make life more fair to the people who were involved in them. We don't change history, we don't "pretty" it up, we don't sensationalize it either. Professor marginalia (talk) 22:20, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

When you reverted this, you said in your edit summary “there is no blp rule that all quoted sources are ‘NPOV’”. So it sounds like you’re acknowledging that a quote which refers to Jensen believing in “the inferior genetic attributes of blacks” is not taking an NPOV perspective about this. Right? And you also agree that neutrality is of primary importance in an article about a living figure, right?

Other than the quote from the APA’s report Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns, this quote from Webster is the longest quote in the entire article. It’s also one of the most strongly anti-Jensen quotes in the article, and is at odds with both what Jensen said in his own paper and the secondary sources that we’ve agreed are neutral such as Loehlin. Now, if our goal is to make the article as neutral as possible, are the views that we want to give the most space the ones that take the most strongly anti-Jensen view? Or should the views that we give the most space the ones that we agree are fairly neutral, such as Loehlin and the APA?

That’s a rhetorical question. This is the reason why I reverted this addition to the article, and I suspect it’s why David.Kane reverted it also. If you want this quote to stay in the article, you’ll need to explain how it’s acceptable to give the most space to the sources that are the least neutral. --Captain Occam (talk) 22:30, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

This page has overstuffed with enough of this childishness already so don't put words in my mouth and grandstand with "rhetorical questions". There is no such rule, so don't use the nonexistent rule when reverting. Are we clear? I would also highly recommend you and David.Kane stop tag teaming. Are you acting as his spokesman here?

So now it's WP:NPOV. Not WP:BLP. Inconveniently, there is no "revert on sight" provision in NPOV. So no there is no urgency to revert the content before discussing it. If you think there is undue balance for one side than the other, start a new section and propose how you think to improve it in terms of the overall scope discussing the 1969 paper, or all Jensen's work that relates. It can't be accomplished by arbitrarily and imperiously "vetoing" references and claims on an WP:IDONTLIKEIT basis. Professor marginalia (talk) 23:41, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

If you actually read WP:BLP, you’ll see that the rule I’m referring to is part of it. Specifically, it’s this: Do not give disproportionate space to particular viewpoints; the views of tiny minorities should not be included at all. Care must be taken with article structure to ensure the overall presentation and section headings are broadly neutral.

You asked why David.Kane and I had both reverted this material, so I’m explaining it. I’m only acting as a spokesman for myself, although I suspect that his reasons are similar to mine. Since the two sentences I quoted are part of WP:BLP, and the rule for possible BLP violations is to revert on sight, everything I’ve done is an application of this policy.

I’ve explained why I think this material isn’t consistent with this portion of BLP policy. If you think it is, then it’s now your job to explain why that’s the case. If you can’t, then it’ll need to be removed. This is no different from every other possible BLP violation we’ve discussed here. --Captain Occam (talk) 00:20, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, well I have read it, many times, but thanks for the advice. Webster isn't fringe.. He's a sociologist, working right there in the thick of race and multicultural issues in society, written many books on it, and this particular book, as I said, has been cited many, many times. Fringe, at wikipedia, has very specific definition. Fringe, he's not. Nor is his opinion. It was shared by many, and that's why Jensen became such a lightening rod. Professor marginalia (talk) 00:50, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

I wasn’t claiming that Webster is fringe. My point is merely that if we’re seeking to describe Jensen neutrally, and to not provide disproportionate space to any viewpoint about him, providing more space to one of his most vociferous critics than we do to any other perspective about him is not the way to do it.

I actually don’t have a problem with Webster’s perspective about this being mentioned, but I think the current lengthy quote from him ought to be condensed into something that’s not longer than a sentence or so. Would you consider that an acceptable compromise? --Captain Occam (talk) 01:05, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

(ec) This doesn't in this case seem to be "the view of a tiny minority". A number of uninvolved academics from various parts of the social sciences gave their dispassionate readings of this article, which has been described as long, discursive and written in a hurry (Lee Cronbach explained why in 1975). Jensen's theory of Level I/Level II abilities (associative/cognitive) is described in numerous secondary sources and appears in the article. As many commentators write, Jensen points out that although blacks and whites perform equally well in Level I skills, blacks perform less well in Level II skills, which are the cognitive skills measured by IQ tests. Jensen suggests that it would be more reasonable to teach those with less aptitude in Level II skills, using primarily their Level I skills, i.e. by rote memorization rather than through learning abstract concepts. This is what almost all of the multiple sources so far have written. It is not a BLP violation, nor are those commenting a minority. They don't consitute a tightly formed group of conspirators. These are academic writers, often writing in a less speculative and more dispassionate way than Jensen himself. Several of the accounts occur in standard textbooks. The article of Jensen, as he himself remarked later in 1998, was not in any sense in a final state. It was speculative and he later changed his mind on several points. His academic reputation does not rest on this paper; it is on the other hand the historical document that, in a highly volatile politicalclimate of unrest and struggle, sparked a possibly disproprotionate reaction. That is made rather clear in the article (one reason the FBI picture is there, an FBI picture of the "weathermen" was the only choice because of WP copyright rules). In this case writers are assessing Jensen's article as a historical document. Their readings are therefore extremely important to provide context for why it created an uproar. That of course is slightly ambiguous (as Cronbach relates) and that is reflected in the WP article. If Jensen's article, even in just a few places, contained reasoning which as it happened was construed in a negative way, whether that was intended or not, we cannot suggest to readers of the WP article that that interpretation has not been suggested. In the article the comments are ascribed to particular authors. Mathsci (talk) 01:21, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Before Professor marginalia paraphrases and shortens Webster's comments in the article, which of course I completely agree should be done, it would be helpful if Mikemikev and David.Kane could give some assurance that they would cease removing properly sourced material from the article. That would be a very positive step forward. Thanks, Mathsci (talk) 01:39, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

I am happy to confirm that I will not revert correctly sourced and accurate material. For example, you added a quote [18] from Jencks. Neither I nor anyone else removed it. Why would that be if your view --- that we remove all material critical of Jensen or describing his position --- were accurate? Why do you think we have not removed that quote? Simple: Jencks describes Jensen's views accurately, just as Loehlin et al do. Correct descriptions of Jensen's views will stay. WP:BLP requires us to remove and discuss (potentially) inaccurate descriptions. David.Kane (talk) 01:59, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Above, Professor Marginalia wrote:

So to review Jensen's part: Jensen's 1969 paper exploded in controversy-there were widespread protests, he became essentially an untouchable even in academia over it. Why? Come on! Why is because most people who read it thought it suggested blacks didn't do as well in school as whites because they inherited genes giving them significantly lower IQs than whites, and there's no way to raise it. It was interpreted to say their low IQs can't be raised through better education or improvements to their environment via social programs. That's why Jensen became an extremely provocative figure in race and intelligence controversy, why there were widespread protests against him, and why he became a something of a pariah.

I agree with all this! This is a reasonable summary of what happened. I think that the current article describes it well. I am not against adding more detail. (Although if the section devoted to Jensen (1969) gets any longer, we will need to break it off as its own article.) I simply insist on removing (and then discussing) material which, at first glance, is not accurate. The key issue seems to be claims from various folks that Jensen sought to treat all black children differently from all white children. He never wrote this. This is a much more extreme (and objectionable position) then his views on IQ differences and their genetic causes.

Professor Marginalia: In all honesty, I think that I have failed to make my position clear to you. I am in favor of detailed discussion of Jensen's views on IQ differences and their genetic cause. He really did write all those things. But WP:BLP requires that we only include accurate descriptions of his views. David.Kane (talk) 02:09, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

No wikipedian can judge whether something is a "correct version of Jensen's views" or an "accurate decription of his views". The article concerns a historical document, written in 1969. Commentators point out that Jensen changed his mind on parts of the paper subsequently. As far as the history is concerned, the WP article relies on what secondary sources say, not second-guessing by wikipedians. That is just WP:OR.

Captain Occam has said that he is happy with content in the segment from Webster. Is this also your view now? Mathsci (talk) 02:26, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Only verifiable quotes from the subject himself are acceptable in such a controversal article about a living person. Xxanthippe (talk) 02:36, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

What you say doesn't seem to be correct. A not particularly complimentary quote from the biography by Anthony Seldon has been used in the article an John Major. That is permissible. And that would apply to almost anything in the book, provided it was not WP:UNDUE. This is not a controversial article at all: it's a neutral article. The events in history might have been controversial, but that is an entirely different matter. The article is certainly not about just one person: it is a small part of of the history of psychology, which involves many people, several of whom like Richard Lewontin and Leon Kamin are still living. Mathsci (talk)

I don't have much time to devote to this at the moment. But to XXanthippe, I don't know where you got that idea but it's not at all the BLP policy position. Nothing of the kind. And to David.Kane, I believe you're interpreting claims here as saying all black or all white when that wasn't what the claim said, or the secondary source said. Jensen didn't say they should be strictly segregated by race, but legitimized segregation was widely interpreted to be the outcome of such a recommendation given Jensen's own assertion that the average black has an IQ requiring a very different kind of education than the average white. In other words, the separate education would be the norm, not the exception? Get it? But this is what I've tried to explain many times--our job isn't to judge who did or didn't interpret Jensen's work properly. Our job is to accurately describe how these notable, published figures, academics, and other parties to the dispute did. We need to accurately describe how Jensen describes his own work. We need to accurately describe how his critics interpreted it. That's what we do. At no point do we nobodies at wikipedia step in to the fray and presume to judge the validity of those interpretations based on our own interpretation of the primary text itself. See? Professor marginalia (talk) 03:47, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

I agree with your last five sentences. The difficulty is that some people in this debate are not following their import. If this were a debate that had taken place in the nineteenth century, historians would have had time to absorb and assess all the evidence and all the participants would be dead. But this controversy is going on at present and most of the participants are very much alive. It is essential, on BLP grounds, that all the living participants are given fair treatment. Wikipedia must state explicitly what protagonists actually said as well as what cherry-picked commentators allege that they said. There are so many unreliable and biased secondary sources here that excruciating care must be taken to be fair. Xxanthippe (talk) 09:39, 2 June 2010 (UTC).

Xxanthippe wrote, "Only verifiable quotes from the subject himself are acceptable in such a controversal article about a living person." Not true. perhaps it would be better if this discussion were left to people who understand our BLP policy, or are willing to honor it. Slrubenstein | Talk 10:31, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Since Mathsci has agreed with me that it's reasonable to condense the Webster material, I've gone ahead and done that now. I've also included a passage from Flynn (1980) in order to help balance it. Mathsci has stated that he considers Flynn one of the leading authorities on psychometrics, so hopefully including his view about this won't be contentious either. --Captain Occam (talk) 11:20, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

@Xxanthippe: Most of the episodes I've watched battled over here are decades old..Jensen, an octogenarian, is one of the few of the most notable participants reacting to his paper who is even still alive, and that debate is more than 50 years old now. I would like someone here to list out the supposedly "unreliable" and "biased" secondary sources allegedly filling the section, because what I've seen happen over and over and over again is the sources have been rejected out of hand by editors who didn't look at them, don't know anything about the qualifications of the author, but simply based on the editor's personal disagreement with the claim itself. In other words, the standard used here for calling a text "biased" or "unreliable" is not the authority, or lack of, to the published source. Instead, editors are judging the claim as "true" or not based on their own personal opinion of Jensen and pronouncing sources "biased" or "unreliable" if they don't conform to it. In other words, the inexpert wikipedian has appointed himself the judge of what's a "true" interpretation or conclusion to come to from a primary source. And that's completely backwards--in fact that's exactly what editors cannot do per WP:NPOV and WP:OR. Professor marginalia (talk) 16:39, 2 June 2010 (UTC)