Talk:Race, Evolution, and Behavior

Revert by Maunus, 12/31/15

Can you explain what is wrong with those edits [1]? Sombe19 (talk) 18:53, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

Given that two editors have reverted your proposed addition, the onus is on you to explain why it shouldbe included.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 22:09, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

Where is the Wikipedia policy that states that? Sombe19 (talk) 23:25, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

Try these: WP:CONSENSUS and WP:BRD.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 23:33, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

I'm still not seeing it. But I will answer your question.

"Rushton argues that "Mongoloids", "Caucasoids", and "Negroids" fall consistently into the same one-two-three pattern when compared on a list of sixty distinct different behavioral and anatomical variables, ranging from IQ and brain size, to temperament, speed of maturation, criminality (see also race and crime), social organization, reproductive effort, and various anthropometric variables."

This is useful information that is not found anywhere else in the article.

"... Richard Lynn, who stated that "[the book] should, if there is any justice, receive a Nobel Prize". [2]"

This is a very notable quote by Richard Lynn. More notable than Richard Valencia in my opinion. Sombe19 (talk) 17:21, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

The Lynn quote is so absurd that it is laughable. Rushton did not work in a field that is represented among the Nobel prizes. His work was almost universally decried by peers as sub-standard scientific quality and as tainted by a sick ideology. Lynn was a close personal friend of Rushton and has received large sums of funding from the Pioneer foundation which Rushton managed. Really his praise of Rushton is totally irrelevant and including it would be misleading to the reader. I do think more of Rushton's argument could be included in the article (not necessarily in the form you suggest), but including this has proven not to have consensus among the editors in the past.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 18:28, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

Consensus can change. There apparently hasn't been any significant discussion about the content of this article since December 2011, so I don't think we should be constrained by whatever the consensus was four years ago. I also support including more details of Rushton's argument, so at the moment that's three people in favor. I think you (Maunus) should go ahead and add it, in a form that's acceptable to you. 103.47.145.178 (talk) 22:04, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

Not untill there is evidence that consensus has changed. Try an RfC to see if it has.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 23:09, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

There's no need to start an RFC if no one actually opposes adding the material. All we need here is the WP:BRD cycle. Sombe9 was bold and added the material, and you reverted it because you opposed including the Lynn quote. Now we discuss and see if we can come up with a compromise. It sounds like we probably can.

Would you prefer that I add the summary myself? I would most likely use a wording similar to the one used by Sombe9 (the summary of the book, not the Lynn quote), so if you think another wording would be preferable, please clarify that. 103.47.145.178 (talk) 00:28, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

I oppose the material untill there is clear evidence that consensus has changed.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 16:59, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Editors oppose adding the material. And an averaging between non-neutral fringe POV and mainstream view is not a "compromise" nor is it neutral. The stuff shouldn't be in there, end of story.Volunteer Marek (talk) 01:36, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Rushton's papers have been published in peer-reviewed journals and he is a very heavily cited scholar. That should be enough to establish that he doesn't represent the fringe. Sombe19 (talk) 05:23, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

That is a clear misunderstanding.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 16:59, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

I don't get it. Sombe19 (talk) 17:04, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

A work does not get mainstream merely by being cited in other mainstream work. It depends on what mainstream works say about the work. If they cite it in the context of critiqueing it as pseudoscience then obviously that is not the same as if they cite it as an authority on certain topics. Passing peer-review also is no guarantee of mainstream status. There are scientific peer-reviewed journals specifically created to enable scholars to publish whose work are not being accepted for publication in mainstream journals. There are journals who have different criteria for the distinction between mainstream and fringe than within the wider field (e.g. in "Intelligence" Rushton/Lynn type hereditarianism is not a fringe viewpoint (though it is definitely not the mainstream either), but in American Journal of Psychology it is clearly a fringe viewpoint and a work that cited Rushton uncritically is unlikely to be published there). Rushton's work has been so thoroughly debunked and destroyed that it has no credibility within the mainstream.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 19:33, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

What about this: Mainstream Science on Intelligence? Sombe19 (talk) 20:00, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

It also doesnt get mainstream by claiming that it is mainstream. And that essay is not about Rushton's views or data. ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 20:06, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

But it is the consensus opinion of quite a few academics. And Rushton takes the stance taken by that essay. Sombe19 (talk) 20:09, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Read the essay. The opinion stated in that essay is very different from the view of Rushton in "Race, Evolution and Behavior". You are confusing unrelated issues here. The hereditarian hypothesis of the racial IQ gap is not itself fringe. Rushtons evolutionary explanation based on cranial morphology and penis length measurements is very much fringe.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 23:23, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

So what is your basis for claiming that? Sombe19 (talk) 04:17, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

At this point I think DFTRT applies.Volunteer Marek (talk) 17:03, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

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Quotation marks

Why are race terms such as Mongoloid used with the quotation marks in the article? They are scientific terms not specific to this particular book.--Adûnâi (talk) 21:55, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

I thought the same, this is obvious editorializing on the part of Wikipedia. I am sure the book can be criticized harshly on grounds of actual content, so that there is no need to belabor the point that the author writing in the 1990s used standard 1990s terminology, which apparently has become later became deprecated at least in some fields.

It is certainly worthwhile to discuss such changes in recommended terminology, who is advocating for them and why, but this isn't the place for such a discussion and it needlessly distracts from the topic. There can be a brief note explaining that the terms have been deprecated by some authorities since the book was published, but this isn't more than a footnote. --dab (𒁳) 10:19, 25 May 2018 (UTC)

Is "cancer" operating at the explicit level? I think not.

He served as a professor of psychology at the University of Western Ontario for many years, and he also served, until his death from cancer on October 2, 2012, as the head of the Pioneer Fund.

I write a lot of improvisational satire online, and it's an absolutely routine tactic to bury a modifier in one sentence that's intended to spill over into a subsequent remark, and every astute reader gets this right away, because it's simply a magnification of a universal human behaviour. So you describe some chick as amazingly "hot" at the outset (it's a good hook). But then in the next paragraph you manufacture a pretext to inject the word "radioactive" and the paragraph after than you manufacture a pretext to inject the word "potato". People absolutely do connect the dots at the subconscious level to form the gestalt "radioactive hot potato". Any lingering hint of Victoria's Secret foxy hotness has by this point been thoroughly deep-sixed into the dirty laundry hamper.

Enter one J. Philippe Rushton, radioactive hot potato extraordinaire.

Anyone out there defending the use of the word "cancer" in this context as not having wings (as described above), I must congratulate you on your ninnihood of the straight face. (Were you ever to become the target of my satire, you'd wise up in a New York microsecond, because the effect is amazingly potent when wielded with practiced hands.)

For some reason that I never understood a favourite joke in my childhood schoolyard went this:

• so and so was telling everyone he saw you floating down the river last night
• but I defended you by saying "shit doesn't float".

(It was all I could do to restrain myself from pointing out that shit does float with a sufficient volume of entrained gas, thereby gaining a permanent reputation as having exactly the wrong fascination with intestinal atmospherics.)

Is that why we're specifying death by cancer here? Because otherwise the reader would assume he was assassinated in his sleep, or accidentally immolated himself while burning down an orphanage? In which case "cancer" dispels a much worse implicit rumour?

Bottom line: I successfully weaponize that kind of casual word drop on a daily basis. Doesn't look harmless from where I sit, at a wry Eustachian cant, emitting my barbed bubbles. — MaxEnt 23:01, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

You found it easier to write this lengthy analysis, than simply moving the cause of death out of that sentence?·maunus · snunɐɯ· 23:15, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

It's not "simple" if it keeps coming back, and if it's still here, chances are not slim that it has already come back, and fairly decent that some (in such a polarized venue) are choosing to deny or downplay the issue. Revision on a Wikipedia is a dime a dozen. And I have no real desire to put my fingerprints on the actual page itself, since I'm just passing through, and not planning to stake the matter out in my watch list. And it's not like I haven't had blowback from "simple" edits along the way, either. My sensitivity to language is not "normal", as I've discovered at cost (which I lampooned above, quite deliberately, in my remark about "entrained" gas). — MaxEnt 23:26, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

Here's how I rewrote that for my own notes:

He served as a professor of psychology at the University of Western Ontario for many years, and he also served, until his illness and death in October 2012, as the head of the Pioneer Fund.

Manages to not leave the "death" door open just a crack, without invoking "cancer". — MaxEnt 23:26, 23 March 2019 (UTC)